- While developing the design of Draconian Hatchet Fighters, Kane sends the best pilots of the kingdom that are not able to control the fighters and die. Princess Ardala suggests that Buck Rogers is the best plot of the galaxy and able to control the fighter. She lures Buck Rogers and releases a probe similar to the one Buck Rogers was found with a dummy inside. Buck and Twiki are captured by the Draconian warriors and Buck's skills are used for three clones called Zygots. One of them is sent to New Chicago replacing Buck with a bomb inside to destroy the city. Now Buck tries to flee from Ardala, Kane and his warriors.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Kane has designed the Hatchet Fighters of the Draconian Realm, resulting in the invariable deaths of the empire's best pilots who cannot control their ships. Determined to launch attacks on Earth, Princess Ardala orders the capture of Buck Rogers, the one pilot in the galaxy who can possibly control Kane's Hatchet Fighters. Using a dramatic ruse, Ardala succeeds in capturing Buck and Twiki, and prepares Buck for the debut of the Zygots, android clones of himself. Strapping Buck into a space suit, the Draconians record his combat experience and transfer the information into the clones. Buck attempts to escape, but finds Ardala has sent one of his clones as an impostor, rigged with a bomb capable of destroying New Chicago.—Woodyanders
- A test pilot for the Draconian empire is testing the hatchet fighter, redesigned by Kane for attacks on Earth. But the ship suddenly bobbles and the pilot cannot control it. The ship then explodes - the seventh such fatal accident in the test program. Ardala is angered at the failure of the program, but suddenly gets an idea, one that involves the man she lusts after the most - Buck Rogers.
Buck meanwhile is checking out a new game table designed by Twiki - a ping pool table, a mistaken amalgam of ping pong and pool. He challenges Wilma - herself unsure of the ping pong concept - to a game, but it goes nowhere. They are then interrupted by Doctor Huer summoning them both to his office.
The reason why is shown by a robot probe - it has scanned the arrival of a large satellite marked as launching in 1996, this even though Directorate records know of no further space launches after Buck's fateful flight. The probe scans further and detects an astronaut in frozen suspension inside. Buck and Twiki launch to rendezvous with the satellite and are able to enter, where they open the casing with the astronaut - whose plastic head falls off and the airlock instantly shuts, thus trapping Buck and Twiki where the satellite launches back to its mothership - Ardala's capital ship.
After Ardala offers Buck a drink - and witnesses some pointed exchange involving Kane, her bodyguard Tigerman, and Twiki - she takes him to a special lab, where she and Kane reveal a perfect robot duplicate of Buck, known as the Zygot. She can program Buck's neural actions and responses into the robot so it can fly the improved hatchet fighter. Buck makes a break for it, knocking out several Draconian guards, but is finally overpowered - though Ardala sharply tells Kane to keep his guards under control and thus not to harm Buck.
Wilma and Huer finally realize something is wrong and Wilma launches in her Starfighter to find Buck. When she finds Buck's abandoned shuttle, she is ordered to begin a search of the star field. Doctor Theopolis meanwhile reads data from the robot probe and finds its energy drive's output has the distinctive pattern of Draconian drive units - thus confirming to them that Buck has been captured.
Buck meanwhile awakens in a hatchet fighter, and coming under fire from three Starfighters. He immediately outmaneuvers and shoots them down, and Kane, having enough data, shuts off the holographic simulation. Ardala, before sending the prototype to infiltrate Earth, brings Buck to her bedchamber again, hoping yet again to seduce him into joining her side. But Buck, undeniably in love with Ardala, cannot bring himself to do so. Ardala, now seeing hope of having this man slipping away, summons the Zygot - who takes the programmed personality of a wisecracking hotshot even though he mangles some of Buck's 20th century jargon.
Buck tries to escape again with Twiki, but the ship goes to alert and the two are momentarily separated. Twiki then sees Buck - in reality the Zygot prototype - and winds up trapped in a storage chamber, with a momentarily unconscious Buck. The Zygot launches in a hatchet fighter and contacts Wilma, and is escorted home, where his excessively cheery attitude is noticed by Wilma and draws her concern; when the phony Buck claims to have seen something on the Draconian capital ship but can't remember it because of drugging, he suggests getting together with Theo and Huer, and the unsuspecting Wilma - unaware the phony Buck carries a nuclear warhead programmed to explode upon contact with all three New Chicago leaders - agrees to a meet.
Buck meanwhile is allowed exercise in the ship's gymnasium where he challenges two warriors to a duel with energy stun sticks - he bests them right away but is caught again, this time by Tigerman. Buck then realizes how they know about his escape plans when he finds and digs out a transmitter within Twiki's chest box; this allows him to formulate a plan to sabotage Kane's Zygots, three of which are being built to fly hatchet fighters. Buck has Twiki send a low-voltage current into his body to damage his neural responses just long enough to affect the programming of the other Zygots - during the data transfer Kane attributes the synaptic responses to alcohol.
Wilma meanwhile has met with Huer and Theo and both have recognized the difference in Buck, but when he arrives a base-wide bomb alert goes off and a member of Explosive Ordinance Detail arrives with a scanner indicating the bomb is directly in front of everyone. The alert indicates the bomb will detonate in five seconds, but Wilma draws her laser and shoots the phony Buck - and vaporizes the bomb.
Ardala and Kane are disappointed but not to a great level, as the three attack Zygots are certain to shoot down Earth's Starfighters. Ardala, however, wants to examine the three Zygots herself - hoping for a romantic replacement for the real Buck. Each Zygot possesses a distinctive aspect of Buck's personality - one is mellow and withdrawn. One is a "jock" fighter pilot who goes off for some two hours reciting memory of Buck from flying F16s in overseas combat duty with Wild Weasel missile-suppression fighters. The third is a romantic and passionate lover, but when Ardala kisses him she sees the electrical energy in his eyes and is repelled by the fact of him being a machine. Ardala now begins coming to grips with her inability to find true happiness, and in tears she orders Kane to launch the attack at once.
When she sees Buck to boast of the attack, Buck pretends to malfunction like one of the Zygots, and is able to escape with Twiki, hijack a hatchet fighter, and launch after his robot doppelgangers. Wilma leads a Starfighter intercept group, but they are slaughtered by the Zygot pilots - until help arrives in the form of Buck's stolen hatchet fighter.
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