JellyTelly Review: Galaxy Buck - Mission to Sector 9

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: A great Biblical message about being used by God

Cons: The story isn’t as entertaining as much of Phil’s previous work

The Bottom Line:

Mission in deep space

Contains a great message but

Lacks entertainment

Boldly Taking the Gospel Where No Man Has Gone Before

If you dig back into my archives, you’ll find it no secret that I really enjoyed Phil Vischer’s What’s In the Bible? series of videos.  Using giant puppets, he went through the entire Bible exploring the themes of each book and how it fit into God’s overall redemption plan.  So when Galaxy Buck: Mission To Sector 9 was announced as the first part of a follow up project, I was excited.  After seeing it, I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would be.

This 40 minute video reunites many of the major characters we got to know through What’s in the Bible?, but forget everything you thought you knew about them.  Much like how the characters of VeggieTales change their role based on the story, we now find Buck Denver and most of the gang working for Pastor Paul, who has an intergalactic broadcast sending the Gospel to the far reaches of the solar system.  Buck and the rest of the crew work in the phone banks, helping people get their tote bags and other goodies.  But Buck isn’t satisfied.  He knows God wants him to do great things.

Buck thinks his opportunity has come when a report of a down transponder comes in from Sector 9.  So, under the supervision of Sunday School lady, Buck leads Clive, Owen, and Marcy out to this distant uninhabited planet to fix the transponder so that Pastor Paul’s message can still go out.  Only when they get there, they encounter danger and aliens.  Will Buck succeed in his mission?  Or has he doomed his friends?

I honestly had a hard time getting past the new jobs everyone had.  It took me longer than expected to get into the story as a result, although it didn’t help that the story was slow, period.  Yes, I’m familiar enough with Star Wars and Star Trek to get the fact that we were getting some spoofs of them, but it just wasn’t that funny to me.  Instead, I kept waiting for something to happen.

Since we are talking about spreading the Good News we learned about in the earlier videos, I was expecting a little more about that, too.  Honestly, I think the initial idea of Buck and his crew working a phone bank a pretty good indictment of many Christians today.  However, I didn’t feel like the story went much beyond that.  But since this is the first of these videos, maybe I was expecting everything at once.

I will say I loved the moral.  Buck has to learn that God wants him just to be available, not to look for big things to do Himself.  That’s very Biblical.  Plus, when you are open to God and His leading, you’ll find yourself doing bigger things than you ever dreamed even if they aren’t what you think are big things.

Yes, I am looking at this as an adult, but an adult who has enjoyed much of Phil Vischer’s previous work.  I’ve always found good lessons mixed in with fun stories and great jokes.  This video had one out of three, at least as far as I was concerned.  Kids might enjoy it more.

It’s a shame that Galaxy Buck: Mission To Sector 9 isn’t more entertaining because it absolutely has a great message for all to learn.  Here’s hoping that the next Galaxy Buck adventure has more entertainment with its lesson.