DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 1, "Back to the Klondike"

Before we get rolling here, one quick note. As you can see above, I've decided to change the overarching title of this feature.  You can blame this alteration on my determination to maintain arithmetic precision.  DuckTales' "kickoff year" being 1987 means that 2012 is, and always will be, the silver anniversary year of the series.  Since my one-ep-per-week plan will obviously take us well beyond the end of '12, I decided to remove the numerical indicator.

Play along with me here:  Imagine that you are a Disney TV Animation exec trying to decide how you should commence production on your ambitious new series.  Everyone is still feeling his or her way (well, yeah, there are those who've worked on Gummi Bears, but you get my drift) and you'd like to get the series off to a good start.  You intend to take your inspiration from the works of Carl Barks, and, at this point, you have Barks' full complement of UNCLE $CROOGE tales upon which to draw.  You decide to pick a story with:

(1)  fairly extensive gunplay, including gunfire aimed at juveniles;

(2)  drug dependence (Scrooge's reliance upon medicine to jog his memory);

(3)  kidnapping;

(4)  sexual tension, coupled with implied cohabitation (so what did Scrooge and Goldie do when they weren't digging up White Agony Creek?);

(5)  a lengthy scene set in the questionable environs of a "honkytonk";

(6)  heavy reliance upon an historical flashback.

For some inexplicable reason, this bear of a project gets green-lighted, and you begin beating it into shape for televised consumption.  Of necessity, you have to change some things; for example, the meds have got to go (at least at this early stage of the series; you'll get more leash later on).  Less justifiably, you undercut the battle of wills at the heart of Barks' story in favor of a more conventional "misled heroes vs. conniving villains" approach.  But you still retain many of the elements listed above, even amping some of them up to a surprising extent.  For your pains, you get raked over the coals by numerous Barks fans, and the criticism is, at least in part, deserved.  But you still merit some extra points for sheer chutzpah.

Boy, is this a choice episode with which to start our journey!

"And 100 mint sodas for me little partner -- Superdoo!"

Joe can attest to the fact that my original reaction to the DT "Klondike" was of the "recoil in horror" variety.  In my first written output of any sort related to DT ("DuckTales: A Review," THE BARKS COLLECTOR #38, June 1988), I went all "Comic Book Guy" on adapters Tedd Anasti and Patsy Cameron for turning the "unforgettable ambivalence at the end... where Scrooge goes bawling into the sunset, having just purposely given up his claim to Glittering Goldie (and feeling ashamed about it)" into the now-infamous "perching on a bear and smooching while heart-shaped smoke plumes waft into the sky" TV wrap-up.  My first draft of "Klondike" comments for the DUCKTALES INDEX upped the rhetorical ante, as I used the word "atrocity" to describe the episode.  Joe helped talk me "off the ledge" by making a few of the same points that GeoX made in his review -- yes, the adaptation took immense liberties with the original, but it did have its own inherent charms (mostly of the visual variety), and, given its self-imposed limitations and simplifications, it did manage to capture a fairly substantial piece of the ambiance, though certainly not the complexity, of Barks' original.  The intensity of my original reaction to the TV "Klondike" can be set down to the fact that I was still in the first, flushed stages of my enthusiasm for Disney comics, when "keep the Barks canon unspotted" still had the feel of a prime directive.  It was a good learning experience; I've been critical of other products since then, but I've generally eschewed extremely over-the-top language, and I've also trained myself to be much more open-minded about departures from "book."  If you don't agree that that's a good plan, then stop and reflect for a moment on the 10,000-plus-hit "holy heck" that followed my comparatively mild description of kaboom! DUCKTALES #3 as a "train wreck."

How did the DT "Klondike" give us "a little something extra," even as it changed the nature of Scrooge and Goldie's spat and introduced Dangerous Dan as the oily, altogether-too-obvious heavy?  Start with sex (no, I don't mean that literally).  Don Rosa's "The Prisoner of White Agony Creek," with its now-notorious "between the legs!" and "Crash, tinkle, tinkle *silent cabin*" scenes, has NOTHING on the DT "Klondike" insofar as sexual innuendo goes.  After the Goose Egg Nugget goes missing, Goldie offers to help Scrooge replace it by working at his claim.  And you don't see her going home after each day's work is done.  Did WDTVA really expect us not to put two and two together?  I see GeoX's point about Goldie's voluntary change of heart being a rather abrupt swerve for a character who has presumably been seducing and/or fleecing unsuspecting sourdoughs for quite some time before this.  But when sex is entered into the equation, Goldie's decision looks more like a plan to seduce Scrooge (for presumably nefarious purposes) that winds up backfiring -- by growing into love.

We may not get an animated equivalent of Barks' famous censored splash panel of Scrooge licking everyone in sight, but the DT "Klondike" also gets away with a surprising amount of stuff during the honkytonk scenes.  The wonderful "reveal" of a performing Goldie is a highlight, of course, but we also get a lengthy gambling session and some indoor gunplay courtesy of Dangerous Dan.  (This last was apparently trimmed at some point during Toon Disney reruns, as was the later scene in which Goldie threatens to "take another shot" at Scrooge.)  Again, consider that these fairly daring sequences were included as part of DT's first effort to capture Barks' world.   

The central conflict involving Scrooge, Goldie, and Dangerous Dan is, of course, not a patch on the tremendous ego-tilt between Scrooge and Goldie in Barks' story.  Even here, however, DT didn't completely miss the boat.  The idea that an old debt must be repaid is preserved; the difference is that Scrooge and Goldie can't agree on who should pay whom.  This approach has the advantage of both showing "newbies" that Scrooge is capable of less than admirable behavior and getting the audience on Scrooge's side from the start (since one can easily sympathize with him over the misunderstanding).   As great as it would have been to have seen the original, much more grasping Scrooge, it's not hard to see why the adaptation took the approach that it did.  Scrooge is going to have to be the lead character and "hero" for a good many episodes to come, after all.

Several aspects of the TV "Klondike" have not held up so well.  The Valentine theme really contributes nothing of importance to the story, save for providing an ending visual that has dogged this ep's reputation forever after.  (BTW, how ironic is it that the ep's first spoken words -- presumably, the first words ever recorded for DT -- consist of Scrooge saying, "There's nothing like a quiet evening at home"!  Well, at least he didn't say anything about feeling a hankering to join the circus.)  The Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, in its first animated appearance, is imperfectly realized, proving to be of decidedly limited help to the Nephews; it's almost as if the writers were considering making a running gag out of its fallibility.  Thankfully, they seem to have done a re-think after the fact.  Most troubling of all is the ridiculous ease with which Scrooge and Goldie accidentally discover that there is still gold on Scrooge's claim.  If the other prospectors truly believed, as Goldie says, that "all the gold ran out years ago," then the fact that gold is lurking several millimeters below the surface of a boulder suggests that those other guys didn't have a fraction of the gumption and stick-to-it-iveness that Scrooge -- even during his lovelorn and unkempt "hermit" phase at Red Agony Creek -- displayed during his time in the Klondike. 

All in all, for a Barks fan, the DT "Klondike" remains a decidedly mixed bag -- a dusty gunny sack containing a mixture of shiny nuggets and clinkers.  I respect what it does well and have come to tolerate most of its gaucheries and simplifications.  If I were a complete newcomer to the world of the Ducks -- and we must remember that the vast majority of people watching this for the first time in the Fall of 1987 fell into that category -- then I would probably give it much higher marks.  It delivers the visual goods and, for all of the eye-rollingly cliched aspects of the Scrooge-Goldie romantic relationship, respects the intelligence of the audience.

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We'll conclude with a little sub-feature which I'll call DuckBlurbs.  Here, I'll address various issues raised by other folks who've done reviews of the episodes.  In my case, that means calling upon the services of GeoX and Greg Weagle.  Note:  In case any additional comments of note are sent my way, I may update the remarks below. 

(GeoX) Here's how modern-day Scrooge and Goldie find a new vein of gold: they're getting all nostalgic and sentimental until they start arguing about whether she stole the gold, at which point she opens fire on him and hits a rock, revealing the gold beneath. I would request that in the future, DUCKTALES writers, you not do such flamingly idiotic things.

Cue all those aged prospectors simultaneously whacking their temples and exclaiming, "Shee-yoot!  Why didn't I think of that?"

(Greg) Okay; we cut to the seats [in Dan's honkytonk] as Scrooge enters as we cut to various furries including the guy playing the piano as it's an old manual piano.

Uh, it's a player piano.  He's playing a player piano.  The only other character that I've ever seen do that was Snoopy in "What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown," and even that took place within the context of a dream.  Said dream also was set during the Klondike gold rush.  Was the night life in the Klondike so boring back then that people felt the need to pretend to provide entertainment, even when they didn't have to?

  

Giving "faking it" a whole new meaning.

(Greg) So [Scrooge's decision to return to the Klondike] logically leads us to a far shot of a tunnel as the wolves are howling and a train waltzes down the tracks making good time. We then go inside the passenger cart as Scrooge and the nephews relax as Dewey bounces badly in excitement. Man; TMS' animation is stinking up the joint for some reason...

Actually, I thought that Dewey's bouncing here was quite charming, not poorly animated at all.  The bit didn't have to be included, but the fact that it was indicates that TMS was putting a little extra into this first effort.  I will grant you that they did mess up Goldie's beak movements earlier when she said "feather face."  

Bouncy bouncy, bouncy bouncy...

(Greg) We then cut to Dangerous Dan and Dan's partner (ah; I see he got his gun back and holster; no logic break there though) point their guns at the babyfaces inside proclaiming that he got the best of him again. Scrooge blows it off because he couldn't have done that. Except he's done it like three times already in this episode alone. Dan then blows his cover and admits that he stole his last shipment of Klondike gold as we get the flashback as we see Dan doing the deed which makes no sense since we clearly saw Dan's PARTNER steal it since in one of the shots; it was a dogsperson's nose. Logic break #4 for the episode and a bad one at that. 

Well, I looked over the shot in question, and it was hard to see any details on the face of the person who stole Scrooge and Goldie's gold.  More to the point, perhaps, there was no indication that Dan's partner (who never does get a name, but gets no fewer than THREE distinct voices, courtesy of Hal Smith) WAS Dan's partner at the time of the gold rush.  Did Dan, the bragging master of the honkytonk, really need an acolyte at the time of his first encounter with Scrooge?  I've always figured that Dan hooked up with the guy with the smelly aftershave and the appearing and disappearing Swedish accent long after the honkytonk had closed down.  Also, TMS was consistent in showing Dan's cuffs on the unseen thief's shirt.  I'm willing to give TMS the benefit of the doubt on this matter until I see a shot that definitively establishes the dogsperson nature of the thief.

Next:  Episode 2, "Earth Quack."