Dale Arden

In the opening arc, of Defenders of the Earth, also known as The Story Begins, Flash Gordon and his son Rick escape Ming the Merciless from the dying planet Mongo.

Ming seeks Earth's resources and drains the life force of Flash's wife, Dale.

Her essence is preserved in the new supercomputer Dynac-X.

The heroes unite as the Defenders of the Earth establish their volcanic-based monitor and battle Ming's forces.

And I think Tony and I were probably the right age for this to work on because I think they were targeting young folks that were our age when this series came out to introduce them to as Tony was saying more of the you know say pre-Superman era you know pulp adventure sci-fi you know serialized you know kind of stars right like where it's like okay but then Flash Gordon had a feature film so it's interesting to me because they seem to lean really heavily on the mythology of Flash Gordon but they kind of do their own shit with it too like and So it's

like

Flash Gordon, I think, you know, it's like, I don't know, it was almost mind boggling to me because I think I read somewhere that technically, even though this series came out in 1986, I guess it was set in 2026. like and so i'm like sitting there kind of going oh it's set like right now like and like and like there i don't know there's something mind-blowing to me about that but then the the other thing is that's supposed to explain like oh that's why they have lasers and and then that fits with the standards and practices of the time you know that they don't have you know guns and bullets and and whatever right but ming you know, the Flash Gordon lore is Mongo isn't like destroyed or you know not habitable or whatever you know you know what I mean like it's like they it's almost like and and to me it's like well Ming's not an ice planet like Hoth you know in in most of the source material so it's like they kind of took and picked things from different sci-fi lores and comic lores that worked for them it almost seems like Mongo was like Hoth and then he's got ice robots and Garrix and like all that stuff is kind of lore that's created specifically for defenders of the earth and is not really part of flash gordon lore but then like there's hints of it where like they never call her dale in the episode but it's like rick's your mom is is dale arden right but And then, but, and I guess the only way I can justify that is in, you know, more recent modern comics, they basically straight up say she's Dale, right? Like, and maybe going into, I know we were talking a little bit about X-Men 97 earlier before we started the call, but like, you know, the idea that like, oh, it's so mind blowing, they killed Morph and you know, like in the original X-Men show and things like that.

But it's like, this is also interesting to me too, because even though, you know, you could argue, oh, well, two minutes later, she comes back as a computer program and she's Dynac X, right? And she didn't really quote unquote die.