Thursday, January 23, 2014

Buck Rogers 1.15: “Happy Birthday, Buck”


Airdate: 1/10/80

Cornell Traeger, whom Dr. Huer sent on an ill-fated space mission some 15 years earlier, is back in town – and bent on revenge. He kidnaps a lovely courier named Raylyn and plans to zap her brain to get Huer’s business schedule, but the beauty also happens to be a diversionary tactic for Buck, for whom Wilma and Huer are planning a surprise birthday party (to help allay his homesickness). Traeger manages to succeed enough to meet his nemesis face to face, but Buck rushes in to save the day, and not even Traeger’s “molecular transference” abilities can stop our titular hero.

So-so episode hampered by Peter MacLean’s overwrought, Charlton Heston-esque performance as Traeger but abetted mightily by smokin’ vixen Morgan Brittany as Raylyn – never mind that her character seems to jump from uber-serious in the first half to loose and jovial in the second. Again, lots of unnecessary sci-fi plot baggage to convolute things, particularly when there doesn’t need to be (i.e. Traeger’s plans to team up with a telepathy doctor to probe Huer’s plans out of Raylyn). 


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