Jonny Quest (TV Series) Riddle of the Gold (1964) User Reviews

The introduction of Dr. Zin

[bensonmum2 · 6/10 · 4 December 2008]

In "The Riddle of the Gold", the Quest gang heads to India to check out a mine that has suddenly started producing a large quantity of gold. The problem, as Dr. Quest has discovered, is that it's not real. Who's behind this attempt at passing-off a worthless mineral as gold? And what dangers lay ahead for Dr. Quest, Race, Jonny, Hadji, and Bandit in India?

The single best thing "The Riddle of the Gold" has going for it is the introduction of Quest nemesis Dr. Zin. When I was younger, Dr. Zin represented the ultimate in bad guys – seemingly unlimited resources, grand evil plans, and a desire to do harm to anyone standing in his path. Other than that, there's really not a lot to get overly excited about in this episode. The tiger hunt, one of the episode's main set pieces, never really worked for me.

One thing about this episode that I find odd is seeing Dr. Quest and family on a commercial airline. Why not take the private jet they always flew in? I suppose the writers did it to pad the script and create a few comedic moments with Bandit on the airplane. There's really no other good explanation.

Meet your nemesis episode. Or Race's worst episode yet....

[julianmarku · 5/10 · 14 May 2021]

Honestly "Riddle of the Gold" might be the laziest episode yet of the series. The episode is missing huge chunks of the script and you can tell they either didn't have time to animate the whole episode and had to cut huge chunks of the script.

This episode is like a bad Bond movie where your James Bond character is split into 4 people and each one does nothing to save themselves The whole episode, everything happens to the gang and no one does anything about it, no one has to do anything about it because the plot shield is so hard for this episode that if Zin himself appeared with a minigun, he wouldn't hit a thing.

Let me just say some of the things that were completely forgotten in the production of this episode: The formula for the gold. No ideas how it's made, Just that it's from a rare mineral, which is strange because: why not sell the mineral? I mean look at diamonds, they sell pretty well and any metal that is close to imitating gold which is a great super conductor for electricity would make the owner of the formula the richest man in the world.

Next, events happen in this episode out of pure luck and I mean just luck and plot shield: bad guys get a tiger to stage an accident, tiger accidentally fails and accidentally lands on the would-be assassin. Bad guy has a palace of guards, yet only he ever does his own dirty work even though we know that the guards are no strangers to the schemes in the palace. Finally, Benton steps in front and completely wastes the element of surprise for a : "A-ha" moment only to have the bad guy pull a gun and Benton Quest answer by... doing nothing while a tiger breaks the chains it was holding it and saved Doctor Quest by attacking the bad guy. Wow...

Finally, I want to address a point: Race is completely useless in this episode. He does nothing to protect the Quests. In other episodes you could tell that Race knew his enemies before stepping into a room. In this episode, he is just a humble passenger. And it is thanks to the plot armor that no one died.

The only good thing about this episode is the introduction of Doctor Zin and it does a very sloppy job to it, similar to a Bond villain. Apparently doctor Quest already know about him. I guess they met at a scientist convention. Doctor ZIn does nothing in this episode but distract you with his misshaped head. I wish this episode never showed his face, but he was just a voice on a phone or something. Because intruding your nemesis in a bad episode is the worst introduction.

So plot armor galore in this episode! Why am I giving it a 6? It deserves a 5.