Apparently in Smallgate - aka Flash Gordon - Ming The Merciless is not to be called "The Merciless"... and of course, he's not even slightly Asian looking... he's to be a "media savvy dictator". Which is a lot more in keeping with the times but makes him slightly less... well - Ming.

As predicted, we get the Mongol of the week - this time a guy with massive hair, Goualdified voice and LASER WHIP. That aspect of the episode isn't particularly interesting... him being a big "man beast" he's got the intelligence of a block of wood.

The more interesting aspect of the episode is Ming The Media Savvy - not really quite the same, is it? Supposedly his absolute dictatorship is built upon the contamination of the water... and his current monopoly on its distribution. Hence, ice smuggling carries the death penalty.

Now, they don't actually explain the nature of the contamination... but in previous episodes, it was alluded to that it was necessary for sustaining populations... although it's not exactly clear if this was simply through the necessity of water or to feed crops... but if it was any kind of normal contamination, then it would naturally increase as it went up the food chain. Anyway, it seems fairly strange that the ice smuggler should get stopped in a leafy green area with cattle wandering around. Perhaps the contamination only affects humans but then, it's likely that either all with be revealed later or that detail will be overlooked.

Other than banishing the man beast - surprise! Flash finds that the bounty hunter from last week isn't so stand offish - despite having stolen The Predator's cloaking device - and she is going to stay with Flash. So, I suppose we at least aren't quite stuck with the status quo... or at least, we've not yet reached it... sometimes it can take shows a couple of episodes to get their main cast established... see SG-1... ha, another similarity. Although the science guy (is he called Zharkov and if not, WHY NOT?) is no Sam Carter.

Also, by the end of the episode it's entirely clear that Ming really should be called the Merciless - even if he is media savvy - and that whole subplot massively overshadowed the main "Mongo of the week" one in terms of coolness but then... evil dictators generally trump boring man beasts of the week.

The fact the episode is so Earthbound makes the show feel quite limited... despite a lack of rocketships, Flash et al trapped on Mongo and running around would be pretty great... sure, it would follow the cliche of humans getting trapped in some other time/planet/place/dimension/universe but at least it wouldn't have the awkwardness of suburban life. Naturally, this type of "home by dinner" adventuring has been done before but it's somewhat facile. Which is unfortunate, it does seem that the concept of Mongo is quite cool... although we've yet to see the moons of Mongo as anything other than a backdrop. This episode was more promising than the last but only by dint of Ming being great.