Gratuitous Buck Blogging

After having Buck save New Chicago from non-Islamic terrorists, the series downshifted a bit. The next episode is:

Ep. 1.8 “Return of the Fighting 69th” (aired 10/25/79):

Basically, a nasty pair of illegal gun runners attempt to wage a terrorist plot of their own on earth, with nerve gas. They’re motivation? Well, revenge of course. It seems this male and female duo was once came under attack by our own Col. Deering and they suffered disfiguring burns in a fire. So they’ve decided to take it out on the whole planet. Why waste perfectly good WMDs on one individual when you can destroy an entire population? Sounds almost like a Hannibal Lector sequel. Anyway, they’ve established a hidden base on Dantooine in an asteroid field and Dr. Huer calls on Buck and Wilma to hunt them down and bring them to justice.

One problem. The asteroid field is so treacherous that only pilots with experience in that particular asteroid field can successfully navigate their way to the hidden base. So they need to pull some old timers out of retirement to help. This would be the remaining members of the old 69th squadron. Wilma, under pressure from the Defense Directorate, had filed the report that kind of forced them into retirement several years earlier. It was a difficult task because she had trained under them and even thought of the commander, Noah Cooper, as a father figure.

After the obligatory laying on of the guilt trip, Cooper and his crew are convinced to sign on and we spend the next half hour flying through the asteroid belt. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

The theme here is obviously a commentary about writing off the usefulness of the elderly just because they reach a certain age. OK, we get it.

It’s a draggy episode that features Peter Graves as Noah Cooper. As good as Graves is it was hard not to see him as Captain Oveur in “Airplane”.

"So tell me, Schultz. Do you like movies about gladiators?"

Episode rating: Pass (although there’s more Wilma than normal, there isn’t a whole lot to get worked up over).

Next:
Jamie Lee Curtis is an “Unchained Woman”

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The first post in this series can be found here.