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FLASH GORDON
(Pilot)
I’ve been waiting a long time for the Sci Fi Channel to come up with another show that would kick my a$$ into orbit the way the Battlestar Galactica redux did.
Well, my wait isn’t over.
Which is not to say that their Flash Gordon redux is a total waste, but it’s got some ways to go before it can reach a level where I can actually say it’s a good show.
Steven “Flash” Gordon (Eric Johnson, who played Whitney, Lana Lang’s boyfriend from way back in Smallville’s freshman season) is a star athlete whose father Lawrence is a physicist long believed dead. But it soon turns out that Flash’s father discovered a rift to another world and could still be alive, possibly lost in that other realm.
Meanwhile, incursions from that other world begin to occur just as Flash’s ex, Dale Arden (Gina Holden; Final Destination 3 and TV’s Blood Ties) returns to town, and a mysterious stranger driving an RV (Jody Racicot; incidentally enough, also from Final Destination 3 and Blood Ties) shows an interest in the young man.
All this activity leads to Flash and Dale inadvertently entering a rift and winding up in Mongo, where they meet the local tyrant Ming (John Ralston), who wants something called an “Imex” from Lawrence Gordon’s belongings.
The premise and set-up of this latest incarnation of Flash Gordon are pretty standard, and the writing and performances are passable without being particularly noteworthy. Mind you, I’ve seen far worse, but it’s the sort of show I wish were smarter, so it could be a lot more entertaining than it actually is.
As it is, the characters are agreeable without being overly interesting: Flash is written as the modern, capable hero, schooled in the Joss Whedon Academy of Flippant Heroics, while Dale is the modern, capable heroine who apparently also went to the same alma mater. Meanwhile, “RV Dude” turns out to be Zarkov, of the high-strung, twitchy scientist school, whose inventions aren’t particularly effective.
But while Johnson and Holden submit performances that just pass muster, Racicot comes off as a tad too annoying. Ralston‘s Ming is, thankfully, not overplayed, though at the same time, is not particularly a powerful presence either, and the Floaty Dude (Rankol; Jonathan Walker, from George Romero’s Land of the Dead), who is his right hand flunky, is creepy in a cheesy sort of way.
Some of the series’ other characters include Aura, Ming’s daughter, played by Anna Van Hooft, and Dale’s fiancée, Joe Wylee (Giles Panton): the presence of these two pretty much blares “romantic tension” for the two leads.
The Flash Gordon Pilot, awkward and clunky as it is, is pretty underwhelming. It’s not particularly atrocious—as I’ve said, I’ve seen worse—but it clearly lacks the wit and verve of some of the other new Pilots I’ve taken a look at in the four installments of TV Watch (see Archive: August 2007).
Having said that, I’ll be checking out a couple of its succeeding episodes, if only to see if this gets any better.
(Image courtesy of ew.com.)
(Pilot)
I’ve been waiting a long time for the Sci Fi Channel to come up with another show that would kick my a$$ into orbit the way the Battlestar Galactica redux did.
Well, my wait isn’t over.
Which is not to say that their Flash Gordon redux is a total waste, but it’s got some ways to go before it can reach a level where I can actually say it’s a good show.
Steven “Flash” Gordon (Eric Johnson, who played Whitney, Lana Lang’s boyfriend from way back in Smallville’s freshman season) is a star athlete whose father Lawrence is a physicist long believed dead. But it soon turns out that Flash’s father discovered a rift to another world and could still be alive, possibly lost in that other realm.
Meanwhile, incursions from that other world begin to occur just as Flash’s ex, Dale Arden (Gina Holden; Final Destination 3 and TV’s Blood Ties) returns to town, and a mysterious stranger driving an RV (Jody Racicot; incidentally enough, also from Final Destination 3 and Blood Ties) shows an interest in the young man.
All this activity leads to Flash and Dale inadvertently entering a rift and winding up in Mongo, where they meet the local tyrant Ming (John Ralston), who wants something called an “Imex” from Lawrence Gordon’s belongings.
The premise and set-up of this latest incarnation of Flash Gordon are pretty standard, and the writing and performances are passable without being particularly noteworthy. Mind you, I’ve seen far worse, but it’s the sort of show I wish were smarter, so it could be a lot more entertaining than it actually is.
As it is, the characters are agreeable without being overly interesting: Flash is written as the modern, capable hero, schooled in the Joss Whedon Academy of Flippant Heroics, while Dale is the modern, capable heroine who apparently also went to the same alma mater. Meanwhile, “RV Dude” turns out to be Zarkov, of the high-strung, twitchy scientist school, whose inventions aren’t particularly effective.
But while Johnson and Holden submit performances that just pass muster, Racicot comes off as a tad too annoying. Ralston‘s Ming is, thankfully, not overplayed, though at the same time, is not particularly a powerful presence either, and the Floaty Dude (Rankol; Jonathan Walker, from George Romero’s Land of the Dead), who is his right hand flunky, is creepy in a cheesy sort of way.
Some of the series’ other characters include Aura, Ming’s daughter, played by Anna Van Hooft, and Dale’s fiancée, Joe Wylee (Giles Panton): the presence of these two pretty much blares “romantic tension” for the two leads.
The Flash Gordon Pilot, awkward and clunky as it is, is pretty underwhelming. It’s not particularly atrocious—as I’ve said, I’ve seen worse—but it clearly lacks the wit and verve of some of the other new Pilots I’ve taken a look at in the four installments of TV Watch (see Archive: August 2007).
Having said that, I’ll be checking out a couple of its succeeding episodes, if only to see if this gets any better.
(Image courtesy of ew.com.)
1 comment:
hey! thanx for the kind words! :)
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