Gil Gerard, who has died at 82 after what his wife described as a brief and merciless skirmish with a particularly aggressive form of cancer, will forever be remembered as the man who thawed out in the 25th century and somehow made tight white spandex look like a viable career choice.
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1943, Gerard started life far from the stars—first as an industrial chemist, then as a New York cabbie who moonlighted in nearly 400 television commercials, peddling everything from Ford cars to whatever else paid the rent. A chance fare led to a bit part in Love Story, but it was daytime soap The Doctors that kept him employed for years as the reliably handsome Dr. Alan Stewart. Fame arrived in 1979 when Glen A. Larson defrosted the old Buck Rogers comic strip and handed Gerard the title role.
As Captain William “Buck” Rogers—an astronaut frozen for 500 years only to wake up quipping in a disco-flavoured future—Gerard brought a breezy, winking charm to a show that teetered gloriously between camp and adventure. Ably supported by Erin Gray’s Colonel Wilma Deering and a beeping robot called Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc, no less), the series ran for two seasons, delighting children and baffling critics in equal measure. After Buck’s shuttle was grounded, Gerard kept busy with television movies, the short-lived martial-arts series Sidekicks opposite young Ernie Reyes Jr., and occasional film roles, including a cameo alongside Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys. He was candid about his struggles with weight and addiction, even subjecting himself to the reality lens in Action Hero Makeover.
In later years, he reunited with Gray for fan events and a web pilot, proving that some heroes never quite hang up the ray gun. Gerard is survived by his wife Janet, after eighteen years of marriage, and by his son Gib from his earlier union with Connie Sellecca. One suspects Buck himself would have approved of the exit line Gerard prepared: “See you out somewhere in the cosmos.”