Gil Gerard is the shit!

I was recently reminded by someone who thinks deeply on all manner of topics of the wonder that was Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. One of several sublimely campy futurist/sci-fi TV shows of the late 70s/early 80s that featured gloriously hairy male leads, a shattered humanity searching for its remanants in a post-apocalyptic setting, and excessively tanned white-haired father figures, it has left its mark on the psyche of a generation. Thankfully, no one has yet dared to approach this masterpiece with heretical thoughts of a remake, the fate to which Battlestar Galactica has now been consigned.

Back then, men were men, robots were robots, and the women were uniformly outfitted in spandex jumpsuits, zipper agape according to their degree of sluttishness. Sure, humanity was screwed--the entire continental United States turned into an uninhabitable dustbowl by Buck's near descendents--but the path to salvation was clear: never listen to the advice of the old scientist dude, but do whatever the big dumb guy from 1987 suggested. Because at least he knew how to fly a spaceship and use a pistol.
Buck singlehandedly revitalized a culture languishing under the dominance of stroppy women like that space-slut Princess Ardala and slightly fey scientists like Dr. Huer (I'm not even going to talk about the outrageously gay Dr. Theopolis and his catamite Twiki). Even the relentlessly competent Col. Wilma Deering soon started wearing more midriff-baring "leisure" uniforms under the influence of his irresistible masculinty. In fact Ardala made several vain attempts to make Buck her mate, finding him to be "the most perfect male." And truly, who else but Gil Gerard could pull off outfits like these? OK, probably Dirk Benedict.

With the appearance of the Hawk at the end of season one, Buck was no longer the only man's man in the 25th century. The Hawk, like Buck, was one of a kind: all of his people had been hunted down by less enlightened humans. Once his wife had been "accidentally" dispatched by Buck they were free to roam the galaxy together in search of adventure.

Even the gay robots were more manly than our more recent incarnations of mechanical lifeforms. For despite the constant nattering presence of the mechanical brain to whom he was enslaved, Twiki suffered none of this wussy Data-esque identity crisis that all cinematic robots seemed to have developed at some point in the early 90s. It's unclear if this raw and gritty depiction of the post-1987 American landscape, both psychological and cultural, can be matched by any present-day auteur striving to enter into a modern intellectual dialogue with the polite violence of a radically feminized culture. We can only watch and wait.