If there's one thing I learned from Buck Rogers, it's that disco will make a comeback in the 25th century. Big bushy sideburns, large wide open collars and bell bottoms will also be making a return in about five hundred years.
It's easy to laugh at the 70's influences on Buck Rogers, but the fact is there wasn't a single sci-fi movie or TV show that didn't allow that special 70's style to creep in somehow.
George Lucas was pretty good at making Star Wars fairly sheilded from the 1970's. But take a good long look at Luke's feathered hair and Leia's sparkling lip gloss and you'll see that even a galaxy far, far away couldn't escape the 70's.
Anyone who watched Space:1999 knows the show should've been called Space:1976. Evidently, earth toned velour track suits were in vogue on Moonbase Alpha.
Indeed, everything on Logan's Run (both the TV show and movie) and Battlestar Galactica had that distinctive 70's flair. But perhaps the most striking 70's infiltration was not on a show set in the future or in another world... but a show set in the 1950's. Happy Days started out pretty accurately depicting the 50's - sure, it was over simplified and stereotyped a la American Graffiti, but it bore a pretty honest resemblance to the decade they were trying to portray. Then something went wrong.... horribly wrong.
Somewhere along the way, the writers, directors, producers and cast of Happy Days all said "screw it". In the last six or seven seasons there was no way for a person of reasonable intelligence to figure out the show was supposed to be set in the past. There were bell bottoms, wide collars, 70's hair galore, Suzi Quatro, tight denim, lip gloss - all the hallmarks of 70's fashion were shamelessly on display. To make matters worse, when the 1980's hit, the show adopted 80's fashions with equal enthusiasm.... the 1950's pretense was not even an afterthought.
I ask you, does this look anything like the 1950's?
Granted, movies and television shows set in different times have always contained bits of the culture they were created in. However, the 1970's style was so tacky and obnoxious, that I find a special sort of pleasure in finding it where it does not belong.
