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Earth and Zykaria are on the brink of war, so it's high time for a
piece conference in Oasis, the one town on an otherwise barren planet,
R-4. And Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard) and his crew - Colonel Wilma Deering
(Erin Gray), birdman Hawk (Thom Christopher) and absent-minded scientist
Dr. Goodfellow (Wilfrid Hyde-White) - are to escort Zykarian ambassador
Duvoe (Mark Lenard) to Oasis in a shuttle as a symbol of trust. However,
their shuttle is caught in some nuclear storm and crashlands miles and
miles away from Oasis, and the walk alone's already quite the challenge.
But add to this that for ages all planets of the galaxies have dumped
their genetic experiments on R-4, and now the vast wastelands are
populated by not-too-happy mutants, and things get worse. Meanwhile, back
on Buck's mothership the Searcher, Admiral Asimov (Jay Garner) gets under
pressure from his Zykarian counterpart Admiral Zite (Len Birman), who
thinks the earthlings have actually only staged a shuttle-crash so they
can take the Ambassador hostage and use him at the next provocation -
which is why three Zykarian battleship turn up in the region threatening
war should the ambassador not be found in a timely manner. Meanwhile on
R-4, Buck, the ambassador and company fight mutant tribe after mutant
tribe, sometimes helped by alien Odee-x (Felix Silla, who also plays robot
Twiki in this episode), who knows everything about the planet but tends to
speak in riddles. During al of this, Buck and Duvoe play plenty of alpha
dog, especially since Wilma's the ambassador's former lover, but gradually
learn to respect one another, and ultimately Duvoe manages to ward off a
probably deadly mutant attack by de-attaching his head from his body, the
greatest secret of his tribe. And seeing how selfless his human companions
have been getting him to Oasis, he makes a flaming (and ultimately
successful) speech for peace between earth and Zykaria. Actually
a pretty tired feature length episode - or two-parter, depends where you
watch it -, one that sure has its heart in the right place ... but apart
from that, little else. Basically the whole thing tries too hard to drive
its message home, so some points are made over and over again while the
main story, Buck and company's walk through the wasteland, lacks any real
story arc, it seems to be just a hanger to attach episodic adventures to.
And the fact that the film's mail alien Odee-x suffers from a terrible
mask that looks a little too much like Papa Smurf - including white beard
and blue skin - makes the whole thing a bit ridiculous. So despite good
intentions not one of the better entries into the series.
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