“Hello, Doctor Silbermann. How’s the knee?” - Sarah Connor

By Lisa Fary

Buster Crabbe, Roddy McDowall and Jack Palance! Jack effing Palance in a cape! With glowy red hands!

You can kiss food goodbye in the future. On 25th century Earth, there is no funky blue future-food. There are only food discs that look like giant, white Altoids. The disc has all the nutritional stuff you need, but is probably a lot like subsisting on rice cakes (rice cakes are vile - no one believes you when you swear you like them).

On the plus side, there are no dirty dishes to wash. On the downside, Earth’s food disc supply has been poisoned!!!!! It’s up to Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, and some dude harboring lots of male aggression to find out what’s going on before all of Earth’s pilots DIE!!!!

The three trace the poisoned food discs to. . . . ummmmm. . . I’m not sure I’m hearing this right.

Planet Fistula?

That’s gross.

A fistula is a hole between the bladder and the vagina. I learned about it on Oprah (about fistulas, not vaginas). That’s a horrible name for a planet.

Not only is the place unfortunately named, it’s a den of civil rights abuses. Buck, Wilma and Duke (the aforementioned dude with aggression problems) have a lovely dinner with Fistula governor Roddy McDowall and discover that, in addition to being forced to wear shiny, orange, go-go dancer uniforms, their waitresses are slaves.

The only African-American at the dinner table inquires, “What’s slavery?” and Buck has to educate her.

Right- have the African-American girl ask what slavery is. I get that Earth’s holocaust gobbled up history, but that’s messed up. Have Wilma or Duke ask. Don’t make the African-American girl do it.

So, slavery is afoot, but Governor Roddy is too lazy to do anything more than purchase the slaves and too dense to really be sinister. I mean, he wears a sparkly turban. That’s not exactly the universal symbol for “Bad Guy” in the Buckverse.

Capes, however, are the universal symbol for “Bad Guy”, and Jack Palance has a really big cape, which he wears over a white and purple satin dress (call it a “robe” if you want - it’s a dress). Then, as if the cape wasn’t enough of an evil giveaway, he has glowy red hands, which he uses to control and kill his minions (who are also being sold as the slaves).

But, the slave trade is all a ruse to further Jack Palance’s true goal: GALACTIC DOMINATION!!! The slaves are being trained as fighter pilots and spies in Governor Roddy McDowall’s palace. They’re also. . . .

. . . contaminating Earth’s food discs.

That’s part of Jack Palance’s evil plot, too. Poison the food discs, make Earth’s pilots too sick to fly, send in slave fighters, take over the world.

Which seems really stupid. Earth can’t make it’s own food and has very little in the way of resources. So, why try to take over Earth? It’s kind of a worthless planet in the 25th century.

All is revealed by a slave girl sent to entertain Buck for the evening. Being the conscientious 20th century guy he is, Buck sets out to free the slaves and save Earth. While he’s doing that, Wilma and the slave girl get snatched and taken back to Jack Palance’s hollowed-out mountain lair.

Yeah. His evil lair is inside a hollowed-out mountain. I think that’s one of the signs that you’re stuck in a cult. If you suddenly find yourself living inside a hollowed-out mountain, I think it’s time for an intervention.

Next time: a gold leather clad Buck Rodgers intervenes in “Planet of the Slave Girls Part 2”!

And BTW, the planet isn’t called Fistula. It’s Vistula, which sounds a lot like “fistula” when Roddy McDowall says it.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.