Anyone know what became of the Flash Gordon TV show?

[Angel Tarragon]

Spcifically the series that aired last year. Its listed in Imdb as 2007-???? which leaves me curious. I stopped watching it after the mutilated bird people episode.

Cripe the show was terrible, but I am curious as hell as to what happened to it.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

They never got around to officially canceling it. However sometime late spring or early summer Sci-Fi in another announcement stated that they might revisit Flash Gordon sometime in a few years if they felt they had enough money to do it right. The inference being both that the series was canceled and they they realized just how bad it was.

Goodbye and good riddance. That show had to be one of the worst Sci-Fi series ever and the bird-men episode in particular one of the wort hours of TV ever.

 

[Jamdin]

Goodbye and good riddance. That show had to be one of the worst Sci-Fi series ever and the bird-men episode in particular one of the wort hours of TV ever.

I agree and I lost interest in the show due to that.

 

[Merkuri]

I've never seen the show (we don't get Sci-Fi) but you guys have made me curious. What did they do that made the show so horrible?

 

[Rackhir]

I've never seen the show (we don't get Sci-Fi) but you guys have made me curious. What did they do that made the show so horrible?

There really isn't anything to be curious about. We're not talking "So bad it's good" or even "So bad it's wacky". It had a shoestring budget, uninteresting characters, boring scripts, etc... It was basically just dull and uninteresting. It was awful in the worst kind of way, it wasn't even bad enough to be worth hating.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

The show was done in Canada with Mongo consiting of 1 CGI image of the capital, the same forest used for Stargate, 1 house, maybe 6-12 corridors and rooms, and a gravel pit. It then hired B-List Canadian actors who wern't terrible but had no chemistry between themselves, especially Flash and Dale. At this point they ran out of money so hired minimum wage writers who had dropped out of High School (OK that last part is made up but they writting couldn't have been worse if it was true).

The show spent the first 3/4 hoping between Mongo and Earth through wormholes (useing leftover effects from Sliders) that his missing father had developed, with Flash having to get home for dinner with his Mom every day (Where he still lived as a Mamas Boy). There were no spaceships as that would require a special effects budget.

As for the Birdmen episode (You can't call them hawkmen as that would insult hawkmen) here is a review that sums up the bad plot: 'Flash Gordon' vs. The Hawkmen - From Inside the Box - Zap2it. While reading this it left out some of the worst parts. First the Birdmen live in what can best be described as the Mongo Dump (The Gravel pit mentioned above) instead of a floating city. Next all the birdmen spend the entire episode doing some sort of chicken dance (I'm not kidding) and Kawing (Yes like crows not like hawks) constantly.

That episode alone ranks in the top 5 worst hours of telivision. It might be worth watching if you can stand watching half naked leather-men bouncing around and kawing for an hour. There were polls done that people ranked Galactica 1980 as a better show than this version of Flash Gordon.

 

[jaerdaph]

Let's not forget Ming looked like he used to be the lead singer from Wang Chung.

It might be worth watching if you can stand watching half naked leather-men bouncing around and kawing for an hour.

Suddenly, I'm reminded of what it was like living in the West Village in the 1980s...

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Let's not forget Ming looked like he used to be the lead singer from Wang Chung.

The problem was that Ming didn't come off as merciless, more like a slightly disgruntled low level bureaucrat. FEAR MY MAD ACCOUNTING SKILLS!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

FWIW, according to the Wiki, Flash Gordon 2007 was canceled in 2008.

I've never seen the show (we don't get Sci-Fi) but you guys have made me curious. What did they do that made the show so horrible?

Agreeing with the answers above and expanding...

In every previous incarnation, Ming and Mongo were visually over the top. Even in the movie from the 1980s, the colors were vivid and bright.

In contrast, last year's show was typical post-1980s dystopia: dark & industrial. Palace interiors sometimes looked more like factories. Uniforms and other costumes were in muted, dark hues of brown, grey and black.

The Hawkmen looked and sounded like a bad HS theater troupe.

And Flash himself? The original comic strip character was a polo player (the sport of kings)- a sport that involves speed and power, and its players are commonly associated with adjectives like "dashing" and "charismatic." And "Flash" could mean any of that, as well as being flamboyantly ultra-cool...like we'd expect an elite professional athlete to be.

A Marvel comics version made him into a basketball player. The movie changed him into a QB for the NY Jets. In both sports, the nickname "Flash" isn't uncommon.

In the 2007 TV show, Gordon's nickname is supposed to be a reference to his speed as a runner. However, Flash is a marathoner- a sport depending more on endurance than speed. Not that he looked like an elite marathoner, either- he was waaaaaaaay too big and bulky.

Or, to put it simply, the show was bad.

 

[PoppaGunch]

I agree and I lost interest in the show due to that.

I applaud your endurance. I wasn't even able to make it that far. After the token black friend lost his mind at the wedding I begged my wife to stop DVRing it. She didn't take much coaxing though. LoL.