Golden nerd alert!

You know you've been watching too much Mysterious Cities of Gold when you start to think Mendoza (left) is pretty hot. C'mon, you have to admit there's something there. You should see him doing dashing things with his blue cape on.

So I finished watching the series today, having received the DVD boxed set for my birthday (it was a long road - not only was my birthday in May, I had to tell my friend what to buy, where to get it and print out a 40% off voucher for her as an incentive...). It was worth the trip down memory lane. I feel like I should do a thesis or something, I'm so fanatic about the series right now.

One particular theme I'm caught up in is the fact that the three children all talk about missing their fathers (there's no mention of anyone's mother except when Esteban learns that his mother dies because of an apparent curse). Tao knows his father has died, Zia spends a large part of the series searching for her father, a priest, and finds him in a village near the end of their journey, just before he dies. Esteban's reasons for following Mendoza to the New World is the possibility that his father may still be alive. But in a turn of dramatic irony, Esteban meets his father, high priest of the Mysterious Cities of Gold, but does not realise it. It is Mendoza who figures out the true relationship between the high priest and the child of the sun. And then the priest dies while saving the world from destruction without Esteban ever knowing his true identity.

Anyway, I am interested in the ongoing notion of fatherhood in the series because much of it gets moved along by various wise men and a lot of the motivation (for the children) for finding the Mysterious Cities of Gold comes from their respective fathers' legacies, rather than the promise of riches. In an interesting twist, Mendoza morphs from a greedy Spaniard to a father figure as the adventure wears on. In the beginning he is the children's main protector because he realises how valuable they are as tools to discover the city, but towards the end he admits to Sancho and Pedro (his greedy sidekicks) that he has grown fond of them and eschews a chance to set off for the city at the earliest possibility to fight on their behalf.

But Mendoza never becomes like a father in the truest sense. He protects and defends them, and eventually earns their trust and respect, but they never love him as a father and vice versa. The relationship they build during their adventures together is like that of equals in a team.

It is further of interest to note that although Mendoza is intelligent, brave and shows leadership, he is not the leader (Esteban fulfils this role), nor the 'vizier' (which is Tao). Neither does he show any particular friendship toward Sancho and Pedro compared with how they treat each other and how the children treat each other. Rather, he is the maverick, an individual who allows himself to get too close to the trinity and embroiled in their affairs.

Anyway, enough rumination on Mendoza as father figure. I found out by watching one of the DVD extras - an interview with the voice actors for Mendoza, Esteban, Tao and Zia - that the guy who did the voice of Mendoza got the part by accident. Howard Ryshpan was actually the director of the English version and they were about to send the tapes to France so the producers could pick the voices they wanted. One of Ryshpan's colleagues discovered they were short a Mendoza (they only had three Mendozas for the four tapes) and as it was 2am in the morning, Ryshpan just laid down a track and they made their recommendations for one of the other three actors to take the part. But the producers chose Ryshpan.

Another funny thing I found out was that the voice actors were sourced from Canada because the series was to be dubbed for both the American and UK markets and the Americans couldn't understand Brit accents and the Brits didn't like heavy American accents. Considering the voices that ended up on tape, they did a really good job picking quite neutral accents. They don't even sound Canadian.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll make my way through all the DVD extras. It has been more than 20 years, but it was worth the wait!