Some Differences from the Classic Version of Flash

Hm... Well, the original Flash Gordon is a novel, not the Saturday serials with Buster Crabbe. It was set a bit into the future, but still took place in the latter half of the twentieth century - I think! I'm not sure, since it has been years since I read the book. Then, there was/is? the syndicated "comic" strip, which did take Flash, Dale, and Zarkov into the future. Ming was part of the original book and some of the history of the strip. The serials were put together to look like the strip.

History has a nasty habit of stepping all over SF writes/producers (look at Trek, for example - we haven't launch any sleeper ships or had any eugenecs wars to produce the likes of Khan). When WWII came along, it changed a lot of things about Flash Gordon going forward. As the Marshall plan for rebuilding Europe went into effect, the Flash Gordon story went futher and further into the future and became a lot more like Buck Rogers (which has a similar genesis).

The key to all of this is that Flash, for the future, went to exotic places, and rather than try to create a believable future, most series went the route of the "monster of the week" until Star Trek went where no one had gone before. Only a few movies (the great silent, Metropolis, and Forbidden Planet) really explored man in the future. Almost all the rest of it was an "Outer Limits" experience or had limited exploration to the planets in the solar system or beneath the Earth (i.e., Edgar Rice Burroughs). Went Crabbe et al did the serials, it wasn't much more than walking into the future about twenty minutes or so...

I think this is the Flash Gordon seriel I watched in the mid 1970s as a child with my father, one episode every week over a few months, late on Friday night. He and I were really into it, and inspite of being very young I only missed a few episodes. Ironically I don't remember Dale, the female. But I do remember the other member, who was a older bearded man, a type of scientist. Then when I looked this up recently I saw his name was Dr. Zarkov, and I then remembered that is what my father had called him then. But I had always during this time of watching this referred to him as the man that runs the computer. I don't know why exactly, and my father more than once told me his real name, but I always continued to refer to him as this. This was the mid 1970s, I'm not even sure if computers existed then, and I'm nearly positive they didn't in the mid 1950s when this was filmed. So where I got that from I just don't know. I think it was probably because Dr. Zarkov flew their spaceship, which resembled a computer for me (and I'm sure with his brilliance he could run any computer today flawlessly). But I do have very good mid 1970s memories of watching this series, and seeing how it unfolded from week to week, until Flash and comrades won at the end. And I do have a few questions. Does anyone remember a group near the end called the tree people, who lived on a forest planet, and were they friends or foes? Also, didn't Flash and comrades' main enemy have an invention that was going to destroy Earth by causing things to simply fall apart and destruct, which it did begin to do near the end, before they stopped it(the head enemy watched this on a video and said, triumpantly, "It's working even better than I'd hoped". If anyone else that watched this knows this stuff, please respond.

"I happen to be a vegetarian". Lex, from Jurrasic Park

My friend is related to Buster Crabe. He is his great great uncle, I think.