1990 TV Flash Facts
In this video I take a look at interesting facts about this classic tv show that paved the way for the Flash series of today.
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| Flash 1990 TV Series |
Barry’s parents are both alive and his father never went to jail as shown in the CW Flash series.
Research scientist Dr. Tina McGee, played by Amanda Pays, works at S.T.A.R. Labs and helps Barry fight crime while performing experiments to help Barry understand his new powers.
Barry’s best friend at work is Julio Mendez who is played by Alex Desert.
Other notable characters that showed up on the Flash series were the Nightshade. This character featured on 2 episodes was a 1950’s era superhero that used tranquilizer darts to capture criminals. He comes out of retirement to help the Flash in 1990.
Mark Hamill famous for his role as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and as the voice of the Joker in the Batman Animated Series portrayed the super villain the Trickster on a couple of episodes. Hammill’s Trickster comes across as a live action version of the Joker without the painted face. Hamill’s role as the Joker would begin in 1992.
David Cassidy famous for his musical career and starring role on the Partridge Family in the 70’s played as the Mirror Master.
Iris West was on the show played by Paula Marshall, but she had a very limited role having only appeared in the first episode where as in the comics Iris eventually becomes Barry’s wife.
Bill Mumy from Lost in Space appeared as Roger Braintree.
In the first episode Barry had an older brother named Jay Allen an obvious nod to the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick.
Development of the Flash began in 1988 before the extremely successful release of the Batman movie starring Michael Keaton, even though it was patterned after and compared to the Batman movie. Filming of the first episode took six weeks to complete costing 6 million dollars. Episodes afterward would cost around 1.6 million to produce. At one point the current Flash TV series was reported to have been around 2 million per episode. Now if you look at what 1.6 million is in today’s dollars it would be roughly close to 4 million dollars and the pilot at 6 million would have come in at almost 14 million dollars in today’s rates. Of course, this was a show on a big network like CBS at a time when a lot more people watched television.
The 4 Flash costumes alone cost $100,000 dollars. Can you imagine paying that much for a costume? The suit was cast to fit Shipp and was made out of latex.
One of the interesting aspects of the show is that it seems to exist in stylistically somewhere between the 50’s and the 80’s as you’ll see old 50’s cars sometimes along with modern cars of the day.
The show aired on Thursday nights which belonged to NBC thanks to the very popular, The Cosby Show which ran at 8 PM EST. Trying to avoid Cosby the Flash was aired at 8:30 that night which was still a bad time as most people never turned the channel once they settled in on NBC. Eventually, CBS moved the series to Saturday. It was a very strange time slot for an hour long series.
Music for the Flash’s theme was done by Danny Elfman and Shirley Walker composed the music for each episode. Elfman is famous for his musical work on Tim Burton’s Batman and Sam Raimi’s Spider-man, but did you know he was the singer songwriter for Oingo Boingo who had one of my favorite songs of all time, Weird Science for the movie Weird Science. That deserves a video all on it’s own. Both Elfman and Walker composed music for Batman the animated series.
DC Comics published a one-shot photo cover comic of the show in 1991.It featured two comic stories and a behind the scenes look at the making of the series with photos.
John Wesley Shipp went on to play a recurring role of Barry Allen’s father, Henry Allen in the new CW Flash series that began in 2014. He also played Jay Garrick who in the comics was the Golden Age version of the Flash who went on to be the Earth-2 Flash of the Justice Society.
Shipp also played the 1990 Barry Allen in the “Elseworlds” CW arrowverse crossover event. The 1990 series becomes designated as Earth-90 in the event. Shipp’s Flash appeared in the next year’s Flash crossover event, “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. It is revealed that his Flash had married Tina McGee.
Shipp also appeared as the Jay Garrick Flash on an episode of Stargirl in 2021.
Shipp also did the voice of the Reverse-Flash in a 2010 episode of Batman the Brave and the Bold which is a great series if you haven’t seen it.
Other instances where the 1990 Flash series crossed over with the CW Flash are where
Amanda Pays brought back a version of the character of Dr. Tina McGee on the CW Flash. In the episode, “Tricksters” Mark Hammill returned as James Jesse the Trickster with images of the Trickster from the 1990 series. Julio Mendez appears in the the third season episode, “Flashpoint” where he is captain of the Central City Police Department in the Flashpoint timeline.
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