TV Buck Rogers...Begins?

[Roo Stercogburn]

Buck Rogers Begins (2010) (TV)

Stumbled across this because I was rewatching some of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV series and looked up an actor on IMDB. Random cross referencing and... ooooh... wossat?

YouTube - Buck Rogers: Exclusive First Look!

Seems there's a donation based version of Buck Rogers in the pipe for TV and its even got Gil Gerard and Erin Gray in it.

The puzzler for me is that the whole thing about Buck is that there isn't any real 'origin' - he's just a guy that landed in the 25th century and had to deal with what he found. Its not like Batman or such. He wasn't shaped by events in his life before the fun starts, the fun starting is the whole originating event.

...which makes this very, very stupid. And oddly, totally in keeping with the cheesy popcorn idea of Buck Rogers.

No idea if this will be bad, really bad, or terribad squared. Not betting it will be great. Pretty sure if it sees the light of day I'll watch some of it at least just out of interest.

But a stroke of awesomeness is having Gil Gerard and Erin Gray in it. From the YouTube clip, Gil Gerard at 300 years old has no new expressions on his face but unlike The Rock, er, Dwayne Wossname, its fun to see that again.

 

[PLightstar]

Not sure about that, remember watching Buck Rogers as a kid, so I don't recall a lot of it, but it doesn't make sense to create a prequel unless it leads to him being landed in the future and continuing the series from then onwards.

 

[ECA]

Buck Rogers Begins (2010) (TV)

The puzzler for me is that the whole thing about Buck is that there isn't any real 'origin' - he's just a guy that landed in the 25th century and had to deal with what he found. Its not like Batman or such. He wasn't shaped by events in his life before the fun starts, the fun starting is the whole originating event.

The character first appeared as Anthony Rogers, the central character of Nowlan's Armageddon 2419 A.D. Born in 1898, He was a veteran of the Great War (World War I) and was by 1927 working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation. He was investigating reports of unusual phenomena reported in abandoned coal mines near Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. On December 15, while investigating one of the lower levels of a mine, there was a cave-in. Exposed to radioactive gas, Rogers fell into "a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of catabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on physical or mental faculties." Rogers remained in “sleep” for 492 years.

He awakes in 2419 and, thinking that he has been asleep for just several hours, wanders for a few days in unfamiliar forests (what had been Pennsylvania almost five centuries before). He finally notices someone clad in strange clothes and moving in giant leaps, who appears to be under attack by others. He defends the person, killing one of the attackers and scaring off the rest. It turns out that he is helping Wilma Deering, who, while on “air patrol”, was attacked by an enemy gang, the "Bad Bloods", which is presumed to have allied themselves with the Hans.

Wilma takes Rogers to her camp, where he is to meet the bosses of her gang. He is invited to stay with their gang or leave and visit other gangs. They hope that Rogers’ experience and knowledge he gained fighting in the First World War may be useful in their struggle with the Hans who rule North America from fifteen great cities they established across the continent. They ignored the Americans who were left to fend for themselves in the forests and mountains as their advanced technology prevented the need for slave labor.

In the sequel, The Airlords of Han, six months have passed and the 'hunter is now the hunted'. Rogers is now a gang leader and his forces as well as the other American gangs have surrounded the great cities and are attacking constantly but the airlords are determined to use their fleet of airships to break the siege.

 

[nath]

That's some really awful writing and acting right there.