And so back to the 25th Century for the second half of Buck Rogers‘ first season. Well, I say 25th Century, but you can’t get more 1979 than this episode. It’s like they crammed The Love Boat and The Incredible Hulk in a blender. There are lots of men and women in bathing suits. Erin Gray gets to wear the ugliest wig in the galaxy and finally gets down and boogies with Buck on the disco floor, and Twiki even finds a love interest: a gold-plated robot like him called Tina. Our son really enjoyed it and was happy to get back into his comfort zone of laser blasts and strange super powers.
“Cruise Ship to the Stars” was one of the few acting appearances for Dorothy Stratten, who played the genetically perfect “Miss Cosmos,” the target of a pair of thieves. (One of them is a Jekyll-and-Hyde woman whose evil persona has super strength and fires lasers from her hands, hence the Hulk comparison.) Stratten, of course, was murdered about eight months after this episode aired. I remember reading that she was in one of these episodes but forgot which one. I can’t see her in anything without reflecting on how she was killed before her life could get started.
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 