The Secrets of Isis



"O my queen!" said the royal sorcerer to Hatshepsit, "with this amulet you and your decendants are endowed by the goddess Isis, with the powers of the animals and the elements! You will soar as the falcon soars, run with the speed of gazelles, and command the elements of sky and earth!"

3000 years later, a young science teacher dug up this lost treasure and found she was heir to... the secrets of Isis!

And so, unknown to even her closest friends, Rick Mason and Cindy Lee, she became a dual person -- Andrea Thomas, teacher...

"Andrea: "O Mighty Isis!""

...and Isis! Dedicated foe of evil. Defender of the weak; Champion of truth and justice!

The series, part of Filmation's block of live-action programming in The Seventies, is free to watch (with ads) on Hulu right here.


 * Action Girl: As much as she can be in a minimally violent kids' show like this.
 * And Knowing Is Half the Battle
 * Aside Glance: Andrea (or Isis) would often give a knowing wink to the audience.
 * By the Power of Grayskull: "O Mighty Isis!"
 * Invocation: Most of Isis' powers had to be activated by her speaking a rhyming couplet, even for something as simple as flying.
 * Canon Immigrant: A character called Isis was eventually adopted into the DC Universe, but she bore only superficial resemblance to her incarnation here.
 * Character Title: When first aired (and in the title cards), the show was called simply Isis.
 * Clark Kenting: One of the most Egregious examples ever, moreso than even Superman. Seriously, Andrea doesn't even wear her glasses half the time!
 * Contrived Coincidence: So, Andrea Thomas is (implied to be) a descendant of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsit and thus heir to the amulet and the powers of the goddess Isis. Well, it's a good thing then that she found the amulet on that archeological dig, rather than someone who might have used it for evil -- or, at best, put it in a museum. To be fair, this can be easily Handwaved as the gods making sure the amulet winds up with its rightful owner.
 * Glasses Pull: Andrea does this more often than her bespectacled superhero contemporaries... and yet her friends still can't see through her disguise.
 * Hoist By His Own Petard: "O ancient Sphinx, so great and wise / Confront this man with his own lies!"
 * Eleventh Hour Superpower: Isis would usually appear within the last five minutes of the episode.
 * Expy: Isis has been described as a Wonder Woman ripoff.
 * In truth, Filmation wanted a female superhero alongside their show Shazam but they didn't want to pay licensing fees for Mary Marvel; they wanted to create a character, in-house, that they could own outright. So really, Isis would be more a Mary Marvel ripoff.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: The moral lessons from each episode were excised when the show went into syndication. That is to say, they were excised from the master reels, and were subsequently lost. The DVD release included as many as they could scrounge, mostly from third-generation re-dubs and over-the-air recordings.
 * The series DVD set might also count, as it is now out of print. But it can still be found.
 * New Powers As the Plot Demands: Isis could do, quite literally, almost anything. It helps that her powers are vaguely defined to begin with, thus not painting her into any corners. She's also based upon a god, which helps further.
 * Opening Narration
 * Poorly-Disguised Pilot: The series' only two-part episode, "Now You See It"/"Now You Don't", was intended as a pilot for a spinoff series involving teen sleuths. It never materialized.
 * Scooby Doo Hoax
 * Stock Footage
 * Syndication Title: The Secrets Of Isis, which is the title most everyone knows it as today.
 * Transformation Sequence
 * Transformation Trinket: the amulet