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Zorro Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
26 Episodes 0 - 1990
Episode 0
Zorro: The Legend Continues
22 mins
While studying in Spain, Don Antonio de la Cruz (Patrick James) is asked to return to his native California by his ailing father. Upon his arrival, he discovers the Alcalde is ruling the province as a tyrant and his soldiers murder anyone who dares to challenge his authority. The people's only hope is the legendary hero, Zorro aka Don Diego de la Vega, whom Don Antonio finds mortally wounded after rescuing innocent men from the Alcalde's firing squad. Zorro/Don Diego urges Don Antonio to assume his secret identity and rally the Californians to fight the iron-fisted rule of the government. Don Antonio is also bethrothed to the wealthy señorita, Doña Maria Costanza Arellaga (Patrice Martinez), in which they do not get along but their romance is hinted when Don Antonio assumes the role of Zorro.
Episode 1
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Fri, Jan 5, 199022 mins
Don Diego de la Vega shows his trusted houseboy Felipe how astronomy studies the moon, and dreams about mankind going there one day, when his telescope shows a horseman approaching the pueblo hastily. It's a certain Señor Morales, who most unkindly asks a room in her inn and commandeers señorita Victoria Escalante to wake him at dawn; when she does, she is found standing over his body, which has a bloody stab-wound, and is arrested and quickly condemned to death by Alcalde Luis Ramone. Diego investigates, and discovers the alcalde actually used his friend, Mexico City's actor Ricardo Cortes, to play dead in order to set a trap for Zorro. But The Fox is hard to bait and even harder to catch in a trap...
Episode 2
Deceptive Heart
Fri, Jan 12, 199022 mins
The de la Vegas, especially Alejandro, are eager to host the young widow Señora Francisca de la Pena who just arrived by stagecoach. She is not the lady on the cameo sent to Don Alejandro, who invited her as his potential fiancée based on correspondence, but explains she wanted to test his sincerity by sending him her aunt Consuela's portrait, which worries Don Diego. When Felipe, who proves a good fencing pupil, reports Gomez's vaqueros (cowboys) cause trouble again in the tavern, Zorro rides to Victoria's aid, while sergeant Mendoza eats as if undisturbed; later Zorro sees Francisca sneaking into a man's window and kissing him, but how can Diego warn his father, who plans a wedding by Easter and a pre-nuptial contract? When he tells her to be seen by a friend, she claims it's her vicious former lover Ramirez, who drowned the real Francisca, but sends him a carrier pigeon, which Diego follows as Zorro and defeats him sword-fighting, to be kept pending proof of murder by Mendoza's men under Victoria's longing sight. The false Consuela leaves for good.
Episode 3
Water
Fri, Jan 19, 199022 mins
During a drought, which even hits the plaza fountain everyone in the pueblo depends upon, the alcalde heartlessly demands a tax of two pesos per bucket of water. When Don Diego even dares suggest this might start a riot, as the farmers just can't afford it, he is jailed. Fortunately Don Alejandro and the other caballeros make a stand until he caves in, but only to do essentially the same thing two other ways: offering free water but charging a toll to get to it at his estate and, after Zorro puts an end to that, have the garrison collect all arrear taxes the hard way...
Episode 4
Double Entendre
Fri, Jan 26, 199021 mins
The alcalde has the Indian camp ransacked, leaving Zorro's mark so as to turn the whole pueblo against the 'bandit', finds copper ore on Indian land, and has a fake Zorro, a master-swordsman, rob the church's poor box, which convinces most of the villagers. The real one rides to investigate, finds the alcalde's geology report, and overhears him plan a fake duel with the impostor. The alcalde confiscates the Indian land but both 'duelists' are defeated by the real Zorro.
Episode 5
The Best Man
Fri, Feb 2, 199021 mins
Diego's younger cousin Rafael is visiting the hacienda, about to marry Marguerita de Madeira. When Felipe reports the arrival of soldiers, Diego pretends to stay back reading and painting but rides as Zorro. The alcalde orders the sergeant to hang farmers who can't pay taxes because of the bad harvest, so Zorro springs the alcalde's office safe and offers the gold to pay all taxes, admired by everyone including his father and the future couple as he ridicules the taxers and rides off. When Rafael invites Diego as best man, Marguerita calls off the wedding- she has fallen for Zorro, so Rafael wants to challenge him to a duel. Diego breaks off a cactus and sends Felipe out with it under his saddle to create a diversion on the plaza, where Victoria fights her new rival. The alcalde orders the couple to leave within two hours, after paying an outraging traveler's tax; Rafael would rather fight the lancers; when Zorro turns up to help, Rafeal insists they duel, loses out of Maguerita's sight but is allowed to pretend 'winning and sparing the masked man' to impress his thus regained bride.
Episode 6
The Sure Thing
Fri, Feb 9, 199022 mins
The de la Vegas are surprised poor farmer Maceas offers them a free load of beans, because he believes Zeus, a fine stallion he nursed to racing shape after Don Esteban ordered it put down, will win him a fortune from a certain Señor Herrera. The whole pueblo bets on the race, after Don Diego won a friendly challenge accepted by Don Alejando, but remarked the stranger held his horse back, the alcalde even wagers 4,000 pesos of taxes collected for the governor. Zeus loses, but it soon appears only because he was poisoned; the alcalde confiscates everything Maceas owns, 'including this miserable horse'. The only one who can win the fortune back is Zorro on Toronado, but appearing when and where the alcalde knows him to is reckless...
Episode 7
Zorro's Other Woman
Fri, Feb 16, 199021 mins
When Zorro finds a few bandits' spoils, the loot includes a 'bundle of joy' they are glad to be rid of: a baby-girl, stolen, as Diego guesses rightly from the cloths, from Russian immigrants, who are flooding California at the time, and changes the alcalde's mind from 'not interested' to 'alcalde's job' by posting a 500-peso reward. Poor Felipe is stuck sitting the crybaby, so he literally begs Zorro to ride and get more willing help from Señorita Victoria Escalante, who proves very maternal. The alcalde tries to arrest both for 'kidnapping' Natasha Petrov - now sergeant Mendoza is appointed involuntary nurse, while the alcalde demands 1000 pesos for the 'kidnapped' child, but Zorro is near...
Episode 8
The Legend Begins: Part 1
Sat, Feb 17, 199023 mins
The alcalde promises the pueblo a direct route to San Pedro, the Ramone highway, but press-gangs 'recruits' to build it. When Don Alejandro rides off to complain to the territorial governor in Monterrey, Sergeant Mendoza is ordered to stop him. Zorro rides to distract the lancers, but gets shot and falls into a canyon, at first sight dead. When Toronado comes home alone, Felipe follows him and climbs bravely down. Too badly wounded to get up, Zorro reminisces how it all started: after his studies at Madrid university and fencing lessons with Sir Edmond Kendall, his being recalled home and meeting Alcalde Luis Ramone.
Episode 9
The Legend Begins: Part 2
Sat, Feb 17, 199023 mins
Desperate for a hiding place in the canyon, the wounded Zorro reminisces further how he showed Felipe his set-up in the hacienda's secret escape trough the fireplace to the hideout cave. The alcalde's arrests of Don Alejandro and Victoria Escalante and Mendoza's uttering that nothing scares soldiers more then the unknown inspired Don Diego to invent the mysterious black-cloaked and -masked man, named after the cunning fox ('zorro' in Spanish) found in the hideout by Felipe, who proved an ideal assistant once Diego found out the mute boy was not deaf. Zorro was born as a creature of the night, freeing the senorita and his father. To Victoria's shock, the alcalde celebrates Zorro's alleged death, while Mendoza's lancer detail returns to the canyon to shoot a load of bullets trough the cloaked body.
Episode 10
The Legend Begins: Part 3
Sat, Feb 17, 199023 mins
The lancers climb down in the canyon, and find not Zorro's corpse but his cloths on a dummy made from branches; Toronado frees and chases their horses without anyone giving him instructions; Felipe helps Diego stay hidden under water, breeding trough a reed. Diego reminisces how he wanted an unknown horse for Zorro, and Felipe helped him find, catch, name, and train the wild black stallion after saving his foal. When the alcalde plans to execute Don Alejandro just for escaping from jail, Zorro prepares his lab in the cave and a flying contraption à la da Vinci, launched from Felipe's riding horse-cart...
Episode 11
The Legend Begins: Part 4
Sat, Feb 17, 199022 mins
Zorro and Felipe bravely made their last stand, but face only their horses: Toronado even found a way out so they get home. Mendoza returns with nothing but Zorro's costume and still gets the 500 pesos reward, but is taxed on his windfall during military service - 100%. Diego learns from Dr. Hernandez the news of Zorro's death makes the alcalde even crueler, but is too weak to stand up. Victoria tells him the alcalde resumes the forced labor, invents new taxes even on income, and prepares a memorial service with a fake Zorro-corps to bury the myth.
Episode 12
Pride of the Pueblo
Fri, Feb 23, 199023 mins
A free black man named Jack Holten (played by Philip Michael Thomas) is eating lunch at Victoria's tavern. When two of the alcalde's guards start harassing him because of his race, Jack punches one of them. He is then imprisoned in the town jail for assaulting a soldier of Spain. The alcalde takes Jack's papers that prove he is free and plans to sell him to a U.S. plantation. Don Digeo and Don Alejandro know that the alcalde cannot resist a friendly wager, so they make a bet that if Jack beats the alcalde's best guard in a boxing bout, then he wins his freedom. If he loses, however, the alcalde may keep Jack in jail. The alcalde promptly picks the biggest and strongest of his guards. Don Diego suspects that there is no way that Jack can beat this monstrosity of a man, so he dons his Zorro cape and takes matters into his own hands. Zorro fights with the giant guard and causes him to injure his hand. This renders him useless to the alcalde. In his place, the alcalde picks the bumbling Sergeant Mendoza. What follows is an amusing parody of the Rocky training sequence. Jack can impressively perform difficult exercises to get ready for the fight while Mendoza can barely catch his breath. Soon afterward, the alcalde gets a notice that the local Magistrate is coming to inspect Los Angeles and see if the alcalde is doing a good job with his soldiers. If he impresses the Magistrate, he believes that he will get a promotion and transfer to Monterrey. The conditions of the fight suddenly change. Now, if Mendoza knocks out Jack, it will prove the soldiers' might and will impress the Magistate. Zorro/Don Diego jumps at the chance to get rid of the town's tyrant, so he decides to fix the fight in Mendoza's favor. He puts ether, a substance that makes people sleep, on Mendoza's boxing gloves so that Jack will inhale it and appear to be knocked out. The plan does not work, however. Jack stands up to several whiffs of ether, but Mendoza doesn't. Mendoza puts his gloves close to his face and he inhales the vapors. After he faints, the Magistrate disgustedly tells the alcalde that he will not get his transfer. The enraged alcalde then arrests Jack once more.
Episode 13
Honor Thy Father
Fri, Mar 2, 199022 mins
Robbers take the garrison's pay; Don Alejandro de la Vega witnesses that and tries to stop them, but gets knocked down, hard; Victoria finds him and brings him to the hacienda, where Doctor Hernandez concludes he may never come out of his coma again. Don Diego is heartbroken, feels guilty he may never get a chance to tell his father about his secret life as Zorro. The alcalde blames the crime on Zorro and the doctor sighs the only medicine that might give Alejandro a fighting chance was stolen with the gold. It's high time Zorro rides again...
Episode 14
The Magician
Fri, Mar 9, 199022 mins
The traveling Frenchman Foucard impresses the pueblo, even ever-skeptical Don Diego, as magician and pickpocket, then romances Victoria and performs various science-based services to various villagers. Sergeant Mendoza must command the protection of a gold shipment, but as earlier near San Francisco, it is robbed by someone who uses a fireball. Even Zorro was too late and finds Foucard asleep, from a distance.
Episode 15
A Deal with the Devil
Fri, Mar 16, 199022 mins
Spanish royal army Colonel Mefisto Palomarez, the dreaded butcher of the Yucatan campaign, soon loses the alcalde's admiration when he announces he has come to eliminate Zorro but does so by drawing lots to execute daily one inhabitant of the pueblo until Zorro hangs, even though nobody knows his identity, and exempting nobody - the first victim is Sergeant Mendoza! Zorro makes a nocturnal visit offering the colonel a fair duel instead, but is arrested.
Episode 16
Whereabouts
Fri, Mar 23, 199022 mins
Sebastian Moreno, an author from Spain, arrives in the pueblo to write the story of Zorro and his true identity. He soon witnesses the hero saving Victoria and some guests from two robbers; he ignores how close he is while he is Don Alejandro's guest at the de la Vega hacienda, but accidentally triggers the secret mechanism of the fireplace door, luckily seen by Diego in time to stop him entering. The alcalde makes Sergeant Mendoza follow Moreno everywhere for weeks, to no avail. Then Sebastian tells the de la Vegas he'll just pretend to know Zorro's identity to lure him; they warn him the alcalde would not let him go without divulging the secret, but he persists. Zorro fakes a revolution aided by Yankees in the village to divert the alcalde - who strikes at Moreno.
Episode 17
All That Glitters
Fri, Mar 30, 199022 mins
The alcalde is delighted to hear Leonardo Montez, who hid the jewel he stole from the Guadelupe mission sanctuary in Santa Barbara, has escaped in the pueblo's direction and probably comes to retrieve it. Felipe just signs that Diego's painting 'Mona Lisa of the Puebla' resembles Señorita Escalante when Victoria enters in the flesh to report the alcalde just arrested Leonardo. Zorro rides to prevent the ecclesiastical treasure changing hands between both greedy criminals and frees Leonardo under the nose of the alcalde and some lancers, bringing him blindfolded to the secret barn, where the bolting stallion Toronado keeps him in. After Felipe, who checked on them, overhears Leonardo tell the horse that he stole 'only' the jewel, the thief is released so they can follow him to the hiding place, where Zorro must first get rid of a local cougar.
Episode 18
Child's Play
Fri, Apr 6, 199022 mins
Toronado is lost, limping in the desert, to Diego's despair. A small boy finds and 'adopts' the normally indomitable stallion.
Episode 19
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Fri, Apr 13, 199021 mins
Diego looked forward to the arrival of the new mission padre Benitez, whom he knows from correspondence on ornithology. The priest who greets Don Alejandro proves a brute who claims to take orders only from the cardinal; he makes all caballeros triple their contributions, for unnecessary renovations, and has his servant Carlos falsely arrested for stealing the church silver. Diego notices the handwriting is different- Zorro rides at night and hears him haggle the alcalde's share. In the morning Carlos is to be whipped, but Zorro brings the silver, denounces the false priest, and chases him in vain.
Episode 20
Ghost Story
Fri, Apr 20, 199022 mins
Don Diego and Felipe are puzzling which ancient creature's bones are preserved in natural tar when Don Alejandro reports the heir to the portillo hacienda is none other then- Sergeant Jaime Mendoza, an orphan but distantly related. Inliving houseman Torres tells Mendoza the legend of the builder, conquistador Portillo, who hanged himself for a fatal love and, according to legend, haunts the estate; the pueblo's other gentlemen tell the new don not to worry and accept invitations to his first banquet. At night, an apparition in armor warns Mendoza to leave or die; learning this, Don Diego cancels so Zorro can ride; when the ghost appears at the dinner party, he easily defeats the alcalde and his men, but too late to chase the mounted ghost, which has scared Mendoza enough to accept selling to his neighbor. Zorro soon finds out the fake ghost, his conspirator and their motive...
Episode 21
The Bounty Hunters
Fri, Apr 27, 199021 mins
Diego's photographic experiment after Joseph Eeps is a bright failure, twice. Señor Casey Hawkes' gold transport worth 6000 pesos for the Spanish colonies to the north, where Russians must be kept away, is raided by Indians; although Diego remarks their arrows are unknown, a bounty is awarded on every Indian's head. When Zorro saves some innocent local Indians, Hawkes' men attempt to apprehend him, only to be delivered to jail themselves; the alcalde quickly releases them. With Victoria's help, Zorro searches Hawkes' room at her inn and follows him to his gang of fake-Indian gold robbers...
Episode 22
The Unhappy Medium
Fri, May 4, 199022 mins
Don Diego and Victoria suspect that the female medium Miyarana, who claims to speaks to deceased loved ones of mainly the rich people in the pueblo and her travel companion Ricardo Quintano, who sells the poor 'magic' stones, are frauds. Zorro finds out they pay the alcalde 20% for insight in his official records, so they can dazzle their dupes with private facts. After Don Alejandro finds them fakes, he is threatened; Don Diego comes to his defense and is made to duel Ricardo, but Zorro acts first...
Episode 23
An Explosive Situation
Fri, May 11, 199022 mins
The alcalde is delighted with an invitation for a birthday party at the inn with the nobility, but Mendoza got one too, while Don Diego and Don Alejandro doubt if the alcalde really throws a birthday party for Mendoza. Yet they all go and are, with Victoria, knocked down and tied up with a lighted fuse to a powder keg by Ricardo Quintana, who spent eight months in prison where his partner in crime Myatana died. As he leaves saying their dreams will all go up in smoke, they spend their presumed last minutes dreaming what could have been: for the alcalde and Mendoza, promotions, for Victoria, Zorro's love.
Episode 24
Family Business
Fri, May 18, 199022 mins
The stage coach brings two visitors to Los Angeles. Firstly there is Victoria's brother, colonial army Lieutenant Francisco Escalante, who concludes after a meal with Mendoza that the garrison is in no condition to resist a U.S. annexation attempt; the alcalde promises him a post - if he captures Zorro. Furthermore a woman claims to be the mother of Jose del Reynoso - Felipe?! Don Diego recalls how he adopted the boy after finding the orphan, probably mute from trauma, at the August Revolution battlefield, under the cart where real father lay dead; none of the nearby villagers would take him, so he became Diego's intimate confident. Given the free choice, Felipe decides to be finally reunited with his mother, and accepts to accompany her to Mexico City; while they drive off, Francisco remarks Felipe resembles strikingly his friend Emilio Alvarado, a banker. When Victoria informs Don Diego, Zorro rides like lightning, and not too soon: the imposter already delivered Felipe, 'worth his weight in gold', to her accomplice. The Fox tracks the vilest villains ever and has Felipe deliver them, only to be attacked by Francisco and next by the alcalde...
Episode 25
Palomarez Returns
Fri, May 25, 199022 mins
The hated colonel Mefisto Palomarez returns waving a royal re-grant of all lands in the territory - to him, so he takes residence at the de la Vega hacienda, but accepts Don Alejandro's suggestion to have the document authenticated by an impartial non-land owner: Sergeant Mendoza. Thanks to ever-loyal Felipe, Diego learns the colonel plans to sell the pueblo to the Britton Bickel. Zorro manages to look at the parchment and finds it a brilliant forgery, but gets scarred by Palomarez with a mysterious deadly poison...
