Awesome / Defenders of the Earth

• The premise of the series, a crossover between Flash Gordon, The Phantom, and Mandrake the Magician.
• The theme song, with lyrics by Stan Lee.
• In episode 1, Ming surmises that if the Earthling heroes have kids, those kids go to school. He locates the school and has his men capture two of the kids in order to lure the adult heroes into a trap, setting them up for execution at an abandoned prison. How far does he get with his plan? They throw the switch.
  • He also kills Flash's wife and Rick's mother (likely to be Dale Arden).
• Ming's son, Kro-Tan, gets one when he reduces his father to molecules, takes over his operations, and neatly conquers Earth—until a beast he summons proves too powerful to control.
  • And that beast's one weakness? Zuffoids.
• In "The Ghost Walks Again" the Phantom appears to have been killed in action and Jedda takes up her father's mantle as the first (openly) female Phantom. Not the first female though; Julie Walker, daughter of the 17th Phantom, occasionally used a padded costume to fill in when her twin brother was too injured to tend his usual duties.
• The confrontation between Mandrake and the destroyer god Shiva in "The Gods Awake" deserves a mention. Mandrake gains possession of the episode's MacGuffin and enters the magical realm of Bodhidama with it, knowing full well how dangerous Shiva is and that the god will follow him in order to get this item back. It looks as though Mandrake may not survive this confrontation, especially after Ming traps him in Bodhidama, but then Theron contacts him and tells him that his normally illusory powers are real while he's in this magical realm. Armed with this knowledge, Mandrake single-handedly defeats Shiva. He then enters the portal (which has been reopened) and takes down the three statues which Shiva brought to life, before escaping from Bodhidama.
  • Points also go to Kshin for running all the way back to the College of Magic in order to alert Theron to the danger Mandrake is in.

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