I think Jaimie was trying to, just perhaps, suggest that money is the root cause behind all of these remakes. I'm not so sure money is the only, or even most important, reason. Something that bombs badly (like that awful remake of The Night Stalker) is probably going to lose much more money than it makes.
These remakes where they play fast and loose with the original material may appear more out of laziness than greed. It's easier to come up with something based on someone else's imagination, and just give it your own "twist", than imagining something completely on your own.
Money undoubtedly plays a part (when doesn't it?), but I think it's the cheap and easy solution to creating a movie/series.
It can be done right, as it was with Doctor Who (for the most part), but it takes effort, drive, and some original thinking to update a cherished show and still make it work. You can't really just slap a name on something and hope nobody will notice the difference between your shoddy creation and the much-superior original.
If Flash Gordon was on a major network, I think it would have already suffered a well-deserved axing. Since it's on ScFi Channel, who knows?
NBC/Universal
owns the Sci-Fi channel. Ever since they bought it out, there's been a constant parade of just
awful shows and made for tv movies, like "SS Doomtrooper". 5 minutes of this Flash Gordon was enough to burn into my brain like an arc-light of stupidity. After accidentally catching 5
seconds of that Doomtrooper while channel surfing, I had to recite my alphabet just to make sure I hadn't been dumbed down to where I couldn't write an email of complaint. When I see how great the fiction is here, even in the Flash Challenge where there's less room to flesh things out, their shows offend me. Pay any of us here. We'll give them better stories.
The Sci-Fi original series that I like are Eureka and Battlestar Galactica. They rock. Doctor Who is great, too, but not made by Sci-Fi.
Nate