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[ 16 ] A Blast for Buck
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| Season: | 1 |
| Date Aired U.S.: | Thursday, January 17, 1980 |
| Writer(s): | Richard Nelson |
| Director: | David G. Phinney |
 Episode Synopsis
 "To discover the secret behind a terrifying riddle, Buck subjects himself to a mind probe in an attempt to find out who is responsible for the mysterious objects that have teleported into the Directorate building. Flashbacks from the first eight episodes are used as Buck tries to figure out who might be responsible."
 "A communication probe arrives in Dr. Huer's office, and delivers a strange riddle: "A man out of old Earth's past, has the key to the next and the last; but you won't solve this riddle, till the end is the middle, and Terran sands disappear with a blast." The future survival of Earth depends on whether or not mind probes used on Buck can solve the riddle. Searching for a solution, Buck recounts his previous adventures since his arrival on Earth."
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Fan Reviews |
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Average Fan Review
 
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Reviewer: Mark Weller
Submitted: August 10, 2002
It may have been a Blast for Buck, but Wilma, Twiki and Dr. Huer watch TV for most of the show. And we watch them watching TV. This is, as the Simpsons would say: "A Cheezy Clip Show." Some high points, if you are a fan of Hieronymus Fox that is, otherwise a much-too-early-in-the-run-of-the-series retrospective. Waiting to do a clip show until the second season would have been nice (Hawk, did I ever tell you about the time I gave Dr. Huer a plant?) Lines like "Beedee Beedee - a flying yo-yo!" and a repeat of the "lizard burger" joke relegate this episode to subpar status. See also: the Star Trek - The Next Generation episode "Shades of Gray" for another fine example of using a mind probe as an excuse for running old clips. Smelly.
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Reviewer: Susan Kite
Submitted: May 08, 2003
Please keep in mind that I have not watched a Buck Rogers show
since just a few years after it went off the air. (It was syndicated
somehwere, just don't remember where....)
So when I sat and watched this episode, it was almost as though I
had not seen it at all. It only brought back snippets of memory. (And I
can see why with "A Blast for Buck" it was definitely forgettable.)
Let me be blunt, the only thing that "Blast" did for me was to show me the earlier episodes that I had missed in their showing on Sci Fi. I felt like I, as a viewer, was
being insulted. This was a cheap attempt to save a few bucks, (no pun
intended) at a time when budgets were being slashed. Even with the success
of Star Wars, television sci fi was still being told to make it on a Barney
Miller type budget or get canned... (same thing happened in the sixties, IE
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, even Star Trek was told to
cut budget.....) Anyway, even though this was done in the day of Charlie's
Angels, I was still turned off by all the babes and trendy junk, and only
watched this one because Gil is nice to watch, period.
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Reviewer: D. P. Cole
Submitted: January 15, 2004
Clip this! Whatcha' talkin' about?!
Atmosphere: It's a clip show. It's a hammy plot surrounded by clips somebody thought would be good clips.
Plot: It's a clip show whose revelation isn't that of somebody out to kill Buck, but a cameo by Gary Coleman in a less than murderous attitude!
Acting: Typical, clip shows usually don't stand out as being shining examples of any part of a series because those who choose the clips, historically, have never chosen wisely. Well, "The Golden Girls" makes a few exceptions, but that's not sci-fi! While useful for people who may have missed the show, and useful for budgets that have ran out of money, these are usually pointless.
Overall, it's a clipshow. Having not seen half the episodes, about half the clips intrigued me as a taste of things to come. But it's a clipshow, there's nothing of value here!
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Reviewer: Kent Lyle
Submitted: June 20, 2005
"Clip shows" generally only have value if they tell us what became of the people seen in the clips. They satisfy a sense of curiosity about "whatever happened to them?"
This show did that in a couple of places, but the explanations often defied all common sense. First of all, Theopolis tells Buck that Commander Corliss and Roxanne Trent were in rehabilitation after the bomb attack on their asteroid bunker. Exactly how did they manage to survive a direct hit which blew their complex and its weapons sky high? Also, there was a suggestion that Kellogg might have been behind the strange objects, although it seemed obvious from "The Plot to Kill a City" that Kellogg's ship was destroyed during the final battle. Did he eject beforehand? The parachute never opens out in space.
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