 The term has no relation to music, as in a traditional opera, but is instead a play on the terms "soap opera", a melodramatic television series, and "horse opera", which was coined during the 1930s to indicate a clichéd and formulaic Western movie.Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, and video games.An early film which was based on space-opera comic strips was "Flash Gordon" (1936), created by Alex Raymond.