In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
When we think about stories that brought science fiction to the attention of mass audiences, today we tend to think immediately of Star Wars. For decades before George Lucas brought his creation to the big screen, however, there was one character who stood at center stage: Anthony “Buck” Rogers. Because Buck has visited us in so many forms over the years, I’m going to look at three different works today. The first is Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan, a book combining the two novelettes from Amazing Stories that first introduced the character. Second is The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a selection of Buck Rogers newspaper comics from over the years, with a wonderful introduction by Ray Bradbury. And the third is a family heirloom, a “Big Little Book” that I inherited from my father: Buck Rogers in the City Below the Sea.
My dad was born in 1922, and grew up in the suburbs of New York City, a metropolis with one foot in the future. His father worked at Bell Labs, and he remembered being taken to work to see new inventions like the first televisions. His father also, in the wee hours of one morning in 1927, took him to Roosevelt Field so he could watch Charles Lindbergh take off on the first non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris. He watched the construction of the world’s highest skyscraper, the Chrysler Building, followed shortly by a new highest skyscraper, the Empire State Building. The city was criss-crossed by an ever-expanding network of mass transit, with new aircraft flying to the growing airports, and all manner of new ships plying the waters. Even after the Crash of 1929, New York City continued to be a center for technological innovation, culminating in the New York World’s Fair of 1939, which promised attendees a look at the world of tomorrow. It’s no wonder that my dad took to Buck Rogers like a duck to water when the strip appeared in the newspaper. He often talked about how much he enjoyed the comic strip, and how it inspired his life-long love of science fiction. And my dad was not alone—all over the country, youngsters couldn’t get enough of Buck Rogers and his adventures.
About the Creators
Philip Francis Nowlan (1888-1940) was a newspaper columnist who also wrote science fiction stories. He brought one of these stories to the National Newspaper Syndicate, which was looking for ideas for a daily adventure comic strip…and from this small beginning came the work of a lifetime.
John F. Dille (1884-1957) was the founder of the National Newspaper Syndicate, which operated from 1917 to 1984. The most notable comic syndicated by the company was Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D., running from 1929 to 1967. Dille paired writer Philip Nowlan with artist Dick Calkins, which proved to be a winning combination.
Dick Calkins (1894-1962) was a newspaper cartoonist who served as a flight instructor for the U.S. Army in World War I. He was an editorial cartoonist before being asked to draw the Buck Rogers comic strip in 1929.
Because they have gone out of copyright, the original novelette, “Armageddon 2419,” is available for reading at Project Gutenberg, as is its sequel “The Airlords of Han.”
Armageddon 2419
The version I read for this review is a fix-up of the two aforementioned novelettes that originally appeared in Amazing Stories, “Armageddon 2419” and “The Airlords of Han.” The two were first combined into a single novel the 1960s by Donald A. Wollheim. The book was then re-edited by Spider Robinson, and released by Ace Books in 1978. While I haven’t compared the Spider Robinson version with the original magazine version extensively, it appears that he updated and streamlined the prose, and also removed the racist overtones that characterized the original works. The origin of Buck Rogers is, unfortunately, rooted in a tale that describes the conquering of the world by a people referred to alternately as “Mongols,” or the “Han.” This setting evoked the racist ideology behind the “Yellow Peril,” which argued that Asian people were a threat to Western civilization. Like many other characters that originated in the early 20th century, Buck Rogers would be reinvented over the years to mitigate such unpleasant and outdated elements of the original tales.
In the first novelette, World War I Army Air Corps veteran and engineer Anthony Rogers is sent to investigate a mine, is trapped by a cave-in, succumbs to a mysterious gas, and enters a state of suspended animation. He awakens when the rocks shift, allowing fresh air into the cavern. He emerges to find a young woman being attacked and, when she is injured, uses her rocket pistol on her attackers. The woman, Wilma, tells him it is the 25th century, and that during the 22nd century, America, like most of the rest of the world, fell under the domination of the Han. Using advanced technology like aircraft lifted on repulsor beams and disintegrator ray-guns, they have laid the United States to waste. The population is now organized into gangs who live a nomadic life, hiding from the Han. Wilma helps Rogers take a jumper belt from a dead attacker, which uses a substance called “inertron” that reacts to gravity in a manner opposite to normal matter. Wilma’s attackers were Americans called Bad Bloods—bandits who attack other gangs, and sometimes cooperate with the Han.
Rogers joins Wilma’s gang, and after convincing the leaders that his story of a long hibernation is true, uses his experiences in the 20th century to develop new tactics that help them fight the Bad Bloods. In addition to inertron, the Americans have developed ultron, a substance that can be used in radios, enabling them to transmit in ways undetectable by normal radios. Ultron also can be used to build shields impervious to Han disintegration beams. Rogers stumbles on a way to use rocket shells to disrupt repulsor rays, and brings down a Han airship. The Americans have been on the verge of rising up against the Han, and this action is the catalyst for widespread action, with Han airships downed all over the country. There is an American gang betraying their secrets to the Han, however, and soon Rogers and Wilma are on a daring raid into the Han headquarters in what used to be New York City in order to find the secret of the betrayers in their records. When that information is discovered, a coalition of gangs moves on the gang that betrayed them, and their defeat puts the Americans on the road toward freedom. This first novelette is packed with action only occasionally punctuated by exposition about the new world Rogers has landed in, and is a fun read.
The second novelette that makes up this short novel begins when the Han occupation is collapsing. The Americans have developed swoopers, flying vehicles shielded against disintegration rays, but the Han have developed ground ships that float just above the grounds, and function like 20th-century tanks. After participating in a couple of battles where innovations on both sides are pitted against the other, Rogers crashes in a damaged swooper and is captured by the Han and taken to their capital. This sucks the life out of the narrative, as the war for independence is then viewed secondhand by Rogers as a prisoner. Moreover, the text focuses far too much attention on the inferiority of the decadent Han culture, as compared to the strength and vitality of the Americans. Even edited to remove the overtly racist statements, this narrative is unpleasant to read. Rogers is finally rescued by floating American robot drones and escapes to be reunited with Wilma. The end of this war of independence brings the second novelette, and the novel, to a close.
The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
This coffee table book was assembled in 1969, just after the first moon landing, and starts off with an affectionate introduction from Ray Bradbury. He recounts his love for Buck Rogers, describing how all across the country, the character introduced youngsters to an exciting future, full of possibilities. The collection includes a selection of story arcs from throughout the first few decades of the comic strip. One change from the original tales in Amazing Stories was the decision that “Buck” was a catchier first name for the character than “Anthony,” which clearly turned out to be a wise choice.
The artwork of Dick Calkins gets some criticism, as it is frequently rather primitive looking, and the characters are often awkwardly posed. The panels have a lot of text, and are packed with odd little details. But the artwork is also very much of its time, and Calkin had the challenge of drawing devices, vehicles, and costumes that had no analog in the real world. For many years, when people thought of the future, they imagined it in the context of Calkins’ artwork.
The first couple of years of the comic strip loosely followed Nowlan’s original two novelettes from Amazing Stories, with Buck traveling around the United States to drive out the Han invaders. Reportedly, the syndicate used the mention of specific cities visited by Buck to encourage additional newspapers to pick up the strip in syndication. There are a lot of romantic subplots and misunderstandings between Buck and Wilma; the strip even introduces an old boyfriend, Killer Kane, who is so enraged by Wilma picking Buck over him that he turns traitor, and begins to help the Han invaders. He is such a despicable figure, you wonder what Wilma saw in him in the first place…
It was after the Han were defeated, however, that the series really reached its full potential. As it recovers from the Han occupation, the society explodes with new inventions, and soon Buck is rocketing off to other planets. He faces alien invasions, battles on the moon, encounters with the Tiger-Men of Mars, the discovery of sunken Atlantis, and travels to Jupiter and even Planet X (where World War II-era anti-Japanese racism unfortunately rears its ugly head).
The Sunday comic strips, because some people did not read both daily and weekly papers, presented separate adventures, often featuring Bucky Deering, Wilma’s younger brother, and his friend Alura. These strips presented the future in bold and vibrant colors.
Today, completists can find every Buck Rogers strip available in multi-volume collections, but this particular collection gives you a good cross-section of the tales in a single book.
Buck Rogers in the City Below the Sea
This book, containing a story drawn from the daily newspaper strips, was published in 1934, when my dad was 12. It was one of his prized possessions, one of the few childhood mementos he kept throughout his life, and was my own first introduction into the world of Buck Rogers. The Big Little Books were created by Whitman Publishing in 1932, and were small, thick books that contained stories presented with prose on one page with an illustration on the facing page. The books were aimed at children and primarily featured characters from comics or films. They were published until the 1960s.
This book closely follows the comic strip, although it is heavily abridged, and uses artwork drawn from the strip. It follows Buck and Wilma as they investigate the appearance of mysterious albinos around the world. One of these has had her memory scanned by scientists who discover that she lived in an undersea city and had the ability to remain underwater without breathing for extended periods of time. Buck and Wilma report to a flying submarine that has been assigned to them to find it has already departed. Their longtime enemy Killer Kane has wooed the young Lieutenant Ardala Valmar and convinced her to betray her superiors. Buck and Wilma find the submarine, and they believe Ardala when she says their departure was a mistake. Buck survives a shark attack, and finds the undersea city of Atlantis. Killer Kane and his piratical minions capture the submarine, but Wilma escapes. Buck and Wilma are reunited, and meet Atlanteans who greet them warmly, but say they can never leave because the existence of Atlantis must remain secret from the outside world. Then Killer Kane and Ardala arrive and try to convince the Atlanteans that Buck and Wilma are the pirates. There are many twists and turns as Kane and Ardala prove to be crafty opponents, but finally Buck and Wilma regain their submarine, befriend the Atlanteans, and head back to the surface world with an offer of trade. The plot is overly contrived, but moves at a brisk pace, with lots of action. As a youngster, this was my first exposure to the legend of Atlantis, and I found the concept of a lost world fascinating. To my father’s dismay, we loved the book so much it began to come apart at the seams.
Buck Rogers in Other Media
People today might wonder how a comic strip character could have such broad and extensive popular appeal, but you have to remember that in the day, syndicated comics were a major form of entertainment. There was no TV or internet, and other than records that only played a song or two at a time, there was no recorded media to consume at home, other than books or periodicals. And over the years, of course, Buck appeared in a lot of other formats as well. I won’t include all the incarnations of Buck Rogers here, but will mention some of the highlights:
The Buck Rogers strip spawned all sorts of related merchandise, including ray guns, rocket pistols, spaceships, and other toys. There was a popular radio show that ran for a number of years. The series spawned a 1939 movie serial that started Buster Crabbe. There were also appearances in comic books.
Buy the Book
All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries
The character garnered renewed interest in 1979 when producer Glen Larson, coming off success with the Battlestar Galactica TV show, led efforts to create a TV show featuring Buck Rogers. Gil Gerard starred as Buck and Erin Grey played Wilma. The pilot was well received, and actually gained a theatrical release. After a first season with disappointing ratings (perhaps because the tone was too campy), the series was retooled to focus on deep space exploration. But the retooling did not turn things around, and the show ended after a second season. The show was my son’s first exposure to Buck Rogers, and his favorite character, Twiki the robot, was his first action figure.
In the late 1980s, TSR (the company that brought the world Dungeons & Dragons) launched a multi-media effort featuring Buck, called “Buck Rogers XXVC.” This involved novelizations, comic books, video games, role-playing games, and a board game called “Battle for the 25th Century.” That game, which my son and I often played, involved a battle for control of the solar system. While it quickly settled into a stalemate with two players, it also generated epic space battles that kept us entertained for hours.
Buck and Wilma have never gotten the big-budget movie screen incarnation they really deserve, but like many fans, I still have hopes. The financial failure of the John Carter movie a few years ago has probably dimmed the chances of many projects involving classic SF characters, but there is always talk among the fandom. I would love the character to receive the kind of treatment director Joe Johnston gave The Rocketeer and Captain America: The First Avenger.
Final Thoughts
So, there you have it, a quick overview of the many adventures of Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering, characters I’ve loved for years. Buck has been quiet recently, but his influence on the field of science fiction has been huge, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him making more appearances in the future.
And now, you have the floor. Have you read any of the books I’ve mentioned in the column, and if so, what did you think? What incarnations of the character introduced you to Buck, and which did you enjoy the most? And what new versions might you want to see going forward?
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
I think the first reference to Buck Rogers I encountered was probably the Warner Brothers cartoon “Duck Dogers in the 24th and Half Century!” on Saturday mornings in the early 70’s.
I currently have the collections of the dailies and the Sundays from the library. It’s good to know that the Sundays and the dailies are not the same stories.
I’ve been bingeing all the Buck Rogers media I can get my hands on lately. I do this periodically, having gone through the Flash Gordon comic strips, the 1980 movie, and the late 70s Saturday morning cartoon, and now it’s Buck’s turn. Captain Future is up next.
I would like to think that we are far enough past the John Carter debacle (which I entirely blame on Disney’s marketing, not the quality of the film itself) that we could start working on the classics again. Allen Steele’s recent Avengers of the Moon, updating Captain Future while still retaining some of the pulp flavor of those stories is proof that it can be done.
Recently, we’ve even had some original works that come close (oh, so close) to those old style sci-fi stories. Jupiter Ascending was just a hair’s breadth from Flash Gordon (And I liked it, no matter what you say). Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was awesome, perhaps only really hurt by the choice to go completely green-screen. Slightly less recently, Buckaroo Banzai, anyone? Even Marvel and DC have done well with a couple of period-set superhero stories. Their movies were even box office successes, instead of just cult classics.
So let’s go! Let’s get us a Gernsbachian superhero universe going. Flash Gordon, The Phantom, the Shadow, Doc Savage…they can all be lifted above their problematic origins and given a modern sensibility, even if their stories are still told as period pieces.
Buck Rogers, Captain Future, John Carter (OF MARS!!!), they can all be brought into a glorious retro-future set of stories. The stories are there. The authors, illustrators, and filmmakers who love this sort of thing are clearly out there too.
I say bring em on!
Haven’t read any of the books. My first introduction was the 1979 movie/TV series, which it’s probably just as well I can’t easily revisit at this point. I’ve also seen the Buster Crabbe serial, although I kind of preferred Crabbe’s Flash Gordon.
I reviewed the Glen Larson series on my blog last year, and also covered the Nowlan novellas and the Crabbe serial:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/tag/buck-rogers-in-the-25th-century/
My first exposure to Buck Rogers was probably seeing the serial on TV, followed by the Larson series. I think what left the strongest impression on me as a kid was Erin Gray as Wilma — she was one of my first actress crushes, and I think Wilma’s portrayal in the first season as a strong, capable action heroine helped shape my appreciation for strong, smart women. The first season was very shallow in its storytelling — showrunner Bruce Lansbury believed mass audiences couldn’t handle unfamiliar sci-fi concepts or philosophically challenging stories and thus insisted on doing generic TV action plots with superficial futuristic trappings — but it was surprisingly good for its day in portraying gender equality, and relatively good at racially diverse guest-star casting. Unfortunately, the second season (under a completely different creative team) was far more misogynistic, and generally much worse overall — though season 2’s first and last episodes are almost Star Trek-worthy science fiction tales with meaningful social commentary, better than anything else in the entire series.
I haven’t read any of the comics as far as I recall, and I’m curious about the Ardala Valmar character. I know the name Ardala from Pamela Hensley’s recurring villain on the TV show, but I realized when I did my reviews that the show’s Princess Ardala has very little in common with the comics’ Ardala, instead being essentially a clone of Princess Aura from Flash Gordon, aside from remaining a villain throughout. I’m puzzled why they made that choice (since it was still a year or two before the DeLaurentiis Flash Gordon movie came out or would’ve even been in production), and I’m curious what the comics’ Ardala was like. I’ve only been able to find a bit of information, that she was Killer Kane’s moll and an amoral adventuress. I’d appreciate hearing more about her.
When I read the original novellas, I was shocked by how deeply racist they were — some of the language was indistinguishable from the sort of stuff you’d only see today on extremist white-supremacist fringe sites, with stuff about the defense of the White Race (equated with Americans) against the Yellow Peril. And the climax of the second novella portrays the use of weapons of mass destruction to exterminate an entire race as a heroic, triumphant act. It’s truly horrifying. The tacked-on “Oh, the Han were aliens after all and now all human races live together in peace” epilogue was very unconvincing. But it suggests that the genocidal racism of the story went too far even for 1920s audiences so they tried to walk it back some.
And if the later, revised edition kept the name “Han” for the enemy, that does little to fix the racism, since Han is the name of the majority ethnic group of China. (Though Nowlan used it interchangeably with “Mongolian,” which is a separate ethnic group.)
@2/malquidis: I agree, the John Carter movie was excellent. Its only problems are that its first couple of scenes were weak, creating a poor first impression, and that its title was way too bland to mean anything to the uninitiated.
@1 I can’t believe I didn’t mention Duck Dodgers in the article. One of the highest of the many high points in the Warner Brothers catalog!
@2 I am also a big fan of old school science fiction. I have been getting back into model building, and one thing I would love to see are some model kits of the old Buck Rogers rocket ships, along with figures of old-school Buck and Wilma. Since writing the article, I stumbled upon information regarding the rights to the characters, which may explain why we haven’t seen much of Buck lately. Apparently, the heirs of Nowlan and Dille have been in court, with both having some claim on the character in its various incarnations, and I could find no news the dispute has been resolved. But I also found reports that Disney has shown some interest, and they certainly have deep enough pockets to make something happen.
And I don’t know if you saw it when it appeared, but I recently reviewed Captain Future, and the new Allen Steele book: https://www.tor.com/2018/12/06/updating-pulp-adventures-two-captain-future-stories-by-edmond-hamilton-and-allen-steele/
I remember watching Flash…uh…Buck Rogers played by Buster Crabbe as a kid. Then the TV show which was most memorable for the Asimov references int he second season.
I also remember the issue of Amazing Stories on the upper left not for the Buck Rogers story but for the other one. The first story of the marvelous E. E. Smith Skylark space opera series.
The (for me, at least) Megadrive game ‘Countdown to Doomsday’ is the version of Buck that will always be my favourite, even though I’m pretty sure I was aware of the TV versions first. There’s something so great about that setting and I do remember buying the campaign setting itself, though I never got around around to playing it. The artwork was fantastic, though.
@6/Dr. Thanatos: The Asimov references came about because season 2 showrunner John Mantley had worked with Asimov on a failed I, Robot movie adaptation (the same one Harlan Ellison was involved with, IIRC), so they knew each other. Oddly, that and Buck were Mantley’s only screen science fiction credits, though he had written an SF novel once. Mostly, Mantley worked on Westerns, including Gunsmoke and The Wild Wild West (which Buck‘s season 1 showrunner Bruce Lansbury had also been a showrunner on). I recently heard it said that Buck‘s season 2 premiere was essentially a rewrite of a Gunsmoke episode, though I don’t know whether that’s literally the case (it wasn’t unheard of back then for the same script to be rewritten and used on two or more different shows) or if it’s just that they told similar stories.
@6 the Skylark series was actualy my first “adult” book and my introduction at SF, when I was about 8 years old. I loved it enormously, and read it at least 5-6 times.
But even then i was a bit confused and woried by its quite casual approach to genocide as a problem-solving strategy…
Yes, Skylark was difficult in that way.
And much more speciest that Lensman.
“Humanity Triumphant, Not Incorporated” forsooth!
@8 ChristopherLBennett The episode’s writer Norman Hudis was quoted as saying Mantley had used the episode’s story “at least twice before when they worked on Gunsmoke”.
Someone else suggests that one of them was “Chato”, which had the same director, Vincent McEveety, and involved Matt Dillon and the eponymous character, played by Ricardo Montalban, in a similar outsider role (Chato is part-Indian) at first at odds with Dillon, then coming to a truce to try to get treatment for the latter’s wounded wife. James Arness listed it as one of his favorite episodes.
I never knew Buck Rogers was a comic strip. My introduction was the tv show from the 70’s. My favorite character was Twiki too. I had a Robby the Robot toy instead of Twiki for some reason but I’d have loved to have one. I did see some of the black and white serial with Crabb but I honestly can’t remember if it was Buck or Flash Gordon. I am also a fan of the Donald Duck cartoon. I’ve heard of the games but never played them they sound fun.
@11/mschiffe: Okay, that answers the question — it wasn’t literally the same script, just a parallel premise. After all, if it had been a rewrite of an actual Gunsmoke script, then the writer of said script would’ve had to get at least a story credit, like Jaron Summers & Jon Povill did when their script “The Child,” written for the abortive Star Trek Phase II revival in the late ’70s, was adapted into TNG’s season-2 premiere. But Norman Hudis never wrote for Gunsmoke.
@12/robinm: That’s a Daffy Duck cartoon, not Donald. You can tell the difference because his speech is actually comprehensible.
Chef: “Hello there, children. What’s all this I’m hearing about a new teacher?”
Kyle: “Ms. Ellen, dude. She’s beautiful!”
Chef: “Is she like Vanessa Williams beautiful? Or Toni Braxton beautiful? Or Pamela Anderson beautiful?”
South Park kids: ‘No … not really … nuh-uh …”
Chef: “Or is she Erin Grey in the second season of Buck Rogers beautiful?”
Stan: “Yeah, that’s the one!”
Chef: “Woof! I gotta meet this woman!”
– from South Park, “Tom’s Rhinoplasty”, Season 1, Episode 11 (and a good reason I turned into a stone South Park fan)
As a Roman Numeral pedant, I feel obliged to point out that XXVC is meaningless nonsense. It should be Buck Rogers MMD.
My first exposure to the character was the Gil Gerard television series. Several years later I read Armageddon 2419 AD which was part of a book I got called “Reel Future: The Stories That Inspired 16 Science Fiction Movies” edited by Forrest J Ackerman and Jean Stine.
Like seemingly everyone else here, discovered Buck via the Gil Gerard TV series, which lead me to learn about his pulp/comic strip origins, and at the same time had my father reminiscing about the strip, movie serial, and radio series…I just saw bits of the comic strip in various generic Comic Book Encyclopedias. and during the 80’s saw some of the movie serial when a local PBS station aired it. Incidentally should be noted that the Duck Dodgers cartoons were naturally voiced by Mel Blanc who also voiced TWIKI on the TV series
@15/zeg: The RPG title was actually Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century. So it was “XXV” for “25th” and “c” (written as a superscript in the logo) for “century.”
@17/capt_paul77: Blanc voiced Twiki for the entire first season and the latter half of the second, but for the first half of season 2, he was replaced by Bob Elyea, who gave Twiki a more high-pitched, elfin voice to match his boyish appearance.
And Twiki wasn’t an acronym, just a name (pronounced “tweaky”). It was claimed in “Shgoratchx!” that it stood for “unit TWKE-4,” though that contradicted season 1’s “Twiki is Missing,” which gave his designation as “Ambuquad N22-23-T.”
Though I’m reminded of the pocket-sized robot sidekick from Filmation’s Jason of Star Command, which premiered a year before Buck Rogers. His designation was W1K1, and he was called “Wiki” — a rather prophetic name for a computerized character.
@18/CLB Yeah, I do know/remember Twiki’s voice change, though never saw why they recast the voice, nor do I recall any onscreen/in universe explanation, though fan backlash was such that it was said to bring Blanc back for the last half of season two…
I’m not sure why they changed Twiki’s voice, but they changed virtually everything about the show; season 2 was practically an entirely different show that just happened to have a couple of the same actors with the same character names. Certainly Twiki was written differently in season 2, and that was one of the few consistent improvements from season 1. In season 1, Twiki had virtually no personality beyond periodically injecting sarcastic wisecracks or anachronistic slang observations, which contributed nothing of substance to the scenes and which fell flat as humor because the need to preface every one of his lines with that “Bidi-bidi-bidi” sound (which I realized last year was basically an electronic-sounding version of Porky Pig’s stutter) ruined the comic timing. But in season 2, Twiki actually had a personality and his dialogue went beyond wisecracks, so he actually contributed something of substance to the stories when they used him — and unlike most of late season 1, they didn’t go out of their way to feature Twiki unless they had good reason. Plus they dropped the bidi-bidis in the Elyea episodes, though they were back when Blanc returned.
Part of the writing problem of Wilma in Season 2 of the series is that Hawk was supposed to be in the two-part season opener then leave, but the awesomeness of Hawk/Thom Christopher convinced the showrunners that he needed to be a season regular. The early scripts gave many of Wilma’s lines to Hawk.
For those interested in the history of Season 2, I recommend the Thom Christopher website where all his articles and fan club interviews are archived. Click on the Archive tab under “Thom Christopher.” http://www.thomchristopher.info
And, yes, I’m the one who compiled most of the archives.
@20/CLB Wonder if the, um, Tweeks to Twiki were part of the attempts to make the show more serious for season two…I read somewhere that Gerard was increasingly vocal about his dislike of the show’s campish tone, and the overhauling for season twowas done as an effort to keep him from quitting the show…Also saw somewhere that originally Twiki was supposed to talk exclusively with the Biddi Biddi language, with Dr Theopolis translating for him, not unlike R2D2 and C3PO from a certain film franchise which no doubt influenced the show’s creation..
@21/MByerly: Except that Hawk was marginalized in most of the episodes too. There were several where he was just “out on patrol” for most of the episode and only showed up briefly to back up Buck. I guess maybe that’s because he had to be tacked onto scripts that weren’t written with him in mind. He was a fantastic character in “Time of the Hawk,” and the shame is that he could’ve been one of the great SFTV characters if he’d been given more to do and more than 11 episodes to do it in.
And the real problem with how Wilma was written is that the entire season was misogynistic. Whereas the first season had featured numerous female guest stars as strong, capable characters, the second season marginalized women. Of the Searcher‘s female crew members, the only one other than Wilma who ever had a significant part was Kim Hamilton’s Nurse Paulton in “Mark of the Saurian,” and only two more who spoke even a single line each. And female guest stars were mostly in traditional love-interest or sex-object roles, and there was rarely more than one significant female guest in an episode, the finale “The Dorian Secret” being the sole exception. So it wasn’t just an issue with Wilma. I mean, how did she go from being literally the commander of Earth’s entire military in season 1 to a junior officer of ill-defined responsibilities on a single ship? They just couldn’t handle a woman being in authority.
If you think about it (quoting from my blog reviews here), Buck Rogers season 2 was the closest thing in real life to the series within the movie Galaxy Quest. Both were Star Trek-like starship adventure series from c. 1980 with a macho male lead whose actor tended to hog the spotlight (Taggart/Buck), his stoic alien warrior best friend who’s the last survivor of a slaughtered people (Dr. Lazarus/Hawk), and a somewhat marginalized token female lead/love interest with a vaguely defined shipboard role (Tawny/Wilma). Meanwhile, Laredo, the child prodigy navigator of the Protector, has always strongly reminded me of Gary Coleman’s Hieronymous Fox from Buck season 1. Everyone assumes that Galaxy Quest is just a Star Trek parody, and to a large extent it obviously is; but if it isn’t deliberately based on Buck Rogers as well, then it’s a staggering coincidence, given the sheer number of strong parallels.
@22/capt_paul77: You’re right about Twiki’s dialogue, and I talk about that in my blog reviews. He was mostly just “bidi-bidi” in the pilot with Theo translating, but they did tack on a few lines of Blanc dialogue here and there. Amusingly, Twiki’s first comprehensible word was “L’chaim!“
@23 In some Gil Gerard interviews, Gerard said that Grey was going to be dumped with the remainder of the Season 1 cast until he threatened to walk. So, it’s no wonder her character was treated so badly.
@24/MByerly: Wow, how can you do Buck Rogers without Wilma Deering? That’s like Superman without Lois Lane.
Although I’m not sure whether to trust Gerard on that. I’ve seen other interviews claiming that he tried to get Wilma written out of several first-season episodes in favor of love interests of the week, until Gray put her foot down and insisted on being written back in. That’s why “Space Vampire” opens with the odd sequence of Buck teaching Wilma Deering, Earth’s highest-ranking fighter pilot, how to fly his new pleasure yacht — because Wilma replaced the love interest who was going to be in the episode instead.
Hi Alan
Another great topic and post, as a huge Bradbury fan I have read a number of interviews where he discussed his love of comic strips including not just SF themes but Tarzan and Prince Valiant as well. But the thing I enjoyed most was your discussion of your father’s experiences growing up in New City. His experiences really brought to mind, for me at least, the futurist covers that appeared on pulps like Amazing, Astounding, Air Wonder Stories, Wonder Stories etc. I enjoyed it so much I included a link and quote in a post of some pulps covers of the 1930’s.
Thanks for this.
Guy
Considering Season Two’s Star Trek influence, interesting to note that both seasons had a fair amount of guest acting/writing/directing crossover between the Buck Rogers TV series and the Trek franchise..
@27/capt_paul77: In season 1, it was clear to me that story editor Alan Brennert really wished he was writing Star Trek (and he eventually would, becoming a consulting producer on the first half of Enterprise‘s fourth season under his pseudonym Michael Bryant). There are references to Earth belonging to a Federation, terms like “mind meld” are used, Christopher Pike is name-dropped in a spaceport PA announcement in one Brennert episode (and DC’s Adam Strange in another), and the interstellar society depicted in the show seems like an attempt to depict something Trek-like. Actually, the pilot movie depicted Earth as a post-apocalyptic wasteland with only one surviving city and little trade with the wider galaxy, but the series retconned it into a more thriving society that led the interstellar Federation (albeit in a galaxy where war and slavery were rampant and there was much farther to go to achieve peace). It’s ironic that the more space-based second season did a much worse job of creating a sense of the larger universe of the show.
I’ll grant the crossover of actors — though it’s hardly surprising for working actors to show up in many different shows produced within a decade or two of each other — but there’s really very little crossover of directors or writers. The only director Buck had in common with TOS was Vincent McEveety, and the only TOS writers who worked on it were Paul Schneider and D.C. Fontana — plus David Wise, who wrote for ST:TAS, and Jaron Summers, who wrote for the unmade Star Trek Phase II revival. It did have a couple of writers who’d work on Trek later, including Brennert (for ENT) and David Bennett Carren (for TNG), as well as Martin Pasko, who wrote multiple issues of Marvel’s first Trek comic book series (which Brennert also wrote for).
But the Trek connection could’ve been much stronger. When Universal and NBC originally developed a Buck Rogers TV show, it was going to be a more serious, space-based science fiction series with David Gerrold as the head writer and with concept designs by noted space artist Robert McCall:
http://space1970.blogspot.com/2012/02/buck-rogers-lost-tv-series.html
It even had its pilot written by Samuel Peeples, who’d written both ST:TOS’s second pilot and ST:TAS’s first episode. D.C. Fontana wrote one of the commissioned scripts as well. Unfortunately, Universal thought it was too heady and science-fictional for the audience to handle, so they started from scratch and gave us the shallow, campy version we got instead.
@28 I could have watched a Trek series about making and maintaining contact with, what must have been, the early diaspora from Earth once space travel (even at low warp) became possible. It would have had to be a prequel, some sort of voyage of Discovery, with a bold and daring crew of professional people wanting to build far flung connections. Of course, there was never a way to make that fit. I mean, what sort of show would that have been?
Rewatching the TV series on MeTV, and now that they’re just starting season two, it’s almost like seasons one and two were totally different shows…From what I recall (and maybe the rewatch will disprove) there was no reference whatsoever to Huer, Theopolis and the Draconians, though I’ve come to imagine that Buck and Wilma at times kept up some sort of offscreen correspondence (personal or otherwise) with Huer back on Earth (and perhaps similarly TWIKI with Theo)…Also like to thnk that some sort of lasting Peace occurred between Earth and the Draconians (perhaps related to their mutual cooperation in Flight Of The War Witch) freeing up the EDF for the type of exploration depicted in season two..
@31/capt_paul77: You’re right — no season 1 characters other than Buck and Wilma were ever mentioned in season 2. It really was almost a completely different show.
i’ve just spent a year illustrating 6 posters for the original 1920s Buck Rogers here is my artwork, 30 days to go
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/buck-rogers-artwork/buck-rogers-15-foot-wallpaper-art-mural?ref=user_menu&fbclid=IwAR1fYtyyQ_2gqRAPjoO0Iz6F3NLWWfJlx9qMMH8j3UQ-LO9j4ytjbq7hA7c