Re-Imagining Roulette

Battlestar Galactica. The Bionic Woman. The televised sci-fi hootenanny that was the 1970s seems to have become an inexhaustible resource for today’s aspiring show-runners. Which leads us to speculate: What’s next?

We’ve laid odds.

20-1: Space: 1999. Such a natural, it seems, though limited in its re-imagining potential because it was just so friggin’ good to begin with. Well, one climbs the mountain because it’s there. Obviously, the title needs work, given the awkward associations with the Prince catalog. And, um, of course the fact that we didn’t have a moonbase in 1999. We had the Y2K scare! No dang moonbase, though…

10-1: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering was hot in 1979 and, as far as we can tell, is still hot three decades later. We’re seeing her as some kind of admiral or battle-fleet grand pooh-bah. As the re-imagined Col. Deering, none other than…that’s right, Claudia Black, small-screen sci-fi’s answer to Ava Gardner.

2-1: The Man Woman from Atlantis. This one has the distinct possibly of, yes, a bikini maneuver. Dirk Benedict saw Starbuck gender-flipped for the re-imagined BSG. Let’s do likewise here. We’re thinking Jolene Blalock, who should have wrapped the direct-to-DVD Starship Troopers: Marauder by now and can definitely carry the wardrobe.