>>>>It had the funny looking spaceships that had sparks coming out the back and the Emperor with the really high collar? By today's standards it would be a joke, but when I was a kid, it was very cool.
>>>>
>>>>Also made me think of Charlie Chan. Anyone remember that? Number One son and all that... I loved those movies.
>>>
>>>Flash Gordon. The evil emperor was Ming the Terrible. As I recall though, it was a movie serial, and not a TV show. Maybe there was a TV show that followed the movies, but I don't recall it. Flash Gordon was played by Buster Crabbe.
>>
>>That was it. Thanks! And I was young, so there wasn't much difference to me then between a movie serial and a TV show. <g>
>
>I love that old stuff, and generally, the old serials on DVD or tape are cheap as dirt to buy these days. Oh, wait, I just remembered as I was typing this. It wasn't Ming the Terrible. It was Ming the Merciless.
>
>I have a number of the old serials. There is one called Zombies of the Stratosphere. One of the main green aliens (who could breathe under water) was Leonard Nimoy.


Microsoft had a guy named Ming on the VFP 3 team. Probably inevitably, he was nicknamed Ming the Merciless.