Professor Gordon

Performer:

Bruce Dawson (Sci Fi Channel)

Richard Tucker (1936 serial)

Serials

In the first Flash Gordon serial, Professor Gordon is a distinguished scientist, known around the world. He works in an observatory with his nervous colleague, Professor Hensley. Gordon appears in Chapter 101, and receives telegrams informing him of the world's reaction to the upcoming collision with the planet Mongo. He returns to the story in Chapter 109, as Dr. Hans Zarkov makes radio contact with Earth.

Professor Gordon is next seen in the serial "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe". On this occasion he is leading a group of top scientists who are confronting a new crisis, the so-called Purple Death. One of Gordon's colleagues on this occasion is Professor Arden. Perhaps because of his son's fame, Professor Gordon by this time also takes on the role of an official spokesman, giving the world regular bulletins concerning the latest developments in the struggle to combat the deadly disease.

Professor Gordon is a creation of the 1936 serial. In the earlier versions of the story, the original Flash Gordon (comic strip) and the The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon, Flash has no known family.

Sci Fi Channel

Lawrence Gordon is Flash's lost father. A physics professor at the university, Lawrence also participated in a secret project, the Portage Initiative, with a young colleague, Dr. Hans Zarkov.

The Portage Initiative attempted to open a "rift" between in space between our world and another. Lawrence succeeded in creating a rift in his laboratory, but was sucked through onto the planet Mongo, and was unable to return. Lawrence's wife Norah and son Flash were told that he'd died in a fire.

In "Episode 101: Pilot" of "Flash Gordon (Sci Fi Channel)", scientists on Mongo create their own rift, and send a probe through to Earth. Flash finds his father's driver's license hidden inside one of the probes, and realizes that his father may still be alive on the other side of the rift. Determined to find his father, he finds a way through. At the end of the first episode, the final shot is of a man, presumably Lawrence, hooked up to a machine on Mongo with wires coming out of his head.