Flash Gordon Pilot ...huh?

mckracken

Flash Gordon 90 minute Pilot: OK so the story so far is that when Flash is 10 years old, his father gets sucked into a vortex never to be seen or heard from again, the cover story is that Flash's father died in a fire but there was no body found.

Now, fifteen years later, Flash is 25 and there's a hint that his father didn't die in a fire, that he was "lost" in one of his experiments gone haywire.

through a series of events, Flash opens a portal to Mongo and jumps head first with Dale Arden to try to rescue his father from Ming the Merciless... OK.

Dale fights with Ming's daughter, who's fighting with a bounty hunter chick, who's fighting with Flash... OK.

Ming's daughter wants "the Imex" a secret thing that Flash's father had. OK.

"the Imex" is the Timex watch that Flashes father gave to him at age 10. It unlocks the secrets of Mongo or the universe... we're not quite sure.

1) why would Flash's father give Flash the Timex watch that contains all the secrets of the universe when he was 10? Apparently he's a pretty responsible youngster and has never lost anything...ever, because 15 years later Flash is STILL wearing the Timex watch that his father gave him... uh.. OK.

2) why would Ming send a flying probe though the portal? this seemed rather lame and pointless. It was quickly decimated by a local Mexican immigrant wielding a double barrel shotgun from his truck cab. I'm also fairly certain there are laws against weapons and firearms being hidden in cars and trucks... right? I'm also fairly certain that if **I** were Ming the Merciless, my Probe Scanning Flying things wouldn't be so easily decimated by some idiot wielding a double barrel shotgun. (see robot, later on) 3) why would Ming send a single robot through the portal to get the Imex instead of launching a full or semi-full scale invasion of Earth? 4) why is the robot carrying Flash's father's drivers Licence, which is discovered in the remains of the charred exploded robot? Why would Ming the Merciless intentionally do this at all? If Flash's father planted it there (and from the show's final scene, he didn't) how would he have known that Flash would be the one to discover it? 5) why are there only four eye witnesses in a packed crowded bowling alley that report seeing an alien robot blow stuff up? The bowling alley had people at every lane... yet only four eye-witnesses saw the robot? Why did the robot blow up a bowling ball? 6) Flash believes his father died in a fire, but he didn't, he was sucked through a portal to Mongo yet when we finally see a flashback of this "fire" it only occupies about 5% of their lab and is quickly extinguished with a fire extinguisher, its clearly not a big enough fire to cause major damage yet this is the cover story that Flash's father burned to a crisp and no body was ever found? what? 7) while Dale and Flash argue outside his fathers old lab, which is now Zarkov's Lab, the door suddenly explodes outward... why? Aside from these gaps in logic, and more, it was interesting to watch and even more interesting to pick apart the show.

The portal and the device that opens the portal reminded me an Awful LOT of the FOX show Sliders

score 1/10

mckracken 12 August 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1710465/