Dr. Zin


Dr. Zin

(pop culture)The treacherous Dr. Zin, arch-nemesis of brilliant inventor Dr. Benton Quest, epitomizes the supervillain mastermind. Sartorially sinister in his lab coat and ascot, this bald, Asian scientist sports a Fu Manchu goatee and a diabolical chuckle. First seen in “Riddle of the Gold,” the fourth installment of television's animated Jonny Quest (1964–1965), Zin is buffered by soldiers, cutthroats, and servants for whom he has little respect—“You brainless fool, get out!” he derides a dutiful houseboy—yet these minions steadfastly sacrifice themselves for their malicious master. His past is cloaked in mystery, but one thing about Dr. Zin is clear: his goal of world domination. This insidious intellectual perpetually tinkers with weapons of mass destruction, and what he cannot create, he steals. In his most famous Jonny Quest episode, “The Robot Spy,” Dr. Zin dispatches a spider-legged, single-eyed automaton to obtain Dr. Quest's experimental weapon, the para-power ray. His efforts foiled by Quest, his son Jonny, Jonny's friend Hadji, and their bodyguard Race Bannon, Zin produces a duplicate of the weapon, his inertia ray, an unperceivable beam capable of downing aircraft. Dr. Zin, voiced by Vic Perrin, challenged the Quest team in four episodes of the series' original single season, and returned in the 1980s and 1990s in Jonny Quest series continuations and made-for-TV animated movies, with Jeffrey Tambor, Clyde Kasatsu, and Frank Welker lending him voice. The doctor's deceitful daughters Anaya and Melana were introduced in 1997, and with them a cybernetic ninja immodestly dubbed a “Zinja.”