EW.com has a lengthy Q&A with Smallville‘s Eric Johnson, who landed the title role in the new Flash Gordon live-action series, which premieres Aug. 10 on Sci-Fi. It likely comes as no surprise that the TV show will deviate a little from the comic strip:
When do you arrive on Planet Mongo?
Well, we end up there at the end of Part 1 of the premiere. But the thing is, we’re able to come back and forth.What’s the mode of transport here?
It’s the old wormhole. Flash’s father was a scientist who was developing the technology. I thought he was lost in a fire, but it turns out he was sucked through this wormhole that he created. So now after 13 years, something came back through, and that something is not so nice, and it’s looking for me.So we’re not gonna see anything resembling a spaceship.
Not at this point. But there is some pretty cool stuff on the planet Mongo, I have to say. I saw some early drawings of some things we have to battle. We’re gonna have our hands full, that’s for sure.Creatures?
Creatures, ships, different types of ray guns…it’s pretty intense. There’s already been a probe that has gone through, and an android. I fight an android in my kitchen.
The interview includes a couple of stills from the show.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:13 am
So it’s Flash Gordon by way of Adam Strange? Or maybe Stargate?
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:53 am
Cancelled before the 8th episode
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I thought it said Mogo at first, but I couldn’t find the Green Lantern angle – d’oh!
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:29 pm
This show was rumored to be the less expensive, less political, less controversial, and more family friendly replacement for Battlestar. This is why Battlestar was not renewed for so long into the season and why new episodes have been pushed back until 2008 after the first ratings sweep in November of 2007.
I’ll make sure this isn’t watched or tivoed at my home.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:50 am
Worm hole are not much discussed.Most general public has not heard of it.Even amongs astronomers it is considered bizzare by some.Kip Thorne book on black hole has chapter on it.finserioufiction also good.
May 24th, 2007 at 2:04 am
If Stargate was Wal-Mart SF, this is definitely K-Mart. Boy, that’s low.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Flash Gordon without a spaceship? That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
July 28th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Well, I won’t be watching this. I’d like to know how a wormhole makes more sense than a spaceship. Last month I stood five miles away and watched a real spaceship blast off and fly into space — but I’ve never seen a wormhole. Last month I met the REAL Flash Gordon. Okay, he didn’t look like Buster Crabbe and he never fought Ming the Merciless, but his name was Dick Gordon, he took off in a rocketship, and he flew to another world, what more do you want? The closest we’ve gotten to a wormhole is the enormously expensive SSC, which when completed would have produced every variety of quark, but it was killed by Congress due to budget overruns and put thousands of physicists out of work, a catastrophe from which the scientific world is still reeling. So I say the rocketship angle is definitely more realistic.
But, though I won’t be watching, hopefully this will make older Flash Gordon series and comics available and I can round out my collection.