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Monday, March 3, 2014

Buck Rogers 2.7: “The Golden Man”


Airdate: 2/19/81


The Searcher gets collides with and gets stuck in a huge asteroid; concurrently, they harbor a floating life pod and its passenger: a golden skinned boy looking for help in rescuing his also golden companion from a nearby planet. Buck obliges, but his work is cut out for him when the planet turns out to be a fierce penal colony. It doesn’t take long for the golden man’s captors to realize he has powers of molecularly altering any kind of metal – it just might help escape their planetary prison – but Buck and the boy succeed in freeing the golden man and getting both mutants back to their ship, where they use the man’s powers to lighten its weight and dislodge themselves from the nasty rock.

Clever, intriguing story has some nice surprises (especially the “twist” ending), once you get past the cheesy gold makeup and doofy wigs sported by the golden pair. (It also doesn’t help that the penal colony looks a heckofa lot like the Universal studios backlot). You will probably recognize prolific juvenile star David Hollander as the boy, or if you don’t the voice will give it away. Of course he is probably best remembered as the “little boy with coffee” in Airplane! Sorry, Erin Gray fans, not much Wilma here as she stays on the Searcher along with the others.



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