#jonathan willaway

[theimpossiblescheme]

“You would do this just because you hate the tyrants of all the world?”

“And because I’ve always liked beautiful ladies.  Smiling.”

In which Jonathan Willaway agrees to help his friends save a new world because its queen is mourning her husband’s impending death and he doesn’t want her to feel hopeless.

[thegreatvampirekiller]

⭐️ -renegadexscientist

Even after Jonathan explains how he was displaced in time in full detail, Peter still feels like he hasn’t gotten the full story and is forever asking about the people he travelled with.  By now, he feels like he knows all of these people on some level, especially Liana, who reminds him quite a bit of Bo.

[scarletcoding]

‘ come on, talk to me. what happened to no secrets? ’ (renegadexscientist)

“I know, I shouldn’t… it’s just hard.  It’s like–like being the only person on a roller coaster.  You… You’re stopping and starting way too fast, and–and nobody else really understands what’s going on, and they can’t really help… I just hate it when I get like this.  I get work done, but that’s… that’s all I do.”

[dominoed-daredoll]

Allow me. Gallantry isn’t dead. (renegadexscientist)

“Why, thank you.”  Barbara couldn’t help but smile perhaps a little too widely as the handsome stranger walked alongside with her armful of books–she hadn’t seen him around before, but she found herself rather hoping he’d stay for a while.  “If you’re new on the faculty, they’ve been rather good at keeping you a secret so far.”

[wingdingsandbrokenstrings]

The RP Reaping

Here we have it, folks! The first RP Hunger Games (for us at least, I’m sure this isn’t an original idea). Here are our contesters:

Dr. Egon Spengler as written by @physicsandfungi   

Rook as written by @theotherrookie 

Dr. Peter Venkman and Martin Heiss as written by @worldoftheskeptic

Kylie Griffin and Eduardo Rivera as written by yours truly, @manicpanicaddict

Walter Peck and Jack Hardemeyer as written by @manfromtheepa

Ron Alexander and Madeline Rook as written by @chicagobranchreport

Rind as written by @randomeevee

Dr. Jonathan Willaway, Dr. Noa Kean, and Domino all written by @xdahliawallacex (renegadexscientist, firstdxnxharm, dxntcallmepatches)

Dr. Ray Stantz and Paulo Ravinski as written by @heartoftheteam (oughtabeinpxctures)

Dr. Egon Spengler as written by @doctoregonspengler

Peter Vincent as written by @thegreatvampirekiller

And I am absolutely honoured, thrilled, and pleased to present you two very special guests:

Teles and Himerope as written by @alluringvoices (doctoregonspengler)

[honourablejester]

When you're rewatching episodes of old shitty shows that are truly terrible but you love them anyway (The Fantastic Journey 1977, in this case), and you stumble across some real gems of lines:

Kid Guards: "We found him in the temple. He was going to rob it!" Dr Willaway (indignantly): "That is not entirely true!"

Entirely. It's not entirely true. As in, what, you were only going to rob the place a little? Firm and staunch denial there, love. Wouldn't suspect you for a moment, honest. *facepalms* And Willaway wonders why people occasionally try to kill him. Not the best in the world at de-escalating things, that man.

(That said, he was weirdly the best at understanding the kid trying to kill him this episode. You know, one angry accidental tyrant running largely off betrayed principles to another).

This show is amazingly terrible. I really, really love it :)

[theimpossiblescheme]

“But I believe in beauty and I hate war--why do I have to die?”

I’ve gone on about the old 1970s sci-fi series “The Fantastic Journey” a little bit before on this blog, and it should come as a surprise to no one that my favorite character is Roddy McDowall’s Jonathan Willaway.  But it has more to do with the genuinely clever writing around the character than with the actor (although he does help a great deal).  As campy and far-fetched as the show can be sometimes, all of its best and most memorable moments go toward helping a man who was once a greedy loner with no respect for the sanctity of life along the path of redemption until he eventually becomes a sort of reluctant hero or at least a wild card with more of a noble side than he cares to admit.  And you can see his progression with each episode he’s in--join me under the cut for details!

“Beyond the Mountain”: Jonathan Willaway the Somewhat Tragic Villain who builds a home for himself off of slave labor just to prevent going crazy from isolation, tries to force a woman to marry him solely for the sake of having another human around, and is forced to watch his home painfully crash and burn under the weight of his own pride.

(Even while he’s very much the bad guy, we still get glimpses of the humanity underneath.  He does love, or at least tries to convince himself that he loves, the androids he’s built to basically be his servants and “family”.  He notes that seeing one of them, whom he’s come to consider like a son to him, without his central processing unit is like seeing him dead and starts to have second thoughts about punishing his disobedience.  It’s the archetype of the “kind” slaveowner who takes up the “White Man’s Burden” and thinks he’s doing a service to mankind by doing so.  And when he watches his home be abruptly reclaimed by the ones he’s wronged, he’s left a numb, broken man with nowhere to go and not even the energy to properly cry. When we see him again at the end, it’s no coincidence that he’s wearing black—Jonathan’s essentially in mourning for his entire life since reaching the island.  What he did was unequivocally wrong, and he knows it now… but it was all he had.)

“Children of the Gods”: Jonathan Willaway the Bitchy Primadonna who still doesn’t quite appreciate what the main characters are risking in bringing him along, but reveals some hidden depths by helping someone similarly misguided and much younger realize his mistakes and try to better himself.

(This episode is especially notable since it’s the first time we see that, while Jonathan is inevitably going to butt heads with any adult he comes across just for the sake of keeping his pride, he gets along surprisingly well with kids, despite his own protests to the contrary.  Scott is the first of the main cast who’s willing to be alone with him.  And while Jonathan’s invariably still either rude or dismissive to the adults in the party, when he’s talking to Ace and trying to talk him out of essentially making a bunch of other kids into child soldiers, listen to his voice during key moments.  It’s soft and measured, and there’s actual compassion in it.  Jonathan recognizes someone else who’s about to royally screw up his life and urges him not to.)

“A Dream of Conquest”: Jonathan the Willing Double Agent who actually helps of his own volition this time, gets a front row seat to the sort of cruelty he’s been trying to leave behind him, and gets smacked in the face with just how much he needs to come through for his new friends after all they’ve done for him.

(Here, Jonathan really gets a cold dose of just what kind of man he might have become if he’d stayed home—every second he’s in the company of this warlike dictator who treats his own people like cattle, you can tell that he hates it.  He actually says in the episode that he hates war and everyone who engages in it, but he’s now embroiled in someone else’s war for the sake of getting him and the main cast out of the battle zone with a whole skin.  And going along with the charade visibly erodes the others’ trust in Jonathan, which scares him to death because they’re now all he has.  He might be always “seeking better”, but he doesn’t have to look very far for it; without even realizing what it truly means, he’s willing to put his life on the line for the people he’s just now starting to consider friends.)

“An Act of Love”: Jonathan the…Friend?  Yeah, the Friend who’s actually starting to be integrated properly into the group and is now trusted to be able to save lives rather than risk them.

(Here, Jonathan doesn’t have quite as much to do, but it’s starting to become evident how much he’s actually become a part of the main cast rather than a glorified guest star.  He’s realizing that he actually cares about these people—he wants to see them happy and safe from danger, and he really feels Varian’s absence when it becomes less and less certain that he’ll stay with them.  And note how Fred, the conscientious doctor who was Jonathan’s most vocal enemy before now, puts him in charge of talking a woman out of letting herself be killed.)

“Funhouse”: Jonathan the Slave, having his new psychological scars taken advantage of by someone much more powerful and reduced to little more than a puppet his friends have to forcibly cut the strings of before it kills him.

(The Possession Episode ™ of any TV show, particularly when it’s played for horror instead of humor, can always be a little hard to watch because you’re basically watching a character have their mind and body violated by someone who, a lot of the time, is a complete stranger.  But I’m hard-pressed to think of an instance where it felt more like a man being sexually assaulted.  Jonathan is watched from afar and called “vulnerable”, but “perfect” right before he’s taken over, and it’s abundantly clear that it’s a painful and humiliating thing for him to go through, even as he struggles to take back control.  When it’s over, he admits that he can’t remember much of what happened, but what he does remember he’d rather forget.  This is the second time Jonathan’s put through the meat grinder now that he’s actively trying to be a better man, and it won’t be the last.)

“Turnabout”: Jonathan the Exploited, forced into action by a new, broken society that lets him watch his friends be tortured if he refuses to put his own life on the line and help fix it.

(This time, Jonathan doesn’t willingly volunteer to help this community reform from the inside—he’s shanghaied into it.  Either he puts himself at great personal risk by repairing a computer that’s taken a turn for the Hal 9000, or he gets to watch his friends slowly and painfully die with nothing he can do about it.  The scene where he’s shut in the opposite jail cell of Varian and Scott as they gradually succumb to poison is actually pretty harrowing, especially when he sees that Varian is doing everything he can to reduce Scott’s suffering—remember that these two were the first to truly accept Jonathan as part of their company.  Even when their captors change their minds and let them go, Jonathan isn’t so quick to forgive, saying that it isn’t the lack of compassion that truly bothers him, but the lack of justice since neither he, nor Varian and Scott did anything to deserve their punishment.)

“Riddles”: Jonathan the Frightened, faced with another near-death experience and the fear that no one is coming to save him, all the while actually being more concerned for his friends than his own safety.

(I did say that “Funhouse” wouldn’t be the last time Jonathan gets put through the meat grinder.  This time he’s not only nearly frozen to death trying to help the company find an artifact that could help them get home, but also shoved face to face with his own fear of enclosed spaces where no one can hear him yelling for help. He’d be forgiven for thinking that he’d be trapped there forever and actually says that he thought they’d never be able to find him.  But all the while, it’s not his own wellbeing Jonathan puts at the forefront.  He quickly regains his bearings both times and goes on as if nothing ever happened, ready to move on to whatever lies ahead for him and the company.  And again, his concern for Scott rears its head—notice the terror on his face when he’s told that Scott is also alone somewhere in this godforsaken house.)

“The Innocent Prey”: Jonathan the Neutral No Longer, first tempted to leave a city in need after finding what they need from it, then moved into staying and helping once he knows just how much it means to his friends.

(This episode can pretty much be a microcosm of Jonathan’s character arc throughout the series so far—first motivated primarily by selfishness, then softened into actual empathy once he realizes how much pain will remain if they walk away and do nothing.  His earlier credo that “it takes a thief to catch a thief” gets an ironic callback when he describes those kinds of people here as being bloodthirsty, cruel, and fundamentally untrustworthy.  And not for nothing, but the one who ends up appealing pretty thoroughly to his better nature?  Fred, who once hated Jonathan and still bickers with him incessantly.  In fact, Jonathan ends up preventing Fred from doing anything rash out of blind emotion and helps him to uncover the truth about a murder.)

What really makes this evolution effective is that, like all the great character arcs, Jonathan isn’t magically a new person on the other side.  He’s not perfect, and he’s never going to be—he’s still proud, impatient, sarcastic, cynical, a bit vain, sometimes thoughtless, and willing to tread a more morally grey zone than the others are.  But underneath all the obvious flaws is a more selfless, self-aware, and compassionate man than he was at the start, a man who sees the people around him as actual people rather than utilities and, when he sees his own faults in others, tries to help them overcome.  It’s honestly kind of inspiring to see, even for a campy ‘70s show. In the spirit of Jonathan always having a pithy quote to share in each episode, Marcus Aurelius once said, “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be.  Be one.”  And he does just that.

[theimpossiblescheme]

Things you miss by not watching The Fantastic Journey: Roddy McDowall holding a cat (screencaps by @hawkeyesout-punks)

[thegreatvampirekiller]

Peter and Dr. Willaway play tricks on the crew at Fright Night to get back at them for all the times they've given Peter grief in the past.

✅

[thegreatvampirekiller]

Willaway feels strangely protective of Peter. It may very well be because he knows never made it to that age in his own timeline. -renegadexscientist

Approved!

[thegreatvampirekiller]

“I’ve learned from my mistakes, but I’ve had more time to commit more mistakes.” (renegadexscientist)

“I don’t think we ever really stop doing stupid things,” Peter sighed, sinking into the armchair across from Jonathan.  “We’re only human… humans are idiots at the best of times.  But if it means anything… looking at you now, I would never believe the things you’ve said about yourself.”  Trying to imagine the man as some sort of futuristic slavemaster was almost unthinkable.  Yes, Jonathan was a rather prickly sort, to say the least, but Peter could never think of him as a truly bad man.  

[scarletcoding]

@renegadexscientist

“You are the only person I know,” Catherine grinned, “who can use just his name as a pickup line.”  The bartender gave her another meaningful look, and she had to shake her head again.  She was probably the only person in the club who wasn’t having a drink, but someone had to get Jonathan home in the morning.

[renegadexscientist]

Accidental [txt] Alex, I swear, if you start flirting with the new professor, I am putting a bag over your head with a mustache drawn on it and introducing you to everyone as Englebert Humperdinck, and don't think that I won't.--Barbara

As soon as he stopped laughing, Jonathan began typing. “I’m afraid, Ms. Gordon, that you’ve reached Professor Willaway, not Ms. Young but…I shall be sure to pass along the message to her when I see her again.” 

[theimpossiblescheme]

I’m seriously starting to consider a series of “Things You Miss By Not Watching The Fantastic Journey.”

One of them: this flipping glorious profile shot.

[thegreatvampirekiller]

⭐️ renegadexscientist

It amuses Jonathan to no end what a relative technophobe Peter is, even for their respective time periods–whereas Jonathan can glom onto the new technology Peter’s children bring home with them pretty quickly, Peter still uses a landline phone and a phonograph.