I just sat through 90 minutes of Sci Fi Channel’s new contribution to their line up, Flash Gordon, an original Sci Fi series. Their splash site says “The new Flash Gordon follows Flash (Eric Johnson) and his companions, Dale Arden (Gina Holden) and Dr. Hans Zarkov (Jody Racicot) through wild and momentous adventures.”
http://www.scifi.com/flashgordon/about/
Though the pilot episode was 90 minutes long, we were rushed through character development in the show. They threw the characters at us, and telling us so much about them rather than just letting a developing storyline do the job.
In this pilot episode, Flash discovers the truth about his fathers work and his “death”, meets and defeats an alien* on earth, teleports to Mongo, gets captured & tortured by Ming, escapes back to Earth, defeats Ming’s daughter on Earth and she escapes back to Mongo.
*After Flash defeated the alien, he found his fathers drivers license in the ensuing alien death goo puddle. (Gimme a break!)
Did I mention that early on, an alien zaps a bowling ball in a bowling alley? (I’m not sure the relevance. I wasn’t paying that much attention at this point in the show. I started to take up knitting.)
In case you were wondering if Flash Gordon used to take place on the planet Mongo, yea, the 1930’s based stories, but today, we are watching a prequel type series, as we follow Flash develop into an off world hero, while teleporting back and forth from Earth to Mongo.
Yep, teleporting. Flash and the aliens use a hand held remote to open a teleporting window to travel between planets. (Can we say Sliders?)
As the episode ends, we see the father in some sort of stasis, a prisoner!
The story developed too quick, the energy was flat, information for the characters was derived in quick, unsubstantiated scenes. My interest was not fixated by the events in the show because I’ve seen these themes time and time again.
I’m not sure I’ll be tuning in again, but I have been known to try anything twice to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.
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