TV: Jonny Quest, Disc 3

Episode 15: Turu the Terrible

The team's chartered a Disney tramp steamer in upriver South America to search for a vein of pure Trinoxite, a metal vital to the space program.  Unfortunately,  the deposits lay deep in the land of Turu, a man-eating Pteranodon who squawks like an Andean condor and is kept as a pet for half-mad wheelchair-bound Kurtz.  He's used Turu to enslave the local natives for mining the Trinoxite, thinking it to be silver.



Fortunately, Quest has brought the never-again-seen Quest Rocket Belts as well as a bazooka, and Turu absorbs a few direct hits before succumbing to the nearby tar pits.  In a heartwarming scene, Kurtz chooses to die with his pet.


Pros: Terrifically bald moral judgments from Benton, who displays real anger when the boys are threatened.

Cons: Yet another Scooby Doo plot, at least it has some Heart of Darkness in there.

Grade: C+

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Episode 16: The Fraudulent Volcano


Perhaps the series' worst episode title, the Volcano in question is at least a cover for Zin's Tahitian operation of weapons development.

Investigating the staged eruptions, Benton and Race are captured by Zin in true Blofeld fashion.  Of course, Bond never needed two ten-year olds to rescue him.

Strangely, the base is scuttled off-camera during the wrap-up.

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Pros: Zin! Also, Quest's fire-fighting bomb was not used to solve the problem!

Cons: Benton takes time out from extinguishing a fire to explain how his new invention will help extinguish oil-well fires.  There had to be a better means of exposition...

Grade: C+

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Episode 17:The Werewolf of the Timberland

Quebecois lumberjacks with names like Jacques, Blackie,  and Pierre are being menaced by Lupe Garoux, the werewolf of the timberland.  The werewolf is of course yet another Scooby Doo ruse to cover a gold-smuggling operation.  Unaware of all this, Benton and Race are combing the area in hovercraft  (apparently stolen from Zin's Tahitian operation) in search of petrified wood. Yeah.

A thin story like this can only mean extra time devoted to Bandit hijinks, and so we are subjected to minutes of Bandit's tangle with a skunk to serve as an introduction for White Feather, a Peter Pan-level Indian protector-of-the-wilderness voiced by Mike Road at his How-iest.  White Feather pretty much does all the heroics here by saving the boys and running off the smugglers -- leaving us with only the important question: Where's Bandit?

Pros: Direwolf!

Cons: Another thin episode wrapped up off-camera,

Grade: C-

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Episode 18: Pirates from Below



The bad guys (well armed: island base, hovercraft, mini-subs)  take a proactive tack this time around, stealing Quest's new undersea probe and taking Jonny and Race as hostages.   An unsuccessful escape attempt eats a full act's worth of time, and soon the whole cast is imprisoned; Hadji pulls an ancient and mysterious trick from the orient to facilitate a more successful jailbreak. 


Chekhov: The probe's robotic arms.

Pros: the cast is split up for a relatively plausible reason.

Cons: Hadji's mysticism is a little too effective here, conversely the original escape's failure relies on an improbable dog, boy overboard turn of events.

Grade: B-

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Episode 19: Attack of the Tree People

The story begins with our heroes separated at sea following a galley fire that scuttles the Sea Quest.  "I'll miss you, old friend," Benton intones before abandoning ship.  The boys wash up on a nearby island,where they are menaced (actually, "treated like gods" would be more accurate)  by gorillas and a pair of ne'er-do-well australian poachers with an eye to get into kidnapping.  When the two forces meet, it's a small-scale recreation of the battle of Endor.


Pros: Treating the abuse of one man at the hands of a dozen gorillas for laughs.

Cons: A forgettable light story in the series' back half.

Grade: C

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Episode 20: The Invisible Monster

The series returns to form here, as Isiah Norman, one of Benton's old friends, now employed by DHARMA, has inadvertently created an invisible creature made of energy (and his id?) and manages one frantic radio call before the creature returns to kill him.

Genuine horror follows, as the monster runs amok on the island, wiping out anything its path crosses.  The last act doesn't hold up, with the paint-bombing and yet another jury-rigged Quest science trap, but it's still one of the series better outings.


Pros: One of the series' best title cards, and very little use of Bandit.
Cons: Creature consumes everything it touches.  Except paint!

Grade: B-

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Episode 21: The Devil's Tower

While testing Benton's weather balloon in the Serengheti, those savannah winds carry the device to the top of the not-titular Devil's Escarpment, a peak which cannot be climbed.  Race is sent to town to rent an airplane (it turns out to be a biplane worthy of Frohlich's collection), leaving aside the question of how the team even got to Africa, much less why they failed to bring their hovercraft, rocket belts, or other exotica.  Once there it was found by clan of neanderthals who have naturally avoided detection for millennia atop their perch...

except for by Klaus, a nazi war criminal who escaped justice at the end of the war (and coincidentally, Benton's War Crimes tribunal).  He's put his concentration-camp management skills to work, forcing the cavemen to mine the escarpment for diamonds.  It ends with a Temple-of-Doom rope bridge showdown as Klaus bombs the team with his cache of German Army surplus grenades.

Pros: Interesting backstory reveal for Dr. Quest, and features one of his trademark valedictions: "Not an end I'd wish on anyone, but he deserved it!"

Cons:  A real hodgepodge of elements -- evolutionary throwbacks, biplane, weather-balloon experiment, nazi war criminals...

Grade: B