Buck Rogers is a 1939 Film Serial directed by Ford Bebe and Saul A. Goodkind. It ran for 12 episodes.
It is, you guessed it, an adaptation of the iconic Buck Rogers comic strip. As the story opens, Buck Rogers is a daredevil pilot who, along with his teenage sidekick Buddy Wade, is trying to pilot a dirigible around the world. The blimp crash-lands in the Himalayas—but Buddy's father has stashed his experimental suspended animation gas aboard the ship! Buck and Buddy deploy the gas before they crash, and they sleep in the mountains for 500 years.
They are discovered in 2440. Buck and Buddy are brought to the "Hidden City" ruled by benevolent Dr. Huer. It turns out that the Hidden City is the last refuge of free people, after the rest of the world has been taken over by ruthless super-gangster Killer Kane. Buck and Buddy, who adjust really, really fast to waking up five centuries in the future, go on a desperate mission to Saturn to get help from the humans on that planet. Accompanying them is the lovely Wilma Deering, Dr. Huer's assistant. But Killer Kane isn't willing to let that happen, so, after attempting to stop the good guys' mission, he sends ambassadors of his own to Saturn.
This series is basically a Follow the Leader imitation of the wildly popular Flash Gordon serial, right down to casting the same actor, Buster Crabbe, as Buck Rogers.
Tropes:
- Almost Out of Oxygen: In the first episode, the blimp runs out of breathing oxygen, which forces the crash landing in the Himalayas.
- Animated Credits Opening: The opening credits play over a trippy kaleidoscope effect.
- Anticlimax: There's no big battle at the end in either space or Kane's headquarters. Buck, after liberating all the robots in Kane's headquarters, comes storming into Kane's conference room and grabs him. Buck puts a robot helmet on Kane's head and makes Kane tell his army to stand down. And that's it, the end of the series, except for the denouement in which Buck and Buddy both get commissions in Dr. Huer's Air Force and the last scene in which Buck and Wilma may finally be getting together.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Don't believe the silly encyclopedias that tell you Saturn's atmosphere is 96.3% hydrogen, with the rest helium, and that it could not support human life for a moment. Instead, believe this film serial, where people can breathe on Saturn just fine.
- Black Cloak: While most of the Saturnians wear outfits that 1940 moviegoers might have imagined as futuristic, their three-judge council, the "Forum", does not. The judges of the Forum wear hooded cloaks, even though they're not really ominous.
- Born in the Theater: Episodes end with a reminder in the end credits to come back to "this same theater" next week to see the next episode.
- Call-Back: Krenko, one of Kane's councilmen, is turned into a robot after he argues with Kane in a scene that demonstrates Kane is a Bad Boss. Several episodes later, in the finale, Buck and Buddy infiltrate Kane's compound and liberate Krenko from enslavement. Krenko then happily joins Buck in liberating the other robots and overthrowing Kane.
- Chronoscope: In episode 9 Dr. Huer is revealed to have a device called the "Past-i-scope", which can replay scenes from the past that happened recently. The good guys are able to pull up a scene of Buck and Wilma getting captured on Saturn but not the one they need, the one that would determine whether or not Buck and Wilma survived their crash-landing.
- Dressing as the Enemy:
- In episode 3, Buck and Buddy dress up as two of Killer Kane's men. They enter Kane's headquarters and disrupt Kane's meeting with the Saturnian ambassador.
- The bad guys wind up doing this in episode 10. When Buck steals a Killer Kane ship and flies back to the Hidden City, he doesn't notice that one of Kane's minions is in a compartment in the rear. Said minion exits the compartment, kills a Hidden City soldier, and takes his uniform. Thus disguised, the minion radios Killer Kane and reveals to him the secret location of the entrance to the Hidden City.
- Exploding Calendar: A sequence in the first episode has "1940", "2040", "2140", and so on popping up onscreen, with shots of the crashed blimp covered in ice. Finally the ship is discovered in 2440.
- Frazetta Man: Even on Saturn! The Zuggs are subhuman, ape-like creatures, who serve the Saturnians. This pays off in episode 7 when they begin to worship one of Killer Kane's mind-controlled robot men, allowing Kane's mooks to use their robot man to boss the Zuggs around. (This however is subverted in episode 8 when the Zuggs are revealed to be capable of speech.)
- Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks: Dr. Huer is a scientist, so naturally he has to have a lab filled with bubbling, smoking flasks and test tubes.
- Human Popsicle: The suspended animation gas preserves Buck and Buddy for five hundred years. The future, when they wake up, is not so great.
- Idiot Ball:
- As the heroes are returning back to Earth at the end of episode 2, Buck suggests raising the Hidden City on the radio, only for Wilma to say "That's not necessary" as she knows how to get into the secret entrance. Also, they are flying one of Killer Kane's stolen ships! Naturally, that nearly gets them killed when the people inside the Hidden City take them as hostiles from Killer Kane.
- Special mention has to go to the mook who is guarding Wilma's prison cell in episode 10. He goes up to the bars to taunt her, and does so while holding his raygun up against the bars. Wilma grabs the raygun and shoots him in the face.
- Invisibility Cloak: In episode 5, the Hidden City must send a ship to Saturn, but Killer Kane's men have a tight blockade in the skies above Earth. How to get through? Fortunately, Dr. Huer has invented an invisibility ray. The ray allows Buck, Wilma, and the Saturnian envoy to make it through the blockade and get to Saturn.
- Live-Action Adaptation: Of the popular Buck Rogers newspaper comic.
- Mind-Control Device: Killer Kane has mind-control helmets that he can use to make people into zombie slaves.
- Multicultural Alien Planet: Interestingly, while some of the Saturnians are white, many are Asian. The three judges are played by white actors, but the major character of Prince Tallen is played by Korean-American actor Philip Ahn.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Killer Kane". Yikes.
- Opening Scroll: Every episode after the first one starts with this in a Previously on… sequence.
- Previously on…: Every episode after the first starts with an Opening Scroll catching the audience up with the story.
- Ray Gun: Ray guns everywhere, both hand-held ray guns and what are basically ray cannons. Since this is a family show, people tend to use the stun setting.
- Raygun Gothic: The original comic strip was the Trope Codifier and this film series recreates the look, with a lot of shiny metal and Art Deco curves, everyone wearing silly leotard-based Space Clothes, and of course Ray Guns.
- Scrolling Text: Every episode starts with an Opening Scroll catching the audience up. This series was a Trope Codifier for scrolling text and opening scroll.
- Shirtless Scene: A little 1939 fanservice as the audience sees Buster Crabbe's broad, muscled chest in episode 3, when he's changing into the uniform of one of Killer Kane's men.
- Teleportation: 27 years before Star Trek, people in the Hidden City can get into a teleportation chamber, vanish, and reappear in a manner very similar to the TV show.
- Video Credits: Every episode starts with video credits showing film clips of all the main players.
