Episode One picks up right where Space Soldiers left off, with Flash, Dale and Zarkov returning to Earth in their rocket ship. Amusingly, despite leaving Mongo a long-haired blonde, Dale is now a brunette with a fashionably short hair-do.
Feted upon their return, Zarkov holds a glitzy press conference, taking the opportunity to issue a stark warning, saying that it's very likely the Earth could be invaded in the near future, and that aliens might even develop light-speed travel methods. Cut to Ming (who – surprise!- is not dead after all) and Queen Azura, who are, at that very moment, beaming a Martian to Earth.
Although he dies immediately afterwards, the Martian plants a device which issues a hissing cloud of steam and soon, there is chaos and destruction on Earth as a result of “atmospheric disturbances” and the Light Ray, which is also still needed for some reason.
Enter reporter “Happy” Hapgood (played by Donald Kerr), a new character who's clearly been brought on board in order to give the Trip to Mars a bit of comic relief. He uses a clever reporter's trick to track down Zarkov and Flash, just as they parachute out of a crashing airplane they've been using for their experiments.
Dale's there too, along with an impressively powerful wind machine.
Flash, incidentally, does not take kindly to nosey reporters and he traps Happy in some barbed wire. Bit of a school bully move, if you ask me. Not cool, Flash. Still, it gives you a flavour of the sort of comic relief you can expect from ol' Happy.
Anyway, Zarkov concludes from his airplane-based experiements that there's a Light Ray from Mongo that is causing all the destruction, so he immediately announces that he's going back into space. Flash and Dale say that of course they'll go with him too. You'd think Dale would have had her fill of Mongo, given all the Tigrons, Octo-pods and forced marriages, but no, she's well up for it.
Meanwhile, on Mars, we discover that the Light Ray is extracting the Earth's supplies of Nitron (that's nitrogen to us Earthlings), which Queen Azura needs for her war against the Clay People of Mars.
Azura's full title is “Azura, Great Queen of Magic”, and we get a demonstration of her powers when she turns a supposed traitor into a Clay Person and banishes him, before disappearing in a puff of smoke herself. It's not entirely clear how she can just turn her subjects into Clay People, but no doubt it will all make sense later on.
Incidentally, the Clay People make-up is deeply disturbing and I remember being transfixed by it as a kid. It's still creepy now.
Anyway, there are early indications that maybe Azura isn't so bad after all, as she asks Ming to switch off the Light Ray now they have all the Nitron they need. Ming, however, refuses, saying he's going to kill ALL EARTHLINGS as a revenge for his defeat at the hand of Zarkov and Flash. Azura seemed perfectly okay with Ming killing Earth's atmosphere in their previous scene, but whatever.
Meanwhile, Zarkov, Flash and Dale have wasted no time and are already on their way in the rocketship. It is safe to say Dale has not packed appropriate space-wear.
Of course, they also discover that Hapgood has stowed away on the rocket, apparently without realising that doing so could lead to him ending up in space. Not the brightest tool in the box, that Hapgood. Needless to say, Flash isn't happy about it.
Still, there's no time to fight, as Zarkov discovers that the Light Ray isn't coming from Mongo, as he previously thought, but from Mars, Also, his calculations are off, or something, because the ship crashes straight into the beam! There's a flash of light and the rocket drops like a stone, going into a deadly tail spin. How will our heroes escape?
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