Cast:

• Eric Johnson ... Flash Gordon
• Gina Holden ... Dale Arden
• Karen Cliche ... Baylin
• Carrie Genzel ... Vestra
• Panou ... Nick
• John Ralston ... Ming
• Jody Racicot ... Zarkov
• Anna Van Hooft ... Aura
• Jonathan Walker ... Rankol

Official Summary:

On the way to his brother's wedding, Nick is bitten by a bug that's come to Earth from Mongo. Nick will die unless Flash and Baylin can retrieve the cure -- from a man-hating sisterhood on Mongo.

Key Moments:

Baylin is caught sneaking into Ming's palace in order to help Flash recover an artifact desired by the sisterhood; she tries to bluff a suspicious Ming by claiming to have killed Flash, but of course Aura immediately rushes in saying Flash was still alive. The upshot is, Baylin has ruined her credibility with Ming and so casts in her lot with Flash for good. Meanwhile, because the parasite thrives on joy, Dale has to spend the day trying to make Nick miserable. She's actually not very good at it.

Power Politics, Mongo-Style:

Ming collects something of cultural importance from all the castes on Mongo as a symbol of his power over them, but instead of displaying them he tucks them away under low security in the "archives." Not only that, this supposedly merciless tyrant reacts to Rankol's having "lost" a rift by … being rather peevish with him. Is Ming reluctant to punish Rankol for some reason?

Cheesiest Will They/Won't They Moment:

Flash and Dale spend most of the episode apart; Flash, of course, is constantly surrounded by beautiful women (even if some of them want to employ elective surgery to make him into, ahem, a "docile"), while Dale is stuck at Nick's brother's wedding, poor girl.

When they meet up at the end they have a "oops, I meant to say" moment in reference to marriage, which Baylin notices. In connection with the threatened operation Flash refers to his future children (with whom?). His roll-around on the bed with the vapid Aura is as hot as a baloney sandwich, but he seems very fine with having Baylin around for him to ogle.

Bottom Line: Worth Watching?:

This very goofy episode has some unexpectedly nice moments for Gina Holden as Dale, as she confronts just how unpleasant the wacky premise of keeping someone miserable actually turns out to be in practice. Meanwhile Eric Johnson is becoming more comfortable in his role, with a corresponding increase in the dryness of his delivery. Jody Racicot, on the other hand, has dialed back his manicness to the point of nonentityness, and the Mongo contingent are all more cartoonish than ever. Even though the episode itself is rubbish, it's a very uneven indication of hope for the future.