Somewhere deep down, Stella Flare owes a debt to Flash Gordon—the franchise in general, but in particular the 1979 animated series ‘The New Adventures of Flash Gordon’, a distinctly low-budget children’s serial whose characters lurch (quite literally) from peril to rapid-fire peril, cheating death every two minutes, barely able to catch their breath (let alone bathe or change clothes). It’s space opera in garbled fast-forward, yet with two redeeming features: firstly, the SF design elements, which rise to giddying heights above an otherwise dire production; and secondly, its plethora of strong female characters—Dale, Aura, Undina, Fria, Azura, Desira—all of whom outshine Flash yet, when it comes to Mongo’s innumerable cliffhangers, are overshadowed by his cheerfully himboic, biff-baff, barehanded wrestling approach.
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