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Every time rock band Andromeda (Nancy Frangione, Jesse D. Goins,
Leonard Lightfoot) transmit one of their live sets from music satelite
Musicworld, all youths watching go absolutely bonkers and on a crime spree
- but the effect of the music quickly wears off. So the Earth Defense
Council sends up Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard), his little robot friend Twiki
(Felix Silla, voiced by Mel Blanc) and portable supercomputer Dr.
Theopolis (voiced by Eric Server) to investigate - under the cover that
Buck is to present Andromeda's first galaxy-wide show. Now Andromeda's
manager/producer Mangros (Jerry Orbach) leaves no stone unturned to make
life difficult for Buck, which naturally sets Buck more and more on the
right track, that Andromeda's performances carry subliminal messages that
make those under 30 go bonkers. A talk with the band convinces Buck though
that they're not the ones to blame but unwilling pawns in a game played by
Mangros. And just before their live transmission, Mangros locks up
Andromeda and Buck, figuring he can just as well use some pre-recorded
performance - which he does, and of course, the young audience goes wild
all over the galaxy, at the climax of which Mangros goes on screen himself
trying to launch a youth revolt - but by that time, Buck and Andromeda
have freed themselves, and Twiki shows them a way to the control room
through the sewers, and there they remove the little gadget that sends the
subliminal message, upon which all youths immediately turn normal and
laugh about that old man on the screen talking about galaxy domination ... Now
even if Buck calls Andromeda's music "good old rock'n'roll",
it's really more of a funk/disco hybrid - and it's not at all bad, either,
provided one is into late 70s/early 80s music with a futuristic twang
that's kind of cute from today's point of view. As are of course
Andromeda's pseudo-futuristic outfits that from today's point of view are
weirdly nostalgic. That all said, the episode as a whole is pretty much
tired routine, especially since everything that Buck tries to figure out
is crystal clear to the audience from the beginning, so basically the
excitement of the story is reduced to the main characters running up and
down some corridors and doing the occasional fistfight, interrupted by
occasional musical performances. Some fun still mind you, just nothing at
all special.
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