Zorro — Season 1

This is the original unaired pilot. 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 (Valentin de Vargas) 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.

Victoria is accused of murdering a guest at her tavern.

Don Alejandro's female pen pal comes to Los Angeles and wedding bells are in the air, much to Diego's chagrin.

Alcalde Ramon tries to monopolize the pueblo's water supply.

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.

Diego's cousin is visiting the hacienda with his fiancee. However, when it becomes apparent that she plans to leave him due to her infatuation with Zorro, he plans to challenge Zorro to a duel.

The de la Vega's are surprised the 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.

When Zorro finds a few bandits' spoils, the loot includes a 'bundle of joy' they are glad to be rid of: a baby-girl, which is stolen, as Diego guesses right from the cloths, from Russian immigrants, who are flooding California at the time, and change the alcalde's mind from 'not interested' to 'alcalde's job' by posting a 500 peso reward. Poor Felipe is stuck sitting the cry-baby, so he literally begs Zorro to ride and get more willing help from senorita Victoria Escalante, who proves very maternal.

The alcalde promises the pueblo a direct route to San Pedro, the Ramon 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.

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 fire-place to the hide-out 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 he cunning fox ('zorro' in Spanish) found in the hide-out by Felipe, who proved an ideal assistant once Diego found out the mute boy is not deaf.

The lancers climb down in the canyon, and find not Zorro's corps but his cloths on a dummy made from branches; Toronado frees and chases their horses, without anyone giving him instructions; Felipe helped 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.

Zorro and Felipe bravely made their last stand, but they face only their horses: Toronado even found a way out so they get home. Mendoza returns with nothing but Zorro's costume, still gets the 500 pesos reward, but is taxed on his windfall during military service- at 100%. Diego learns from Dr. Hernandez the news of Zorro's death makes the alcalde even crueler, but is too sick 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.

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.

Robbers take the garrison's pay; Diego's father, 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 dad 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.

The traveling Frenchman Foucard impresses the pueblo, even ever-skeptic 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. Diego shows Felipe the chemical properties of pyrosulphate solve two of Foucard's mysteries: how the magician 'revived' an apparently dead dove

Spanish royal army Colonel Mefisto Palomarez, the dreaded butcher of the Yucatan campaign, soon looses 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. Naturally he came prepared, and even the alcalde smiles when the sadist is duly humiliated at Mendoza's execution

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.

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 sign-gestured 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

Toronado is lost, limping in the desert, to Diego's despair. A small boy finds and 'adopts' the normally indomitable stallion

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

Don Diego and Felipe were 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.

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

Don Diego and Victoria suspect that the female medium Miyarana, who claims to speaks to deceased loved ones of people in the pueblo, mainly of the rich, 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

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 (see the previous episode "The Unhappy Medium") Myatana died.

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 that very trauma, at the August revolution battlefield, under the cart where his real father lay dead;

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