Detective Jenny (Johnsonverse)

Detective Jenny is an American animated series that ran on WBC's Saturday Night block from September 3, 1994 to December 29, 2001, and again since September 2, 2017. The series follows the adventures of six (nine starting with the fourth film) teen detectives in the employ of the UN to uncover such things as drug smugglers, arms traffickers, human slavers, and terrorists. The series was critically acclaimed, and spawned a franchise including merchandise, films, games, soundtracks, and a clothing line, with Team Jenny appearing on Fireside Chat with Tim Johnson in 2018.

Development
In early 1992, Tammy Jo Johnson, known for being a doodler, drew up five characters while at a Howard Johnson's during a visit at Times Square. Johnson named the five characters' given names after relatives of the Johnson Family (Jenny was named after Johnathan Johnson's wife Jenny Anne Daniels; an urban legend postulates that Jenny Smith was named after the character, as she was born during the series' first run, Makayla was named after Daniel Johnson's aunt Makayla O'Neill, Kristen was named after Sheldon Johnson's mother Kristen Parker, Terry was named after Tammy Jo's cousin Terry Jones, and Louise was named after Sheldon Johnson's half-sister Louise Benjamin). At that point, she immediately began making a series of comic books based on the five characters, naming the series Detective Jenny, about the five girls employed by the UN to uncover various criminal activities, under the Chalke Comics banner (later Johnson Comics after 2010; the original Johnson Comics wouldn't come back under Johnson control until the Disney acquisition in 2013) to distinguish from the former Johnson Comics, which Phil Stacker had sold to Marvel during his mental breakdown in October 1991. The series was an instant hit, and Johnson's brother, Stephen J. Chalke, saw potential in the characters, and started creating the television series in mid-1993. The pilot, finished in December 1993, was sold to WBC, where Sheldon Johnson, Jr., and his brother Craig, helped Tammy Jo and Stephen develop the series. Ronnie, who was named after Tammy Jo's aunt Ronnie Chalke, was added for the series, debuting in the comics in the fourth issue.

Tammy Jo was showrunner from 1993 to 2001. When the series was revived in 2017, her son Tim took over. Craig Johnson was director of the series and movies until 2015, at which point Timothy Hill (director of EarthBound and Monster World, among many other productions) took over.

Premise
The series follows six (nine starting with the fourth film) 13 to 16-year-old girls working for a special task unit of the United Nations. They were selected because they were the subjects of Project Hercules in April 1979, an experiment in stopping the aging process; the project was a success, and the six subjects, while they can still be killed, are effectively immortal, in addition to being physically stronger and having faster reaction times than normal humans (this was done so the series could follow real-life events without having to age the cast). Known as "Team Jenny", they are tasked with infiltrating, uncovering, and in many cases, destroying illegal operations.

The series has been described as "deceptive". On the outside, it seems like a generic girls' show, but the series is actually very dark and mature, serving to deconstruct the child hero concept. The heroines often find themselves in dangerous situations, and carry firearms that they do not hesitate to use to kill. In fact, they seem to have no qualms about killing, and will not take chances with their enemies. In addition, innocent civilians, even children, are often caught in the crossfire. As a result, they were viewed as outcasts in school (their school, the John Tyler High School, was destroyed in a terrorist bombing in 1981, with no reported survivors aside from the team) because of their line of work, and don't have any friends aside from each other. They have also been left with mental and emotional scars as the series progressed, and since no therapist will see them, these scars only worsened to the point that Terry once ripped out and ate the heart of a drug lord and chucked an active grenade in his mouth in a Season 8 episode, Makayla and Kristen stabbed a smuggler with a sword, took out his eyes with a corkscrew, and left him to die in a Season 5 episode, and Louise also once burned a terrorist alive and fed his body parts to her dogs in a Season 6 episode.

The series also involves such themes as drugs, smuggling, slavery, human trafficking, and terrorism, among other. Villains are either depicted as depraved individuals, or good people forced into a life of crime. It is for this reason that several one-off villains were redeemed, but usually died in the process.

The series also has a recurring antagonist in the form of a terrorist organization known as Black Scorpion. Led by a man known only as "Onizuka" (named for Ellison Onizuka, an astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster), they commit terror acts around the world, with the ultimate goal of Japan gaining independence from the United States, though this goal later changed, after the first film, to the more noble goal of a global utopia where war is an alien concept, while utilizing the same brutal tactics.

This was the first series to use Johnson's famed hybrid approach, mixing animation with live-action elements such as miniatures and live pyrotechnics. In fact, early in production, Johnson Television was in talks with Gerry Anderson to make a Supermarionation series out of the concept; had this gone through, it would have been Anderson's first series to use Supermarionation since The Secret Service; negotiations fell through when Anderson wanted to use the Supermacromation technique used in Terrahawks; another early concept was making the series live-action, with Ben Stein cast before the switch to animation, and Fairuza Balk considered for the role of Jenny, before animation tests showed the comics' art style transitioned nicely to screen. For the final product, and to this day, the animation is done by Toei Animation. The series was also the first WBC series to be created in widescreen, to coincide with Johnson-owned PrimeStar's switch to widescreen earlier that year.

The intro is also innovative, using an opening similar to that of the later show The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, while a dramatic theme by longtime Johnson Philharmonic Orchestra composer Cal Johnson plays. The sound of ice clinking in glass is also heard in every episode. The opening sequence is an homage to old spy movies. Much of the series' soundtrack is stock music composed by Barry Grey for various Gerry Anderson series. The outro involves the cast in various situations from the previous season (except for season one, which had clips from the pilot and the first six episodes), set to another original composition; both the opening and end credit music were used in the 2004 video game Evil Genius.

Unlike many shows, most of the voice actors record together in a soundstage (Stage 33, the same stage that also tapes WBC's game shows, in addition to Game Show Network and Comedy Central's game shows; as a result, many game show hosts like Mike Reilly, Todd Newton, and Rolf Benirschke have all guest starred), and are encouraged to improvise; Tammy Jo Johnson explained in a 2000 interview that this would lead to realistic back-and-forth between characters; this led to many outtakes, some of which made it into a documentary on the series in 2017.

United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international co-operation and to create and maintain international order. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II with the aim of preventing another such conflict.

Team Jenny
The main protagonists of the series, Team Jenny is the UN's best team of detectives. This title is a misnomer, as the team more often acts as spies, saboteurs, assassins, even commandos. They are often used for infiltration, sabotage, rescue, even outright combat. Despite their young ages, ranging from 13-16, they are hypercompetent at their jobs, rarely getting so much as a scratch. However, since they have had to experience a wide range of horrifying sights, their mental and emotional states are very, very fragile, and they are liable to flip out unexpectedly at any time.


 * Jenny G. Denver (Tara Strong; credited as Tara Charendoff 1993-2000) - The main protagonist of the series, Jenny is the titular character. She is the leader of Team Jenny. Jenny is normally the most level-headed member of the team, and serves as a calming influence to the others. Most of the time, Jenny is relatively subdued, only truly expressing herself if she's alone, or if Makayla is the only person in the room. Even so, Jenny is not immune to flipping out, once ripping off a Libyan drug smuggler's arm and then shoving it up his anus in the Season 7 episode Operation: Drug-less. She is a well-rounded agent, able to do anything while excelling at nothing, making her the most reliable agent employed by the UN. Jenny is the oldest member of the team, at age 16.


 * Makayla O. Gómez (Alanna Ubach) - The deuteragonist. Makayla is Jenny's second-in-command, childhood friend, and confidant (there are also many hints throughout the series that Jenny and Makayla may be romantically attracted to each other, though that has not been confirmed yet; the twelfth movie will mainly focus on their relationship), and often her main anchor to sanity. She is also the wealthiest member; her father, Alejandro Gómez, who was an immigrant from Mexico, having made his fortune by mining oil through his company, the Gómez Brothers Oil Company, which he and his brother Javier started in 1960, and as such can get access to a therapist who will actually see her (most therapists refuse to see the team out of fear of being targeted by their enemies). As a result, she is the most well-adjusted member, but still has episodes of depravity. Makayla's specialty is infiltration, which she achieves using a variety of gadgets and gizmos such as a grappling gun, a laser cutter, and a watch that renders her invisible. Makayla is the second-oldest member of the team, also being 16-years old, but is a few months younger than Jenny.


 * Kristen Smith (Cree Summer 1993-2001; Jessica DiCicco 2003-present) - Kristen is one of the team's two pilots. Despite only being 15-years old, she can pilot any aircraft or helicopter with ease. She is also one of the more mentally-insane members of the team, and is often the one to commit the most gruesome acts against villains, whether it's throwing someone into a volcano or throwing someone to get mauled by lions. She is best friends with fellow pilot Louise.


 * Terry Jones (Tress MacNeille 1993-2001; Hynden Walch 2003-present) - Team Jenny's weapons expert. Terry is a 14-year old girl who grew up on a farm in California's Central Valley, and whose parents were killed by cattle rustlers; she killed the rustlers with their own weapons, then used their remains as fertilizer. She was then put in an orphanage run by a shifty man named Jim Albertson, who turned out to be notorious serial killer Ted Bundy; she called the cops on immediately after stepping through the door. Terry can use a wide variety of weapons, from knives to rocket launchers and everything in between. She is best friends with Ronnie.


 * Louise Savage (Kristen Schaal) - The team's other pilot, 14-year old Louise has seven cute but deadly attack dogs and is much like her best friend Kristen: able to pilot any aircraft or helicopter with ease, though Louise has the added bonus of being able to drive land vehicles and watercraft. She is perhaps the most depraved member of the team, as she once burned a terrorist alive and then fed his remains to her dogs in the Season 6 episode Operation: Terrorist Killer and also rammed an arms trafficker, ate off his toes and fingers, cut off his tongue, gouged out his eyes, ripped out his spleen, tore off his intestines, burned his corpse, dipped his skin in acid and lye, and threw the body into a saw, cutting it in half and all the remains being preserved as food for Louise's dogs, in the eleventh film. All things considered, she lives up to her surname.


 * Ronnie Hinton (Paige O'Hara 1993-2001; Melissa Fahn 2003-present) - The youngest and (until 2003) newest member of the team, 13-year old Ronnie doesn't have nearly as much mental or emotional damage as the other members. She joined the team in the series' pilot, and was quickly taken under Terry's wing. Ronnie's specialty lies in electronics, able to hack computers with impunity and disassemble and reassemble chipsets in minutes, while leaving no evidence behind. She also carries EMP charges designed and built by herself, and can quickly reprogram robots to her side. She also sees putting grenades in peoples' pockets as the first solution to a problem.


 * Jeff Herbert (David Tennant 2019-present) - One of the team's superiors, replacing the deceased Joe Quill. He is described as a veteran of the Vietnam War. He will debut in the twelfth movie.


 * Dennis Leonard (Ben Stein) - The team's other superior. Dennis has the charisma of a wet blanket, always being deadpan and humorless, though it has been shown on many occasions that he does indeed have emotions, such as when he was noticeably angry after 9/11. Dennis' job is to give the team their equipment.

Starting with the fourth film, three new members joined:
 * Christy Joles (Grey DeLisle) - Christy is a 14-year-old scientist who, like Angus MacGyver, can make efficient weapons out of ordinary household objects. Like Ronnie, Sandra and Emily, Christy doesn't have the same state of mental health as other members.
 * Emily Kennedy (Rachael MacFarlane) - Emily, a 15-year-old martial-arts expert from Detroit, can take out enemies with kung-fu or karate, and is also a natural fighter.
 * Sandra Thomas (Lacey Chabert) - 15-year-old Sandra is the team's demolitions expert, able to rig any kind of explosive from cherry bombs to thermonuclear devices (provided she can get her hands on enriched uranium). Despite this, she often leaves the act of detonating explosives to Ronnie. Her favorite pasttime is booby-trapping her enemies' things; for example, in the eighth film, Sandra used a slaver's wallet and added a cutter so that the slaver's fingers would be chopped off.

Deceased members

 * Joe Quill (Shane Rimmer 1994-2019) - One of the team's superiors. Between himself and Dennis, Joe was more charismatic, and could empathize with the girls. His job was to brief the team on their target(s), and their objectives. Joe didn’t do much field work anymore, but when he did, even Onizuka himself feared him. Joe will be killed off in the twelfth movie due to the death of his voice actor, Shane Rimmer.

Black Scorpion
The most-recurring antagonists in the series, Black Scorpion is a global terrorist organization. Originally just another Japanese separatist movement, Black Scorpion eventually began aiming for world domination, with the ultimate goal of creating a utopia free of war. They still use the same tactics since there's no other way to unify the world under one banner.
 * Onizuka (Mako Iwamatsu 1993-2007; Greg Baldwin 2009-present) - The main antagonist of the series.

Episodes
Each season consists of 26 episodes, each 45 minutes in length.

Pilot (1993)
The pilot, which aired in 1995, is an origin story of Team Jenny, telling how they met, and the circumstances of Project Hercules.

Season 1 (1994)
The first season premiered on September 3, 1994. As a new series, the budget was much lower than it its today, forcing the production staff to heavily rely on stock footage from Gerry Anderson productions and older Johnson films. In fact, several episodes were outright adaptations of Thunderbirds episodes; an early Usenet review said that "Detective Jenny does with Thunderbirds what Power Rangers does with Super Sentai".
 * 1) Operation Hawk - Ronnie Hinton was a normal teenage girl until her life was changed forever when she was randomly selected for Project Hercules and inducted into Team Jenny as the sixth member. It is here she feels she is in way over her head when she goes out on her first assignment: stopping a terrorist from hijacking the new atomic airliner Fireflash. This episode was adapted from the Thunderbirds episode "Trapped in the Sky".
 * 2) Operation Neptune - When ships begin mysteriously disappearing off the coast of Somalia, Jenny and Makayla are dispatched in the high-tech submarine Neptune's Trident to investigate.
 * 3) Operation Trapper Keeper - A major human trafficking ring is uncovered in Florida, and the entire team is dispatched to flush the perps out by any means necessary.

Detective Jenny: The Fourth Movie (2003)
This film sees three new members added.

Toyline
The line, made by McFarlane Toys in partnership with Johnson Toys, features highly detailed figures of each character and playsets of various locales. In addition, the figures are highly detailed.

Video games
The games were all critically acclaimed.

Detective Jenny (Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System; 1994)
The first game was originally created as a WAD for Doom, which Johnson Games liked so much they made it an official game. The first game follows Team Jenny stopping an organized crime ring. Each level involves the characters taking out pawns from the mafia to corrupt cops in 18 levels. In addition, FMV cutscenes featuring new animation and special effect sequences were made, which were considered revolutionary for the time due to their high video and audio quality.

Detective Jenny 2 (Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, 1996)
This game involves Team Jenny stopping Black Scorpion from a terrorist plot to take over the US by stopping bombs in the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, among others. The Genesis and PlayStation versions were Doom clones, while the N64 and Saturn versions were fully-fledged 3D first-person shooters that set the stage for Rare's GoldenEye 007 the following year.

Detective Jenny 3 (Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, 1998)
The first game in the series not to be released on 16-bit consoles, this game involves the kidnapping of all the key government by Black Scorpion in an attempt to overthrow the government, and Team Jenny must stop this plot in 22 levels.

Detective Jenny 4 (Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Sega Dreamcast, 2000)
In this game, Black Scorpion attempts to create an actual Y2K bug. Team Jenny must stop this scheme by killing key Black Scorpion hackers. This game introduces new weapons.

Detective Jenny 5 (Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, 2002)
This game was made in direct response to the September 11th attacks, and involves Team Jenny going to the Middle East to hunt down Osama Bin Laden. Upon release, the game drew widespread controversy due to its use of real terrorists and their groups (such as al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Hamas), as well as missions in which the player has to kill innocent civilians to draw terrorists out of hiding, with many accusing the game of being nothing more than pro-military propaganda and even a US Army recruitment tool. In recent years, though, the game has been viewed as a satirical piece on the post-9/11 paranoia and the tactics employed by the military. In addition, the game provoked foiled Hamas, Taliban, and al-Qaeda terrorist bombings near Johnson HQ and several key Johnson buildings. The game was also noted for being the first time Team Jenny and Black Scorpion were forced to work together, as well as the final Detective Jenny production in which Kristen, Terry, and Ronnie were voiced by their original actresses (Cree Summer, Tress MacNeille, and Paige O’Hara, respectively) before they were recast in the fourth movie in 2003.

Detective Jenny 6 (Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, 2004)
This game sees Team Jenny investigating a suspected pirate operation on the Eastern Seaboard, eventually finding that a group of pirates backed by Black Scorpion has been using old naval ships dating back to World War II and the Cold War have been raiding all merchant shipping in the Atlantic.

Detective Jenny 7 (Nintendo GameCube, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, 2006)
The first game to take place in outer space,

Clothing line
The clothing line covers outfits for every member of Team Jenny. The costumes are full-piece, and are used as Halloween costumes, cosplays, or worn everyday