In 1987, lone NASA astronaut Buck Rogers is piloting Earth's last Space Shuttle mission, Ranger 3, when a storm of ice meteors shuts down life support and he is frozen for 504 years.
Note: This two-hour pilot episode is a revised version of the theatrical release "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", with a different opening credit sequence, additional scenes, and also the use of Vic Perrin as voice of the Draconia's PA system.
Buck and Wilma then discover the poisoning is part of an elaborate plot by a fanatical religious leader and slave trader with paranormal powers named Kaleel.
Huer initially refuses but is persuaded by Major Marla Landers when she questions that Armat has technical secrets of Draconian Marauders that have been preying on Earth's shipping lanes.
While Landers uses her charm to distract Velosi, Buck rescues Felina before a hired interrogator, Carl Morphus, can conduct a potentially fatal mind probe on her.
After capturing Raphael Argus, a notorious assassin, Buck learns that the killer is to attend a meeting with a group of terrorists known as the "Legion of Death" on the planet Aldebaran II.
Buck had learned the group's plan to destroy New Chicago by sabotaging the city's antimatter power plant, and he and Joella race back to Earth to stop them.
However, Pantera happens to have a business associate back on Earth, Ted Warwick, the Zetan government diplomat whose involvement could be exposed if Jen testifies.
After towing them home, a man named Cassius Thorne takes Buck into custody and has him sold at auction as a mate to the Prime Minister's daughter Ariela Dyne.
Buck is forced away from a vacation trip by Lieutenant Dia Cyrton who is the bodyguard of a 493-year-old, child super-genius, Hieronymus Fox – the president of the planet Genesia.
Princess Ardala attacks New Chicago with an indestructible alien weapon and orders the Earth leaders to hand over Buck Rogers or she will destroy every city on the planet.
After the galactic beauty queen "Miss Cosmos" is attacked by a mysterious woman, Buck and Wilma are assigned to protect her while she travels aboard a luxury space liner.
There, Buck encounters a shy girl named Alison Michaels who suffers from periodic blackouts to which her boyfriend Jay Davin dismisses as mental stress brought on by hypertension.
After another attack against Miss Cosmos, Buck confronts the assailant, a wild-haired woman named Sabrina who demonstrates superhuman strength and powerful psychokinetic abilities.
Buck begins suspecting that Sabrina and Alison are the same and that Jay is exploiting her abilities so that they can capture Miss Cosmos and sell her perfect genetics on the black market.
Dr. Theopolis later confirms this and identifies Alison as a transmute, a split personality with the genetic ability to transform into an entirely separate entity during times of extreme emotional distress.
The freighter's crew are all found in a strange state that is somewhere between life and death, and believing a virus may be responsible, the station commander puts the base under quarantine.
To lure Buck out of his apartment and allow Wilma to set up the party, Dr. Huer assigns him to escort a psychic courier named Raylyn Derren to New Detroit.
At the city, an assassin named Cornell Traeger, who has a mutant power to alter molecular structures, plans to kill Dr. Huer as revenge for sending him on a disastrous mission 15 years ago.
Meanwhile, Wilma guides a massive "spaceberg" composed of frozen oxygen into Earth's atmosphere in an attempt to replenish the planet's breathable air, but the berg is put in danger of exploding when it veers off course.
Jorax is from a repressive world called Lozeria and is trying to defect with Lara to Earth to escape being used as a political figurehead by the Lozerian hierarchy, but they have implanted a molecular bomb in his head which, if detonated, will not only kill him, but anyone around him.
With Andromeda's biggest galaxy-wide concert just hours away from transmission, Buck tries to destroy Mangros' transmitter before the youth of the galaxy tear their worlds apart.
Buck is invited to the planet Katar where he learns that he is to fulfill a prophecy that a 500-year-old man called the "Roshan" will lead an uprising against the "Trebor" – a ruthless warlord who oppresses the Katarian people.
Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering and Twiki have been assigned aboard the spaceship Searcher which is on a mission to explore the galaxy and contact lost tribes of men who left Earth after the apocalyptic war.
Conflicts arise when members of the crew try to destroy the box, but Buck stops them believing it is leading them to its new keeper – a being only known as "The Guardian" – and he must fulfill his promise to the dying man.
The only way to free the ship may reside in the strange molecular-altering powers of the boy's companion, the "Golden Man", who is being held captive on a nearby planet inhabited by a penal colony.
Buck offers to help them finish their disposal mission, but the curious dwarves begin to wreak havoc aboard the Searcher and severely damage Crichton's positronic brain.
He stands trial while his peers review a 500-year-old piece of evidence – a videotape from the 20th-Century unearthed from the ruins of an Air Force Base – which shows Buck working with treasonous military personnel who brought about World War III.
He then resorts to using Dr. Goodfellow's repressed memory probe, (which shows among other things, Rogers' meeting with the President of the United States in a secret base inside Mount Rushmore), in hopes of finding the truth of what really happened before a final verdict is rendered.
Buck initially refuses handing her over and the Dorians respond by randomly firing heat and freeze rays at the Searcher forcing the crew to endure continuously changing temperatures.