The “wild men” in Buck Rogers were basically an early version of the Reavers from Firefly. Buck Rogers had his “life support accident” in May 1987. Nuclear war devastated the planer Earth in November 1987. The “wild men” are mutants, they are no longer human, but evolved from a few centuries roaming the radio-active wasteland outside the City. Buck encountered them when he left the City to visit his parents’ grave sites.
… giving it a Hollywood do over?
It’s important that the show being given the “BSG treatment” not just be a complete subversion of the original (as in Lust4Life’s “Star Trek”). Moore’s genius idea for the reimagining of BSG wasn’t taking an old show and gritty-fying the shit out of it - it was recognizing the potential for dark, complex drama within the original’s premise.
The original BSG could have been a meditation on the apocalypse, survivorhood, and the desperation of being the last of your kind with an implacable enemy on your heels. It could have wrestled with questions of identity, what it means to be human, and how we as a civilization interact with our technology. Instead, we got campy monsters of the week and a casino planet. But the potential was there, right from the moment Lorne Green watched in impotent horror as the Cylon fleet annihilated the Battlestar Atlantia.
So a “BSG-style” reimagining needs to be one that adheres to the basic concept/ plot summary of the original, but takes the premise utterly seriously and focuses on exploring what it would really be like for people placed into that situation. Lumpy’s “Land of the Lost” is a perfect example (and I would personally love to watch that show!).