In my last blog, if you recall, I discussed my recent obsession with the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series. Well, since then I have caught up to season 4.5 and am anxiously awaiting the final season.  Fellow editor and www.game-journal.com founder Adam Colton downloaded theses babies from Itunes; I might just have to have a marathon session in front of his computer catching up.  However, in the absence of new episodes to watch my obsession has sort of come full circle in my life. I started watching the original Battlestar series from 1978 and have also begun watching episodes of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century from 1980.

I’m going to date myself here by telling you that I remember watching these shows as a little kid.  I have always been a fan of them, but I had forgotten how long it has been since they were on the air. My memory recalls me sitting in front of the tube during prime time television hours and glorying in the sci-fi spectaculars before my eyes.  Doing research into the shows had me realizing that I was watching them at the ripe old age of 3 or 4!  To be honest, my earliest memory is of a looming Darth Vader.  My parents took me and my sister to the drive-in theatre to see the movie . . . when I was 3.  Ever since then I have been hoping to grow up to become Lord Vader.  So far, no suck luck, although I consider myself a cyborg since I do have a metal plate and some screws in my arm. That’s the closest I have come to realizing that dream although I’m building a Death Star in my closet. . .

Sci-Fi has always been on my mind, it would seem.  I had just forgotten how early the influence of these shows entered my life.  I also recall coming home from my half-day kindergarten to watch the original Star Trek in re-run. TV was a wonderland when I was a kid even if it did come to me via a radial dial antennae.  I always got a kick out of turning that big dial and waiting for our antennae to hover into place; it shook the house and made me think I was picking up my own signals from outer space.

Nostalgia only goes so far, though.  While I am getting a kick out of watching the old Battlestar and Buck Rogers shows, they don’t quite live up to my memories!  I fully intend to watch every episode, but I find myself drifting into other things and thoughts as I watch them.  The shows didn’t take themselves seriously enough and the story lines are too simplistic and hokey for my adult tastes, but they are still pretty cool in their own way.  I’m not sure I want to live in the future if it looks like some of the ways portrayed in these shows, especially as 70’s fashion seems to have more staying power than we thought.  Hey, I remember wearing bell bottoms to elementary school for that matter.

Now that Battlestar has so successfully been realized into an adult-themed and serious show, I say it is time for Buck Rogers to be re-imagined as well.  I’d love it if Ron Moore and David Eick of Battlestar transformed this series in the same vain.  I know Eick worked on Bionic Woman, another 70’s show I used to watch, although I never watched it when it was on.  Not every old show deserves to make a come-back, but if they are done right they can really provide us with something special.  So, Ron and David, get cracking on another great re-make. In the mean time, I will have to be satisfied watching the old shows and remembering back to my diaper days in front of the boob tube.