Buck Rogers in the 21st Century - Page 8

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

This site might help you out with which episodes are on which DVD.

Buck Rogers - DVD Movie Central

Harry

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I'm sure you're right. Probably used early 1990s digibeta masters/transfers that were already "on the shelf."



Plus, back in '79, it's likely they were broadcast direct from 16mm film prints, rather than from transfers to tape. That's part of why old TV broadcasts of film-based material looked so "dirty": they were using the actual films a lot of the time, so more chance for dirt to end up in the picture!

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I'm pretty sure that the main source material for network broadcasts back then was a 35mm print transferred to tape. Any backup version would've been on 16mm. By backup version, I refer to secondary simultaneous runs in the event of technical difficulties, or delayed broadcast prints sent to affiliates who deviated from the scheduled air time.

I recall seeing, numerous times, a network have technical difficulties with a broadcast film-based program, and switching to an inferior-looking version for a period of time. It always looked like the difference one would note when seeing a standard network broadcast and then seeing a local station broadcast syndicated reruns at a later time.

As I said, most of what I've seen so far on this BUCK ROGERS set is pretty decent looking. For the price, I'm certainly not complaining at all. They look pretty good overall. It's just that it appears that minimal effort went into mastering them to DVD. They're nowhere near as good looking as say the VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA or TIME TUNNEL sets which looked amazingly good, and were sourced from films more than a decade older.

The BUCK ROGERS set looks good color-balance-wise, perhaps a bit oversaturated at times. But the bright reds are noise-free, and as I said, the dirt that is present looks like it's always been there. For reference, look at any opening credit sequence in the first season. When the faces begin appearing in the circle as the actors are credited, there's this annoying black spot that appears left of center and slightly lower than center. It looks like a mole on Erin Gray and Tim O'Connor's faces. That spot in particular, was present on the network broadcasts way back in 1979.

Harry

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Good detective work, Harry!

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Thanks, Will.

It's not something I would have ever noticed had I not read about Ms. Clay's hiring for the role. Then, seeing the episode, it just appeared that it might have been filmed before the change. With Mr. Romero in the scene, I put two and two together and watched it more carefully.

Harry

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Same here. I tend to think it has/had a running flaw, as a buddy of mine who owns it has problems with the same episodes. Since one of them is a Gary Coleman episode, i doubt i would ever watch that episode again anyway!

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

It strikes me that watching the shows, there is a lot more chemistry between
Pamela Hensley and Gil Gerard than with Erin Grey. The show was firmly tongue in cheek and they seemed to be able to play their roles more tongue in cheek.

My favorite episode was Flight of the War Witch. The scenes with Gil Gerard and Pamela Hensley are a joy to watch.

The second season was a disaster. It makes Star Trek's 3rd season look like a classic. I have not looked at even one of those episodes.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I have a little bit different feelings about the second season, looking on it a bit more fondly - in some cases. Recall that this series aired after a full decade with no STAR TREK other than the animated series. Some of us were hungry for sci-fi on TV in almost any form.

So when BUCK ROGERS and BATTLESTAR were running, some of us looked at those as substitutes, if you will, for more STAR TREK. Yeah, we realized that some of it was cheesy, but a trip into outer space weekly was at least something to grab onto.

When BUCK ROGERS went to its second season, I instantly recognized the changes to make it really MORE like STAR TREK. An exploration vessel with a captain and crew, an alien counterpart for our hero (the Spock-like Hawk), and different stories on different planets every week.

I really enjoyed those first few episodes of the second season. The two-parter "Time Of The Hawk" introduced us to the Hawk character (Thom Christopher) and his lovely wife Koori played by Barbara Luna, and it seemed like more adult sci-fi than the previous tongue-in-cheek BUCK ROGERS did. Also early on in that second season was an episode called "The Guardians" which I found to be an enjoyable sci-fi fantasy, and another two-part episode with Mark Lenard, a STAR TREK icon, guest starring.

On board the Searcher as part of the crew was Paul Carr, who played in STAR TREK's second pilot and had done the rounds on the Irwin Allen shows.

Cringe-worthy stuff was the silly, stuffy robot named Crichton, and the crappy replaced voice for Twiki. These were offset by a Captain named for Isaac Azimov, and the lovable Dr. Goodfellow character played by Wilfrid Hyde-White.

Anyway, IMHO it had potential based on the early going. I don't think it quite lived up to it though. Bottom line here is that for those of you who have the set but don't remember too much about the second season other than you hated it, check it out. Give those first few episodes a spin sometime when you're bored with little to do. You might find that you'll like them better than you thought.

Harry

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

My biggest gripe about Season 2, aside from the reasons you cited, was that they jettisoned lots of fun characters (Dr. Huer, Princess Ardala, Kane, Dr. Theopolis, TigerMan) and Buck became a little more humor-less and tired-looking. The fun, tongue-in-cheek factor disappeared and the show took itself more seriously, resulting in many bad episodes. Aside from The Guardians, the only other one I kind of liked was Testimony of a Traitor.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

If you guys want a scanned copy of the booklet that came with the DVD set, I'm prepared to offer a scanned copy of the booklet which also contains the info about which episodes are on which DVD.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I wish the pilot episode were on the dvd set, not just the theatrical version.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I just bought this set through Columbia House within the last month and had the same problem. I really couldn't even tell at first if a booklet was supposed to be enclosed since the perforated slot where the booklet would supposedly be held was still sealed, as it would be right after the package was assembled. My guess is that at some point perhaps Universal ran out of booklets and just went ahead and packaged the remaining sets in production without them.

I also thought of writing Universal, but its sounds like that might be a fruitless endeavor as well.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I've uploaded the cover image for the booklet as well as the first page. If everyone want's to see the remaining pages for printing, and these are the exact size so all you have to do is print them out, then what I'll do is scan the rest of the pages.

Booklet Cover: ImageShack - Hosting :: brcoverkw6.gif
Page 01: ImageShack - Hosting :: page01on6.gif

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I bought my copy from Wal-mart for the same price and it had the booklet but it was missing disc 3. I took it back a week later and got a complete set, including a booklet. I bought mine sometime last summer.

I enjoyed season 1 more, Gil looked like he was enjoying the role. That season was very fun to watch. My favourite episode of the entire series was Testimony of a Traitor from season 2. I hated the cast, especially the dropping of Mel Blanc's voice for Twikie for a few episodes, and story changes.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Thanks for going to the trouble, Mark. I'll give these a shot. How many total pages is the booklet?

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

The booklet is all connected together but I can edit the pages so that you can fit two pages per sheet of paper and create your own booklet.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Buck Rogers suffered the same fate as Battlestar Galactica. The second season of each had a huge budget cut, i.e. no more ardala or draconians. Battlestar came back as galactica 1980. Richard Hatch and Dirk benedict didn't have to return because their contracts were up. As for Buck Rogers, Hawk was one of the best characters in the second season. Look for Dennis Haysbert in a number of episodes as well.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

The special effects for Battlestar Galactica had suffered a major setback when Lucasfilm Ltd. discovered that the special effects/sound effects they were intending to use were similar to Star Wars. Universal did not want to fight a legal battle with Fox at that time and so they agreed to change the special effects for the television series and the series suffered ...

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I'll never forget during the run of this show there was a scene where buck accessed some kind of control panel. The panel looked very familiar. After taking a better look at it I realized it was a game (Computer Perfection) that I had. I couldnt believe that they used it as a prop.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Since it was John Dykstra and bunch of ILM guys working on the Galactica pilot/movie fresh off of Star Wars, of course there were going to be similarities! How many different ways can you have spaceships flying around battling each other anyway?

As the series itself recycled a lot of that FX footage, I don't see how Lucasfilm would have been appeased in such a bizarre scenario. But then again, Lucas' lawyers wanted to sue the people who made Hardware Wars...

Speaking of familiar looking props, Buck is seen using a Commodore PET computer in a second season episode. A similar computer turns up in Kirk's apartment in Star Trek II, but that could simply be part of his antique collection.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

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Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Amazon has this on sale again for $15.49. If you never picked it up, that is a great price.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Amazon has it now for 15.99, so ive finally ordered it.I wonder if mine will have the booklet, LOL!!!!

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I ended up ordering my copy through Columbhia House.com and mine came with the booklet.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I guess its just the luck of the draw, we will see when mine arrives in a week or so.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

When I ordered mine from Amazon back in March, the booklet was included.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

Received mine yesterday from amazon,and it came with the booklet.Ive watched the theatrical pilot , it was really fun.Havent seen this series , since the early 80s.Judging from the pilot, I think im going to enjoy this series on dvd, even more than 70s galactica !!!!!

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I snagged one from Walmart last year and it had the booklet.

I've been watching these myself lately. I'd seen them on sci-fi years ago and knew the show had "gotten" cheesy since last seeing it as a kid when it originally aired. That was a real shame. Still, nostalgia drives this one pretty well for me. The honeys on the show are still honeys! Wilma is incredible in those tight outfits. I don't see how I made it through an episode without 12 trips to the restroom for "a pee break".

I like BG much better though. In fact, BG has held up and the nostalgic is strong too. I have yet to buy those however....both the original and the lesser 80s series are high on my list. It makes a big difference when something is $20 and sitting there in Walmart.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I took alot of comfort the future would be safe for all women to live in spandex disco pants & skintight matching jackets.I'm collecting all movies that contain scenes or feature the supporting cast wearing these oft put down beauties.It took mad hip bones to get in those & sit down,run,etc.
the 50's gave us duct tape piping & monsters with pices of 2x 4 & mics exposed in shots.my neighbor has those.Just because the matrix looks like a video game doesnt make it high art.

Re: Buck Rogers in the 21st Century

I'm glad they are finally making this stuff available.The "tine tunnel" was a fun show....also,depending on age,ta have to remember this was during the 3 channel years & was in "prime time". My other post about Sweeps or 'grab for ratings/advertising dollars made most of the female characters go 'undercover' in a swimsuit competion/etc...the other way to hook the audience was a two part show that had the lead in deep trouble.....Has ANYONE seen the"MIDNIGHT SPECIAL" or DON KIRSHNER"S ROCK CONCERT????"
I remember zappa w/ full band,Todd rungren...alot of performers before MtV turned the music on its ear;requiring runway models lip syncing a whoule album worth of 2 min 30 sec dance hits.
It was"unplugged;plugged in & cranked up, & Edgar Winter to Dusty springfield would show up.

Your threads are very helpful,fun & interesting.Alot of good points on here made with enough clarity you can make informed desicions on what you may want to collect.I was unaware of TVLAND....as we dont care for TV/just movies.The TV on collections is just fun nostalkia...My wife & I look at the cars,car phones,clothes....it's just hysterical sometimes.