Check out the classic episode of Jonny Quest called “The Robot Spy,” on YouTube, in four parts. Here are links to each part:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
I guarantee you that any kid who was alive in 1964 (or who saw it in later years, in syndication) remembers this episode, vividly. When I was a kid, I thought JQ was quintessentially cool. Still do. But when I watch it now as an adult, I realize that the show is also a gold mine for parody and humor.
Some of the many things in “The Robot Spy” episode that are funny:
Dr. Quest slaves away building his “para-power ray gun” using millions of bucks of the public’s money, etc. Meanwhile, Hadji, ignored and marginalized, can F**ING LEVITATE WHATEVER HE WANTS TO. Screw the para-power ray gun! Dr. Quest should start attaching diodes and wires to Hadji’s head, figure out how he does that sht.
The playful “lounge” music that’s used while they are hauling (nice drawing of a tractor, by the way) the spider ball back to the storage shed at the base is so incongruous - it cracks me up.
When the spider “wakes up” inside the storage shed, extends it legs and starts to move around, it doesn’t make the SLIGHTEST BREATH of noise. Mouse farts would sound like cannon blasts compared to the “sounds” that spider robot made inside the shed. I couldn’t hear a gddamn thing, and I was straining my ears - except for the stock, atmospheric-scary soundtrack, of course. But yet, somehow, the guard standing watch outside the shed not only hears the spider robot, he acts like it’s been so f**ing loud that you’d swear some joker’s been walking around on sheets of corrugated tin lying around on the concrete floor in there: “What’s going on in there? . . . Alright, who’s in there!” he says. Once again, Dr. Quest is clearly barking up the wrong tree. This guard has superhuman hearing that just cries out for further testing and analysis.
Is it just me, or does the voice of the Air Force radar operator shown at the very beginning of the episode sound just like Race Bannon’s voice, except with a super-fake Southern accent?
Also near the beginning, the motorist in the car, who happens to see the flying craft fly overhead, clearly reacts with horror at least a FULL TWO SECONDS before the flying craft is even remotely visible on the horizon. I’ll give Dr. Quest a pass here, since how was he to know about this guy? But for crying out loud, this dude has superhuman vision. Test this f***er too!
Dr. Quest clearly has a fetish for instrumentation. Not many people feel the need to embellish a simple speaker phone with an oscilloscopic read-out of the audio signal.
Twenty years of schooling and an advanced degree enables Dr. Quest to say, when standing near the flying craft with Race in the desert, “We’d better move back, no telling what it is.” Brilliant, just brilliant.
When Dr. Quest and Race discover the unconscious guard at the storage shed, there’s a tight shot of Race flipping “on” a light switch. Except that it’s very obvious that Race flips the switch down, not up, as would be usual. I believe this to be a not-so-subtle clue that the world of Jonny Quest is actually a “reversed” world, somewhat like the one they used to show in certain issues of Superman Comics. You know, the ones where everything was drawn “blocky,” and where when they showed people playing baseball, everything was all backwards and sh*t. But why the Quest world would be reversed is far from clear.
The electrified fence is a nice touch. Totally unbelievable, but nice. Same with the flamethrowers. Pure kid-bait, this stuff.
At the end, Dr. Quest seems crushed that his para-power ray gun caused the flying craft to crash. But what the hell did he think would happen? That it would make a graceful three-point landing? Get real, buddy. You design weapons for the f***ing military! A military whose basic job it is to destroy things and kill people. It ain’t beanbag, dipstick.
Love the disembodied spider “eyeball” coming back to life at the end, in defiance of all known physical laws. Now I know where Cameron got this idea for his Terminator movies.
