The New Adventures of Flash Gordon - The Complete Series (1979-1982)

Flash Gordon blasts off to the planet Mongo with girlfriend Dale Arden and scientist Hans Zarkov to prevent evil dictator Ming the Merciless from dominating the universe. In attempting to put an end to Ming's villainy, Flash receives the aid (and often the hindrance) of Prince Barin of Arboria, the Hawk Men led by King Vultan, Queen Fria of the ice-covered land of Frigia, Thun the Lion Man and Ming's sexy, scantily-clad daughter Aura, who has a powerful attraction for Flash.

IMDB

BCI Eclipse has collected all twenty-four episodes of "Flash Gordon" into a single handsome collection. The episodes come on four discs, housed in a double-sized keep case that holds two discs on each of its sides, one disc overlapping the other to save space. The case is then housed in an attractive cardboard slipcover.

The episodes included in this set are:

Disc One: "A Planet in Peril," "The Monsters of Mongo," "Vultan - King of the Hawkmen," "To Save Earth," "The Beast Men's Prey," "Into the Water World," and "Adventures in Arboria."

Disc Two: "The Frozen World," "Monster of the Glacier," "Blue Magic," "King Flash," "Tournament of Death," "Castaways in Tropica," and "The Desert Hawk."

Disc Three: "Revolt of the Power Men," "Ming's Last Battle," "Gremlin the Dragon"/"Royal Wedding," "Sir Gremlin"/"Deadly Double," "The Game"/"The Seed," "Witch Woman"/"Micro Menace," and "Flash Back"/"The Warrior."

Disc Four: "The Freedom Balloon"/"Sacrifice of the Volcano Men," "Beware of Gifts"/"The Memory Bank of Ming," and "Survival Game"/"Gremlin's Finest Hour."

Video

The visual presentation here is quite the mixed bag. The image looks pretty clean for the most part, although a few episodes show quite a noticeable amount of edge enhancement. The rest has been cleaned up so well that, unfortunately, you can see all the flaws in the original animation - dirt, debris, and film scratches, as well as telltale signs of cels overlapping for visual effects purposes. You can still thrill to the remarkable detail of the earliest drawings, though. Presented in the original 1.33:1 broadcast format.

Audio

The mono soundtrack is refreshingly clean, getting the most of the audio effects and musical score on just one track. No pops, hisses, or any other artifacts of a 25-year-old cartoon are noticeable. No subtitles have been provided.

Extras

BCI seems to have understood its cult audience, as we get quite a few fan-friendly bonuses.

First up are three commentary tracks (on "A Planet in Peril," "Sir Gremlin," and "Gremlin's Finest Hour") featuring several of the series' key players. The first and third tracks tend to repeat some of the same historical facts, but the rest is quite informative, especially when animators begin to admire others' works and explain why it's so impressive.

A 21-minute featurette, "Blasting Off With Flash Gordon," contains interviews with a good number of the creators, and while it provides some repeat material as the commentaries, we do get more depth. It's obvious that everyone here is in love with the show - which is a bit disappointing, as nobody pipes up to talk about why the second season failed. Still, the love is infectious. We don't even mind when a few of the interviewees use their time to shill for their own books and magazines at the end.

Next up is the pilot episode for the mid-1980s cartoon "Defenders of the Earth," which united Flash with comic strip faves The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and Lothar… and their kids. Yeesh. It's a fairly miserable show in terms of both animation and storytelling, but Flash completists might like a peek. It serves mainly as a promo for BCI's upcoming "Defenders" DVD sets, the first of which is due this fall.

For those who appreciate such things, animated storyboard comparisons are included for a couple of key stock footage sequences. We also get a gallery of the character model sheets, as well as some blandly written profile pages for characters, aliens, and settings.

On the chapter listing page for each episode, you'll find "Gremlin's Fun Facts," which are trivia nuggets that are actually pretty interesting at times, despite having Gremlin's name attached to them. They're worth the extra clicking it takes to find them.

Those with DVD-ROM access will be able to take a gander at scripts, storyboards, and the "series bible," the guide all writers and animators had to follow. All of these extras are in PDF format and require Adobe Acrobat, which you most likely already have, so no worries there.