Genius thread.
Here's the situation: I'm five years old, I'm in kindergarten, and my two favorite things are karate and Star Wars. My favorite TV show is
Sidekicks(I have a feeling I would be extremely embarassed if I saw it again today--it's about a little asian kid who knows karate, and fights crime with his american partner/step-dad/cop).
I was young and stupid, and didn't realize that TV shows had set schedules. I just figured they came on at random times, and I would always be flipping through channels when I was at home, hoping that this show was on and that I would find it.
One fateful night, I finally found it...sort of. No asian kid, but it was definitely the white dad from the show. He didn't know karate, but he was still cool because he was dressed up just like Luke frigging Skywalker. And there, in the same room, was Princess Leia. Not the REAL Princess Leia, but close enough. (Even at that age, I knew that TV shows based on movies never had the "real" people from the movies.) And there was even Darth Vader!
Through nosing around at IMDB, it looks like the show I caught was
Buck Rogers. Makes sense--scifi show with the lead actor/actress in white jumpsuits. Looks enough like Star Wars to a dumb little kid. But why in the world did I see Darth Vader? I may have been a dumb kid, but I know Darth Vader when I see him. This was him, people! Same mask, same breathing noises, same lights on the chest.
Is anyone familiar with this show? Did they really have a character that was an exact ripoff of Darth Vader? (Or close enough of a ripoff that a stupid five year old kid would confuse it for Darth?)
According to IMDB, the Buck Rogers show came on from 1979-1981--at least five years before I was addicted to Sidekicks. Why would they have been airing both shows at the same time? Did I stumble upon some sort of Star Wars/Buck Rogers crossover/parody thing? One with a high enough budget to get the real actor from Buck Rogers, as well as an authentic Vader costume and sound effects? What in the world did I see?
All I know is that after it was over, I told my mom about it and explained to her that it was my favorite show, even better than Sidekicks. She humored me by telling me "that's great, Jeff". I never saw this show again, although I would still occassionally talk about it to my mom(my mom was the only person nice enough to pretend to care about such things). This is actually the first time I've mentioned this in well over 15 years. Oh, sweet sweet memories...