A blastoff from the past
Denise, her sister Glenda and I spent last evening with one of my earliest childhood friends- the 1954 German-produced TV series Flash Gordon, starring Steve Holland.
Glenda and I are about the same age, and both of us remembered the show from our pre-kindergarten days. For me, though, it was more than just a vague memory. I was obsessed with outer space and astronomy and space travel from the time I was first able to conceive of such things. Tom Corbett, Space Cadet was my favorite show for a while, but I must confess that my memories of it are pretty vague.
But Flash Gordon was another matter. He, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov are one of my most enduring childhood memories, a staple of my Saturday afternoons that I looked forward to all week. Later, when the old Buster Crabbe serials (which- hokey though they were- were objectively so much better than the TV series they don't bear comparison) began to appear on Sunday afternoons, they were nothing more than first a poor supplement, and later a wholly inadequate replacement. For me, Steve Holland was the real Flash Gordon, and always would be.
In this incarnation, Flash was an agent of the GBI (Galactic Bureau of Investigation), who- along with Zarkov and Dale- went buzzing around the galaxy in a neat- looking rocket ship called the Skyflash. Later, when the show began to operate with bigger budgets, marginally better writing, fewer actors with German accents, and better-looking sets, the changes were explained by a switch to a new ship, the Skyflash II.
A plotline of a typical episode reminds me remarkably of George W. Bush's foreign policy. Flash and company would somehow become involved when the villains- an amazing percentage of the time planetary kings and queens and other heads of state- launched nefarious schemes to bring Earth and galactic civilization under their control. But with remarkable ease, and in only half an hour, Flash would outwit them, place them under arrest, and bring them back to Earth for trial after installing a new, more compliant government in their place. Though it never occurred to me as a rug rat, more than once last night I wondered how the GBI had jurisdiction over all of those apparently sovereign planets. That was sort of explained by a radio message in one episode from Galactic President Jennings, who apparently headed a super-government whose authority exceeded those of the miscreants in question.
Either that, or Jennings was simply a fellow Neo-Con.
Anyway, when I saw the DVD on sale for one dollar in a bin of such archeological oddities at Walmart earlier in the week, I couldn't resist. So Denise, Glenda and I ordered some pizzas and settled down in Glenda's living room for an evening with that old childhood friend.
Certain things I had expected. The state of our astronomical knowledge even of our own solar system in 1954 was laughable by today's standards. I vaguely remembered various adventures taking place on remarkably Earth-like planets bearing the names of gas giants- and sure enough, Flash landed on Saturn in one episode to do battle with an evil queen, mentioning in passing a past adventure on Neptune. That neither planet has a surface as we understand the term (well, both probably have metallic cores, but neither the temperatures nor the gravity nor anything much else would be even vaguely compatible with even momentary human life there) was apparently not widely known back then.
But even then scientists knew that on Saturn or Neptune Flash would be instantly crushed to death by his own weight, even if a way could somehow be found to breath the poisonous atmosphere and survive the radiation and the temperatures. No matter. This was the 1950's, and in the field of space travel all things were possible- at least to those who wanted to dream.
Still, I really hadn't counted on the utter scientific innocence of the series. Last night the three of us laughed harder and more often than at just about any intentional comedy any of us have seen in quite a while, simply because of absurdities in the plot which apparently passed unnoticed at the time. Flash's ship went zipping around the Solar System and the galaxy itself at remarkable speeds, promising on one occasion to be back on Earth in half an hour shortly after leaving Neptune, and making interstellar journeys not in centuries or decades or years or months or even days, but in hours.
Yet it was only in one of the episodes we saw last night that for the first time one of the most basic of natural laws was somehow violated, and a spaceship- the Skyflash, naturally- was made to travel faster than the speed of light. The idea was to go back in time and rescue Dale Arden, who had just been killed (she had been deprived of oxygen as a way to get her to talk. Uh-huh).
As the ship approached light speed, the camera focused on the speedometer- yes, that's what I said- which, despite the pioneering and in fact wholly impromptu nature of this particular journey, had clearly-marked gradations for 184,000 miles per second... 185,000 miles per second... 186,000 miles per second...
The 1950's dashboard- I can't think of another term- of the Skyflash also contained an analog clock, whose lack of a second hand did not prevent Flash in one episode from using it to keep track of passing seconds.
After reaching and exceeding light speed, the crew of the Skyflash assured each other that time was now going backwards. Yet their conversation seemed remarkably unaffected by that fact, and the Skyflash continued onward toward its goal rather than backward, retracing its path from Earth.
Some of the problem was simply involved bad writing, like Dr. Zarkov's fortunate discovery of what he described as an uncharted planet on- that's right- the ship's charts on one occasion. In the time travel episode, a scientist explained to Flash that traveling past the speed of light involved "being turned inside out." Yet the viscera of the actors- fortunately- never made an appearance. Apparently what was meant was that things become confusing and inconsistent with normal experience at that speed.
In one scene, Flash pointed to what was obviously a planet on a chart and referred to it as a globular cluster- which he pronounced "GLOBE-u-lar." And in another,the bad guy demanded that Dr. Zarkov, under duress, give him the names of Earth's leading "astro-physicians." I have a strong hunch that the series was written in German and then translated by a German into English. There's a great deal about the series which just can't be explained any other way.
Oh, it's so easy to make fun of poor old Flash in so many different ways- and I haven't even gotten to the makeup, the costumes, or the acting yet. The fact is that it's impossible to approach what we watched last night other than as camp. By any objective standard, the show was just so incredibly, breathtakingly bad in just about any way one could possibly imagine that half a century later it can only be enjoyed as unintentional comedy. And last night, the three of us laughed until our sides hurt.
But strangely, even now- even after having spent an entire evening watching the show as someone older, wiser, better educated, and more sophisticated than that four and five year-old who lived for that half-hour every Saturday afternoon, and so much more knowledgeable about so many aspects of the field simply by virtue of being a backyard amateur with a telescope, a couple of college courses, and a layman's interest in astronomy than the most erudite of professional astronomers were back then- when I think of Flash Gordon and the Skyflash it's not the absurd plots and the bad science and the bad writing and the bad acting which come to mind.
It's the excitement of spending that half-hour every Saturday afternoon imagining for the very first time what might be out there, in the company of a larger-than-life hero who blazed a path upon which James Tiberius Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard and Kathryn Janeway and John Sheridan and Matthew Gideon and Adama and Starbuck could do no more than follow.
Whatever the fifty-five year old may think, Flash is still a hero to the five year old in me. And I wish every five year old had a hero who could make him or her dream the way Flash Gordon, in his incarnation as Steve Holland, made me dream- and even now, all these years later, sometimes still does.
Glenda and I are about the same age, and both of us remembered the show from our pre-kindergarten days. For me, though, it was more than just a vague memory. I was obsessed with outer space and astronomy and space travel from the time I was first able to conceive of such things. Tom Corbett, Space Cadet was my favorite show for a while, but I must confess that my memories of it are pretty vague.
But Flash Gordon was another matter. He, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov are one of my most enduring childhood memories, a staple of my Saturday afternoons that I looked forward to all week. Later, when the old Buster Crabbe serials (which- hokey though they were- were objectively so much better than the TV series they don't bear comparison) began to appear on Sunday afternoons, they were nothing more than first a poor supplement, and later a wholly inadequate replacement. For me, Steve Holland was the real Flash Gordon, and always would be.
In this incarnation, Flash was an agent of the GBI (Galactic Bureau of Investigation), who- along with Zarkov and Dale- went buzzing around the galaxy in a neat- looking rocket ship called the Skyflash. Later, when the show began to operate with bigger budgets, marginally better writing, fewer actors with German accents, and better-looking sets, the changes were explained by a switch to a new ship, the Skyflash II.
A plotline of a typical episode reminds me remarkably of George W. Bush's foreign policy. Flash and company would somehow become involved when the villains- an amazing percentage of the time planetary kings and queens and other heads of state- launched nefarious schemes to bring Earth and galactic civilization under their control. But with remarkable ease, and in only half an hour, Flash would outwit them, place them under arrest, and bring them back to Earth for trial after installing a new, more compliant government in their place. Though it never occurred to me as a rug rat, more than once last night I wondered how the GBI had jurisdiction over all of those apparently sovereign planets. That was sort of explained by a radio message in one episode from Galactic President Jennings, who apparently headed a super-government whose authority exceeded those of the miscreants in question.
Either that, or Jennings was simply a fellow Neo-Con.
Anyway, when I saw the DVD on sale for one dollar in a bin of such archeological oddities at Walmart earlier in the week, I couldn't resist. So Denise, Glenda and I ordered some pizzas and settled down in Glenda's living room for an evening with that old childhood friend.
Certain things I had expected. The state of our astronomical knowledge even of our own solar system in 1954 was laughable by today's standards. I vaguely remembered various adventures taking place on remarkably Earth-like planets bearing the names of gas giants- and sure enough, Flash landed on Saturn in one episode to do battle with an evil queen, mentioning in passing a past adventure on Neptune. That neither planet has a surface as we understand the term (well, both probably have metallic cores, but neither the temperatures nor the gravity nor anything much else would be even vaguely compatible with even momentary human life there) was apparently not widely known back then.
But even then scientists knew that on Saturn or Neptune Flash would be instantly crushed to death by his own weight, even if a way could somehow be found to breath the poisonous atmosphere and survive the radiation and the temperatures. No matter. This was the 1950's, and in the field of space travel all things were possible- at least to those who wanted to dream.
Still, I really hadn't counted on the utter scientific innocence of the series. Last night the three of us laughed harder and more often than at just about any intentional comedy any of us have seen in quite a while, simply because of absurdities in the plot which apparently passed unnoticed at the time. Flash's ship went zipping around the Solar System and the galaxy itself at remarkable speeds, promising on one occasion to be back on Earth in half an hour shortly after leaving Neptune, and making interstellar journeys not in centuries or decades or years or months or even days, but in hours.
Yet it was only in one of the episodes we saw last night that for the first time one of the most basic of natural laws was somehow violated, and a spaceship- the Skyflash, naturally- was made to travel faster than the speed of light. The idea was to go back in time and rescue Dale Arden, who had just been killed (she had been deprived of oxygen as a way to get her to talk. Uh-huh).
As the ship approached light speed, the camera focused on the speedometer- yes, that's what I said- which, despite the pioneering and in fact wholly impromptu nature of this particular journey, had clearly-marked gradations for 184,000 miles per second... 185,000 miles per second... 186,000 miles per second...
The 1950's dashboard- I can't think of another term- of the Skyflash also contained an analog clock, whose lack of a second hand did not prevent Flash in one episode from using it to keep track of passing seconds.
After reaching and exceeding light speed, the crew of the Skyflash assured each other that time was now going backwards. Yet their conversation seemed remarkably unaffected by that fact, and the Skyflash continued onward toward its goal rather than backward, retracing its path from Earth.
Some of the problem was simply involved bad writing, like Dr. Zarkov's fortunate discovery of what he described as an uncharted planet on- that's right- the ship's charts on one occasion. In the time travel episode, a scientist explained to Flash that traveling past the speed of light involved "being turned inside out." Yet the viscera of the actors- fortunately- never made an appearance. Apparently what was meant was that things become confusing and inconsistent with normal experience at that speed.
In one scene, Flash pointed to what was obviously a planet on a chart and referred to it as a globular cluster- which he pronounced "GLOBE-u-lar." And in another,the bad guy demanded that Dr. Zarkov, under duress, give him the names of Earth's leading "astro-physicians." I have a strong hunch that the series was written in German and then translated by a German into English. There's a great deal about the series which just can't be explained any other way.
Oh, it's so easy to make fun of poor old Flash in so many different ways- and I haven't even gotten to the makeup, the costumes, or the acting yet. The fact is that it's impossible to approach what we watched last night other than as camp. By any objective standard, the show was just so incredibly, breathtakingly bad in just about any way one could possibly imagine that half a century later it can only be enjoyed as unintentional comedy. And last night, the three of us laughed until our sides hurt.
But strangely, even now- even after having spent an entire evening watching the show as someone older, wiser, better educated, and more sophisticated than that four and five year-old who lived for that half-hour every Saturday afternoon, and so much more knowledgeable about so many aspects of the field simply by virtue of being a backyard amateur with a telescope, a couple of college courses, and a layman's interest in astronomy than the most erudite of professional astronomers were back then- when I think of Flash Gordon and the Skyflash it's not the absurd plots and the bad science and the bad writing and the bad acting which come to mind.
It's the excitement of spending that half-hour every Saturday afternoon imagining for the very first time what might be out there, in the company of a larger-than-life hero who blazed a path upon which James Tiberius Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard and Kathryn Janeway and John Sheridan and Matthew Gideon and Adama and Starbuck could do no more than follow.
Whatever the fifty-five year old may think, Flash is still a hero to the five year old in me. And I wish every five year old had a hero who could make him or her dream the way Flash Gordon, in his incarnation as Steve Holland, made me dream- and even now, all these years later, sometimes still does.
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