THE PULP CONNECTION
Voyager's Bride of Chaotica! - featuring Tom Paris as Captain Proton and Captain Janeway as the Queen of the Spider People - is a hugely entertaining homage to the Flash Gordon school of thirties sci-fi serials.

Star Trek prides itself on its special effects and high concept technology, so it was perhaps unsurprising to discover Voyager's producers embarking on an episode that satirised the crude, early days of TV sci-fi. With its smooth production values and black and white sheen, 'Bride of Chaotica!' encapsulates Star Trek's rather superior attitude to its forebears. As a unique franchise, the series likes to flaunt its superiority to past TV efforts. But Star Trek arguably owes more to the 'Saturday serial' genre than it will ever admit.

Roddenberry's original vision of Star Trek was bold and ambitious: a groundbreaking, literate TV drama that would decisively sever the connection between sci-fi and lowbrow culture. In its 34 year history, Trek has oscillated between living up to this aim in the most impressive ways (see 'The Cage', the OS' 'City on the Edge of Forever', TNG's 'The Best of Both Worlds', and Voyager's 'Caretaker'); and producing the kind of pulp that would make Ming the Merciless blush.

The impact of the early Buster Crabbe serials on the TV audience was enormous in terms of shaping perceptions of TV sci-fi. Perhaps reminded of the mould they had set, Paramount ordered a 'less cerebral' approach than that offered by the Star Trek pilot. More action and traditional heroics were required.

The result was the recasting of the captain and the arrival of James T Kirk: a hero who explicitly echoed Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon exactly thirty years before. Captain Kirk is a Sixties version of the Flash model, albeit with the Shatner trimmings of puffed-chest and gusty delivery we know and love.

There are further striking comparisons. Roddenberry had wanted the central trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy to represent the human psyche in its three parts, but exactly the same template had been used in the Flash Gordon serials. Thus: rationality (Kirk / Flash); emotion (Bones / Dale Arden); and logic (Spock / Dr Zarkov).

The insistent psychobabble of TNG, DS9 and Voyager recalls the gauche and relentlessly corny scripts for Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, and is equally hard to take seriously. Voyager itself stole its premise from one of the pulpiest sci-fi series of all time: Lost in Space.

Star Trek occupies an enviable position as the flagship of mainstream, accessible, quality TV sci-fi. But it has still produced its fair share of episodes that make Flash Gordon look like 2001: A Space Oddyssey. Doubtful? Just watch the third seasons' Spock Brain - in which aliens steal Spock's brain, to use as a power source for their planet. You will be utterly convinced.