BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY
IT WAS THE TRANSATLANTIC SF face-off to end them all. On Saturday 30 August, 1980, ITV scheduled the first episode of the new Glen A Larson space opera directly against the start of the latest series of Doctor Who. Even with a shiny ’80s makeover, the ratings reflected the fact that Brits couldn’t help concluding that the Doctor’s low-budget bumbling paled when compared to the expense and swagger of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. When they brought him back in 1982, a chastened BBC consigned the Time Lord to a weekday slot where the competition was less intense.
The Doctor has outlasted the interloper, of course, but for two memorable years Buck Rogers was at the top of the SF tree. The series was saucy and camp, but also thrillingly swashbuckling. It was a concoction that constituted a triumphant re-emergence for the man who was the SF genre’s very first icon.
Gil Gerard, a 36-year-old previously chiefly known for commercials and daytime soap The Doctors, landed the plum role of Buck. However, he reveals, “I turned it down three times… ’cos I had seen what happened to Adam West’s career doing Batman.” When his agent finally persuaded him to read the script, he found the project wasn’t what he’d assumed. “It had a sense of humour in it,” he recalls. “It was a cool character.”
Universal greenlit a TV pilot – ultimately released theatrically – with
