[2] The film made $21 million at the North American box office, prompting Universal to move ahead with a weekly series later that year.

The film, which was also released internationally, featured all of the main protagonist characters who would appear in the weekly series, and it also included Princess Ardala of the planet Draconia and her henchman, Kane.

This scene ends with Buck actually declining their offer, though he opts to join them in an unofficial capacity by the first episode of the series proper, "Planet of the Slave Girls".

As opposed to the isolationist planet seen in the film, Earth no longer has an invisible defense shield surrounding it and is shown to be the center of an interstellar, human-dominated government, sometimes called "the Federation" or "the Alliance", with its capital at New Chicago.

Juanin Clay, who played Major Marla Landers in the first-season episode "Vegas in Space", was originally cast as Wilma for the TV series.

She appeared in four separate stories, including the pilot film, two single episodes ("Escape from Wedded Bliss" and "Ardala Returns"), and the two-part first-season finale ("Flight of the War Witch").

One vocal critic of the series was Gerard himself, who pushed for more serious storytelling and often clashed with the producers and the network (NBC) over the show's tone and handling.

In addition to its parallels to Larson's previous television series Battlestar Galactica, the second season is similar in theme to Star Trek, with the Searcher roaming through space much like the USS Enterprise had, Buck being the maverick explorer true to the style of Captain James T. Kirk, and the serious, rather stoic Hawk being a revamped version of Mr. Spock.

Even Wilma, to some extent, had been remodeled after Lt. Uhura from Star Trek, often dressed in a miniskirt uniform and regularly sitting at a communications console on the bridge of the Searcher.

At the time of production, Gerard spoke highly of new showrunner John Mantley, but in a retrospective article in the mid-1990s, he was more critical of him and the Star Trek-esque style of the second season.

These included Peter Graves, Lance LeGault, Jamie Lee Curtis, Markie Post, Dorothy Stratten, Leigh McCloskey, Trisha Noble, Richard Moll, Jerry Orbach, Gary Coleman, Jack Palance, Sam Jaffe, Sid Haig, Vera Miles, Anne Lockhart, Anthony James, John Quade, and Buster Crabbe (who had played Buck Rogers in the original 1930s Buck Rogers film serial), playing Brigadier Gordon (a reference to his other famous role, Flash Gordon).

Several actors who had played villains in the 1960s Batman television series also guest-starred (including Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Roddy McDowall, and Julie Newmar).

Inspired by Star Wars' success, Universal began developing Buck Rogers for television, spearheaded by Glen A. Larson, who had a production deal with the studio.

The pilot for Larson's other science-fiction series, Battlestar Galactica (1978), had been released theatrically in some countries and in key locations in North America, and it had done well at the box office.

Good box-office returns led NBC to commission a weekly series, commencing on September 20, 1979, with a slightly modified version of the theatrical release.

The new series centered on Captain William Anthony "Buck" Rogers (Gil Gerard), a NASA/USAF pilot who commands Ranger 3, a spacecraft launched in May 1987.

Even though no traceable personal records of him remained, his piloting and combat skills and ingenuity made him ideally suited to help Earth Defense foil assorted evil plots to conquer the planet.

Buck is aided in his adventures by his friend and sometimes romantic interest, Colonel Wilma Deering (Erin Gray), a high-ranking officer and starfighter pilot.

Twiki became Buck's comic sidekick and communicated with an electronic noise that sounded like "biddi-biddi-biddi", but also spoke English (usually preceded by "biddi-biddi-biddi-biddi").

Also aiding Buck was Dr. Theopolis or "Theo" (voiced by Eric Server), a sentient computer in the shape of a disk about nine inches in diameter with an illuminated face.

The series' chief villain in the first season was Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley), whose goal was to conquer the Earth while making Buck her consort.

Travel beyond the Inner City was hazardous, as much of the planet was said to be a radioactive wasteland inhabited by violent mutants (as Buck discovered when he visited the derelict remains of old Chicago).

The series also had numerous episodes set on other inhabited planets, with the introduction of "stargates" that allowed for quick transportation between different star systems.

ITV continued to broadcast Buck Rogers in an early Saturday-evening slot, usually from 5:45pm–6:45pm, where it competed against, and beat, the BBC's long-running science-fiction series Doctor Who in the ratings for 16 straight weeks from 30 August to 13 December 1980.

[12] As a similar effect had occurred a few times in previous years, such as when several ITV regional stations had screened Man from Atlantis against Doctor Who from September to December 1977, the success of Buck Rogers in the ITV ratings prompted the BBC to move Doctor Who to earlier time slots on Saturday starting on 11 October 1980, so that it would start slightly earlier than Buck Rogers and thus give it an advantage.

In his book Sci-Fi TV from Twilight Zone to Deep Space Nine, writer James Van Hise opined that the show's scripts "just never took advantage of what they had at hand" and criticized Larson's version of Buck Rogers as a cynical attempt to exploit one of the most loved characters in American popular culture.

[19] Journalist Bill Lengeman also strongly criticized the program, stating "the acting is so wooden that Ed Wood himself (no pun intended) would surely have gone weak in the knees and wept openly upon witnessing it."

[20] On a more positive note, writing in the UK's Observer newspaper in October 1980 (shortly after the series began showing there), journalist Clive James stated, "the best comic-strip science fiction on at the moment is Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

"[21] Filmink thought the series did not live up to its pilot, in particular the Buck-Wilma-Ardala triangle, arguing "the writers forgot the simple motivations and characterisations.

A fumetti book entitled Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was published by Fotonovel Publications in 1979, reproducing the theatrical version of the pilot episode.