Oscar Bensol, the writer of "The Sea Raiders", would go on to write four more Aquaman episodes. He wrote many of the Adventures of Superman episodes.
A strange alien ship (a lot of episodes start this way, huh?) lands on the ocean. They are collecting specimens for their personal collection--I hope they are bagging and boarding them. Actually, they suck them up through a tube and dehydrate them. Somehow, this shrinks them instead of making fish jerky. Of course, Aquaman and Co. come to see what's happening. Tusky gets sucked in, shrunk, and dropped into a box. The aliens then dehydrate a Venusian Sea Serpent to play with our heroes, and we get our first display (in an episode) of Aquaman throwing "hard water" balls at it. He then spins to throw more water at it (not sure how effective this is, since they are underwater already). He then calls in the fish army to finish it off. The aliens decide it's time to blast off, so they have to save Tusky. They tie down the ship and pull it in the ocean. The aliens agree to let the earth fish (and Tusky) go, while taking the sea serpent.
Some things to look for:
- Aquaman's nickname for Aqualad count: Tadpole (8)
- Aqualad catchphrase attempts: Jumping Jellyfish, Mumbling Mantis. We also get "Great Gastropods" from Aquaman.
- What's with the generic music sting at the beginning of the episode?
- A great Aqualad line: "Who? What? Why?". He'll make a fine news reporter some day.
- Shrinking effects on cartoon accompanied by a slide whistle--check
- Aliens, as always, use English on their ship displays--as in the "Eject" button
Next, Bob Haney brings us "War of the Water Worlds". If I remember correctly, this is based on an issue of the comic book. There was also a (lousy) video game based on it.
Mera makes her second appearance. She finds a flower which grabs and pulls her into shimmering sand. Tusky goes to get help. Our heroes jump into the sand, and find another water world under theirs. They move toward a palace, but get grabbed by more living flowers. He calls in some help (some of his world's fish already wandered through the sand), and some Thresher Sharks cut them down. Their sea horse steeds decide to follow them into the other world.
Our heroes find Mera in a cave under a weird ray, as well as Slanth, the ruler there. He controls the plant life, and orders more vines to trap them. Slanth drops Aqualad under the ray as well--it turns people into plants (and then under his control). Aquaman is thrown into a pit, while Tusky manages to escape. Aquaman fights a hydra-like plant, and calls on manta to beat it up. He can't lift the grating in the pit, which is why the sea horses came in earlier--they pull it off. Tusky is watching Mera and Aqualad under the ray (why isn't he being affected?) when Aquaman appears and orders them back to the other world to get help. His fish subjects show up and give him a hand. He manages to get back to the other world himself, and drops a giant toothy(?) clam onto the sand to block others.
Some things to look for:
- Aquaman's nickname for Aqualad count: Tadpole (11)
- Aqualad catchphrase attempts: Mumbling Mantis, Holy Haddock, Hopping Toadfish, Leaping Lionfish
- The other world's sea is red--is this foreshadowing of the Crisis on Infinite Earths?
- Apparently the plant ray must take a lot of time to work--Mera was under it quite a while, but a "good rest" resolves that
Remember, you can play along by watching the show on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, or VUDU. You can also buy the DVD on Amazon.