The cliff-hanger escape to this episode is the most blatant cheat so far. Previously, we saw the impact of the crash knock Flash to the ground as the ship exploded. Here, he doesn't even fall down, he just grabs a ray gun and shoots open the jammed door BEFORE the collision, floating safely to the ground with his Martian wings. The enemy ship explodes though, so job done, I guess.
Down on the ground, the Clay People haul Dale and Happy back into the caves via their chains. Happy comments that he hopes Flash rescues them soon because he's “through getting pushed around by a lot of mud pies”.
The Clay Kingdom turns out to be a lot more advanced than we previously thought because it turns out that they have a super cool underground subway system that even the Martians don't know about. Flash and Zarkov are looking for their friends when they overhear the Clay People saying that Dale and Happy will soon be turned into clay if Flash doesn't bring Azura like he promised. Zarkov, being the intuitive scientist that he is, reasons that the turning-into-clay thing is to do with prolonged exposure to the atmosphere of the caves. If you say so, Z-man.
Anyway, Flash and Zarkov decide to have another go at getting Azura, so Flash decoys a guard and they jump on a subway tube, arriving at a ladder that takes them right into Azura's domain. It's kind of hilarious that the two kingdoms are so easily connected, but at least it's convenient and saves all that faffing about with Strato-sleds.
Speaking of convenient, it turns out the ladder leads directly into Ming's lab. Needing Nitron, Flash and Zarkov beat up some Martian guards, in another fight with frankly outrageously obvious stunt men.
Flash and Zarkov win easily and Flash sets about chucking men down the ladder hatch while Zarkov looks for Nitron. However, it turns out there's only a small amount left and Zarkov says that to get more, they'll have to keep the Nitron Beam going, meaning that they'll have to keep destroying the Earth for a bit, despite that being the whole reason they came to Mars in the first place. Flash enjoys the irony.
You can't leave Zarkov alone in a lab for even five minutes without him coming up with a new weapon or two and before you know it, he's whipped up a Paralyser Ray and is making plans to create a new weapon. Ming and Azura are listening in on the Televisor and they decide they want Zarkov's weapon, so they send in some guards. However, Flash distracts them all with a hilariously terrible whistle (“Don't worry, Buster, we'll add that in post-production...”) and then locks them all in a chamber in a needlessly complicated sequence that uses a curtain for some reason.
With the guards safely locked up, Flash and Zarkov turn their attention to the newly-invented Paralyser Gun. “Try it out on me!”, Flash says. “No, try it out on me!”, Zarkov replies. Just a couple of lads, having a few laughs. Anyway, Zarkov zaps a still smiling Flash, who's instantly paralysed.
With impeccable timing, Ming arrives and frees his men and they burst into the lab to find a frozen Flash. Ming is amused and orders Zarkov to keep Flash frozen, but Zarkov warns the paralyser ray hasn't been tested and the whole thing could go boom.
Azura's there too and she insists that they don't damage the gun. Then the ray wears off and Flash fakes being frozen before grabbing the gun and freezing Ming and his men. Azura's too quick for them though and does her disappearing-in-a-puff-of-smoke trick, somehow managing to flood the subway tubes with poison gas as she does so.
Cut off from the subway, Flash and Zarkov leg it out to the airfield and head for some rocky wasteland. Azura orders her men to board a bomber and “Strike from the air!” The bomber duly heads straight for Flash and Zarkov. A very excited guard zaps Zarkov (at least, that's what it looks like) and he falls over just as the bomber moves in for the kill. Flash runs over to help Zarkov but – DISASTER!- he accidentally turns on the Paralyser Gun and freezes himself as the bomber heads directly for him.
Incidentally, it's never made clear what “The Boomerang” of the chapter title is meant to be. The subway, maybe?
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