Producers and directors alike have turned their attention to superhero films, but how often do we see new superheroes on the big screen? Pulp publications were instrumental in popularizing the first superheroes such as The Mandrake, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and others, but they have faded from viewers’ minds over time. This occurred as a result of the publishers’ need for more commercially and financially viable characters. As a result of the growing unpopularity, quality live-action and animated material have declined.
But there was a show called “DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH” that showed these forerunners of superheroes like Batman, Superman, and others. Lothar Junior, Jedda Walker, Rick Gordon, and Kshin were among the program is younger Defenders. The show focused on the Defenders’ battles with their archenemy, ‘Ming the Merciless,’ who wanted to destroy Earth, eliminate the Defenders, and even take control of the cosmos. Marvelous Videos felt it was only right to pay tribute to and commemorate the superheroes who paved the path for the business to become what it is today. We will take a look at some of the best episodes from this iconic but short-lived series in this video.
Escape from Mongo – Season 1 Episode 1
On a night of thunder and rain, a spacecraft with a tail of fire crash-landed on Earth, right in front of Mandrake and Lothar’s house. When they reached the spacecraft, it turned out that the pilot was Flash Gordon himself. Flash tells them about his escape from Mongo. ‘Ming the Merciless’ has resolved to invade Earth because the planet of Mongo is on the verge of collapse due to a lack of resources. Furthermore, Ming abducted the wife and son of Flash. Flash had come to Lothar and Mandrake to warn them about the impending invasion, but Ming’s ice robots attacked his ship and shot it down. Three ice robots attack the house to enquire about Flash’s whereabouts as they see his ship just outside.
However, Mandrake uses his hypnosis to make Flash disappear to them and also makes the crashed ship appear to be taking off. Meanwhile, at Ming’s base, he is furious to learn from the robot Octon that Flash Gordon had eluded Garax and his ice robots. Even then, Ming still holds Mrs. Gordon and young Rick Gordon as his prisoners. Ming orders Octon to summon them before him to use the inquisitor and extract information that they wouldn’t willfully give. Flash’s wife and son try to evade the ice robots sent to retrieve them, but only Rick manages to escape with the help of a strange creature named Zuffy, while his mother gets captured and is taken to Ming.
The evil ruler drains not only Flash’s wife’s knowledge but also her life force. Witnessing this, Rick attacks Ming but gets chased by his serpentine pet. Zuffy manages to retrieve a shiny crystal from Rick’s mother’s hand. Meanwhile, Flash arrives with Mandrake and Lothar. Mandrake uses hypnosis to make the ice robots see five of Flash Gordon’s ship, and in the ensuing fight, the ice robots inadvertently destroy Ming’s castle, following which Ming escapes to Earth. After retrieving Mrs. Gordon’s body, they all return to Earth.
Now, finding Ming in the vastness of the world was going to be a difficult task, and they needed someone with the senses of an animal. Mandrake suggested that they seek the help of the ‘Ghost Who Walks, the Phantom’. Upon reaching close to the Skull Cave; Phantom’s base of operations, they get captured by the Bandar tribe but are released when Phantom’s daughter Jedda arrives. Phantom was willing to join the fight but remained concerned about his daughter’s safety. Flash allays his fears by offering her the chance to attend school in the city, with Flash’s son Rick and Lothar’s son LJ.
At the school, however, Ming’s frozen zombies attack and kidnap Rick and LJ. Jedda sends her black panther named Kisa to follow them, and she learns about Ming’s location. At Ming’s earthly base, Phantom summons the power of ten tigers and gets the others inside the facility, only to get captured. Ming wanted to electrocute the heroes but Rick and LJ managed to sabotage the electronics and reverse the power generation to overload and explode. The kids save the adults and they all escape just seconds before the facility explodes.
Back in their ship, Mandrake analyzed the crystal to realize that it had absorbed his mother’s personality. Upon learning this, Rick wanted to use this as the base personality of his upcoming supercomputer. In the end, the group of men, kids, and Zuffy are destined to form the ‘Defenders of The Earth’.
The Sleeper Awakes – Season 1 Episode 8
An alien race fought bravely in the great galactic war, against an extremely vile and cruel enemy. The war started when an unstoppable race of aliens started their quest to rule over the Earth. To achieve their objective, they created a mindless and heartless robot designed to destroy anything and everything that came before it. This robot, named the ‘Annihilator’, landed on Earth and was buried under for the next ten million years.
This was the same spot upon which Central City was later built. The Annihilator rests in the depths of Central City, waiting to be awakened so that it could resume the only thing it knows how to do, the only thing it was programmed to do, destroy and demolish anything that came before it. The alien named Ax Rel discloses the secret to awaken ‘Annihilator’ to ‘Ming the Merciless’ in hopes that the latter would spare Ax Rel’s planet. However, this was the alien’s biggest mistake; he should have known that Ming was not just ‘the merciless’ but also ‘the treacherous’.
Now that Ming knew how to awaken the mammoth robotic beast, he was going to use it to annihilate the ‘Defenders of the Earth’. Meanwhile, Crone, Ax Rel’s father, calls Flash Gordon to seek help regarding a matter of utmost importance, without which Crone’s planet would perish. Just as Flash leaves to see his old pal Crone, the supercomputer Dynak X reports that Ming’s ice robots had landed in the Californian deserts. They were constructing machines capable of triggering earthquakes with enough energy to destroy all of California. Rick, Jedda, and LJ leave for California, while Kshin and Zuffy remain at the headquarters. Furthermore, Lothar and Mandrake were in Paris because Mandrake was to receive the Magician of the Year award.
In Paris, Ming had sent one of his minions named Callistro, who was also a magician like Mandrake. With the help of Callistro, Ming managed to awaken the ‘Annihilator’. It started wreaking its havoc upon Central City that was left without the protection of the Defenders of the Earth. However, Kshin, Zuffy, Kisa, and Dynak X were still present. Dynamik X found out that the only way to destroy the robotic monster was from the inside.
And only Kshin was small enough to enter the robot through an opening in its heel and reach the central computer to disable it. Kshin was hesitant and scared owing to a prior experience gone bad, but Dynak X convinces him to take up the arduous job. Kshin leaves with Kisa and Zuffy. Meanwhile, the young Defenders come back to their base. Rick guides Kshin through the robot and helps him disable it from the inside, effectively ruining Ming’s plan to destroy the Defenders once again.
Hall of Wisdom – Season 1 Episode 10
Every two thousand years, the Hall of Wisdom presents itself, but only for a day. It is the universe’s largest storehouse of wisdom and houses a weapon called the Weapon of Quayzaar. Naturally, Ming the Merciless was after the weapon as it would enable him to become the ruler of the universe. The Defenders of the Earth used their remote-controlled puppet battleships to finish off one of Ming’s attacks, but he was not one to give up easily.
Flash reminds all the other Defenders that Ming would strike again, and when he does, there would be no puppet battleships, as they’ve already been destroyed to stop the last attack. Meanwhile, Ming had perfected his new molecular disrupter beam that housed the potential of destroying just about all matter, in a matter of seconds. The Defenders were waiting at the gates of the Hall of Wisdom for Dynak X to spell out the security code and Kshin noticed that a few asteroids were moving in the opposite direction to the rest.
Lothar was quick to deduce that it was Ming’s armada that was behind the anomaly. In the ensuing battle, Ming’s forces mortally wounded Rick Gordon. The enemy surrounded the Defenders, but to their absolute surprise, they got blanketed by a force field that took them inside the Hall of Wisdom. Worried that they lost Rick, the Defenders were feeling helpless. Out of nowhere came the caretaker of the Hall of Wisdom, Jarbaan, who agrees to help Rick. He places Rick on a life extender machine that was able to repair the damage that he had suffered and brought him back to life. However, as payment for the task he had performed, Jarbaan tells the Defenders that he wanted Rick and Jedda to stay back at the Hall of Wisdom. Forever. As exhibits.
When the Defenders protest, Jarbaan uses force against them and unleashes powerful alien creatures to subdue them. Nevertheless, Jedda uses her psychic abilities to convince the aliens that the Defenders came in good faith. Jarbaan later explains that he’s just the caretaker of the Hall of Wisdom, and the real power to release the kids lay with the Hall itself. Flash explains to Jarbaan that Ming was on his way to attack the Hall of Wisdom and take the Quayzaar weapon, but the caretaker doesn’t seem to buy it.
Just then, Ming destroys the gates of the Hall with his molecular disrupter and infiltrates the place. But the Hall of Wisdom was sentient and powerful; it started helping the Defenders fight back with weapons. Ming’s ice robots find the weapon, but Phantom retrieved it from them and flung it towards Rick, who got bewitched by the power it provided. However, Rick fights his temptation and tries to destroy the weapon. Noticing this, the Hall free Rick and Jedda and send them back home, because the Defenders of the Earth had proven themselves to be just and noble.
The Mind Warriors Part 1 and 2 – Season 1 Episode 11 and Episode 13
The younger Defenders were trying out the powers of the thought transference cap that Rick had built. As long as the cap is linked to the battle simulation computer, the wearer can create anything they can imagine. Just then Dynak alerts the Defenders about a deadly alien warhead that was about to crash on Earth, deep within the Amazon forests. It was a leftover device from an ancient intergalactic war, fought more than seven million years ago. The weapon was called the Doomsday device. It could destroy all life forms on a planet while leaving the planet itself intact.
Flash, Mandrake, Phantom, and Lothar leave for the Amazon rainforest to retrieve the weapon, while the others stay behind, praying that Ming doesn’t find the Doomsday Warhead before the Defenders. But Ming had already scrambled his fleet and conjured another sinister plan of overriding the battle simulation room of the Defenders, to destroy them once and for all. Just as the Defenders reached the alien warhead, Garax ambushes them from behind and imprisons them in a box of ice. He then proceeds with loading the warhead into his ship, but Mandrake succeeded in melting the ice, to free himself and the others.
Because the ice robots had destroyed their ship, the Defenders hijacked Ming’s ship and flew it to their base with the Doomsday warhead. Meanwhile, Ming was ready to override the battle simulation room to destroy the Defenders. The Defenders reach their HQ, where Rick revealed that it would take Dynak 24 hours to disarm the device. In order to kill time, the elder Defenders decided to see what Kshin could imagine using the battle simulation room, but just as they entered it, Ming took control and tried to destroy it. However, Jedda, Rick, and LJ destroyed the simulation room itself, before Ming could do any major damage. Ming then decided to abduct Kshin himself so that he could use the boy’s powerful imagination and override device to attempt once again, to terminate the Defenders of the Earth.
In the next part, Ming the Merciless decided to use his new crystal of Mongo. It had a unique molecular structure which he would incorporate with his override device, to use Kshin’s fertile imagination to create living opponents for the Defenders of the Earth. To further his plans, Ming first captures Zuffy and then blackmails Kshin to come along with Garax to Ming’s lair. On meeting Kshin, Ming threatens him to follow his bidding or else he would never see Zuffy again. Naturally, Kshin followed his words to the t, and created the most powerful and efficient enemies that the Defenders of the Earth could imagine.
The Anti-Defenders! Kshin created beasts with similar powers but far greater in strength than each of the Defenders. They used the battle simulation room to reach the Defenders and begin their goal of eradicating them. The mind warriors created by Kshin managed to steal the Doomsday warhead. Now, the only way to stop the menace was by freeing Kshin from the clutches of Ming because the mind warriors were active only because of Kshin. While the younger Defenders were tasked with saving the little kid, the elder Defenders stayed back to keep the mind warriors engaged. LJ, Jedda, and Rick managed to save Kshin, with whose help The Defenders of the Earth infiltrated Ming’s secret base and stopped him from using the Doomsday Warhead. Furthermore, Kshin also destroyed Ming’s simulation override device.
The Defense Never Rests – Season 01 Episode 21
In ‘Defense Never Rests’, the Defenders leave for space after Dynak intercepts a distress message. However, when they reach the source, it turns out to be a trap, and the Defenders get ambushed. They somehow return to their base after destroying a large solar ship. Later, Rick felt that Dynak has started to act suspicious, but the others do not believe him. When they left on Dynak’s warning that a comet had changed its course and would collide with Earth in twelve days, the Defenders left to find the comet and destroy it.
However, they were captured by an alien race and taken to the planet of Illyria. An alien named Eegra welcomed them at the gates in a not-so-warm fashion and told them that his kind had been studying the Defenders for a long time now. He describes his race as the seekers of justice, givers of law, and protectors of freedom who travel galaxies seeking primitive planets. So, Eegra’s race was basically one that acted as a court and put to trial anyone who tried to conquer a world. Ming had made a fake video where the Defenders of the Earth were shown wreaking havoc on Earth and putting lives at risk. Naturally, the Illyrians captured them to put them on trial against Ming’s false accusations.
But Flash Gordon had a plan to escape the unfair trial and bring proof that Ming’s video was fake, and that he was the real warlord intending to conquer Earth. Mandrake created a distraction that allowed them to flee the courtroom, but only LJ, Jedda, and Rick managed to escape. They found out that Ming had created clones of the original Defenders and also a phony newsroom. They brought these pieces of evidence back to the Illyrians, where Eegra and the others found them innocent. However, Ming managed to escape once again.
Terror in Time – Season 01 Episode 26
Ming the Merciless created a mutant lifeform and kept it hidden from the world in his ice station. However, Phantom and Lothar steal the mutant lifeform. On their way out with the other Defenders, they are ambushed by Ming’s minions. The Defenders of the Earth somehow succeed at escaping, but the lifeform broke its containment and ran amock on the ship. Meanwhile, it became clear that Ming’s ice robots were trying to push the Defenders into some kind of a dimensional vortex. On their way into the vortex, however, the mutant lifeform infected Mandrake.
It turned out to be a parasite that fed on living beings. The vortex transported them back to King Arthur’s time, where Ming wanted the Defenders not just to steal the mutant but also bring it back in time to kill all humans on Earth. However, the Defenders of the Earth made friends with Valiant of the round table, whose wife was entrusted with the protection of the eternity stone, the source of all true magic. She was abducted by an evil sorcerer. Naturally, the Defenders of the Earth decided to join forces with Valiant to help him and find a way back to the future. As the Defenders made their way to find Valiant’s wife, the evil sorcerer Warlock summoned his ghostly minions and unleashed them onto the Defenders. They soon figure out that these ghosts were mere illusions that didn’t exist.
With this newfound knowledge, the Defenders tried to reach Valiant’s wife, but Phantom, who had already made his way to her, got temporarily captured by Warlock. However, the Phantom summoned the power of ten tigers and broke free of his restraints. The other Defenders used Merlin’s eternity stone to defeat Warlock. When Mandrake touched the stone, it removed the mutant lifeform from his infected hand and directed it towards Warlock’s face, who jumped out of the castle in a state of frenzy. The day was saved by Valiant’s wife, who not only brought the Defenders back their drowned ship but also opened the time vortex that had earlier been closed. The Defenders of the Earth successfully save the Earth once again, this time by going back in time.
The Ghost Walks Again – Season 01 Episode 30
A century ago, humanoid aliens called the Fallou crash-landed on Earth and were saved by the then Phantom, who promised them security and safety from the outside world. They lived on a remote island in a secret valley and possessed a magical elixir of life. In the present day, a rich industrialist named Kent Madden is wrongly obsessed with the fact that he has a life-threatening disease, so he contacts Partha, the prince of king Ajuna of the Fallou. Madden offers him riches and gems in return for the elixir, but Partha only wants the freedom to explore the outside world. Madden agrees to give him that and contacts Ming the Merciless for weapons and equipment that would help Partha become the king by dethroning his father and allowing him to live the way he wants.
As Madden left the place, the Phantom and Jedda notice his hovercraft but couldn’t deduce who was in it. On the island, Partha and Jedda meet and seem to develop a bond. When she returns with her father to the Defenders of the Earth headquarters, she learns that it was Madden who was leaving on the hovercraft from the island. It became evident that the Fallous’s secret was not safe anymore. Naturally, it became Phantom’s duty to save the Fallou from any danger. Mandrake, Lothar, and Flash Gordon were on Jupiter taking care of another affair, so Jedda and The Phantom leave for the island of the Fallou by themselves.
Just as they reach the place, they get attacked. In the ensuing struggle, it seemed that the Phantom had died, as only his belt was retrieved. However, the Phantom wasn’t dead, but this was unknown to Jedda. Jedda donned her father’s costume and became the 28th Phantom and the first female one. Soon, Jedda realized that Partha had been in contact with the outside world, from some of the remarks that he had made in the past.
Because of Jedda’s harsh words, Partha had changed from within, but it was too little too late as Ming attacked the Fallou with his army. Partha joined Jedda in her quest to save his people. To everyone’s relief, the Phantom returned and helped destroy Ming’s army once again, but Partha was mortally wounded in the fight. King Ajuna used the last vial of the elixir to save his son, who turned out to be an ancient man. Naturally, Jedda and Partha’s relationship ended before it even began, and she left with her father.
Return of the Sky Band – Season 01 Episode 41
Long ago, the 25th Phantom came in conflict with air pirates called the ‘Sky Band’ that consisted of only women. It is the Phantom code never to hurt a woman, so the 25th Phantom decided to use brains over brawns and made the leader of the Sky Band, the baroness, believe that he wanted to join the Sky Band. However, once the 25th Phantom made his move on the baroness, she got scared of the ‘ghost who walks’ and accidentally jumped off a plane. Eighty years later, an ore transport ship in space gets looted, and the modus operandi seemed to be the same as that of the old Sky Band. It was clear that the all-women pirate group had returned.
The Defenders of the Earth leave the headquarters to rescue a mining ship in deep space, where the Phantom comes in contact with a woman named Kristina, who was also the newest leader of the Sky Band and the granddaughter of the woman who apparently died at the hands of the 25th Phantom. The other Defenders of the Earth engaged the woman pirates while the Phantom gave Kristina a chase. Once he successfully defeated her, Kristina planned to blow up the entire ship. Although she would have died in the process, she wanted to ensure that she exacted her grandmother’s revenge from the man ‘who cannot die’. However, the Phantom saved Kristina and vindicated his grandfather in the process. But being a man of the law, he handed her over to the authorities.
The Necklace of Oros – Season 01 Episode 56
When Jedda came of age, the Phantom took her to the skull cave to give her a special gift. She could choose from the riches and mysterious objects placed inside the cave by various Phantoms. Jedda chose the mysterious and powerful Necklace of Oros, which was placed in the cave by the very first Phantom. However, an alien named Graviton who wanted to rule the universe was after the necklace as well. Interestingly enough, the alien also possessed the secret of gravity, and Ming the Merciless wanted to learn about this secret.
Naturally, they struck a deal- Jedda Walker in return for the secret of gravity. Later, Jedda goes with the kids to a new amusement park to celebrate her birthday. But what they didn’t know is that it was a fake park that Ming and his ice robots controlled. One by one, Ming’s minions began to attack the kids. Moreover, Jedda’s black panther Kisa got under some kind of spell produced by Graviton, who wanted the Necklace of Oros. Kisa snatched the necklace from Jedda. The black panther was following all of the alien’s biddings until it asked her to attack Jedda. The loyal pet broke out of the spell and returned the Necklace of Oros to Jedda.
The kids returned back to the headquarters, and the older Defenders wondered what the origin of the Necklace of Oros was. Mandrake put her in a trance and made Jedda recall the events. She tells them that the necklace called to her when she first saw it. It belonged to another universe where a cruel ruler led the common mass. However, a rebellion was coming up, and the rebels had transported the necklace to Earth, where it was handed over to the first Phantom for safekeeping. Graviton infiltrated the headquarters and demanded the necklace, but Jedda learned how to use the necklace to compress time. Scared of this, Graviton fled the place with the promise to come back another day.
Flesh and Blood – Season 01 Episode 61
Three super robots, or the League of Flesh and Blood, are attacking the galaxy at various places to get rid of the other robots. Their intention was to promote human supremacy because they believed that robots were actually making humans weak and depriving them of the spirit of humanity. When they attack a space facility of the US, the Defenders of the Earth take cognizance of the situation. Meanwhile, Ming attacks a power station that’s fully run by robots. Its chief, however, informs the Defenders of the Earth just in time for them to reach the place and save it from Ming the Merciless’s ice robots.
It turns out that the three robots that were destroying the other robots were a part of the power station’s crew. When Flash saw them, he could smell something fishy. Soon Flash figured out that the crew members were the league of flesh and blood, apart from being robots themselves. The strange thing was that they truly believed that they were humans and were fighting for humanity’s cause. After Flash Gordon exposed them to the world through the press, the league of flesh and blood went into hiding for a while, only to join hands with ‘Ming the Merciless’, who kidnapped the younger defenders.
Ming wanted to transfer the artificial intelligence of the super robots into LJ, Rick, and Jedda. Luckily, the elder Defenders of the Universe soon arrived at the spot to stop that from happening. But the super robots proved to be more than a match for the defenders. However, Flash managed to make a super robot named Kayla to see that being human doesn’t mean flesh and blood, but rather holding love and care in the heart. Kayla seemed to understand this, and she subdued the other two super robots. Ultimately, all the kids were saved.
The Thunder Lizards of Ming – Season 01 Episode 65
In a bizarre turn of events, a T Rex attacked the Alaskan coast and began destroying the area. Naturally, the Defenders of the Earth were called in for help. However, it was all happening because of one of Ming’s more elaborate plans. Dynak backtracked the dinosaur’s location and revealed that it came from one of the extinct volcanoes with no inhabitants nearby. The volcano was showing signs of eruption once again. ‘Ming the Merciless’ was using the volcanoes’ heat to thaw out the long-dormant giant reptiles in a bid to launch an attack on humanity. He had drilled more than 20 miles within the Earth’s surface and changed the climate from sub-arctic to tropical.
After finding out that Ming and Garax were present at the scene, the Defenders of the Earth went into a valley filled with violent carnivorous dinosaurs. What the Defenders couldn’t figure out yet was why Ming was raising the dinosaurs. In the valley, they are attacked by a pack of three dinosaurs whom Jedda was able to befriend using her mind. They soon also got attacked by a T Rex. The defenders found the facility from which Ming was releasing the dinosaurs by thawing them out. However, Ming and his minions got to know about the defenders’ presence.
The only way to stop the dinosaurs from destroying humanity and becoming the dominant species on Earth once again was by destroying the drilling station that provided the required heat and favorable environment. While the elder defenders fought dinosaurs, LJ, Rick, and Jedda destroyed the drilling station, which somehow turned the volcano into an active one. The event killed all the dinosaurs, and the Defenders of the Earth saved Earth one again from a possible prehistoric calamity.