Alan Brennert, Anne Collins And John Gaynor: On Writing Buck Rogers In The 25th Century For Gil Gerard

"To me Vegas In Space was the model of what the series should have been: funny, fast moving, adventurous, but with one or two of those serious, poignant moments. After Vegas In Space, Gil suddenly had no interest in doing the funny stuff. I don't know what happened. I don't know what went on in his mind. But he clearly decided he didn't want to do the jokes anymore. He started taking the character more seriously than the character should have been taken.



There was also a communications problem; I don't think we were ever able to quite communicate on the level that we should have. Gil didn't understand that jokes can exist comfortably in the same script as more serious stuff. He was always throwing jokes out on the set. Without that kind of light-hearted spin to our scripts, we just had shows that were essentially melodrama. And to my way of thinking, many of them just sat there. The resulting shows were not anything that I had seen in my head when I was writing them.



Gil was a very good comedic actor. That's not to say he's incapable of doing more serious moments. But I thought his best skills were in that kind of snappy banter with Wilma and the others, when he had that twinkle in his eye. At some point he decided he was above that, or at least that's my interpretation. It was a shame, because he ignored a facet of his abilities that really set him apart, and as a result, I don't think Buck Rogers was nearly as interesting as he could have been. The way we envisioned the character fit him like a glove, but he decided he didn't want the glove to fit.

It has been my experience that writers are paid vast sums of money in this business only partly for their writing talents, but largely to take vast amounts of shit from people."

-Alan Brennert, Starlog Magazine #232 (p.67, 69)- 

"We tried to be faithful to Glen Larson's vision [established in the two-hour pilot], but Gil had his own ideas. Gil became more and more difficult to work with. We didn't trust each other. He thought we were out to sabotage his character, and we didn't know how to deal with that."

-Anne Collins, Starlog Magazine #232 (p68)-



"Gil was getting insecure about the whole situation. Gil could be a very charming man, but somehow he got this insecurity into his head. Gil felt the scripts were being written for women, and not for him. Maybe he felt this way about Wilma, too. He caused a lot of problems.

I just thought he should stop worrying about all this other crap he was concerned about and play Buck Rogers the way he was supposed to be played. Gil was charming and likeable on screen, and I thought it was going splendidly. I don't know why he was getting so upset about it all.

I think Gil felt we were against him. He seemed to be getting a little paranoid about it. He went on about the fact that it was his face up there and we didn't care, which was not true at all---of course we cared! Our reputations were involved as well. It was not a pleasant time."

-Producer John Gaynor, Starlog Magazine #232 (p68-70)-



So Buck Rogers In The 25th Century presents a wonderful example of the writers at odds with a performer. Jonathan Harris had often injected his own dialogue and re-writes into Lost In Space as Gil Gerard did here.

While the two parties in these situations prove there was a significant degree of daylight between them, one could argue there was a certain degree of conflict in the aforementioned applications that made those shows better.

These above excerpts from Starlog Magazine really put into perspective what was in play behind the scenes in the beginning for Buck Rogers In The 25th Century way back in the 20th Century.