>>>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.
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>>>Also made me think of Charlie Chan. Anyone remember that? Number One son and all that... I loved those movies.
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>>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.
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>Ming the Merciless, no?
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>Ah, now my mind drifts back to Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon ( which later were particularly poignant memories as I bounced around SE Asia in Air America porters ( inside joke among those pilots was to refer to themselves as 'Air Expendable' )) They actually referred to the program by which America pilots put their commissions in the safe in Khon Kaen to be 'sheep dipped' as pilots in Laos as 'The Steve Canyon Program'
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>I guess lots of kids grew up at the Saturday matinees <s> I remember when The Flying Tigers was a TV show.

I can j-u-s-t about remember Saturday matinees. I went to one when I was wee, just out of curiosity, but even then it was already old - a Hop Along Cassidy. Back them that sort of old movie was alredy being put on Saturday TV.

The genre of "cliff-hanger" described by Alan is by no means dead, though. Just look at any episode of 24, or Heroes, or Prison Break et al.