Jonny Quest

Ah, Jonny Quest. One of the greatest cartoon shows of all time. It was this show that got me hooked on Saturday morning back in 1972. I only four at the time, and I had very little experience with Saturday morning, save with things like Batfink and Cool McCool, shows that my dad tried to get me to watch. Those shows were okay, but none of them caught on. Then one day the TV just happened to be on, and this show came on that just blew me away!












Black panthers, crocdiles, S. American natives, two shots of a screaming pteranodon, raging komodo dragons, swooping condors, a a giant daddy-long-legs monster with a single eye, flying platforms, lazers, explosions. All things I loved as a kid. There was also a rampaging mummy, but humna-type monsters like mummies was the one thing on the show I WASN't into. I didn't much care for the episode "Curse of Anubis"--except for the those snakes.

Yes, even at that young age, I knew where South America was. This was the continent where many of the Quest teams adventures took place. Not that many in Asia or Africa. "The Curse of Anubis" and "The Devil's Plateau" were the only ones in Africa, and only the latter in Africa proper. There were a few, like the Calcutta adventure that took place in Asia and were pretty good. But S. America seemed to be their favorite. I knew all about the wildlife of those continents and I used to get out my parents World We Live In and look at the magnifcent murals of the Amazon rainforest. Not to mention the great prehistorc mural of Zallinger's Life Through the Ages, but that's another story. S. America seemed also to be Hanna Barbera's favorite continent. Other of their great shows took place there, including the two lost world shows, Dino Boy and Valley of the Dinosaurs, and, or course, Jana of the Jungle.
Anyway, the very first episode I saw happened to be the best. It featured the swooping screaming pterodactyl whom I'd seen on the introduction. His name, I soon learned was "Tero" (actually Turu, as I misheard the name). He was the loyal pet of an evil man who used him to terrorize the natives. Though the ending was VERY tragic (Turu drowned in boiling tar), I looked foreward to this show every single Saturday, and was in anticipation, in particualr of this particular episode. I was soon calling the show, "the pteradactyl show," before I finally learned its real name. Every Saturday I had to be in fornt of ther TV at the crack of dawn. I would watch every show leading up to it, and didn't dare turn the station for fear of missing it. The other shows included the Osmonds, Lidsville, The Curiousity Shop, and a think I remember episodes of Bewitched showing somewhere in the middle, incongruously among the kids' shows. Anyway, JQ came on late in the morning, sort of like the dessert to the whole lineup. We had an old B&W TV set a the time, and I was really WOWed when we visited my grandmother's house, and got to see the thing in color. I'll never forget the dark day when the seasons changed and suddenly it was gone. It seems to me that I actually saw the Turu episode one more time at my grandmother's house after it had been cancelled, but I could be wrong. But eventually a found other favorite shows, and waking up every Saturday was by then a tradition. There were The New Scooby-Doo Movies, the animated Addams Family, Lost in Space re-runs, but there was never any show with quite the magnitude JQ had until Land of the Lost debuted in 1974.

What I didn't know, of course, was at the time I saw JQ and assumed it was a brand new show, it was already quite. What I was seeing were actaully re-runs of a popular series that debuted back in 1964. At the time, it was one of Hanna Barbera's first prime time TV series to be shown on Saturday Morning. In fact, it was origianlly slated for evening viewing, which explains why they were alike to get away with adult-themed violence. And, of course, the censors had yet to take over kids' TV in those days. HB had originally planned to do an adventure-themed series based on the character of Jack Armstrong, but when they couldn't obtain the rights, they simply invented their own character, the young son of an adventurer-scientist named Dr. Benton Quest, and a future sceintist himself. Togather with their friend Roger "Race" Bannon, Jonny's friend Hadji, and their black-masked dog Bandit, they traveled to exotic locales and faced unknown menaces every week. The brief scene on the end-credits showing spear-wielding African warriors, and the JQ plane taking off across the Sahara, is actually left-over footage from the proposed Armstrong series.

Here are portraits of each Quest Team member:

Jonny Quest

The main character, but not the leader of the Quest team, Jonny was the son of Dr. Benton Quest, and a young future sceintist. His mother had died sometime in the past, so he accompanied his father on his adventures. For this reason, his father hired a bodyguard to look after Jonny when he wasn't able to.

Dr. Benton Quest

Jonny's Father, Dr. Benton Quest was a scientist who travled the globe on scientific missions.


Roger "Race" Bannon

Race Bannon was a martial arts expert whom Dr. Quest hired as a bodyguard for Jonny. Jonny would be worth much in ransom, if Dr. Quest's enemies were ever to capture him.
Hadji

A young Hindu boy whom the Quest team picked up in India when Dr. Quest was giving a lecture. An orphan of the streets, Hadji saved Dr. Quest's life from villains. He was on every episode, except the first.

Bandit

The Quest team's dog, named for the black mask over his eyes, who accompanied them on all their travels.

Jezebel Jade

Jezebel Jade was Race's girlfriend, and an occasional member of the Quest team. She identified an imposter sent by Dr. Zinn to impersonate Race in "Double Danger" (the imposter didn't kiss that well), and saved them from Chu Ling's monsters in "Terror Island." She also occurred in at least one issue of the JQ comic.



It wasn't until 1978 that I got to see the old episodes again. The best HB show of that season was The Godzilla Power Hour, which featured Godzilla facing verious monsters, and it's companion series Jana of the Jungle, featuring a blonde jungle girl and her white jaguar. About mid-season, in effort to boost ratings, the POwer Hour was expanded into "The Godzilla Super-Ninety", a ninety minute adventure themned show with old JQ episodes added to Godzilla and Jana. Naturally, I was excited about this, but it turned out I was in for a bit of a disapointment. The old intro, with all its mayhem, had been pruned. Even worse, not all the old episodes were shown, and Turu was among the missing!I almost worried that I'd imagined it all, though that could hardly have bee the case. I at last glimpsed Turu on the following TV season. JQ had been given its own time-slot, and, though the episodes were the same, and the intro still missing, I did get to Turu diving out of the blood-red sky at the clsoignof the end credits, and a final scene of Dr. Quest and Race with their jetpacks and bazookas over a blasted, crimson landscape.



It was not until I was fouteen and in the eighth grade, that I finally saw the Turu episode again. Old JQ episodes were playing on a religous channel owned by a local evangelists. Finally, an episode came on wiht the familar panther staking through the jungle (actually it was a black jaguar). Turu himself appeared high on the cliff, and launched himself screaming, into the air. This station also showed some episodes I would have loved back in '72, but have no memory of them, like "Monsters in the Monastary," and "Terror Island."

A bit later in the eighties, they made brand new episodes of JQ. I've heard a lot of people hate these. The animation is clearly inferior to what was produced back in 1964. But the new series kept the formula and stayed true to the original. There was another "prehistoric" among these, about a scientist reviving dinosaurs from dormant DNA (this was years before Jurassic Park). What he actually creates are dino-hybrids, like a cross between a pterodactyl and an apatosaur, a hybrid triceratops/dimetrodon, a stegosaur with a pteranodon-like head, and a t-rex with pterosaur wings. The scientist's crowning creation, however, is hybrid dinosaur-human, something like what dinosaurs themselves might have evolved into. Another
good episode featured the Quest Team discovering a giant red-furred arctic ape frozen in ice, and wearing ancient Viking armour. Dr. Quest explains that he is a breed of polar gorilla who were trained as warriors by the ancient Vikings--which is totally fiction, of course. The ape, whom the kids name Vikong, unfreezes, and helps the team defeat a villain who attempts to exploit him. These episodes were often shown alongside episodes of the classic series.

During the nineties there were episodes of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest (which I never saw), and Jonny Quest and the cyber-Insects, which I DID see, and disliked, mainly because the story seemed basically a excercise in gender political-correctness, with Jonny himself being a sexist jerk throughout the entire show.A little more recently, I happened to see online a JQ spoof, in which Jonny Quest met up with Squidly Diddly. Squidly may be classic HB, but his presence here turned the animated short into a spoof. Which wasa shame, since the rest of the feature looked like an attempt to creae a brand-new vintage JQ epsiode, with the animation quality of the original.

Not many years back, the entire series of classic episodes came out on DVD. Looking them over, there are definitely some that were entirely new to me, which I would have loved as a kid. The animation quality is absolutely top notch on the first several episodes, and is only slightly diminished in the latter ones. This is the sort of show I wish would be produced nowadays, with the old-school type style, but with quality that is the best possible. I also recently bought the original Space Ghost, and while I enjoyed it, the animation isn't nearly so up to par. Back in the day, the success of JQ led to other great action shows like Dinoboy and Mighty Mightor, which I would have loved as a kid, and only got to see later. Peggy Charen and the censors put an end to all the fun and many of the action themed shows were lost at the start of the seventies. But doubtless later shows like Jana of the Jungle, Godzilla, and Thundarr the barbarian show the early influence.

Now a look at a few favorite episodes, starting with the best .....





Turu the Terrible
I've already indicated that this was my all time fave. Turu was the pet of an evil madman who lived atop a plateau deep in the Amazon. What is not explained on the episode was what the villain's background was, and how he acquired a living pterodactyl as a pet! He used Turu to capture natives form the local Indian tribes to work in the mines for what he thought was silver. The metal was actually trinoxite, an alloy which Dr. Quest identified as essential for the space program. After several harrowing encounters with Turu, Quest and Race manage to injure himn with a bazooka. Turu falls into the tar and drowns, and the villain drowns trying to save his pet. Now--why couldn't have Dr. QUest have used tranaquilizer dart on Turur and captured him? Dr. Quest also makes a false statement implying man and dinosaurs were contemporaries (I've a lot more respect for the prehistoric man). Now, I suppose this could count as possible alternate history ( there are other examples on other HB adventure shows, including one on Godzilla where the female scientist is not at all surprised to find cavemen alive alongside dinosaurs, even though she correctly points out that flowers hadn't evolved yet!(assuming it's the Jurassic rather than the Cretaceous), but I suppose that the writers just fudged. Then again, what's a pterosaur doing alive in 1964 Amazonia????

An interesting note, I found out that this episode initially aired on Dec. 25, making it the official "Christmas Episode"!





Shadow of the Condor"Shadow of the Condor" was my second favorite episode after Turu. It might be because condors were my favorite bird at the time. The condor's scream is actually the same as Turu's (actaully the recording of an elephant). In some ways, it's better than Turu. The condor not only survives, it is actually the hero!. When I first saw it, my childlike brain thought the condor might of been killed in the plane fight at the end, but then turned out to be alive. Actually, the episode has sort of a conservation message. The villain regularly shoots at the condors (these are Andean condors, which I beleive are endangered, though not so much as California condors), and at the end, when the condor causes the baron's plane to crash, saving Race, it's almost like the bird is taking its revenge. The birds themselves do seem menacing for a while, and there are a couple of harrowing scenes, notably when a condor attacks a horned owl, itself a fierce bird of prey, and anther when one nearly flies off with Bandit!



The Robot Spy
This is another very cool episode. The spider-robot of Dr. Zinn menacing an army base was both creepy and terrifying, with its ability to "zap" people with its antenae, and its weird crimson eye. I refered to it as a "daddy long-legs", and it did resemble one of those insects more than it did a spider. I was also a bit disapointed when the mechanical monster was destroyed at the end. JQ certainly had some element that are now un-PC, like the tendency to depicted Asians (know then as Orientials)as bad guys. While the show was pro-science for the most part--Dr. Quest himself was a scientist, and their adventures invloved scientific progress--there were also a good number of "mad scientist" bad guys on the show, and dangerous experiments gone awry.




The Dragons of Ashida
I called this one the "Komodo Dragon" episode. Yes, I did know what Komodo dragons were when I saw first saw it. And indeed, they are native to remote Indonesian island, and very much resmble komodos. In fact, they are actually of a small species Dr. Quest identifies as "the tabora lizard." Dr. Ashida, the Asian mad-scientist of the tale, and a brillaint zoologist, has bred them up to crocodile size wiht controlled gene selection. He uses them as guard-beasts and bloodhounds, especially against people who have somehow offended him. Unfortunately, Ashida loses a wrestling match to the mad doctor, who then becomes obsessed with revenge. Dr. Quest becomes convinced that Ashida has become a very dangerous man, but when they attempt to leave, Ashida, sics his dragons on them. The Quest team barely escapes the island with their lives. In this episode, like in "Shadow of the Condor, it's the animals who win, as Ashida falls victim to his own pets.


Pursuit of the PohoThis was another good one set in the South American rainforest. A fellow scientist is captured by the Poho, a fierce tribe of S. American Indians. We also get to see some wildlife here, including a pink fairy armodillo, and two shots of a black jaguar, one of which nearly attacks Race and the boys.




The Treasure of the Temple





This episode is set in Central America, not South America, this time. Technically, this is part of N. America, though it is not often referred to as such. The story involves a treasure in the ancient Mayan ruins of the area. Wildlife shown includes a toucan, a giant anteater, a gila monster, and two painted vultures, among others There is also a huge, fist-sized cave spider that menaces Race.




A Small Matter of Pygmies
Set in the Brazilian rainforest, Race and the boys save a small Indian from a black jaguar. The man was about to be sacrificed by his own people--a tribe of pygmy Inidians. Eventually the rescued man is instrumental in helping them escape form his tribe. This is the one episode where I spotted the one zoological error I was able to identify; birds of paradise are native to New Guinea, NOT the American tropics.



The Invisible Monster

I just found out that this is the favorite episode among most viewers. And it was pretty awesome when I was a kid. Dr. Isiah, scienntist freind of Dr. Quest, is experimenting with "mass and energy" when he inadvertently creates "something monstrous beyond beleif." truely invisible, the monster stomps around the jungle leaving footprints, and consumes the hapless scientist who created it. The Quest team investigates, discovering that the monster feeds on energy from any source, including the bodies of living creatures. Jonny has the idea to bombard the energy-creature with bags of paint. Once "painted", the monster looks truely weird, with a single staring huge eye and a gaping maw. A flaw in the animation reveals itself when you don't see the monster leave footprints after it's painted. They are able to lure the monster with it's favorite "food", electricity, and then destroy it by reversing the process Dr. Isiah used to create the monster. The episode reminds me a little of the short story by Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing," also about an invisible monster, which is of a color that exists outside the visible human spectrum.



Monsters In the Monstary
On this episode, a bunch of villains dressed as yetis terrorize a Tibetan monestary high in the Himmelayas. It's kind of a letdown, as the monsters cool-looking, but all fake. Rather like "Werewolf of the Timberland" the one ep I was actually disapointed with when I saw it (The werewolf of the title is a fake, and the only real menace are the human villains). That is, until the very end, when a REAL Yeti (pictured above) shows up and slaughters all of the imposters.






Terror Island

On this episode one of the last (if not THE last), the Quest team finds an island overrun by monsters, small animals that Chu Ling, a mad scientist has engineered to gigantic size. The villain captures Dr. Quest, and tries to persuade him to join his side, or he will be fed to the monsters. In addition to those pictured above, there is also another huge reptile that rose out of the sea. Some of the mutant bacteria from Chu Ling's experiments had seeped into the ocean. The monster attacks Chu Ling, and both creator and creation both end up ebing electrocuted in a power plant.

And....



This is my own JQ collection. The Turu and the Spider Robot resin kits are by Anubis. It was very hard to find both of them--but the person wanted to get rid of them, and gave them to me free of charge!