The Plot of Voltron: Lion Series, Season 1
as told by King Zarkon
"From days of long ago, from unchartered regions of the Universe, comes a legend. The legend of Voltron, Defender of the Universe. A mighty robot, loved by good, feared by evil. As Voltron's legend grew, peace settled across the galaxy. On Planet Earth, a Galaxy Alliance was formed. Together with the good planets of the Solar System, they maintained peace throughout the Universe until a new horrible menace threatened the galaxy. Voltron was needed once more. This is the story of a super force of space explorers, specially trained, and sent by the Alliance, to bring back...Voltron, Defender of the Universe!"
Okay, this synopsis played in the beginning of every Voltron episode of the 80's. If you ever actually payed attention to it, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions and also manages to screw up plot points. Pretty impressive for the first 42 seconds of a series...before the episode even begins! Then again, perhaps no one was expecting analysis of a show's prologue originally designated for 3-year-olds who liked playing with robot toys. It managed to plug Voltron twice, so even if the least a brain processed was "blahblahblah Voltron blahblahblah Voltron...", its job was done. However, it doesn't clue the novice viewer in to what exactly the menace was. Well, I'll tell you.
The Lion Voltron series's menace was the Doom Empire. It was
headed by yours truly,King Zarkon. In the tradition of imperialism, my Empire was
having a blast, in most cases literally, conquering other planets and
enslaving the peoples. Before you start whining, just remember that the Doom Empire isn't half as bad as your planet's ancient Third
Reich; there are plenty of employment opportunities for the vanquished in my lands.
There's no fun in being a ruler if you kill everybody off...who would
there be to rule over? My point exactly. Yurak was doing a wonderful job,
I had whipped the worlds of the Denubian Galaxy into submission...until
Planet Arus came up on the itinerary. AGAIN.
Planet Arus was ruled by the typical foil to an evil king: a
good (read: wimpy) king. Undead King Alfor. While Arus seemed to be full of
medieval overtones, he was somehow technologically inclined. Case in
point? He was the current proprietor of Voltron. Voltron did some major
damage control. Now, I had a dilemma. What to do?
Maybe hiring a witch under the pretense of marriage wouldn't be
your first choice, but no one ever credited a megalomaniac for being
a realist now, did they? So silence before I toss you headfirst into the deepest part of the Pit of Skulls! Ahem, anyway, I hired Hagar (or Haggar, depending if you think her parent's had an inkling about her ending up a dried prune or that she has a side gig designing menswear), she disguised herself as a space
goddess, luring Voltron close enough for her uber-spell to work. She
split Voltron into 5 Lions and sent them careening into 5 areas of
Arus. I laughed and clapped and drank some wine, certain that it would be worth the loss of privacy by an ever-peeping witch and her cat. Going back on the marriage proposal probably didn't help my case, but I like to think my snazzy dress suggests I'm "unavailable." *cough*
Now, this has always been open to some debate. Was Voltron able
to be 5 Lions before Hagar came around? Or was it an original whole
robot that got split up? Honestly...I have no friggin' clue. Sorry.
All that was
left was my getting rid of Alfor. I had a sword duel with technogeek Alfor on
Arus in the Valley of Zohar (it's LV Season Two, it's canon, deal with it), and well, in layman's terms, I kicked the
ever-living shit out of him.If you've ever seen
how Alfor's corpse was buried, he's all bandaged up and looks like a
mummy. Even got the pharoah gold head going. Oh, well wouldn't ya know,
I have a picture of it!
He's all bandaged up because I hacked him up into little itty-bitty pieces; the gold head
gives people an idea of what Alfor looked like before he became sausage
filler. The people of Arus fled into
caves at the sign of their inane ruler's defeat. All that was left of the royal court was an advisor, a
governess, and Alfor's daughter, Allura. I went home
to Planet Doom. Arus was occupied by Doom ships, and
any people caught were enslaved. And thus this went on for seven wonderful years.
Eventually, Galaxy Garrison (a planet...some say it's Earth; I
think it's a planet in the Denubian, take your pick) figured out that
Arus needed some help; my ambassadors kept on saying there was no
attack. That's what I pay them for. The Alliance sends 5 space explorers, all under their
legal age to drink, to give humanitarian aid to Arus. Keith, Sven,
Lance, Hunk, and Pidge were their names, in no particular order.
Once they enter Arus's atmosphere, my forces jump on them
like a flea on a feral cat's fur, imprisoning the quintet and take
them to Planet Doom. They are not alone; there are many slaves aboard
the escort as well. Once on Doom, they are lead out by robotic guards,
and have to pass the then-capable commander-in-chief, Yurak. They await their turn at the gladiator arena, my favorite sport.
Bloodsport is all the
rage on Doom: screw your football with all its padding and helmets! Robeast
vs. hemophiliac with a sword...even if the slave simply trips and
falls on his sword, it's damn entertaining. Plus you don't have to
worry about agents or contracts. I can be seen in the VIP
lounge, clapping and laughing at the spectacle. Incidentally, you may get the
impression that there are no nail files in my Empire.
The space explorers are not going to take this sitting down.
They manage to escape. It involved Pidge jumping 42 feet without a
single pre-squat, and hijacking gigantic vultures. The 5 vultures get
annoyed and start twitching. The explorers lose their grip and fall
several tens of feet onto a huge pile of bones. Assume Doom has less
gravity if you must; that's what the soldiers I ordered executed after this did. Without breaking any bones of
their own, the explorers vow to avenge these poor suckers...er, I mean,
victims...but to do that, they know they have to get off Doom first.
With the hijacking urge still in them, they rage against my Doom
machine by stealing a slave ship right out of the dock. Their getaway
is far from subtle. After breaking sundry attacking robots and crashing
into a tower of Castle Doom, everybody on the planet knows about it.
At this point, I want to put my foot up Yurak's cybernetic ass...or at least
poke him in his good eye. Yurak senses this and promises to catch them.
He runs out before he, or we ever learn if his pay got docked to pay
The space explorers end up near Arus again. They recall the
legend of Voltron. The slave ship about to go up like a burrito in a
microwave for too long, they eject out before it crashes into a
mountain. Yurak sees the ship go up in flames, and it was enough for
him to surmise they were extra crispy by now. He returns to Doom all
happy. Now, the 5 boys are on Arus. No weapons, no food. The Arusian
denizens throw spears and arrows at them because they think they are
enemies. Life sucks for them. Now the space explorers need
humanitarian aid! HA HA! In typical fashion, after no communication with
the team, the GG officials assume something went wrong, but, they all
collectively shrug their shoulders and hope the training the team went
through will help them out of the bind. How have Throk and Hazar failed to conquer these worms?!
Suddenly, a pretty light through a dense fog reveals a bashed
up castle with a winged lion statue. The pretty light was coming from
the statue; it was leading the space explorers to the castle! Since
they have nothing to lose, they go up to the castle. They go through
its doors, and are greeted by Coran, the Court Advisor. Acually, Coran
isn't too friendly; he's downright suspicious of these fellows. 
Pidge looks up and beholds the Princess Allura. Then,
the rest of them do the same.Allura says she trusts them, and cries
about what her people have had to go through (this does not stop though the remainder of the show; consequently I bought Kleenex stock to cover my losses). She wants to save them.
The space explorers want to help. How to help? Resurrect Voltron, of
course!!!
In the bowels of the castle is the royal crypt. In Alfor's tomb,
five keys surround his body...oh, wait, did I say five? Better make
that four. Sucks for all of them, because you need five keys to wake up
five lions. Then five lions make up one Voltron. So, no Voltron yet.
But 4 four robot lions is better than zero robot lions! Where the hell
is the fifth key?! A bunch of blue mice had it. They thought it was
shiny and purty. They told the Princess so. They relinquish the key,
and the space explorers each get one and get read to go buckwild. Keith
gets Black Lion, Lance gets Red Lion, Sven gets the Blue Lion, Hunk
gets the Yellow Lion, and Pidge gets the Green Lion. They also get
spiffy spandex uniforms that don't coordinate with their lions.
Now, the tables turn. Voltron decimates anything my forces throws at
them. Robeasts, ships, it's all garbage when Voltron's done. I blame Yurak because I hired him specifically to prevent things like that from happening. I court marshal him before the Doom governors
and exile him. But Yurak wants one more chance because not only is he stupid, he's stubborn. I guess he lost the urge for self-preservation when he upgraded his brain to Vista. My son, Prince Lotor,
enters the scene.
He tells me (not with a straight face, mind you, because he's as subtle as a porcupine in a balloon factory) that rumors about Voltron are spreading
everywhere. He somehow convinces me to give Yurak one more chance: he makes him a giant
robeast. What the hell, only more money from the Treasury Hagar squanders in her R&D division, right?
Voltron kills Yurak, but only after Lotor's premeditated duel
with Keith to prevent Voltron from being formed ends (rock > mullet).Now, Lotor is the
commander-in-chief. Too bad he's more interested in jumping Allura's
bones than conquering Arus. He also wants to rule Doom, and schemes to
oust me every waking moment. But he's in for a rough battle: I won't die so easily. Poison has no effect on me.
Challenging me to a duel was plain stupid; just because I
wear muu-muus that inhibit stride length, doesn't mean I can't be
double-jointed and adept at sleight of hand. Lotor rips my cape with a
single strike, but I bisect Lotor's helmet AND make him
bleed...plus Lotor had jumped and his head was really, really up
there. Being tall has its advantages; if only the Drule Empire had a basketball team when I was young, I could've had a whole other life. Nah, I'm not bitter, not at all about the fact that the Harlem Globetrotters have never returned my phone calls! How dare they!
Guess what? The plot thins. Allura takes Sven's place after Hagar injures him, and he gets
shipped off to Doom. So, wearing a pink spandex uniform, she flies the
Blue Lion. Eventually, Sven is rescued, and he helps overthrow Doom.
Overthrow Doom?! Yup, third time's a charm for my darling dunce of a descendant, Lotor. This gets a
little complicated, so stay with me. Okay: I tire of Lotor being
a loser and put him in a prison cell. I personally head the fleet to Arus.
Allura's castle becomes a spaceship. No, I'm not kidding. I loo...I looos...well, the opposite of flawless victory. Great, now I'm nauseous; the opposite of winning always makes me ill.
Now, the Drule Empire (I don't like them, they don't like me, it's all
in the family.) finds this out and concludes that I'm the
problem. So, they arrange for Lotor's breakout. Imagine my
surprise when my ship lands and all my soldiers are pointing
guns at me! I tell Lotor to cut the crap and haul ass
because Voltron's coming to destroy our home base. Lotor thinks this
is a trick, but just in case, orders Hagar to build a robeast and slam
me in it. That's a grateful son for you; here I am, a single parent for Evil Gods knows how many years, but I'm the bad guy. Shred me to pieces in reformed!Lotor fanfic, what do I care? Just because I don't grow bishie hair doesn't mean I don't have feelings. Well, at least my legal team suing on my behalf due to such libel keeps my Empire from going under. What was I saying? Oh yeah, Hagar really goes all out making a robeast for me. She has feelings for me. You say "Awwwww" and I say "AHHH!". So, I battle Voltron, hacking the crap out of the robot, and
break that irritating Blazing Sword! You would think it's game over for the humans, right? No possible way in any Universe this could be rectified, right? Remember Alfor? Well, he's
been haunting the Voltron Force throughout the whole damn series. Hence my referring to him as "undead" a while back.
In hindsight, I should have just put Alfor in a coma; I would've won.
But, the ghost of Alfor tells his daughter to
place her Lion key on the outside of Voltron. Remember those damn mice that had the fifth key?
Well, they happened to come for the ride, complete with a mini-Voltron
in the shape of a mouse. Stupid mice! She gives them the key, they dump it
outside. The Blazing Sword reforms. Voltron defeats me, not the mice. That's my story and I'm sticking to it; it's bad enough I had to do the opposite of win at all! I
escape in a ship after that disgusting bout of deus ex machina and come back when the dust's settled and
everyone's dumb enough to leave. Now, Lotor's not TOO upset. He's like,
"Aw, shucks," but at least I'm gone. Hagar takes it hard, though.
She grieves by destroying Lotor's decoys, calling him a loser, and
quitting on the spot. Kinda redeemed her a bit in my eyes. Lotor doesn't care. He puts up quite a fight with
snake lasers and soldiers. He manages to capture a
zealous Sven. Threatening to harm his hostage if Voltron does anything,
he has a giant ray cannon start shooting the robot. Sven does the
noble, selfless thing, and tries to stab Lotor when the mice shoot pins
at Lotor's ear. Both Lotor and Sven fall into water at the bottom of
Castle Doom. They were on the top floor of Castle Doom.
Lotor's escapes, Sven's recovered. Everyone goes back to Arus and test their pollen allergies in a field full of flowers. The End of Lion Voltron's Season 1. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to kick off Doom's 1st Annual "Stomp the Guts out of Blue Mice" Day.
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