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Flash Gordon
Title card from episode "Akim the Terrible"
Starring	Steve Holland Irene Champlin Joseph Nash
Country of origin	United States West Germany France
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	39
Production
Running time	0:25
Original release
Network	DuMont Television Network Syndicated
Release	October 15, 1954 – July 15, 1955

Flash Gordon is a science fiction television series based on the characters of the Alex Raymond-created comic strip of the same name. Diverging from the storyline of the comics, the series set Flash, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov in the year 3203. As agents of the Galactic Bureau of Investigation, the team travels the galaxy in their ship the Sky Flash, battling cosmic villains under the order of Commander Paul Richards.

The series was filmed in West Berlin and Marseille as a West German, French and American co-production by Intercontinental Television Films and Telediffusion. The series aired in syndication throughout most of the U.S. but also aired on the east coast on the DuMont Television Network.

The series proved popular with American audiences and critical response, though sparse, was positive. Flash Gordon has garnered little modern critical attention. What little there is generally dismisses the series, although there has been some critical thought devoted to its presentation of Cold War and capitalist themes.

Cast

• Steve Holland as Flash Gordon
• Irene Champlin as Dale Arden
• Joseph Nash as Hans Zarkov
• Henry Beckman as Commander Richards

Production

Universal Studios had held the production rights to Flash Gordon but allowed them to lapse. Former Universal executives Edward Gruskin and Matty Fox struck a deal with Flash Gordon owners King Features Syndicate to produce the first 26 episodes of the series. The series was produced by Gruskin and Wenzel Lüdecke. Writers for Flash Gordon included Gruskin, Bruce Geller and Earl Markham. Episodes were directed by Wallace Worsley, Jr. and Gunther von Fritsch. Composers Kurt Heuser and Roger Roger provided much of the original music.

Shooting got underway in May 1953, with an abandoned beer hall in Spandau serving as the principle shooting location. Among the cast and crew, only the lead actors and director Worsley spoke English. Worsley would recall the production difficulties this caused:

"No matter what galaxy we explored, everyone spoke with a German accent. The use of German actors who could not speak English required us to use a lot of close-ups. I would stand behind the camera, correctly positioned for the actor's look, and read his or her line; the actor would then repeat the line, mimicking my pronunciation and emphasis."

Each episode was budgeted at USD15,000 per episode on a three-day-per episode shooting schedule. Citing salary disputes, Worsley withdrew from the project after completing the first 26 episodes. Production was moved to Marseille under the direction of Gunther von Fritsch for the 13 final episodes.

Episodes

Number	Title	U.S. air date	Synopsis
1	Flash Gordon and the Planet of Death	October 1, 1954	Flash, Dale and Zarkov travel to the planet Tarset to investigate an ancient curse. They must overcome a traitorous scientist and thwart an invasion from the evil planet Ebon.
2	Escape Into Time	October 8, 1954
3	The Electro Man	October 15, 1954
4	The Vengeance of Rabeed	October 22, 1954
5	Akim the Terrible	November 5, 1954	The evil King Akim rules Charon, where the only law is lawlessness. After Akim brainwashes Flash's best friend into attempting to assassinate Flash, Flash and Dale travel to Charon to thwart Akim's nefarious schemes.
6	The Claim Jumpers	November 12, 1954
7	The Dancing Death	November 19, 1954
8	The Breath of Death	November 26, 1954
9	The Great Secret	December 3, 1954
10	Return of the Androids	December 10, 1954
11	The Frightened King	December 17, 1954
12	The Deadly Deception	December 24, 1954
13	Duel Against Darkness	December 31, 1954
14	The Sound Gun	January 14, 1955
15	The Weapon that Walked	January 31, 1955
16	Mission to Masca	February 4, 1955
17	The Lure of Light	February 11, 1955	Prudentia, evil queen of the planet Diana, kidnaps Dale Arden to force her to reveal the secret of faster-than-light travel. Flash and Zarkov must use that secret themselves to travel back in time to save Dale's life.
18	The Rains of Death	February 18, 1955
19	Flash Gordon and the Race against Time	February 25, 1955	Half of the planets are lined up to strip the GBI of its authority and distribute its secrets amongst them. Earth casts the deciding vote in favor of keeping the GBI in control and selects Commander Richards to deliver the vote to the Galaxy Council on Mars. Krybian, the evil representative of Pluto conspires with a master criminal to prevent Richards from voting, thus ensuring that GBI will lose its power. Flash foils the conspiracy and delivers Richards on time.
20	The Witch of Neptune	March 4, 1955	Part 1 of 3.
21	The Brain Machine	March 11, 1955	Part 2 of 3. Flash and Dale race to Saturn to clear the names of the captive Zarkov and Commander Richards, accused of sabotaging Neptune's atmospheric converters. They battle the evil Zyderine, "Witch of Neptune," who brainwashed the captives and has stolen their knowledge of galactic defense.
22	Struggle to the End	March 18, 1955	Part 3 of 3. Using her stolen knowledge, Zyderine, Witch of Neptune, builds a solar ray and threatens to destroy all life if she is not declared Queen of the Galaxy. Flash and Dale race to Neptune to thwart her evil plot.
23	The Water World Menace	March 25, 1955
24	Saboteurs from Space	April 1, 1955	As the Sky Flash is pulled off-course to an uncharted planet, every machine on Earth is seized by a mysterious "mechanical paralysis." Flash, Dale and Zarkov must stop Ziering, ruler of Planet X, before he can kidnap the 100 leading scientists from Earth in his bid to take over the galaxy.
25	The Forbidden Experiment	April 8, 1955	From the near-lifeless planetoid Theta N-1, Dr. Fabian Prendis puts out a desperate call to Dr. Zarkov, at the command of his mysterious master. Upon arrival, Zarkov is taken captive and learns that Prendis is dead. His captor is a "lion-man" who demands that Zarkov continue Prendis' "transmutation" experiment to make him fully human in appearance. Flash and Dale discover where Zarkov has gone and race to his rescue.
26	Heat Wave	April 15, 1955
27	The Hunger Invasion	April 22, 1955
28	Encounter with Evil	April 29, 1955
29	The Matter Duplicator	May 6, 1955
30	The Micro-Man Menace	May 13, 1955
31	The Space Smugglers	May 20, 1955
32	The Mystery of Phoros	May 27, 1955
33	The Shadowy Death	June 3, 1955
34	Death in the Negative	June 10, 1955
35	The Earth's Core	June 17, 1955
36	Deadline at Noon	June 24, 1955	Planets are being destroyed and Earth is next. Flash, Dale and Zarkov must time-travel to 1950s Berlin to defuse a bomb planted 1,250 years in the past.
37	The Law of Velorum	July 1, 1955
38	The Skyjackers	July 8, 1955
39	The Subworld Revenge	July 15, 1955

Critical response and themes

Variety noted that the series was from a technical standpoint "up to the demands of the script and the average viewer probably won't notice the differences in quality between this and home-grown produce". Flash Gordon was immediately popular in the United States and continued to run in syndication into the early 1960s.

Modern critical reaction to the series has been light but largely negative. The production values are frequently derided, with the series described as "bargain-basement". The televised series suffered in comparison to the earlier film serials with the television incarnation labeled "vastly inferior," lacking "good concepts and scripts" and "most of all, [lacking] Buster Crabbe, who was Flash Gordon". One positive comment notes Champlin's portrayal of Dale Arden, who was transformed from the typical damsel in distress of the serials into a trained scientist and a "quick thinker who often saved [Flash and Zarkov] from perishing".

Film theorist Wheeler Winston Dixon, far from decrying the series for its production values, finds that "the copious [use of] stock footage and the numerous exterior sequences shot in the ruins of the bombed-out metropolis give Flash Gordon a distinctly ravaged look". He writes that its international origins give the series "an interesting new cultural dimension, even a perceptible air of a split cultural identity". Dixon quotes German cultural historian Mark Baker, who writes of a particular scene from the episode The Brain Machine as emblematic of this cultural split. The scene uses stock footage of a June 17, 1953 demonstration by East Berlin workers against the East German government, in which Soviet tanks opened fire on both demonstrators and bystanders, thus confirming East Germany's status as a Soviet puppet state in the minds of West Germans. American viewers, Baker speculates, were probably unaware of the iconic power in West Germany of the images of fleeing East Berlinners, which were used to illustrate a panic on Neptune.

Dixon, noting the similarities between the ideals espoused by "space operas" like Flash Gordon, Captain Video and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger to American Cold War values, argues that such series were designed to instill those values into their young viewers. Flash Gordon, he writes, along with its fellow space operas, "have a common, unifying theme: peace in the universe can be achieved only by dangerous efforts and the unilateral dominance of the Western powers." This echoes the earlier critique of Soviet writer G. Avarin, who in the Soviet film journal Art of the Cinema had accused Gordon and other space-faring characters of being "the vanguard of a new and greater 'American imperialism'". The "ravaged look" of the series, Dixon writes, "underscores the real-world stage on which the action of the space operas played".

Bibliography

• Bassoir, Jean-Noel (2004). Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0786419113.
• Cook, John R. and Peter Wright (2006). British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide. I. B. Taurus. ISBN 1845110471.
• Harmon, Jim and Donald Frank Glut (1973). The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury. Routledge. ISBN 071300097X.
• Dixon, Wheeler Winston. "Tomorrowland TV: The Space Opera and Early Science Fiction Television". collected in Telotte, J.P. (ed.) (2008). The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader, pp. 96–110. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813124921, 9780813124926.
• Terrace, Vincent (2002). Crime Fighting Heroes of Television: Over 10,000 Facts from 151 Shows, 1949-2001. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0786413956.
• Worsley, Jr., Wallace and Sue Dwiggens Worsley (1997). From Oz to E.T.: Wally Worsley's Half Century in Hollywood. Lanham, MD, Scarecrow.

External links

• Flash Gordon at IMDb