In
“Beware of Gifts,” Ming claims to have had a change of heart. He wants peace,
and to prove it, he gives Arboria a present: a huge statue of a warrior from Mongo.
Flash and the others allow the statue within the city
walls, and the “stone avenger” promptly comes to life and embarks on a campaign
of destruction.
Flash uses electron torpedoes to attempt to destroy the destructive
statue, to no effect. He realizes he
must destroy the statue’s controls, located in Ming’s lab. He uses Zarkov’s experimental cloaking device
to get there undetected in his rocket.
In
“The Memory Bank of Ming,” Arboria activates a revolutionary new computer or A.I. system, named
“Arnold,” to control the operation of the city.
Things go awry, however, when Gremlin accidentally slips Arnold a memory
tape containing the personality of Ming the Merciless.
This
week, “Beware of Gifts” is a straight-up re-telling of the Trojan Horse myth.
One would think Flash might specifically bring up this historical/literary parallel
(especially since he’s been spending time in a library, if we are to believe “The
Freedom Balloon”). The story also evokes memories of “The Seed,” another second
season story in which Ming hatches a plan to get a monster inside of Arboria to
destroy it.
“The
Memory Bank of Ming” finds every device in Arboria “totally out of control”
when a friendly A.I. gets reprogrammed with Ming’s personality, thanks to
Gremlin.
Here, Dale distracts Arnold in the final act by
playing tic-tac-toe with him. It’s a
rather underwhelming story, but I like the depiction of Arnold as a hovering, friendly drone.
Next
week we come to the end of our Flash Gordon season two retrospective with “Survival Game” and “Gremlin’s
Finest Hour.”
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