Buck Rogers and the 20th Century.
Netflix has "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" available for on demand viewing. I've been down all day with some nasty virus and had little better to do than lie in bed and watch Buck Rogers. Not that Gil Gerard in hard to watch, even with all the hokey martial arts and...unique...70s fashion.
It's been interesting to watch the show wrestle with race and gender. It would be interesting to be able to listen to recordings of the planning meetings to hear what people had said. There are so many...oddities. One the one had you have Colonel Wilma Deering. Female in a command position. Confident. Decisive. Not the traits commonly ascribed to women. Still, she's not above using her "feminine wiles" to distract a villain. Nor does she seem threatened or upset by Buck's implied womanizing, and actually has an implied colorful past of her own. Then there is Princess Ardala. The quintessential femme fatale. Sexy and dangerous. Except that she has the inability to control her lust for Rogers and in episode after episode is undone by it. In the last episode of season one the point is made that Ardala is not a real woman, just a spoiled girl. An interesting distinction.
I'm not sure what to make of all the latex and bikini's. That could be, at least in part, due to my male point of view. I guess one could make the argument that a woman exposing her body is empowering and women don't have to be sexless to be powerful. I'll leave that up to the ladies to decide. My favorite gender-WTF, though, was when Twiki found a love interest. Those of you old enough to remember the show will remember Twiki's signature beedee beedee beedee. His love interest's signature sound? Booty booty booty.
Race is equally muddled. Diversity is carefully calculated. Five captives in a cell and one is black, one is Latin, one is Asian, one is white and one is aging. Wouldn't it be nice if the world were equally divided into fifths? Um...wait. No Arabs? Despite obvious attempts at diversity, the arch enemies, the Draconians, have a decidedly Asian feel to their uniforms, reminiscent of samurai. Though they did switch the original Kane from the pilot, who also looked to be of Asian descent, for someone with a more Latin feel. There was another episode where the bad guy's lair looked like it came right out of a Chinese painting. Oh, and this is the best one: Buck gets to play body guard to Miss Cosmos. How do beauty contests work in the 25th century? Genetics. Miss Cosmos is the "almost perfect genetic ideal of a female human." Miss Cosmos is also couldn't be more Scandinavian. Platinum blond hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin. That's the human genetic ideal, huh?
Still, for all it's awkwardness, I did enjoy watching the show. Not every TV series from my childhood can stand up to my memory of it. "Dukes of Hazzard"? I remember watching that show religiously and enjoying it immensely, but I tired of watching it after just a few episodes. Even the hunky John Schneider couldn't keep me coming back for more. Next to bear scrutiny: "Battlestar Galactica".