“If the apocalypse comes, beep me.” - Buffy

At the beginning, mine was a love-hate relationship with the SciFi Channel’s Flash Gordon. Not as dramatic as my love-hate relationship with Lost, but we had our ups and downs. I just wanted so badly to like it and get swept away in a fun, pulpy science fiction show that didn’t leave me depressed at the end of an episode (I’m talking to you, Battlestar).

When Gillian Horvath joined the show as Consulting Producer, Flash Gordon became the genuinely good show I had so badly wanted it to be. Here, Horvath talks to Pink Raygun about developing the long term story, reading those early reviews, and taking Flash to Fridgia.

PRG: You’re credited as Consulting Producer on Flash Gordon. What does that mean and what are your responsibilities to the show?

GH: The meaning doesn’t translate from one show to another. On Painkiller Jane the consulting producer was a director on staff and that’s not my role. So, the title is different depending on who has it. In my case it means I’m third in command of the writing staff. There’s an executive producer and co-executive producer above me. Most writing staffs, including this one, don’t have a big hierarchy - you don’t boss around the writers below you just because you have a higher title than them - it’s definitely a team effort.

The writing staff all works together in the room to create and shape all the episodes. We figure out the premise and the outline together, brainstorming each episode as a group, and then the person who’s writing that one does a draft, and then we work together again to give each other ideas to improve it or address notes from production or from our executives. We even sometimes write scenes for each other’s episodes when we’re pressed for time, so every episode really is a joint effort

“Consulting Producer” just indicates that I’ve been doing this longer than some people and have worked my way further up the ladder. In terms of responsibility, as far as the writing responsibility we all have, it means being involved in rewriting and consultation with the exec Peter Hume and the co-exec James Thorpe.

PRG: Were you with the show from the beginning?

GH: I came in just when filming was starting at the beginning of May. The original staff had been in the room for about four months. The pilot was completely written and was on the stage and filming. The next five scripts existed in various states of readiness. That was that I joined the staff.

PRG: We’ve been watching Flash since the beginning. We do like it and thought the pilot episode showed a lot of promise which didn’t seem to fulfill it’s potential until several episodes in. After the initial five or six episodes, it really picked up.

GH: We’re really proud of where it’s gone. I have followed some of the commentary and it was a bit daunting at the beginning that there were some disappointed viewers out there. We went into that first episode’s premiere with very high feelings for the show. We had really enjoyed the cuts and the dailies that were coming to the office, so we went into August with the feeling like, “This is great. We are on the coolest show. We’re so happy to be here. It’s gonna be so fun to watch this thing grow.”

Then we got some pretty hard online reviews from people who were disappointed and we were like, “What happened there?” When I look back at it now with brilliant hindsight which is always 20/20, I can see that part of what happened was that there were stories that we knew were developing over time, therefore we could see the germs of them in those early episodes. People viewing couldn’t see where it was going.

Some of the things that I enjoy the most in those episodes - like I love in the fourth episode when Flash meets with the Omadrians - those are great scenes and they set up his future as the guy who’s going to join all the cantons together. He has that scene with Vestra where he says to her, “Ming’s keeping you all at each others throats and you’ll never unite against him”. That sets up the rest of the season, but that’s about three minutes in a forty-eight minute show.

So to us, we’re watching and thinking, “This is great! We can wait to watch this unfold.” I guess looking back, the viewers didn’t see where it was going. I’m optimistic now that the story has unfolded and people have seen it, that maybe people look back at those first six and see the seeds of the stuff that came later.

I love working on shows where they have the history week to week where the more you watch it, the more interesting it becomes. As you watch it unfold over time, that’s where you see it really flower. That’s my preference when I’m working on something. That may be why I’ve had so much fun working on Flash Gordon.

PRG: Episode seven of Flash, “Alliances”, was the first that really impressed me and after that, I noticed that your name started showing up a lot more as a writer and consulting producer and the show was steadily improving.

GH: Peter Hume came to me when “Alliances” was coming out of editing and said, “You did it. This is the episode that will turn the show. We’re on track.” I look at the show and I hope I did help get it where it was going. But, the show went where Peter always wanted to get it. The plot points that are unfolding now are the things he told me the first day I came in back in May. He gave me the rundown of the universe and that’s what we put up on screen. It was my job and I hope I did it, to put up on screen what he had in his head. Of course, I got lucky too because I had the first Barin episode and I had the last Barin episode, so I got all of Steve Bacic.

PRG: Steve Bacic is not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.

GH: I had done two episodes of Andromeda in their last season, which was when he was at his finest on that show. So when he came into audition, he was on a casting DVD for a different role - he was on the DVD for potential Vultans. I was in my office writing and Peter was in the next room watching the DVD of Vultans. I heard the casting guy say, “Next up, Steve Bacic” and I went racing in to the next room to see his audition and Peter was like, “What? Do you know this guy?” We all instantly thought, “That’s the guy. He’s so talented.” Then it was the script coordinator who suggested that he play Barin. Like, don’t use Steve Bacic up. Save him, because we knew Bairn was going to have a larger role - he was straight out of the comic books and was going to join the show for a number of episodes. I give Andrew great credit for the fact that he was the one who first said that because he was 100% right. We were very lucky to have Steve. Unfortunately, he works so much that we haven’t been able to have him as much as we’d like. But the episodes he’s been in we’ve been very happy with.

PRG: In those first few episodes I was reminded of the first episodes of Babylon 5, which really took a long form approach, like a Tolstoy novel. Things were taking their time, establishing these different worlds and cultures, and it all culminates down the line. Was it always the intention to do that with Flash?

GH: We had a luxury a lot of shows don’t have. We knew we were making 22 episodes, so we wanted our story to last 22 weeks. We didn’t want to find out what had happened to Flash’s father too soon and not have story left. We wanted to have Flash becoming a hero and joining the cantons together leading up to this revolution that takes place in the last few episodes that haven’t aired yet, to be the season long story.

Those first few episodes I wasn’t as closely involved with, but I was there as they were filming. The plan was to use the beginning to set the stage and have the story gather momentum over the season. It may be that viewers expectations have changed because a lot of shows don’t last 22 weeks anymore. So the story sometimes starts a lot faster. If you only have 13, you’re gonna get the ball rolling faster than we did.

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PRG: Has there been any word on a second season?

GH: We are waiting for word. Obviously the writers strike has put a cramp in all forward motion of everything. We’re very optimistic because our execs are very fond of the show and have enjoyed it. They want to see more story and so do we.

PRG: Flash Gordon has a long history from the comic strip to the Buster Crabbe serial to the 1980 movie. How important was it for the SciFi show to pay homage to what came before?

GH: We really enjoy the little winks and nods we’ve been able to do - those little lines of dialogue that are in-jokes, but our source material is the original comics. Certainly we’ve all seen the 1980 movie. We watched the Buster Crabbe serials and enjoyed them in their dated charm. But, the comics are what we kept going back to to look for inspiration. There were these wonderful collections of them in the office and if you had a bit of down time, you could go and read another section of comics you might not have gotten to yet.

For me it often led me to go back into the room and say, “Hey, We haven’t used the man-eating vine yet” or “We haven’t been to Fridgia yet. Let’s do that.” That was budgetary of course - how do you go to the frozen world of Fridgia on our budget? But, we did. They found a way. I’m thrilled because that’s one of my episodes. After thinking there were things we couldn’t do, the producers really pulled out all the stops and made it happen.

It was fun for us really - every time we went back to the comics we’d find things in the comics that we hadn’t remembered reading the first time through and say, “This is what we’re doing.” It’s that type of story on screen. So, I think the spirit of our show is very true to the original comics and not particularly to the 1980 movie. I enjoyed that movie when I saw it as a kid, but that’s not the Flash Gordon we’re making. We wanted to go back to the comics.

PRG: A lot of Flash Gordon has been based in suburbia. Was that primarily a cost saving measure?

GH: You probably noticed that there isn’t much of that anymore. Certainly budgetary considerations played into that concept because it’s much simpler to film somebody’s house than to build everything. But, over the course of the season, you’ve seen that more and more of Mongo has been explored and we’re able to spend more and more time there. So, it was partly for budget considerations.

It also had to do with the audience because not all of the audience are hardcore comics and science fiction fans. There are people who will accept an alien world. You don’t really have to spend a lot of screen time explaining it. You go, “They’re on an alien world” and that audience goes, “OK, I get it, what happens next?” Then for another section of the viewership, that’s out of their comfort zone. If you look at a show like Eureka, which is a huge hit, it has a balance between fantastic elements and familiar elements. It’s very approachable even for people who don’t watch science fiction every week. And in the spirit of the original Flash Gordon, which was aimed at a broad audience, we spent more time transitioning between the familiar and the foreign, so that a broader spectrum of viewers would get the baseline information in order to come along with the show. That was the plan. Whether is succeeded or not, time will tell. I myself grew up on science fiction and comic books. I’m hardcore, I’m a con goer, I’m all of those things.

The Flash Gordon episode “Cold Day in Hell”, penned by Gillian Horvath, airs this Friday, January 25th, on the SciFi Channel (seriously, watch it). Check back tomorrow for part two of my interview with Gillian Horvath, in which she talks about being a science fiction fan and writing for television.

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