Posted by Dustin on 08.10.2007 at 10:37 pm

So tonight Sci Fi premiered their new show “Flash Gordon.” I watched it. My thoughts? I’m torn honestly. I realize it was the pilot, which means a lot of storyline and character introductions, but it was just slow. Let me do a quick recap for those who didn’t watch first.

Ming, Dale and Flash. Photo property of SciFi.com

Steve “Flash” Gordon is a home town hero, a three time marathon winner. His father “died” at a young age, he was the good son who stayed home with his cancer stricken mother to take care of her, apparently forsaking his own career/goals in the process. High school sweet heart Dale Evans goes off to Yale, lands a job as a reporter and returns home to interview Flash upon his third marathon win. Dale is of course engaged to a cop. However she seems still in love with Flash. Big shock.

Flash soon finds he’s being stalked by a mystery man (ie geek) in an RV. Enter Hans Zarkoff. He knew Flash’s dad, who was a physicist who supposedly “died” in a freak accident/fire. He warns Flash should he see his dad, trust no one. Meanwhile Dale the reporter begins investigating odd stories about “aliens” invading earth. She thinks they are fakes, until the cop boyfriend lets her know this alien has now killed a person.

Flash goes to Dale, convinced these are all tied together. As it turns out, daddy was working for a project involving dimensional rifts for NASA when he disappeared into one. It seems after 13 years, the rifts have begun again and now aliens are coming through. Daddy’s assistant was the geeky Hans. He helps Flash and Dale with the investigation, it’s possible Flash’s dad is still alive.

Flash and Dale get sucked into a rift, while following a robot sent by Ming to find the “imex.” They learn Ming is after this Imex. A slave girl helps them escape, she of course is no slave, but Alora, Ming’s daughter. She takes a liking to Flash.

They return to Earth. Flash learns the imex is really his dad’s old watch, a Timex. Alora is trying to steal it to prove herself to Ming that she’s not just a nobody. She of course fails, Flash keeps it. Alora returns home and faces her father. Flash however has the “imex,” which inside is a chip containing “all the knowledge of the universe.” He’s determined to return to Mongo to find his long lost father.

His dad is trapped on Mongo, attached to machines probably taping his brain for his knowledge. We get the sense that Mongo is a dying planet, they have no clean water left. Basically it seems the planet has polluted itself beyond repair and they are hoping to find salvation in Earth.

Let’s be frank off the bat, this is not Grandma’s Flash Gordon (my Grandma grew up with the radio serial). This is and always has been promoted as a reinvention of a classic. I can’t fault them for trying something new. After all, the story of Flash Gordon is one most know by now, either from comics, the old movies, the 80s movie, or the cartoons made over the years. However I can fault them on a few things.

First the good. The casting of Flash and Dale wasn’t terrible. They also at least stayed true to a lot of the characters.

The middle of the road. Obviously rocket ship aren’t exactly cutting edge. Flash traveled to Mongo in one, the story was written before there were space ships. To bring it up to date, they replaced rocket ships with a time rift/portal. The main problem I had with this was that it was too much like Stargate, another show they already have. Basically I felt like I was watching Stargate: Flash Gordon.

The bad. The tops of the bad would be the destruction of Ming all together. Basically we’ve got a blond haired blue eyed Aryan dressed in an outfit from “The Wall.” We get it, he’s a Nazi like tyrant. This Ming just doesn’t work at all. They should have stayed true to the old Ming, even if he was cheesy and out dated. This was the worst part of the whole movie for me. I also didn’t like what happened to Hans’ character. He was always the kooky scientist, but now they’ve made him an anti-social geek.

Will I watch next week? Yes. Only to see what happens and if it actually gets better.