Planet Outlaws is the edited Buck Rogers serial from 1938. It was edited again to feature length and titled Destination Saturn as it was syndicated to television,. It was edited again into in the late 70s and called Buck Rogers with the theatrical poster advertising, “Star Wars owes it all to Buck Rogers.”

Lieutenant Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe, who was also Flash Gordon) and Buddy Wade (Jackie Moran) are lost somewhere in the North Pole in 1938. The Nirvano Gas they have in their ship causes them to go to sleep for five hundred years, waking up in 2440.

The future has been taken over by Killer Kane (Anthony Warde) and his army. The only people left to fight him are Dr. Huer (C. Montague Shaw), Wilma Deering (Constance Moore) and Air Marshal Kragg (William Gould). Buck and Buddy join up and head to Saturn to fight against the super crime bosses of the future.

This serial reuses a lot of things, such as the vehicles, a set and costumes from Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars, background music from The Bride of Frankenstein, the theme from Tim Tyler’s Luck and background shots from Just Imagine,

Forty years later, Buster Crabbe made a cameo appearance as Brigadier Gordon on the Buck Rogers TV series episode “Planet of the Slave Girls.” Gordon tells Buck (Gil Gerard), “I’ve been doing this since before you were born.” When Buck, at 533-years-old, asks “You think so?”