Capt. William "Buck" Rogers is a jovial space cowboy who is accidentally time-warped from 1987 to 2491. Earth is engaged in interplanetary war following a global holocaust, and Buck's piloting skills make him an ideal starfighter recruit for the Earth Defense Directorate, where his closest colleagues are Dr. Huer (Tim O'Connor), squadron leader Col. Wilma Deering (former model Erin Gray), the wisecracking robot Twiki (voiced by cartoon legend Mel Blanc), and a portable computer-brain named Dr. Theopolis.
And it is nice to see the pristine Science-Fiction Future. Star Wars sort of did away with that in favor of the "lived in," Science Fiction sets complete with scruffy floors and filthy walls. And that Lived In universe became so popularized that it is really hard to find the pristine universe.
And I am sort of partial to that. It might even be more accurate. I mean, my wife tried to get a little robot to clean our floors so now I do all the vacuuming because when the machines take over, I'm not getting whacked by a dust buster. I want a T-800 to have to take me out.
A T-800 also took the lived in future to a post apocalyptic cesspool, which was also just amazing on screen and made for a killer story.
I don't really care, I like all the themes, but Buck Rogers was so clean they wore white. It was like they were walking around in the gloves my mother wore to make sure my room was up to her military brat standards.
And I might be joking a little, but that is a universe all to itself, it's a future all to itself, and it actually helps take you to a different world for a little while. It was set in an environment that I could lose myself in, with cheap robots that only hard core Sci-Fi fans could love.
And then they went ahead and they made it fun to watch. Technically it wasn't the fx marvel that Star Wars was, but it had it's own heart, it had it's own humor, it had it's own mythology, it's own world, and it turned out to be pure escapist fun.
Which, honestly, is why I watch movies and what movies SHOULD be made to do. So I'm giving it 10 of 10, because it was pure entertainment...
... but it should be a little lower. I sort of feel that Sci-Fi needs to find a philosophy and cling to it, examine it, use it to set up the rules to the new universe it's exploring, or offer some sort of heavily veiled social commentary... and this doesn't do either. So it misses that mark, it misses that necessary trope.
But it brings entertainment to the table and that is all I ask for in a movie. It's fun to watch, so mission accomplished.
