I didn’t think it was possible for any version of Flash Gordon to bore the living crap out of me, but the Sci-Fi Channel managed it.
When BSG was reimagined, Ron Moore removed all the kitschy and campy aspects but replaced it with adult drama and sex. In the case of Flash, the producers likewise removed all the kitschy and campy elements from Flash Gordon, but replaced it with blandness. How colorless was Doctor Zarkov? How staggeringly dull was Ming the Merciless, no longer an evil, vaguely Asian guy but instead an unimposing Caucasian with the amazing ability to convey a total lack of threat. Were the producers REALLY that concerned about protests from Asian groups if they’d portrayed this decades-old iconic character in the classic manner?
And, hey…there was a REASON that Whitney was written out of Smallville: He was colorless and dull. So using him to anchor the series here only succeeds in that, like an anchor, he weighs things down and slows them to a halt.
I wanted to love this series, I really did. I mean, they had me with the prospect of evil aliens invading a bowling alley. (Which I have to think is a tactical mistake on the part of the aliens. If evil aliens showed up on league night standing at the far end of the lanes at my local bowling alley, we’d all just start chucking fifteen pound bowling balls at them.) But the flat writing, miscasting, and non-existent budget sank the pilot episode and I have, frankly, very little hope for subsequent outings.
Is it possible to do a tongue-in-cheek space opera for today’s audience? Sure. The producers of “The Adventures of Captain Zoom,” an underrated cable gem not even available on home video, accomplished that, featuring a lunkheaded hero, a hilariously offhand villain outing by Ron Perlman, a bewildered-looking Nichelle Nichols who didn’t quite seem to understand how she’d wound up there, and a budget of what looked to be $1.79. “Flash Gordon” from those folks would have killed. What we got instead was simply something that killed time, and even that, not very well.
PAD
• 
I guess I am one of the few who enjoyed the show. I thought it was ‘relatively’ well done. (Although I did think the Ming charater was incredibly boring.)
I think the main thing I like about it was that it seems like it has a lot of potential for stories. (The two other things that bugged me were the torturer guy who appeared to be on a Segway through most of the time he was on screen and Imex/Timex thing.) Obviously it was not BSG, but on a scale of 10 I would put it at about a 7.
It actually kept me entertained for the 90 minutes and made me want to see more. (But I also like Painkiller Jane, and couldn’t stand Dresden Files so I guess that puts me in the minority of the comments about those two as well.)
Does this guy ever play someone NOT of royal blood?
The most memorable role (outside of those already mentioned) has to be Suleman Khan in the Tom Selleck flick High Road to China.
Maybe I should say memorable word instead of role:
SPEEEEEEAK
And I’d still pay money for any movie of ONJ’s. Lots of good memories – even if the movies were bad.
The most memorable role (outside of those already mentioned) has to be Suleman Khan in the Tom Selleck flick High Road to China.
Hmm. That’s one I don’t know. I’ll have to look at it sometime, even if it means enduring Selleck.
And Bill — thanks for all the info. It’s not that I didn’t trust you — it was just so weird that I wanted to see something more firsthand. Thanks.
And I’d still pay money for any movie of ONJ’s. Lots of good memories – even if the movies were bad.
Leave Two of a Kind out of the list and I’ll agree with you. That one’s so bad I can’t even watch it just for ONJ. (Lower quality than Xanadu AND a far weaker soundtrack — not a good combination!)
Speaking of Xanadu, has anyone here seen the revival of it on Broadway? The reviews I’ve read have been surprisingly positive.
TWL
Whenever I think of Brian Blessed, I don’t think of Voltan. I think of Caesar Augustus bellowing “IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER?!?”
PAD
RE: CAPTAIN ZOOM
The best thing to come out of the Action Pack, so naturally it didn’t get follow-up movies or a series like HERCULES, XENA, or VANISHING SON. Especially worthy for one of the greatest, and utterly WTF, lines ever. Virgin priestess in the service of Ron Pearlman’s Big Bad propositions him. His response: “I can’t have sex with you. Having sex with you would be like having sex with my mother — and I never enjoyed that.”
Now if they’d just make a FLASH GORDON soundtrack with all the Queen and none of the movie dialogue . . .
Sean Scullion :”I was utterly devoted to the cartoon.”
I pre-ordered the DVD the day I saw it listed. The first season of that thing was great. The second season of it… Well, it was still better then that crippled thing that wasted 90 minutes of screen time last week.
Bill Mulligan :”Xanadu? Xanadoo-oo-oo (now we are here) In Xanadu!”
Stop raiding my DVD collection.
PAD :”Whenever I think of Brian Blessed, I don’t think of Voltan. I think of Caesar Augustus… “
See, and I’m always stuck with Mark of Cornwall in my brain.
Captain Zoom ruled.
You know, it’s actually really sad how much good stuff is out there VS the crap that it becomes. Dan Jurgens did a great Flash mini that would have been a hëll of a lot better template then what they went with. Flash Gordon cartoon that Sean (I was beginning to think that I was the only kid who ever watched it, let alone remembered it) and I loved so much would have been worlds better then this thing. Hëll, people on this thread have thrown out “what ifs” and killed boredom on dieing threads by coming up with better plot ideas then this thing had going for it. And a bunch of paid pros approved, created and aired… This thing.
My biggest gripe with it (besides be often aimless and boring) was that the dialog just came off as having been written by somebody with no clue how to script for TV. Some of it may have worked on a page or, just barely, in an audio production, but it sounded stupid on a TV program. There were entire exchanges that looked like something that would read well as comedic exchanges, but just didn’t work well when spoken on screen.
That problem seemed to also infect the pacing of the thing. Lots of it seemed like something written by someone who had no clue how the actual pacing of live actors and a set would slow things down to a crawl or just bore the hëll out of the viewer.
I’m with the poster who’s waiting for Baron and Voltan. It might get better with a few episodes behind it and it might get better with other writers thrown into the mix. But it’s dropping off of my DVR by episode three if they’re not in the mix and it’s still craptacular in nature and supreme in its boringness.
Whenever I think of Brian Blessed, I don’t think of Voltan. I think of Caesar Augustus bellowing “IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER?!?”
That’s an awesome moment, but I didn’t see the early episodes of I, Claudius until a number of years after their run. (I was something like 8 when it first aired in the US, and apparently my dad was fine w/ me watching Caligula but not Augustus. Yyyyyyeah.) Vultan is, at least to my memory, the first role I saw Blessed play, and under those circumstances it’s extremely tough to keep the image out of my head.
And that said, I hope that you, o man with four daughters, never have cause to echo that bellow!
TWL
And Bill — thanks for all the info. It’s not that I didn’t trust you — it was just so weird that I wanted to see something more firsthand. Thanks.
Oh I knew that…I would have a hard time believeing it myself.
here’s another bit I just remembered–the producers had a great idea on how to explain why the Silver Surfer had a surfboard. Zenn-La, they theorized, was an ocean world, where everybody used surfboards to travel. So there you are.
You know, it never ever occurred to me to wonder why the Silver Surfer had a surfboard. I guess I just assumed that’s what a Silver Surfer would have.
“IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER?!?”
Bloody hëll, I know I’D say I hadn’t, even if caught in fligrante dilicto with said daughter.
Jerry, there’s DVD’s? THERE’S DVD’S? WHERE WHERE WHERE?
I saw that Whitney from SMALLVILLE was playing Flash Gordon and I didn’t even bother. Glad to hear my instincts were right.
Sean,
http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct.htm?productId=5739583
Choco-Socko is Bøffø!
One thing I noticed while watching is that besides Flash’s MILFish mom and his father, we NEVER see anyone over 30. Everyone at the marathon (And what kind of road race billed as a “Tri-City Marathon” ends in the middle of some housing development?) and at the club all looked as if they were in their 20s. Pandering much?
For anyone out there with no clue what Sean and I are babbling about… Just buy it. Not only was it a surprisingly good version (made even more surprising since it was a Saturday morning cartoon) of Flash Gordon, but the soundtrack was partially a riff of Holst’s The Planets. The theme for Ming’s robot soldiers and most of the really cool battles with his armada is a pretty good imitation of The Bringer of War.
Maybe no big deal to some, but I kinda dug the music when I was a kid.
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at August 15, 2007 10:56 PM:
re: Flash Gordon cartoon
“(I was beginning to think that I was the only kid who ever watched it, let alone remembered it).”
I have a very distant childhood memory of a Flash Gordon Cartoon. I remember being very impressed with it at the time.
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at August 15, 2007 11:22 PM
“You know, it never ever occurred to me to wonder why the Silver Surfer had a surfboard. I guess I just assumed that’s what a Silver Surfer would have.”
After all, he’s called the Silver Surfer not the Silver Pogo-Sticker.
>Whenever I think of Brian Blessed, I don’t think of Voltan. I think of Caesar Augustus bellowing “IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER?!?”
What I think of is:
“QUINTILLIUS VARRUS, WHERE ARE MY EAGLES?!?”
I thought it was a decent show. But it wasn’t FLASH GORDON. That’s a title that conjures images of rocket ships, bird-people, swashbuckling adventure and derring-do. This was not that.
Incidentally, anyone else see the 90’s animated series? I thought it was quite fun. Yes, it ‘updated’ things to a blatant degree, but it was far more successful than this outing.
A friend of mine disliked the Silver Surfer precisely because he never understood why a cosmic entity would be a surfer, of all things.
Haven’t seen the new series of FG but will try this weekend’s episode, with clenched teeth.
LOVED the cartoon (also cut into a movie version). Also the Crabbe and the original strips.
Not a huge fan of Captain Zoom, however.
“Virgin priestess in the service of Ron Pearlman’s Big Bad propositions him. His response: “I can’t have sex with you. Having sex with you would be like having sex with my mother — and I never enjoyed that.”
A great line, but my favorite still remains after Vox’s (Perlman’s) men have apparently blown Captain Zoom out of space. Vox laughs triumphantly and then completely changes tone and says, “Okay, that’s lunch, everybody.” And just like a movie set clearing out, everyone promptly gets to their feet and walks away, clearing the set.
PAD
Okay, here’s the thing, I hated that 1980 movie. Actually, hated may not be a strong enough word for my feelings towards that badly acted, badly written, badly done SFX, badly directed steaming pile of monkey doodoo. It was well passed the “so bad it’s fun” stage and into, “so bad it’s physically painful for me to watch.”
Oh, and I hated the Queen sound track, too. So, using that to promote the new TV series didn’t exactly raise my hopes. PAD’s review was spot on, it’s just plain dull and lifeless. If this is what Skiffy thinks is better TV than the Dresden Files, then I don’t have much hope for them.
Captain Zoom, however, was everthing a Flash Gordon movie should have been. Wasn’t that produced by Sam Raimi?
Wait, back up…
Den, are you saying that Sci-Fi has canned Dresden? I haven’t heard anything about that, but that’s the way your comment comes across.
Never mind, I just Googled it.
That sucks.
Hmmm. In a way or two, I am glad that I do not like the new Flash Gordon series. Every time I get to enjoy a series on this channel, they cancel it. FARSCAPE and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA,
Man, I’m glad I’m not the only one who kept thinking “Captain Zoom.” Gotta dig up a copy of that.
I’m another who really wanted to like this. I mean, it’s Flash Frickin’ Gordon!
I admit, I’m a know-nothing young pup who knows Flash mainly from the Filmation animated series and the wonderfully awful movie (which I’ll be picking up on DVD this weekend) but even what I’ve caught of the original serials and comics had more life than this.
Ordinarily I try and give shows 3-5 eps to iron out most of the bumps but after falling asleep on this I was ready to just call it quits right then. The only reason I’ll stick around is that I know (well, in a ‘net sense) someone who has joined the writing staff as of the second episode and I’ve enjoyed a lot of the stuff she’s been involved with before. She says they’re gonna pick up and everyone is having fun (yeah, they always say that) so I’m hoping it starts to come thru on screen.
Oh…from the sound of it, the pilot was planned to be a two-hour thing and she says a lot of the humor and character got lost when it was edited down to a 90 minute spot, for what that’s worth.
The mention of the Flash Gordon animated series gave me a flashback of my early childhood. I think I was only in kindergardne or early elemtary when I watched that show, and I’m not sure how well I understood what was going on. I haven’t heard anything about it or Flash Gordon since then. And now I’m having flashbacks of the few imagers I remember of that show. I remember that at the time I was extremely impressed by it. It’s amazing to be so young that everything seems new and fresh and original.
Do you know about a show that involved a spaceship that looked like a WWII war ship, whose commander looked like a navy admiral?
Do you know about a show that involved a spaceship that looked like a WWII war ship, whose commander looked like a navy admiral?
That would probably be STAR BLAZERS aka Space Battleship Yamato aka Uchū Senkan Yamato
Micha–I think(contrary to the general opinion of me ’round here) what you’re thinking if is Star Blazers which, at least in my neighborhood, the second great anime series to be shown. Now, if money wasn’t the nasty elusive thing for me that it is, that would ALSO be gracing my DVD collection. Here’s the link–
http://www.starblazers.com/
Now, if that’s not it, then I am wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Blazers
Has some more info on the various versions and movies, including a proposed remake by Disney that would have changed the ship to the USS Arizona!
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=star+blazers&search=Search
Has a few clips. Star Blazers and Robotech were two of the shows that really introduced anime to a lot of Americans.
hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Blazers
Has some more info on the various versions and movies, including a proposed remake by Disney that would have changed the ship to the USS Arizona!
hxxp://youtube.com/results?search_query=star+blazers&search=Search
Has a few clips. Star Blazers and Robotech were two of the shows that really introduced anime to a lot of Americans.
Note- replace the xx with tt in the urls
Ok Sean, how come when I use a full url I get snagged in the anti-spam filter while you, a known pusher of Viagra and Nigerian money scams, get to post them without any trouble? And don’t say “clean living” because, hey, we know you.
We recently watched the first season of Star Blazers over again, and it’s interesting to see how well some bits of it age and just how poorly others do. There’s a lot, and I mean a LOT, of repetition over the course of the season — I realize that a lot of that’s due to it being marketed in the US to kids, but even so.
It was still fun, but not really the show I remembered sprinting home to watch every afternoon.
TWL
Because the spam filter was designed by now-rich, now-satisfied Nigerians, Bill. It’s good to have friends in all walks of life.
Flash Gordon’s animated series and Star Blazers both hold spots dear to my childhood TV time. Now, anybody here remember The Children of the Stones, The Tomorrow People, the 60’s Ultra Man, Space Giants and Into the Labyrinth?
oh, and I mean the old version of The Tomorow People and not that really craptacular one from the 90’s.
I’ve got seasons 1-2 of the old Tomorrow People on DVD, with others to be purchased whenever time and finances permit. You BET I remember them. (I’ve started showing them to my wife — they hold up pretty well considering the time period and the age of many of the leads.)
And “Children of the Stones,” if I remember correctly, was one of the stories that aired under Nickelodeon’s “The Third Eye” aegis. Good stuff.
TWL
I’m in the same Tomorrow People position as you. I got the first two box sets to begin to better flesh out kid’s selection of the DVD shelf and am waiting on the last for later down the road. Of course, I cheated. I mentioned them heavily to our then unborn baby’s grandparents and got them as gifts.
Jenn had never seen them before, but she thought they were pretty clever, aged well and would be fine for Ian. However, she doesn’t believe a word of my story that they were actually gotten primarily for him.
Thanks for the info about Star Blazers. That’s the show. I was 5-6 when I watched it. I’m not sure how much I was aware of the story of the show. I typed the Hebrew name of the show into google and got many hits to nostalgic sites by Israelis around my age. At the time we only had one TV channel, so all the kids pretty much watched the same handful of shows. Some were rerun many times, so I have a good recollection of them, but this is the first time I’ve heard of or even thought of Flash Gordon or Star Blazers since then. The internet is certainly very conductive for nostalgia.
Thanks again for the trip down some of the poorly lit sections of memory lane.
Micha,
Try youtube.com and dogpile.com for video clips of the shows. They’ve got some old shows intros only out there, but they’ve actually footage for a few of them.
Micha,
Try youtube and dogpile for video clips of the shows. They’ve got some old shows intros only out there, but they’ve actually footage for a few of them.
Ok, the sites being strange. 1st post gave me an error message, 2nd post said the filter snagged it and then the 3rd goes through and takes the other two with it.
~8?\
Second episode was better. Still not great, but good enough to bring me back next weeek.
I also wasn’t very impressed by the bits of the show I’ve seen (and also had trouble telling the princess and bounty hunter apart, thinking the princess was moving in with Flash in episode 2). Of course, I don’t have that strong of a connection with Falsh Gordon, knowing the serial mainly as an influence on Star Wars. Of the couple of times I remember seeing the 1980 movie, the first thoughts that come to mind, besides general cheesiness, are Ornella Muti (sp?) (the princess) being an attractive woman, and that that Flash reminds me of a punier version of Big Mc Largehuge – er, David Rider – from Space Mutiny (speaking of MST3K; proof that they could make a bad movie VERY entertaining).
Oh, and as for on-screen clutter on TV – even if the corner id boxes are sometimes of use, it’s debateable that they need to be as large as some of them are. And the, sometimes very large and animated, ads some stations are starting to impose during movies and shows featuring other shows on their network, are a helluva lot less beneficial.
I thought the second episode was worse. I got about 2/3rds of the way through it before giving up. Way too many stilted lines, way too many silly moments, way too few interesting characters.
I like the actress who plays Dale. She should get her own show.
Jason, if you like the actress who plays Dale, then check out the Lifetime series BLOODTIES. It’s a great vampire-detective-horror-romantic-comedy series where she plays the lead detective’s assistant.
As one of the writers of Captain Zoom, I humbly agree that I could’ve done a better job with Flash Gordon, but nobody called. Thanks for the compliment!
Flash also suffers regular bouts of certain types of James T. Kirkitis, and often loses his shirt before a battle.
See, this is the one and only thing that the new series seems to be doing right. If Eric Johnson ever gets touchy about providing the shirtless eye-candy factor, the show’s lone redeeming feature will be gone.
Ming the Vaguely Testy is the biggest travesty of the show, I think. If they had a charismatic actor going over the top in the role, like Richard Roxburgh’s Dracula in Van Helsing, it might make up for many of the show’s other failings and wring some entertainment value out of the concept. Unfortunately, John Ralston seems to be emulating Gary Cole’s character from Office Space instead…
I said, “Flash also suffers regular bouts of certain types of James T. Kirkitis, and often loses his shirt before a battle.”
Matt said: “See, this is the one and only thing that the new series seems to be doing right. If Eric Johnson ever gets touchy about providing the shirtless eye-candy factor, the show’s lone redeeming feature will be gone.”.
Just in case I wasn’t clear, I was speaking of the original Flash Gordon, the one drawn by Alex Raymond in those glorious Sunday Comics of long ago. I’ve only seen two episodes of the TV series, and so far everyone has kept their shirts on. So, are you saying the series is right that Flash doesn’t take off his shirt or they’re right that he does (but just not in the two episodes I saw)?
Rick
P.S. I saw both episodes on tape (I don’t have cable and have no plans to get cable). I believe the first was the series’ second episode, while the second was the one that aired last week. I’m not sold on the show, but I like the idea of opening dimensional gateways to travel to and from Mongo than the idea of Mongo entering into (or near) Earth’s orbit. Less ecologically damaging the first way.
I really wanted to like Flash Gordon, mainly ’cause the first commercial I saw had the theme from the 1980’s film playing. Of course, this music is only used in promos for the show, NOT the show itself! Argh!
None of the episodes were all that great, but I wanted to give the show a chance, but the Mongo bugs episode was painful to watch, then the most recent one with the shapechanger did it for me.
When they saw the footage of Flash’s dad come through the rift, and Flash was all excited, I gave up. I mean, Dad was gone for 13 years, yet hadn’t changed a bit?! C’mon, Flash, I know you miss him, but that’s impossible!
Maybe, if the previews hadn’t talked about a person who could change form, maybe I’d have watched the whole episode. But I just couldn’t do it.
Really, the best part was the neurotic Dr. Zarkov-he was the only character I cared for.
So I’ll change the VCR so it’ll only record Doctor Who on Fridays…until BSG returns, anyway.
Dave
Dave said, “When they saw the footage of Flash’s dad come through the rift, and Flash was all excited, I gave up. I mean, Dad was gone for 13 years, yet hadn’t changed a bit?!”
Like I said, I’ve only seen two episodes, but the recap at the start of the former of those episodes showed us Dr. Gordon for a moment, as he went through a rift. He looked younger than the “Dr. Gordon” who appeared last Friday. I seem to recall he had sandy brown hair rather than the grayish seen in last Friday’s episode.
By the way does anyone know who played Dr. Gordon in the pilot episode? I don’t see a listing in IMDB, but in that brief glimpse in the recap, the actor looked familiar.
Rick