TV review - "Buck Rogers episode 2: Planet of the Slave Girls" (1979) **

An outlying planet is poisoning Earth's pilots so it can attack Earth. Buck must save the day with Wilma (Erin Grey) and a flight instructor with whom he aruges until they team up. There is plenty of action, an awful scene where Buck tries to explain military tactics to Earth pilots using gridiron terminology and the pilots laugh at him (its not believable Buck would do something so stupid and not believable that the pilots would laugh so rudely). Most of the story is the usual oppressed people on a planet leading an uprising story, though the politics and what not are nicely complex. The chief attraction here is of the cast, including Jack Palance (villainous messiah type), Roddy McDowall (an unwitting pawn), MacDonald Carey (looking dishevelled as a scientist) and former Buck Rogers Buster Crabbe as a pilot. The series already slightly changed from the pilot - reasons for which are described here. Background to his particular episode read here.