ABSTRACT
In a, perhaps apocryphal, film version from the Flash Gordon canon, the Saturday matinée serial of the 1940s, the heroes, Flash (the brawn), Dale (the beauty) and Professor Zarkoff (the quirky man of science) land their spacecraft on the planet Mongo. Having disembarked, stretched his legs and taken in the scenery, the Rasputin-like professor imbibes a long deep breath and passes the following inductive comment, ‘Hm good,’ he says, ‘There’s oxygen on this planet.’
