Who'd Ever Thought? In the early days of public television, rock and roll was yet to ne nostalgic and teenage kids bopping to Jerry Lee weren't likely to fork over bucks to hear La Traviata. Budgets were not yet sufficient to bankroll big band concerts as a decade later. PBS found two offerings that would light up telephones during rattle the tin cup drives. U.K.'s BBC answer to Red Skelton, Monty Pythons' Flying Circus and pre-Trek Flash Gordon serials ripped from the 1930's cinema serial days. The shows normally ran weekend nights on most PBS stations in the 60's, but they'd run marathons overnight of Flash; each episode was about 20 minutea which gave a ten minute pitch time. Well, now it's rock and roll nostalgia that rings public television donation chimes, but what the heck. Oldies Television has flashes of Flash for those who fondly remember big theatre auditioriums with sticky cement floors, chomping on gooey JujyFruits while Ming the Merciless planned his dastardly deeds.

The Rise Of Flash Gordon. the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond, which was first published on January 7, 1934. The strip, inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip, has since surpassed Buck Rogers for longevity[citation needed]. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash Dixon (1935 to 1939) by H.T. Elmo and Larry Antoinette and Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire (1935 to 1941) by Carl Pfeufer and Bob Moore[citation needed]. In Australia, the strip was retitled Speed Gordon[1]. The change was necessary due to the negative meaning of the word "Flash" in 1930's and 1940's Australia, where it refers to someone who is flashy, showy, or vulgar. As Australian usage changed, the original US title was reinstated, certainly by the late 1960s, for the comic strip, though increasingly obscure usage of the term did continue as late as the 1970s.

The Flash Gordon comic strip has been translated into a wide variety of media, including motion pictures, television and animated series. The latest version, a Flash Gordon TV series, has recently finished airing on the US Sci Fi Channel, and has just begun on the United Kingdom Sci Fi channel.

There was an awful TV series version of Flash Gordon starring Steve Holldand produced in Sweden. but we won't go into that. It was booed off syndication and OTV~

Remember Space:1999M/i> Britain's answer to the NBC Star Trek cancellation brouhha? Click the titles to reminisce and remember, there's also Captain Video & His Video Rangers from the main menu (link below). After all, television itself was once science fiction, as in Ming's "Televisor"

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