Early 80's action cartoon on ABC.

In the midst of the original Dungeons and Dragons frenzy, ABC began showing a new cartoon called Thundarr the Barbarian. The cartoon had elements of fantasy, adventure, and science along with a female character in a short costume, making it the perfect vehicle for its target audience.

The series was set in a distant future. After the destruction of civilization in the early 1990's by the gravitational pull of a rogue planet, the world returned, but a world ruled by sorcery and advanced science. People were being oppressed and mistreated. But a champion arose to defend the weak and deliver really bad dialogue. He is Thundarr the Barbarian! Armed with his mystic flaming sun sword, Thundarr traveled the world fighting evil. He was accompanied by Princess Ariel, a dusky-skinned sorceress with a penchant for calf-high boots and short costumes, and Ookla the Mok, a hairy, fanged creature of incredible strength and the pronounciation skills of Ozzy Osbourne.

These three traveled the globe in search of adventure, battling the forces of evil and looking for opportunities for Thundarr to speak such gems of dialogue as "Ariel! Ookla! Ride! or to use exclamations like Demon Dogs! or Lords of Light!.

The series ran for a year and a half on ABC and is occasionally shown on the Cartoon Network.

The coolest thing about Thundarr's post-apocalypse, to me, was the fact that the celestial event that had ruined civilization also split the moon in two. The two half-moons, with a little debris between, were nearly always visible above the action in Thundarr's nightscape. I remember many a gradeschool dialogue about whether this was possible. My science-leaning peers decreed that any gravitational effect powerful enough to rend our moon in twain would leave no life behind on our planet, not even the tough, wookie-like Ookla. Or if it did, the resulting gravity weirdness would play havoc with Earth. I always wondered how it could stay split...it seemed to me that its own weight would cause it to fall back onto itself.

However, I was able to suspend disbelief throughout the whole series and get my Saturday-morning light saber and wookie fix during the excruciating lull between Star Wars installments.

Thundarr's light saber (or "sun sword," as it's called) was held magnetically on a metal greave he wore on his left forearm. When not active, it was just a bladeless hilt. Note that Thundarr never used it on living beings--he only "killed" robots.