Buck Rogers vs. the Vampire

Andrea and I were watching TV on Saturday morning—we don’t watch a lot of TV, but it does happen from time to time—and she mentioned that a colleague of hers had been watching Battlestar Galactica recently, and that it was a really good show. I decided to look on the Space network to see if it was showing, so that I could record it, and see what all the fuss is about. I found it, but I also found something even better: an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century! Talk about a blast from the past! I used to watch that show all the time, when I was a kid!

But it was even better than that. It was the episode of Buck Rogers where they meet a Vorvon—that is, a vampire. Sound pretty stupid? You’re absolutely right. I don’t really remember much about the show Buck Rogers, except that I used to watch it, and that the laser guns they used looked a lot like the top of a bottle of Windex. But, as I was watching this particular episode, I discovered something: Images from this episode have stuck in my sub-conscious mind, ever since I was a kid. There is something about the image of the “vampire” using his black nails to suck out Erin Gray’s… I don’t know, life, or essence, or something, that really stuck in my mind.



Here are some things that jumped out at me, as I watched:

• As mentioned, as soon as I saw the image above, of the vampire putting his fingernails on Erin Gray’s throat, my mind was immediately screaming “I remember that! That scared the crap out of me, when I was a kid!”
• Similarly, during any of the scenes with the vampire, Erin was doing this weird, shuddery style breathing. For me, that will always represent what a person should sound like, when s/he is scared of a vampire. (So you should probably try and find a copy of this episode, and watch it, just in case you ever happen to encounter one. You don’t want to be unprepared.)
• There were also some scenes—which were lit in red, for some reason—where the vampire is looking at Erin Gray, and she is looking scared, doing her “I’m scared of a vampire” shuddery breathing, and rubbing her arms, and again, it immediately struck a familiar chord with me. I remember those scenes, from when I was a kid.
• I was watching the robots carefully, because they seemed somewhat familiar, but they didn’t really have any kind of visceral effect on me.