Ardala's complex history

[Hope It Is The Grog]

Until quite recently I thought Princess Ardala was simply a clone of Flash Gordon's Princess Aura, with the Draconian Empire more or less lifted from Doctor Who to give her a context. And to a great extent that still seems to hold true.



But just today I found out that the Buck Rogers comic strip, as early as 1930, had a villainess called Ardala Valmar, a fellow Earth renegade who partnered in crime with Killer Kane. She also appeared in the radio series. So clearly our Princess was a sort of composite of this character and Aura.

This is no doubt very old news to True Students of Buck, but since I am not a TSB, I thought it might be of interest to other dilettantes like me.

[goldcylon1]

All I know is she must have been daddy’s favorite as many times as she screwed up lol. Imagine the other daughters if this was the case as the best and the brightest lol.

[Croft2014]

It's highly unlikely that anyone connected to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century had any inkling of the Doctor Who serial "Frontier in Space" which featured the Draconians; first broadcast in the UK in 1973 and never repeated in the UK until Satellite TV station UK Gold in the early-mid '90s.

It wasn't seen in the USA until sometime after August 1983 which is when I left the US and moved to England. PBS in the US had a batch of Jon Pertwee serials from 1972 but it didn't include "Frontier in Space". The batch had a straight run from "Doctor Who and the Silurians" (1970) through "The Time Monster" (1972) and it made the rounds on PBS stations over the next few years; my local PBS station, WXXI Channel 21 in Rochester NY, didn't get them until approximately Easter 1976 and screened them over the following year.

In summer 1978 PBS got the first batch of Tom Baker serials and lost the rights to the Pertwees. That batch - just for everyone's info - was from "Robot" (1974) through "The Invasion of Time" (1978).

[Hope It Is The Grog]

It's highly unlikely that anyone connected to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century had any inkling of the Doctor Who serial "Frontier in Space" which featured the Draconians; first broadcast in the UK in 1973 and never repeated in the UK until Satellite TV station UK Gold in the early-mid '90s.

It wasn't seen in the USA until sometime after August 1983 which is when I left the US and moved to England. PBS in the US had a batch of Jon Pertwee serials from 1972 but it didn't include "Frontier in Space". The batch had a straight run from "Spearhead from Space" (1970) through "The Time Monster" (1972) and it made the rounds on PBS stations over the next few years; my local PBS station, WXXI Channel 21 in Rochester NY, didn't get them until approximately Easter 1976 and screened them over the following year.

In summer 1978 PBS got the first batch of Tom Baker serials and lost the rights to the Pertwees. That batch - just for everyone's info - was from "Robot" (1974) through "The Invasion of Time" (1978).

Thanks for that information. From what I can find, it doesn't appear that the novelization of "Frontier in Space" had appeared in America either.

[Croft2014]

The novelisation was "Doctor Who and the Space War" (1976).

[Hope It Is The Grog]

Yes, and apparently it was not part of the Pinnacle releases in the US.

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Pinnacle_Books

Of course, it's impossible to be sure that Glen Larson or an associate hadn't been overseas and seen Frontier in Space, but since Draco the Athenian was an historical figure, there's no reason two Draconian Empires in space couldn't have been independently imagined.