1 FLASH GORDON
21 episodes • 2007-8 • SCI FI
The show your off-switch button was invented for, Sci Fi’s de-invention of Flash Gordon was mindbogglingly bad. Ming looked like someone who’d turn you down for a bank loan, while cost-saving stargates replaced spaceships, transporting the hapless cast from Canada to a another part of Canada where people wore silly clothes and pointed at bad CG cities.
Flash was replaced by some guy with only two settings – grin or gormless – while Zarkov was recast as the bumbling comedy sidekick who, at his lowpoint, spends an episode re-enacting Weekend At Bernie’s with a dead Mongo guard.
Ming’s tyranny is based on his control of water, and yet Flash never thinks to nip back to Earth and stock up on Evian. Flash Gordon icons like the Hawkmen are reduced to men who use their capes to glide. Which is actually slightly better than when they’re on the ground, where they bob up and down like they need the loo, shout, “Caw!” a lot and flap their capes like some flasher on Clapham Common.
If you watch it, your brain will go on strike.
The nadir: The third episode, “Infestation” in which Flash’s mate is unknowingly infected by a thingy from Mongo which means that if he becomes too happy he’ll die. They should have made him watch this episode – he’d be immortal.
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