SnoopyStyle
It's the year 2525. The earth's surface has been taken over by machines called Baileys. Mankind has been driven underground. Hel (Gina Torres) and Sarge (Victoria Pratt) fight the Baileys under the directions of the mysterious Voice. They barely survive their comrade who turned out to be a Betrayer robot. At a mutant medical shop, they save Cleopatra (Jennifer Sky) who is a stripper cryogenically frozen in 2001 after a botched boob job. With their reprogrammed Betrayer named Mauser, they survive the labyrithium underground world of mutants and dangers like Joker-esque villain Creegan while fighting against the machines up above.This is a campy sci-fi TV. The premise has good potential with a dose of Terminator along with some wackier sci-fi. The execution is campy with scattered humor. Jennifer Sky tries her best to be fun with pop culture references. She ends up with a lot of squealing. Victoria Pratt is all about her abs. Gina Torres is solid. The half-hour format allows the shows to be a quick flashy action meal and the hour-long episodes do drag a little. Overall, this is stripper-tastic but it's by no means good. The sexy trio does keep one's attention and that reworked 2525 theme song is hella catchy.
aimless-46
Most likely "Cleopatra 2525" will be of little interest if you did not watch the series when it was broadcast; and I don't think that many people did. But if you are still somewhat intrigued it is a "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" premise without space ships and with no budget for wardrobe or production design. In this case the Buck Rogers part (Cleopatra) is played by Jennifer Sky. Which one might expect to be a good thing as Jennifer is very beautiful and quite talented; and has a nice comedic touch. But a quick glance at the promotional material will show that she is somewhat the worse for having a bad haircut and a Salvation Army Thrift Store wardrobe. If you remember how fetching Jennifer was during her time on "Xena" her dowdy Cleopatra look will be a huge disappointment. With a target audience of "teenage boys looking to burn their eyeballs looking at "hot fetish-attired girls" it is not a good idea to skimp on the exploitation value of your heroine or her costume. And they wonder why some series don't attract much of an audience. Love it or hate it, "Buck Rogers" had hotter costumes and much better looking guest stars. The other two exploitation elements are Cleopatra's two female associates; Hel (Gina Torres basically playing her stock "Firefly" character) and Sarge (Victoria Pratt-another "Xena" connection-an extremely wooden version of Natasha Henstridge). Torres does a good job playing off the Cleopatra character, providing most of the show's comic relief. Torres sings the theme song, a somewhat lame parody of Rick Evans' "In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)" (1969). You remember the one that opens with the words "In the year 2525, If man is still alive, If woman can survive, They may find..."I suspect that they gave the series its title so that they could butcher this catchy little song although who knows, perhaps the title is a homage to "Buck Rogers" and they thought of using the song later. So, the premise of the show is that the Earth's surface has been taken over by aliens called Bailies (not the WKRP one) and the humans have been driven underground. Our three heroines fight against the Bailies under the direction of a disembodied (presumably) female voice (appropriately referred to as "Voice"). Unlike Buck Rogers, Cleopatra is kind of a wimpy third stooge, still dazed and confused from her cryogenic sleep or maybe just disoriented from the creepy haircut. There are a lot of nice close-ups of Sky wide-eyed and bewildered. Like "Buck Rogers" the running gag is Cleopatra using a common 21st century expression and everyone finding it either totally profound or completely baffling. Unlike "Firefly" the action is more of that hyper edited "Xena" garbage which is neither realistic nor particularly entertaining. One good gimmick is that the girls travel around "Spiderman" fashion, a sort of web slinging through tunnels and shafts in the labyrinth of their underground world. Strangely (or maybe not considering the budget) these are only half hour episodes and except for one two-part show there is not enough time for any subtlety and nuance. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
Victor Field
From the setup (a young woman is cryogenically frozen in 2000, is defrosted more than 500 years to arrive in a world overrun by a terrible threat to mankind, and falls in with heroic freedom fighters) to the characters - particularly our heroine, who's very cute in a Chiana-from-"Farscape"-but-non-albino kind of way - "Cleopatra 2525" is as close to a live-action cartoon as any TV series in recent years has come. This in itself is no bad thing, especially since animated shows have long been worthy of more attention than they often get... but unfortunately the show isn't exactly on the level of "Batman," "Gargoyles" or even "Mighty Max." In fact, it veers closer to the quality threshold of "Rude Dog and the Dweebs" - with Cleopatra very definitely being the dweeb in this scenario. It might actually play better if it was animated, and its half-hour length wouldn't seem like so much of an anomaly (the show seems a bit rushed and compressed at this length, perhaps because half-hour action shows haven't been widely made in live-action for decades, whereas in animation they never went away and hence they never lost the knack). But while it can't compare to the Slayer, the Warrior Princess, Seattle's Dark Angel or even Townsville's Powerpuff Girls, you have only to watch "VIP" or the later episodes of "Lexx" to realise that it could be worse. And my thanks to the uncredited people responsible for the special version of the horribly depressing and depressingly horrible "In The Year 2525" - most of the words are changed and the tempo made more upbeat, resulting in a vast improvement over the original. Not that I'm sorry the show got cancelled, but at least it got something right.
baikal
Now this show deserves some creadit for demonstrating (very thoroughly) what a REALLY BAD show is all about.I can't believe this mindless piece of c**p ever made it to the screen! And this is at the time when some really excellent shows, like "Roar", were never given a chance.So what do we have here? A pretty moronic plot, no script to speak of, bad acting, cheesy special effect and an overall odor of vulgarity. No redeeming qualities whatsoever, as far as I can tell. Really, this one makes "Battlefield Earth" look good!