Not so long ago I went to YouTube looking for the opening to the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which I consider to be the greatest opening in the history of television. Cheers is second, but I really dig Buck's building orchestral march while Gil Gerard falls through a stack of vinyl records. Rock on!

It turns out that the season 1 opener (featuring Cannon's William Conrad voiceover) — which is distinctly different from the season 2 opener (featuring Quinn Martins' Hank Sims voiceover) — is kind of hard to find. I assume that's because Universal has some sort of problem with people seeing the best part of Buck Rogers for free.

My search wasn't entirely fruitless. While I was looking, I found this video which is reportedly the intro used by the movie in its original theatrical release. Like the original Battlestar Galactica, which also was released to theaters (and also created by Glen Larson), Buck Rogers debuted on the big screen in 1979. (Everyone was chasing that Star Wars money.) This James Bond-themed opening is nuts, but I have to say, Henry Silva is better looking than I remember.

Anyway. I finally found the season 1 opener on Vimeo. I expect Universal will get around to ruining that, too, eventually.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia has documented the text of all three narrations PLUS the slightly different narration used when the movie re-aired as the pilot television episode. Because the Internet, as storehouse of the sum knowledge of humanity, would be incomplete without that. Thank the maker!

Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Tags: buck rogers internet television wikipedia youtube