About Flashing Time…

A brief note. A happy, brief note.

According to Syfy Portal (http://syfyportal.com/news424879.html), the SciFi Channel quietly canceled “Flash Gordon.”

Honestly, that’s not how it should have been done. This show was so amazingly awful, it made the “Black Scorpion” tv show look mediocre. Besides the obvious success stories (“BSG” and the ongoing decent if not incredible “SG” franchise) SciFi has at least tried to keep airing some great but unsuccessful shows. ( “G vs E”,”Invisible Man”,”Farscape” being worthwhile efforts. And if memory serves, at least one season of “Sliders” aired by Scifi was decent. )

But then there’s the crap. (The other Scifi produced seasons of “Sliders”,the final season of “Andromeda”, any ‘reality’ show they air, etcetera and so forth.) As I paraphrase from a Wired article a while back, they make a lot of cheap product that just enough people watch, that they can make money on it.

But of all the crap they made, “Flash Gordon” was among the worst. Badly acted, directed, sucking all the pulp glory out of the property, and so clearly “Canada passing as America” it made Stargate’s constant use of the same damn forest look like a brilliant idea.

They shouldn’t have let it die quietly.

They should air, on regular intervals, an apology for allowing it to ever reach the airwaves. Development execs who allowed it to live should be kneeling, spreading ashes on the faces, keening with regret. They should be made to clean and light scented candle’s around Buster Crabbe’s Star on the Walk of Fame.

Forever.

Like, after man has fallen, and Will Smith and Vincent Price and Charlton Heston are fighting to be “The REAL Last Man on Earth”, Scifi will have to maintain a monastic order, who knows not why they do it, but maintains and defends the mysterious star of Buster Crabbe, using hardware from the “Lost World of Man and Mass Market Media” as weapons against the mutant hordes.

I’m not asking them to guarantee decent, watchable TV, or give up on ECW wrestling, but at least that monastic order idea would be a way to start building back Karma for Flash Gordon.