Sliders + Dawson’s Creek + threadbare western mythological tropes about a young man searching for his long-lost father + a few Flash Gordon place/character names = Sci-Fi’s new Flash Gordon? 🙄
The good news is, the new Doctor Who’s still on Friday nights. 😆
Sorry I haven’t had much else to say lately. We’re just waiting for the baby. Jan’s been pulled off of work and is stuck at home going crazy. And let me tell ya, the premiere of Flash Gordon didn’t help her mood! At one point, one of the characters said “We’re looking for something,” and in an opportune MSTie moment, I said to the TV, “Yeah – an original plot!”
Feel free to write this off as me being tired and cranky, but even when I’m up and chipper, this show’s gonna have an uphill battle to win me over now.
I don’t know if you and ubersaurus are comparing notes or not, but he said the exact same thing.
That’s uncanny. I just now looked at his. 😆
Actually, at the time, I was thinking the “Wizard of Oz” song of the Scarecrow would have been appropriate:
“If I only had a brain…..!”
Save that for Sci-Fi’s upcoming “Tin Man,” honey. (Also see the next blog entry for more Wizard of Oz references.)
Wow. A post from Mrs. PDF.
Anyway, I didn’t like the new TV series, but for completely different reasons (I think).
I no longer mind that a show is derivative from other shows. After watching TV Sci-Fi for some 30 years I’ve concluded that they’ve all stolen from each other. Same plots and devices get recycled over and over and I don’t care anymore. Perhaps I’ve mellowed through the years.
What keeps me interested in a particular show is the interaction of the different characters and perhaps a plot twist or two I haven’t seen before. Yes, I know that just about every story in Stargate SG-1 is ripped off from every other TV show or movie (Sci-Fi or not). I don’t care because, for me, it was about the dynamic between O’Neill, Carter, Teal’c and Dr. Jackson (Richard Dean Anderson’s wise cracks helped too). When the cast changed, I rolled with it because even the new characters had a dynamic that I liked.
With a good dynamic I’ll forgive a show for having lame story arcs, recycled plots and lousy special effects.
So, where does the new Flash Gordon series stand with this “dynamic” measurement I’m using? Not very good, I’m afraid. There was no chemistry between the characters. No unusual plot twists. Nothing. Everything else was derived from some other TV show and nothing original was evident. I was bored. Bored, bored bored! The C. Thomas Howell version of The War of the Worlds was more interesting than this new version of Flash Gordon (and that movie sucked ass).
Despite this, my VCR is still programmed to record the show this upcoming Friday. If the next episode sucks, time to reprogram the VCR (I’m not optimistic which means, I guess, that I’m a glutton for punishement).
SG-1 is a really good example of a show that, in its first season-and-a-half or so, was extremely derivative of other material, especially Trek, but I think we all stuck aroud with it because the character interaction and dialogue were there from the word go. I’ve found, in my watching old SG-1 eps to try to backfill the episode guide, that you really don’t get wrapped up in the over-arching plotline of the whole thing until late season 2 / early season 3. But until then, it’s the characters that kept everyone’s butts in the seats to watch.
Even the 1980 Flash Gordon movie had more sparkle than this retread. And yes, I realize it’s silly and campy and can’t be taken even remotely seriously. But that’s what I LOVED about it. Going back to SG-1 for a second, part of what kept everyone watching is because the character dynamics were often funny as hell. I don’t get any kind of a sense of fun from the new Flash. (For a more recent example: the new Doctor Who has buckets of the ‘fun’ factor.) I’m not saying every episode has to have a comedic element, but at least make the thing…I dunno…entertaining?