Buck Rogers: "The Golden Man"

In "The Golden Man," the Searcher explores the Alpha Centauri asteroid field, even as a powerful magnetic storm approaches. A life pod automatic distress signal is intercepted by Wilma (Erin Gray), and the Searcher brings a hibernation tube aboard.

Inside the tube is Velis (David Hollander), a golden-skinned alien who appears to be a child.  When awakened, he expresses concern that another of his kind, Relcos, is still missing. Before the Searcher can investigate further, the ship runs aground on an asteroid and becomes lodged there.  

Also, a beam from the control room's ceiling falls on Admiral Asimov (Jay Garner) during the accident. It cannot be moved until Velis changes the molecular structure of the ceiling beam, rendering it lighter. He reports that his people are capable of "subatomic oscillation," and that Relcos may be able to lighten the molecular weight of the Searcher, and free it from the asteroid.

Buck (Gil Gerard) and Velis head to the planet Iris 7, where Relcos' distress call has been detected.  They find it is a penal planet, and that the criminals living there covet the golden man, Relcos, for his ability to make them rich. After Buck and Velis are kidnapped, Hawk (Thom Christopher) goes in search of them, and masquerades as an interplanetary inspector general to rescue them.

Buck, Velis and Hawk manage to rescue Relcos and return to the Searcher, just as the magnetic storm threatens the ship.  As Relcos tries to change the Searcher's weight, Buck starts to realize that Relcos, who appears to be an adult, is actually a child, while Velis, appearing to be a child, is actually the boy's father.

Let me just say this to start: I strongly dislike this episode.  I'm sorry, I realize that isn't a very professional comment to make.  However, I still remember watching "The Golden Man" in 1981, and hating it, even as an eleven year old.  I didn't write a review of the episode last week, actually, because I didn't want to watch it again. How's that for avoiding?

Anyway, I buckled down, watched "The Golden Man" this weekend, for the first time in nearly forty years, and despised it every bit as much as I did all those years ago.  There may be worse episodes of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981), but this one still has to be near the absolute bottom of the catalog.

Why do I react so strongly, and in such a negative fashion, to this episode?  There are multiple reasons, but all of them have to do with the utter absurdity of the story, and, by implication, the contempt the writers and producers must have felt for fans of the series to foist it upon them.

First, it is wonderful that the Searcher rescues young Velis. But the hibernation pod is brought aboard, and not held for decontamination. With no examination of the device, Buck just opens it.  Again, he does so without even consulting a physician, or an engineer for that matter.  The Searcher just pulls the tube in on a tractor beam, and Buck opens it. At this point, he doesn't even know if the gold alien possesses the same needs so far as an atmosphere that humans do.  What if Velis were a plague carrier? What if exposure to humans was lethal to him? Or vice versa?

 In the scene after this, Buck actually asks Doctor Goodfellow if Velis is made of real gold.

Ugh.

So, basically, Buck is portrayed here as an idiot. First he opens an alien hibernation tube without the simplest or most basic of precautions or expert back-up, and then he asks if a humanoid is actually made of gold.  

Then, just when the episode can't get any more dimwitted, the Searcher suddenly runs aground on an asteroid.  I mean, the ship just piles into a huge space rock.  Who is driving the ship?  How could this happen?  Earlier in the episode, Admiral Asimov orders the viewer closed, but presumably the ship can still be steered by scanner or computer, right? Aren't there some safeguards in place to prevent a vessel of this size and complexity from just plowing into an asteroid, head first?  

Probably these are the same safeguards to use when opening an alien hibernation tube, meaning they are non-existent.

Once on the planet, Relcos is captured and held in a wagon and cage.  The scene in which he is mobbed by denizens of the penal colony is clearly and crisply shot. We see Relcos cowering in the cage, transforming the molecular make-up of several items, including a ladle, and the cage bars.  But for some reason, seeing is not enough.  There is an ADR voice-over narration explaining everything he does, in extreme detail.  "He turned that ladle to pure silver! He's turned the bars to glass!"  This bizarre play-by-play goes on and on throughout the scene and is absolutely inexplicable. The images carry the scene just fine without the narration.

Then, there's the final twist in the tail that reveals Relcos, a fully-grown adult male, is actually a child.  And Relcos, physically about a 12-year old, is a parent.  The aliens, who hail from Vella 5, age in "reverse."  This means that Relcos is actually a 5-year old child.  No wonder Relcos' mother is never seen in the episode. She's likely in a hospital. Imagine what these golden women must go through, having the physical dimensions of children, but giving birth to full-grown adults. All joking aside, it seems a physical impossibility. This touch is meant to be a clever "sci-fi" plot twist, but upon any consideration is revealed to be ridiculous.

There are other issues with the episode too.  Why are the people of the penal colony obsessed with getting their hands on jewels and fine metals?  From what we see, the colony is incredibly small - the size of a Colonial town, perhaps. Jewels and such baubles would only be worth something in a functioning economy with different classes, including a wealthy class, and a professional class.  In other words, someone needs to buy those jewels, or trade for them.  Based on the poor, uneducated colonists depicted in "The Golden Man," there would be no one to buy those jewels, or to sell them, even though the mob leader offers to pay with "Gold Solaris" the location of the Golden Man.

And what are we to make of this penal colony and its presence anyway? The leaders of the colony realize Hawk is not an inspector general because he is not aware of the ship that crashed there, which the colonists are repurposing for escape.  According to the criminals, the authorities know about the crash.  Okay, so the intergalactic authorities are in the loop, even if they haven't acted to retrieve the ship.  If that's the case, how come Crichton, Goodfellow and the Searcher databanks don't have any knowledge of the people of Iris 7, or the planet's designation as a penal colony?  The authorities all know the planet is there, that it houses criminals, and that a she crashed.  But no one on Searcher knows any of these things.  "The Golden Man" just can't be bothered to keep its facts straight, apparently.

I may be biased. I admit it. As noted above, I found this episode terrible the first time I saw it, and revisiting it in 2020 did not change my mind. By 1981, and by the time I was eleven, I expected a top-of-the-line science fiction TV series such as this one not to talk down to me, and to tell stimulating, intelligent, internally-consistent stories.

"The Golden Man" fails to deliver anything that doesn't feel like an insult to the intelligence.