YMMV / Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

• Awesome Music
  • The intro. Judge for yourself.
  • The pilot movie actually began with an extended intro and a song version of the theme music (you can watch it here, or if that video gets taken down, here's an audio-only rendition). For extra kitsch points, fans of The Lawrence Welk Show were tickled to learn that the singer was the Lennon Sisters' kid brother, Kipp.
  • The pilot movie (complete with theme song) is part of the DVD collection of the series.
  • The French version has its own music and lyrics — deliciously kitsch.
  • The music resulted in the series' only Emmy win for "The Satyr"
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Cruise Ship to the Stars" sees Buck having to protect the "genetically perfect" Miss Cosmos, from forces who basically want to kill her through exploiting her. Miss Cosmos is played by future Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten; who would be killed by her controlling husband/manager less than a year after this episode's first airing.
  • Due to the Challenger explosion, 1987 (the year of Buck's launch) was a year that had no actual NASA launches.
  • "Testimony of a Traitor" has as part of its backplot a conspiracy by US Generals to launch a sneak-attack first strike against the USSR. Just a few years after the airing of this broadcast, there was almost a Soviet first strike, as the paranoid leadership of the USSR were collating evidence to prove that a cabal of generals in the US were planning a sneak nuclear attack against the USSR^note they weren't, in reality, even though bellicose rhetoric didn't help the perception, and preparations were made to launch what the leadership thought was a preemption. Fortunately, they were talked down shortly before they could issue the final orders.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: November 22, 1987 (the date Buck is told that World War III began) was indeed historically significant in real life, but for a much, much less tragic reason: that was the day of the infamous "Max Headroom" signal intrusion in Chicago^note short version of the story: someone (to this day, no suspect has been apprehended or even identified) overrode the signals for both WGN and later that night more famously WTTW with live footage of a man in a "Max Headroom" mask ranting and acting erratically. What makes it even more hilarious is that when Buck Rogers was broadcast in Britain over ITV, the show far exceeded the ratings of Doctor Who ^note the British broadcast of the first episode was run opposite a first-run Doctor Who season opener, part one of "The Leisure Hive" and handily beat the latter in the ratings — who would have thought that "the human Polish Sausage" would be a bigger threat to The Doctor than the Daleks?, which would be the show airing in the second of the two intrusions that night, and November 22, 1987, would be the day just before Doctor Who would have its 24th anniversary.
• Informed Wrongness: In "The Dorian Secret", an alien woman escapes from her home planet aboard a passenger shuttle and is pursued by its authorities. When the shuttle docks with the Searcher, the aliens demand her return. Asimov refuses, so the aliens gain control of the Searcher's and the shuttle's life support systems and start alternating both ships' temperatures between extreme heat and extreme cold in an effort to force the woman's return, each time making the temperature shift more extreme. Crichton estimates everyone on both ships will be dead within the day from either heatstroke or hypothermia. The passengers aboard the shuttle finally vote to turn the woman over to the aliens, and do so via an emergency airlock. When Colonel Deering discovers what happened, she angrily upbraids them for their "cruelty" in letting the woman go, and the show clearly expects us to take her side. However, they were just passengers on a shuttle. They didn't ask for a fugitive to be placed in their midst, and expecting them to sacrifice their lives for a total stranger is a major, major stretch.
• Narrative Filigree: In "Plot to Kill a City", Legion of Death leader Kellogg is described in his mugshot profile as a brilliant scientist and leading expert in logistics. While his scientific skills are worth mentioning, it's not clear why logistics is treated like an intellectual or academic discipline with recognized expert authorities.^note In business and military contexts, logistics is a major discipline with recognized expert authorities. Within the story, knowledge of logistics leads to knowledge of infrastructure, which is precisely what someone would need to hamper any response to a terrorist attack.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Tina, Twiki's girlfriend from "Cruise Ship to the Stars", may be this for some viewers. She looks like the robot equivalent of an aging starlet after one bad facelift too many. The fact that Twiki, gruff Mel Blanc voice notwithstanding, pretty much looks like a child only makes things creepier.
  • While we never see it, Dr. Theopolis' description of what happened after Buck left conjures up imagery that one could hardly call pleasant; six months afterwards, the Soviet Union launched an all-out nuclear attack on the United States who not only returned fire, but launched every missile in it's arsenal during a two stage counterattack, the resulting radiation leading to widespread famine and disease that resulted in people dropping like flies so quickly that entire families were buried together in mass graves and dates of death became unimportant. Artifical intelligence ending up being mankind's savior and there's now two factions; those who live in the futuristic cities and those who live in the ruined cities. While both sides appear to have mostly recovered, with Theopolis mentioning a black market in regards to the mutated city dwellers, it's a miracle humanity was able to recover at all!
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Jamie Lee Curtis is a convict Buck has to break out of jail.
  • Markie Post of Night Court fame appears in "The Plot to Kill a City."
• Seasonal Rot: Whatever flaws the first season had, many fans were disappointed to have the series in the second season become a retread of Star Trek: The Original Series with insultingly major Chickification for Wilma Deering.
• Second Season Downfall: The result of that Seasonal Rot.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In the pilot movie, Buck Rogers mentions his family that he left behind. While it's not touched upon very much, he does mention wanting to see his family and the woman he loves, only to find that not only have they been dead for centuries, the world was in such a bad place when they died that they weren't deemed important enough to have their dates of death engraved on their own tombstone and, as Dr. Theopolis points out, it's a miracle that they even got their own grave since people were dying so quickly that entire families were buried together. Buck wishes he had been there to die alongside them and when he is later sentenced to death, seems to welcome it and who could blame him?
  • When Dr. Theopolis spots Buck dressed in the enemy's armour, he sneaks up on him and pulls Buck's own gun on him before calling him a traitor, not knowing he's actually in disguise and is sabotaging the enemy ships. The confusion is quickly resolved but the sense of betrayal in Theopolis' voice after having defended and stuck with Buck for the movie can be difficult to watch.

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