When do you meet Ming the Merciless (played by John Ralston)?
In the second part of the pilot. We meet him fairly quickly, and we find out right away that this guy is not to be trusted.
Will Ming be entirely evil on the show?
No. What's amazing about him is he's an incredibly good-looking, charming guy. He's very physically capable. I mean, this isn't some decrepit old despot. He's a very, very worthy adversary. Flash and Dale are gonna have their hands full. If it came to blows, things wouldn't be one-sided in Flash's favor. I really like [the writers'] take on that. That was something that came up early. They thought it would be far more interesting to make Ming someone that you could understand, to have him be a very capable adversary.
So he might have some redeeming characteristics?
I won't go that far — we're still early. You'll be able to understand where he's coming from at certain points, definitely.
Tell me more about the relationship between Flash and Dale.
We're exes. The story is, basically, we dated during the Clinton administration. She left and went to college, and now she's back in this small town, a reporter from the local newspaper who's engaged to one of the detectives in town. And we have a history.
So you end up working, and wormholing, together?
Exactly. Quite by accident, but we end up spending a lot of time together. So there's a bit of a love triangle in there. And of course, we have the sexy princess Aura and sexy alien bounty hunter Baylin, who also throw a couple wrenches into the works.
Who do you think the show will appeal to the most?
I think it's going to appeal to a lot of people. It's been amazing, in my initial experiences talking about the show, how many men in their 40s into their 60s just light up when you mention Flash Gordon. And I don't think there's a 13-year-old boy in the world who isn't going to think this is the coolest show ever. Frickin' ray guns! How cool is that?
