Five space explorers reach Arus to find Zarkon's fleet has already levelled the capital. They eject rather than crash-land, are taken to Planet Doom as slave labour, and break out of a tower dungeon with a rope and a lucky flock of vultures. The legend of Voltron arrives on the way down to Arus, as a story one of them tells the others.

KEITH: "Space explorers calling Galaxy Garrison. This is Air Unit leader Keith. We're approaching Planet Arus, and no problem."

DIPLOMAT: "Zarkon's planet is over two thousand light-years away. We'd never get there in time to be of help. Their best hope is to try for an escape."

YURAK: "Attention, you miserable fools! Some new slaves will be arriving soon! You will them that escape is impossible and obedience is imperative if they wish to avoid the sting of my whip!"

HAGGAR: "Beware! The Castle of Lions holds the secret of Voltron! Just hope no one discovers it!" ZARKON: "Silence, Haggar! Voltron is no match for me!"

KEITH: "Nobody can keep us in a dingy hole like this! We're space explorers, and we need space!"

HUNK: "Okay! I-I just can't stand heights!" LANCE: "Imagine a space explorer afraid of heights!"

HUNK: "I hate to think of what this place means."

KEITH: "Vultures may not be very attractive, but they gave us a hand and we should be grateful."

A giant robot show opens without its giant robot.

The five explorers approach Arus expecting a routine arrival, no problem in Keith's words, and Hunk's first guess at the fire on the horizon is an asteroid shower. It is Zarkon's fleet, and it is already finishing. The streets are empty, the people are in their underground shelters, and Keith's own verdict on the capital is that all they can do now is help rebuild it. Then a ship that stayed behind to mop up finds them, and they eject, because Keith decides that being captured beats crash-landing.

Cut to Galaxy Garrison, where Marshal Graham wants a rescue mission sent at once and a diplomat tells him Planet Doom is over two thousand light-years away. Nothing can reach them in time. The scene runs less than a minute and it is the episode. There is no robot, there is no rescue, there are no defenders left on Arus, and the only thing anybody can name that might change that is a legend about a castle. The title event is over before the first commercial break, because the capture is not the problem the episode wants to show you.

Planet Doom receives them as stock: a full load of captives for the slave force, with five space explorers as an extra added prize. Yurak addresses the arriving slaves over a loudspeaker, promising the sting of his whip, and Zarkon watches a blue Robeast work through a crowd of people who were civilians on Arus that morning. When Hunk finds the tattoo on his arm and asks whether Lance got one too, Lance's answer is that Zarkon will pay for it, but the mark lands harder than the threat does, because a cartoon made to sell toys has just branded its heroes as property.

The escape is unglamorous, but it is the best sequence in the episode. Nobody has a vehicle or a weapon. What they have is a window Pidge is small enough to reach, bars Hunk is strong enough to bend, and the rope they were tied with on the way in, which Keith sends Pidge back for because it is the only equipment in the cell. Sven and Lance take turns at the door while Hunk works, and a guard looks in, decides they are asleep, and tells Zarkon they will fight better tomorrow! Hunk freezes halfway down the wall and admits he cannot stand heights, and the show gets the joke in before we do: imagine a space explorer afraid of heights! Then the vultures circling the Robeast's feeding pit lift the crew off the castle and drop them into a floor of bones, which Lance apologises for disturbing. Hunk says he hates to think what this place means. Nobody answers him. They climb out into the arena, steal the prison ship that brought them, get clear of Doom, and are shot down within a minute by Yurak's pursuit ship.[1]

So Voltron arrives with about three minutes left, falling, and it arrives as a story. A beam from a stone lion catches the crippled ship and glides it toward the Castle of Lions, Hunk asks whether that is where the secret is hidden, and Keith tells the legend on the way down: a defender of justice, invincible, until Zarkon's witch Haggar disguised herself as a goddess and waited for him to come near. The curse could not destroy him, so she broke him into five. Two lions make the legs, two the arms and body, one the head. Haggar is not ancient history in this telling. She is standing next to Zarkon six minutes earlier, warning him that the Castle of Lions holds the secret and being told to be quiet, so the thing that beat Voltron is still on the payroll and still being ignored. The episode ends with the crew knowing all of it and holding none of it. They are still gliding, toward a castle they have not reached, on a planet that has already fallen. It is a strange and rather brave place to leave an audience of children who tuned in for the robot on the cereal box.[2]

[1] The prison ship is the same one that carried them in, which the script is careful to point out: Lance spots it in the arena and calls it the slave ship that brought them here. This production plays fast and loose with its own detail most weeks, yet the script holds onto that one, and it is worth flagging where it does.

[2] The commercial-break bumpers survive in this cut, narrator and all. They mark where the American edit cut the source rather than where the Japanese episode had its breaks, so timings taken from this print will not match a Golion running order. This entry is drawn from the print in the archive; where another release runs to a different length, the film and release pages carry the disagreement.

Written by The voltronvault.com desk