The Reboot I want to see.

[gridlore]

As Hollywood has completely run out of ideas, we're seeing more and more reboots of older shows, and not so old shows as now there a proposed reboot of Babylon 5. Which I won't watch without Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas playing Londo Mollari and G'Kar.

But why, I ask, aren't the show makers looking back farther? To a property that is perfect for episodic television because it was episodic? To a glorious vision of good vs. evil, strong-jawed heroes and magnificent villains? A story that can last for years written on a broad stage?

I'm talking about Flash Gordon. The tale of a trio of humans who find themselves trapped on Mongo, fighting the evil Ming the Merciless and his plans to add Earth to his empire! My updates to the classic characters:

"Flash" Gordon - Former USMC fighter pilot (call sign Flash) veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Expert fencer from his days on the USNA Fencing Club's team. At the start of the story he's trying to get into NASA.

Dale Arden - Journalist with extensive field experience. Met Flash in Iraq, where they started a casual relationship. Very capable and has a reporter's eye for details. At the start of the story, she and Flash are dating.

Dr. Hans Zharkov - Ex-NASA/DOD scientist. Considered a kook by most of his contemporaries. Manages to salvage a Mongo scout ship's drive and computer. Pretty much kidnaps Flash and Dale.

Mongo itself? I'm thinking mega-structures orbiting the stars in a K/M binary system. Not a ringworld or full Dyson sphere, but enormous platforms, thousands of miles across, each harboring a different race or culture. This also adds a potential plot point: the platforms are all ancient tech, and they are beginning to fail. Ming uses his monopoly on understanding the technology to keep the platforms enslaved by playing the various factions against each other. If only some hero would come to unite the peoples of Mongo and lead them to freedom!

Yeah, I'd watch 110 episodes of this, plus a few expanded universe movies. It's also make an excellent game setting.

Comments

[nodrog]

It may not be commercially available, or far too expensive.  You may recall that George Lucas wanted to do this; because he was unable to obtain the rights, he turned instead to an idea of his own for something he called Star Wars…

I don't know that I'd want to see what today's Politically Correct mass media would do to that property.  This is why I cringe at the occasional rumors of a remake of Logan's Run - be it the book or the film, a new version would be as pointless and horrocious as Rollerball (2002) (“a pointless remake and a terrible film” - IMDb)

Watch the kaleidoscopic, brilliantly fun 1980 film, if you haven't seen it in a while.

The setting of The Integral Trees is what that film now reminds me of; an immense gas torus, all sky, no ground, with the various kingdoms and cities and whatnot floating about not in vacuum, but dotted across that immense skyscape, where WWII tech is Good Enough to get about and getting your windshield shot out won't kill anyone in itself…


[IMDb says there IS a Flash Gordon currently “in production,” but gives no details. But then, they say the same about Logan's Run.]


p.s. As I recall, call signs have to be two (distinct) syllables - “Bingo,”  “Dustoff,”  “Arc Light,”  &c. “Bed Knob and Broom Stick” would both work, but “Mordor” would not.

[nodrog]

Oh, and your TV series WAS tried, too - by SyFy.  What does that tell you?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0959086/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt

SciFi Channel sucks the soul out of Science Fiction again.

Flash Failure

Horrible writing and poor acting = CRAP

&c.

[gridlore]

They tried to make it a teen RomCom. Of course it sucked. It had no budget and no direction. This is a network that managed to screw up Riverworld.

I'm asking for epic space opera in a setting that excites the imagination.

[nodrog]

Well, see, now, this is the advantage to Alternate History:

http://nodrog.dreamwidth.org/400231.html

- you can indeed “Have It Your Way,” whatever it is and whatever your way.


I enjoy playing with that - marginalizing the mighty for effect.  AD 1939?  Sure, Gone With the Wind, starring Bette Davis as Scarlett O'Hara [Jezebel who?], a big-budget yawner; The Wizard of Oz, made the same year and dismissed as just another Shirley Temple vehicle, though her performance as little Dorothy Gale was one of the best of her career…

Then there's the darkly seriocomic Breakfast at Tiffany's, directed by John Frankenheimer (Seven Days in May, The Manchurian Candidate) and starring Marilyn Monroe as 'Holly Golightly' - for whom Truman Capote wrote the part!  He was Not Amused when someone entirely different was cast, someone who then said, “John Frank who? Never heard of him,” and so Blake Edwards directed instead…  This had many consequences, producing an entirely different film.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054698/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2

[But I like my idea better, of “Norma Jeane Carey” as a film comedienne a la Carol Burnette with a hefty dash of Clara Bow mixed in - she met and married a man who stabilized her, and no one has ever heard of “Marilyn Monroe”!]

Re-roll the dice…

Ol' Max -

[nodrog]

- was having WAY too much fun.





But then, they all were, obviously.