Back to the Beach

On the blustery and rainy night of July 20, Nicky and I trundled down to Pier 6 -- site of previous concert visits to hear the Cetera-shy Chicago and to partake of Hippiefest -- to enjoy the ultimate trip in the rock & roll Wayback Machine: a concert by the well-worn remnants of The Beach Boys.  Nicky had seen the B-Boys in concert somewhere on the order of ten-odd times, including three of their famous holiday concerts in DC.  This was the first time for me, which seems remarkable in view of the fact that the B-Boys, along with DuckTales and Gladstone Comics, helped take some of the pressure off me during graduate school in the late 80s.  That's right, most of the infamous "notes" that made up much of the foundation of the DUCKTALES INDEX were composed and edited while listening to cassette tapes of the band.

It won't come as any surprise to you to learn that the B-Boys pulled no surprises out of the duffle bag during this two-hour gig.  It was strictly old favorites for the most part, though Mike Love (who, with Bruce Johnston, comprised the only two "old standbys" in attendance) did insist upon singing an obscure song inspired by his guru.  Would that the guru had been on hand to broker a reconciliation between Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, and the currently touring band.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem likely that such a reunion is on the cards anytime soon.

Mike Love was the literal "front man" for the crew, as you might expect, and his stage "antics" (if you exaggerated and called them that) bespoke someone who had been through the grind far too many times to count.  He pantomimed various familiar lines and words from the songs as if he were conducting a class in American Sign Language.  Perhaps he was preserving his strength, for the night was hot and muggy, at least until a sudden thunderstorm came up and lashes of rain started filtering into the tent-like structure. This cut the mugginess for, oh, about 10 minutes, but performers and audience alike left the venue thoroughly "sweated out."

Amusingly, the crowd was far less well-behaved than either the crowd that came to hear Chicago or the crowd at Hippiefest.  Several inebriated ladies wandered up to the stage during the show and had to be led away by security guards.  A couple of them were old enough that it was probably foolish of them to have partaken of "the grain and the grape" so freely.  Or perhaps stronger substances were involved, since the smell of burning cannabis was annoyingly pervasive.  Needless to say, several beach balls were being bounced and thrown around, leading several small kids to run through the aisles after errant passes.  Would that I had brought a hatpin (do they even manufacture those anymore?).  

Until the next "Over the Hill Gang" blows into town...

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 49, "Scroogerello"

In all honesty, I don't savvy the lack of enthusiasm that both GeoX and Greg appear to have had for "Scroogerello," one of the more imaginative and risk-taking episodes of DuckTales' first season.  Greg inadvertently put his finger on the reason why this off-the-wall take on Cinderella deserves more than its share of respect when he comments, "Yeap; this is our first reality bending episode." Precisely -- and it's the first time that such "reality bending" has taken place within something close to an established "Duck context."  "Scroogerello" works because the storyline manages to respect the parameters of the Ducks' world (or the DT version of same) while putting the characters into some wholly unrecognizable situations.  The ep very rarely flags and keeps coming up with imaginative and amusing ideas to enliven the familiar fairy-tale tropes.  Several future episodes ("The Uncrashable Hindentanic" comes quickly to mind) would execute the trick more efficiently -- "Hindentanic," in particular, has a much stronger framing sequence -- but give "Scroogerello" full credit: It got there first.

The opening could be considered something of an "indirect reboot" of the old idea of an "overly bossy" Scrooge.  Recall that this aspect of Scrooge's personality was toned down from original script drafts in parts three and five of "Treasure of the Golden Suns."  Here, we get a full faceful of the "Wrath of Scrooge," a mad-on exacerbated by his extremely atypical bout of illness.  I suppose that Scrooge could hardly be blamed for lashing out at anyone who tries to "help" him while he's in such a unusually vulnerable physical state.  "Difficult patients" are fairly common in hospital settings, after all.  Still, Scrooge's anger towards his family and servants in the opening minutes winds up playing a surprisingly small role in the context of the Cinderella parody.  Only Scroogerello's comment "Why do I feel so guilty?" when he encounters the aged, imprisoned Duckworth makes any sort of direct reference to it.  Usually, when a character has a "mental experience" like this, the "dream" or "hallucination" or whatever is chock full of references to the underlying reason for the "experience."  The "Cinderella Stone" episode of The Flintstones (which, for all I know, may have inspired this little experiment) is one good example of this.  Scrooge's illness, by contrast, basically creates only the physical reason for his mental adventure.

It's no surprise that Glomgold and the Beagle Boys (or an unusual combination of same: Big Time/Burger/Bebop-Bugle) play the roles of wicked stepfather and stepbrothers here.  The fun really starts to flow when HD&L are introduced as Junior Woodchuck cookie peddlers.  Teleplay writer Evelyn Gabai displays some cunning attention to detail when she depicts the Woodchuck cookies as being heavier than concrete.  This is at once a reflection of the TV series' somewhat more jaundiced view of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook and the traditional vision of the Woodchucks as a hyper-competent organization.  Only such an organization, you must admit, could possibly create such utterly inedible cookies.

As the "fairy godchild in training," Webby produces one of her most winning performances of the series.  We have come to expect Webby's enthusiasm and desire to pitch in (though her gung-ho-ness does seem to tick the impatient Scroogerello off at one point), but she gets to display some additional character traits.  Later in the episode, after she's stopped the topiary-animal stampede in Prince Lilypad's garden, Webby gets to bask in universal approbation and even to flash a little bit of ego with the "When you've got it, you've got it" comments.  I would have liked to have seen this somewhat more assertive version of the character -- somewhat akin to the heckling Webby in "Take Me Out of the Ballgame," but with more inherent charm -- in a few additional episodes.

Speaking of making an impression -- wow, until my most recent viewings of the episode, I don't think I ever fully appreciated just how good a performance "Princess Goldie" puts in here.  It was natural enough that Goldie would serve as Scroogerello's love interest, but Gabai gives the Klondike gal far more to do than simply play the distaff version of Prince Charming.  The extremely feisty, lout-clouting, in-your-face-sandwich-shoving, karate-chopping Goldie we see here is a worthy predecessor to the Goldie who features in a number of chapters of Don Rosa's LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE McDUCK.  In fact, the success of the characterization in "Scroogerello" may be even more remarkable considering that Goldie has been taken completely out of her standard "Klondike context" for the very first time, yet is immediately recognizable AS Goldie.  Joan Gerber's fine performance certainly helps make this impression, but it is clear that Gabai understands how Goldie works and what can believably be done with her.

I find it quite interesting that, while "Princess Goldie" is depicted in the younger form seen in the flashback sequence of "Back to the Klondike" (both Barks and DT versions), Scroogerello is the elderly Scrooge of the present day.  Perhaps Scrooge's dreaming of a young Goldie (not to mention his concluding remark, "I guess it didn't work out this time either, old girl") is a reflection of a long-held desire to return to some sort of "cohabitation" with her in the Klondike.  Surely, that is the underlying message of Don Rosa's "dreamscape" tale "The Dream of a Lifetime."  Amusingly, both "Scroogerello" and "The Dream of a Lifetime" include a rescue of Goldie, though the Goldie of the former is far more aggressive in fighting against her fate than the Goldie of the latter.

I began to fully realize that "Scroogerello" had taken Duck-based storytelling into what fans might call "a whole weird new area" when Scroogerello was provided with a... cookie-box limo... to get to the ball.  (I've heard rumors that George Harrison originally wrote "Crackerbox Palace" with that very title in mind.  No, not really.)  And, of course, the cookies didn't crumble there: we got more gags involving using chocolate chips and cookie crumbs as weapons before midnight struck and the whole shebang devolved into... well, um, cookie dough, I guess.  (That would certainly be preferable to some of the possible alternatives.)  The refusal to let go of the bizarre cookie-car idea, but instead to milk it for all it is worth (see what I did there?), is a clear indication of this episode's commitment to the off-the-wall.

Oddly enough, the characterization of Prince Lilypad is probably the most predictable part of the ep, except that he tends to splash, rather than crash.  (Note how many times he douses the unappreciative Scroogerello.)  Lilypad does get a priceless line when he channels The Elephant Man in declaring "I am NOT an animal... I am an amphibian!"  The biological mistake is more than compensated for by the cleverness of the reference.  More movie references follow as the topiary garden resurrects memories of both Disney's animated version of Alice in Wonderland and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.  From my own peculiar perspective, I couldn't help but think of the Kimba the White Lion episode "The Red Menace" during the "bush-animal barbecue" scene.  The constant references to Lilypad's "cas-tull" do tend to annoy after a while, in the same manner as Bebop/Bugle's "Be-bop-a-lu..." rhyming scheme.  This ep is so good at coming up with new ideas that it's a shame that such old-fashioned jackhammering was found acceptable.

The "rescuing Goldie" sequence is reasonably conventional (or as "conventional" as anything in such a setting can be) apart from the decision to literally turn Glomgold and the Beagles into "bullfrogs."  That weird little bauble was presumably added simply to justify the concluding gag about the Wuzzlified villains finding "an ugly princess who'll kiss anyone on the first date!".  GeoX's negative reaction to this gag is a bit mystifying, since the innuendo is mild at best -- not to mention legitimately funny.  Besides, after the "silent cabin scene" in Rosa's "The Prisoner of White Agony Creek," I think it can be safely said that the "bar" for the appropriateness of sexually charged scenes involving the Duck characters has been raised considerably.

The "take a number" sequence is, of course, a somewhat anachronistic distaff reversal of the "post-ball search for Cinderella," and a clever one it is.  Several figures from the Pick-a-Prince Ball can be seen in the line of would-be matches, though none of them get featured lines.  Goldie's somewhat demure pilgrimage to find "Mr. Right" is also good for a chuckle; I get the impression that Gerber was making a particular effort to channel the spirit of Mae West here.  If only Goldie could have swung her hips just a bit more...

After Scrooge wakes up, of course, we get the old miser's expected apologies for his previous shortness, which (as noted above) would have carried even more meaning had the disputes with the family and servants been more in evidence during the dream-adventure itself.  I am not all that enamored of the decision to have Louie ask whether the penitent Scrooge is "feeling all right"; I think that it is safe to say that the Nephews should know full well by now that Scrooge's bark is rather sharper than his bite.  And, much as I hate to admit it -- because I find the gag to be hilarious -- I have to agree with GeoX and his correspondent "Christopher" (no relation, obviously) that the "fries and hamburgers" business does lead to all sorts of distasteful questions about exactly what the Ducks ate when Scrooge took them out to restaurants in the past.  The only way of getting around the dilemma is to assume that this is the first time that Scrooge has EVER taken his family out to dinner, but we know that such is not the case, because the whole gang went to Quack Maison during "Down and Out in Duckburg."  As GeoX suggested, this was probably a case of Gabai tripping over the "Law of Unintended Complications."  All of these issues combine to make the episode wrap-up a little bit of a letdown, despite the exquisite ending that brings back both the "magic gold topper" and the statue of Goldie from "Scrooge's Pet."  I guess that Scrooge moved the statue out of his Money Bin office after Lucky knocked it over and almost broke it in that episode.

Though it can certainly be flyspecked, "Scroogerello" deserves the respect of all Duck fans as a bold initial effort to use the TV medium to bring a certain approach to the world of the Ducks that had never been used before.  I think that my relative lack of experience with Barks' world at the time made me a bit more receptive than some of the more curmudgeonly "old sourdoughs" in the audience to what Gabai was trying to accomplish here.  (I wonder whether Barks ever screened this ep.  That would have been fun to watch.)  It is safe to say, that by this time, the comparative stateliness of the early DT eps has well and truly been jettisoned, leaving the field open for numerous other departures from the "Duck-expected."  Some of the latter failed, of course, but we tend to remember the ones that succeeded quite fondly indeed.  "Scroogerello" is not the least of them.

.

.

.

"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) Brief, non-speaking appearance by Ludwig [von Drake], as one of the guys who gets his head smashed in the food by a Beagle Boy.

Well, he certainly looks a bit like Ludwig, but I'm not quite willing to pin the definitive ID on him.  Unless Ludwig has suddenly taken to wearing contacts, that is.

(GeoX) The beatnik Beagle is now some sort of combination beatnik/disco Beagle. Very strange.
(Pan Milus) It's Scrooge dream man! For him disco and beatnik culture is the same thing ;)

I figured that it was appropriate to address Pan's comment on this issue along with GeoX's in a more "open" forum than the comments section.  It's pretty clear that the writers who used Bugle/Bebop -- Koonce and Weimers, Anthony Adams, and Gabai -- were provided with only a vague idea of how this character was supposed to be presented.  "Just make him a 'hip dude' who digs music" was probably the sum total of it all.  I do think that Pan comes up with a pretty good take on how Scrooge might have hallucinated about B/B being a "disco Beagle" (even though B/B seems more into a sloppy version of go-go than actual disco).  Just as comic-book writers in the late 60s used references to the Beatnik era when writing dialogue for their "far-out" characters, so too might Scrooge pack several strata of musical history into a single imagined character.

(Greg)  This episode was written by John Pirillo... John Pirillo's IMDB script reads almost exactly like Cherie Dee [Wilkerson]'s in terms of resume.

Actually, it looks more like James Markovich's ("Back Out in the Outback").  Pirillo's story (not writing) credit here is the only one listed under his name.  Just as I did for "Outback," when I interpreted the story as an example of teleplay writer Richard Merwin's work, I chose to regard "Scroogerello" as Evelyn Gabai's baby.  For all I know, Pirillo's "story" simply consisted of the suggestion, "Why don't we parody Cinderella using Scrooge?"

(Greg) Duckworth then brings out the cod liver oil (believe me; that would NEVER work in real life) as Scrooge blows him off (remembering to swear in DUBBED SCOTTISH STYLE to boot) for trying to poison him. HAHA! I agree; Cod Liver Oil is terrible, crappy and totally pointless. 

Actually, cod liver oil seems to be a pretty useful supplement, though I imagine that the liquid form has long since been superseded by capsules.

(Greg)  Scrooge wants to go warn the princess; but he of course loses his balance and screams loudly and drops with a wussy bump into the wheelbarrow as we see logic break #1 for the episode as somehow the Beagle Boys manage to provide the wheelbarrow and show up within about four seconds. I know this is a dream; but COME ON! Show some logic in your dreams guys. It makes it more believable. Even Scrooge is questioning the logic of that spot calling them speedy devils.

If the "speedy devils" line HADN'T been included, then this bit would indeed have stretched logic quite a bit.  But the self-referential comment by Scroogerello makes up for it, I think, especially in the context of such a "reality-bending" storyline.  No argument about Burger misplacing his mask, though...

(Greg) Dewey proclaims that [the boys] are spending their years shining Bebop's shoes. Then why was Bebop asking Scrooge to do it? Logic break #2 for the episode.

You'd have to ask Imelda Marcos about how many servants would be needed to service the number of shoes that B/B appears to own.

(Greg) So we cut to outside as Scrooge thanks the fairies for their spring out and I see Mrs. Beakly's dress has changed from pink to purple. How about that?! I guess Webby's magic does have out of control properties after all.

I'd like to think that this was a reference to the running gag in Disney's Sleeping Beauty in which the three good fairies couldn't agree upon the color of Aurora's dress and kept on changing it up until the very end of the movie.  The "coloring error" explanation seems more believable, somehow...

(Greg) I also sense logic break #4 for the episode as Huey the limo driver was changed to blue. Shouldn't that be Dewey since he wears blue?

...and this is why.

(Greg) Burger takes [Goldie's] hand as the food goes flying and Goldie calls this waltzing in a cheap cafeteria. HAHA! The music stops and Burger asks where is the movie? Huh? Explain THAT one kids! 

Obviously, some bit of dialogue was cut somewhere in the vicinity of this remark, but the continuity error wasn't caught in time.  Since "movies" have nothing to do with what's going on, I wonder what the excised material could possibly have involved.

(Greg)  Flint blows off Scrooge's tactics as they near a church which so happens to not have a Christian Cross on it. Ahh; I see that BS&P finally stepped in on these religious symbols. And then the clock on the front strikes midnight and I betcha everything turns back to normal for Scrooge and company. I check the DVD....Damn; I'm good as Webby explains that her magic doesn't last past midnight.

Note the "Donald Duck" watch here.

(Greg) So we go into the forest as Scrooge and the nephews walk looking defeated for some reason. Then he tells the lads to have courage as he picks up a trail of golden sequins from Goldie. Umm; check your internal logic there; there are no sequins on the blue dress. Logic break #6 for the episode. 

Had "Princess Goldie" been wearing her "Belle of the Klondike" garb, then there would have been sequins aplenty available for the purposes of falling and trailing.  The odd thing here is that the sequins don't resemble sequins as much as they do coins.  Might there have been some miscommunication here between what the script intended and what the Wang Films animators were told to portray?

(Greg) ...Duckworth and Mrs. Beakly panic and back up to the wall thinking that [Scrooge] is going to diss them again for being mother hens on him. Scrooge then goes over to them and breaks logic again as he's now wearing his purple robe with purple slippers again after wearing a red robe when he was sleeping. 

Actually, I think that the "red robe" was red pajamas, and that he was wearing pajamas under the purple robe.  Naturally enough, you wouldn't be able to see the PJs when the robe was on.  It would be unlikely that Scrooge would wear a robe to bed when he's running such a high temperature.  I imagine that Scrooge took off the robe when he got (or was put) in bed and stowed it under the covers, making it easier to put on when he finally did get out of bed.

Next: Episode 50, "Double-O-Duck."

Nicky and the Brains

After searching for almost a year, Nicky has finally secured a new full-time position at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, a Johns Hopkins-affiliated research facility studying abnormalities in brain development.  Her first official day on the job was today.  She will be serving as Lab Manager, assisting researchers in various capacities.

All together now...

"Magic FROG?!"

We found this little fellow hanging on the side of our (gray) car the other day.  Nicky snapped this picture after putting him on the ground in what we both hoped was a safe place.  Needless to say, seeing an albino frog in the wild is a real rarity...

 

...er, sorry.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 48, "The Right Duck"

In order to fully enjoy most comics and animated cartoons, some degree of "suspension of disbelief" is usually a necessity.  We don't expect the logic in shows about talking Ducks with bins full of cash to resemble that of the "real world."  (Of course, given how screwed up the world can appear to be sometimes, the simpler logic of cartoons and comics is frequently quite refreshing, especially when it's based on the works of a master storyteller like Carl Barks.)  BUT, even the most fanciful of animated confections has to pay at least some attention to wider reality.  That, in its essence, is the major beef I have with "The Right Duck," the closest DuckTales equivalent to Barks' own unfortunate extraterrestrial misfire, "Island in the Sky."

I know that a number of folks (including some who haunt this blog) love "Island," and the story, considered strictly in context, is a fairly effective piece of sentimentality, with Scrooge demonstrating compassion for the humanoid aborigines onto whose Edenish planetoid the old miser originally planned to move his money for safekeeping.  It's the context itself that bothers me -- this whole notion that Duckburg has suddenly become this off-the-wall foreshadowing of The Jetsons.  At least in a story like "Monsterville," the "futurization" of Duckburg is carried out in a conscious fashion.  In "Island," it just springs into existence from nowhere in particular.  Where's the logic?

The situation in "The Right Duck" is slightly different, of course, arising out of a reasonable (if somewhat contrived) premise: Launchpad picks up on an offhand remark by Doofus and decides to become an astronaut to "prove to Mr. McDee what a great pilot [he is]." But Ken Koonce and David Weimers then proceed to throw literally everything they know, or SHOULD know, about space travel right out the window and produce a script that, in its basic level of intelligence and respect for its audience, resembles nothing so much as the "childlike scrawl" that LP submitted to the Duckburg space agency as an application.  GeoX's description of the resulting ep as "just plain dumb" seems a bit of an understatement, to be honest.  Given that K&W will put forth an infinitely superior parody of another film genre just two episodes down the road, the lack of care with which "The Right Duck" was slapped together seems infuriatingly mystifying.

In all honesty, the episode doesn't begin too terribly badly -- at least, once we get past the iffy reason for Scrooge's "firing" of Launchpad (note that Scrooge doesn't even originally look upset when LP runs out of gas and falls into the pool -- he only explodes after LP has safely emerged from the copter).  The "astronaut training" business is reasonably well grounded in the reality of what human astronauts have to face, so the slapstick gags resulting from Ronnie the chimp's sabotage (or, in the case of the G-force simulator, LP's attempt to turn the tables) are completely acceptable.  K&W slip up badly, however, when they have Dr. von Geezer suggest that drafting LP as an "idiot" pilot means that DASA won't have to send Ronnie into space.  Um, guys, the whole idea of having chimps as test pilots is to AVOID having to send humans into space in order to beta-test unproven aircraft.  Why would DASA have a vested interest in protecting Ronnie anyway?  Is he some sort of "superchimp" like the "simps" in Arthur C. Clarke's novel RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA?

I don't think that K&W's choice of a name for Ronnie was a coincidence.  I suspect that they might have been referring to a certain future President who once starred opposite a chimpanzee, especially since Ronnie winds up ruling Mars after Emperor Ping the Pitiless has been kicked to the celestial curb.  The fact that the duo included an out-of-nowhere rib of George H.W. Bush ("Presidents have better things to do than play horseshoes!") in a TaleSpin episode ("Bearly Alive") lends further support to my hypothesis, I think.

The ep begins to fall fast, and hard, once LP and Doofus accidentally find themselves aboard a "Voyager probe" headed for Mars.  Even BEFORE the episode had presented us with the proposition of a stereotyped Martian civilization -- domed cities, green skins, antennae, and all -- I found myself tearing my hair out over K&W's complete and utter ignorance of what an unmanned space probe is supposed to look, behave, or move like.  I'm not talking about piddly stuff, such as the historical fact that the Voyager craft were originally sent to explore the outer planets and enter interstellar space.  No, K&W's "unmanned" probe has windows, seats, and a manual guidance system.  Even if you allow for the fact that the robot probe belched out of the "Voyager"'s vitals is meant to "collect data und specimens" and return them to Earth, there would be NO NEED WHATSOEVER for the DT "Voyager" to look like anything remotely resembling one of the Apollo spacecraft that went to the Moon.  (The really infuriating thing is that K&W's inclusion of the gags involving Von Geezer's recorded message suggests that they knew something about the details of the Voyager missions, so the silly simplifications may have been a result of willful neglect, as opposed to garden-variety benightedness.)  Even the real Voyagers didn't travel as quickly as their DT equivalent, the speed of which allows Doofus to crack that lame gag about possibly missing supper.  I mean, kids shooting off bottle rockets probably have more of a grasp of the elementary principles of space flight than K&W display here.

There's little I can say about DT's depiction of the Martians; it is every bit as cut and dried as that seen in the infamous Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964).  With the possible exception of the amusingly paranoid Ping the Pitiless, the sticky-fingered robot probe disgorged by the "Voyager" displays more personality than any other inhabitant of the Red Planet, surreptitiously swiping the clothes of the guards tasked with imprisoning it...

... and then showing out-of-the-blue consciousness by helping Launchpad, Doofus, and the "lifers" in "Ping's Pit for the Pitiful" to escape:

You just know that the wandering whatsit will figure in the ultimate defeat of Ping, which shows a good sense of continuity, if nothing else.  Would that K&W could have been as consistent in its depiction of Doofus' attitude towards Launchpad, which is supposedly the central character-based focus of the episode, but instead "morphs" more times than one of the energy beings from Salusasius Delta (don't ask).  Greg made several comments about this issue; let me go into a bit more detail concerning the various phases of the relationship:

1.  Doofus starts by backing LP's astronaut ambitions to the hilt, as you would expect.  Check out the quasi-rapturous look on Doofus' face in the opening DASA scene:

2.  When Von Geezer finally spills the beans about the reason for LP's employment, Doofus is more concerned with stopping LP from blasting off than with arguing over Von Geezer's description of LP as an "idiot."

3.  Doofus is "glad" that Launchpad is a "smart pilot" when the two get caught in the "Voyager" probe.

4.  Doofus reacts to LP's inept attempts to get them out of Ping's Pit by wondering aloud whether Von Geezer might have been right after all.

5.  Doofus encourages his "hero" to ride the Martian bomb-rocket back to Earth and "warn them about Ping's attack."

6.  Doofus channels Von Geezer in angrily explaining why LP got to be an astronaut in the first place.

7.  Doofus claims that Launchpad will save the day because he's "the best."

8.  Well, maybe not...  (Plug your ears!)

9.  Doofus proclaims, "I knew you'd come through!" when Launchpad locates the steering mechanism (again... on an unmanned rocket carrying a "thermonuclear detonator"??).

10.  The final embrace at the testimonial for Launchpad.

Doofus' "awful, passive-aggressive whining" may have been the single lowest point of all of this, but the overall lack of coherence is even more maddening.  It would have been better had the episode followed the template of, say, "Merit-Time Adventure" and kept Doofus in consistent "rapture" mode until stage 8., at which time Doofus' sudden loss of faith in his "role model," as inexpertly acted as it might still have been, would have had more of a meaningful impact.

Scrooge's brief role is, as intimated by GeoX, in unfortunate line with the ep's dumbness as a whole: the business involving him hiding valuables from a Martian invasion (wouldn't he have prioritized securing his Money Bin above all else?) is embarrassing.  Also, given that he apparently knows that Launchpad has taken a trip to Mars (his spies aren't just on Mount Vesuvius anymore, it would seem -- either that, or he finances DASA), Scrooge really ought to have considered the possibility that LP was responsible for the terrible "flying skills" displayed by the pilots of the Martian rocket.  Scrooge does get one fairly clever bit, though, when he channels the radio announcer from Orson Welles' War of the Worlds (1938) while describing the opening of the rocket hatch.

As Greg says, "The Right Duck" is certainly better than Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers' "Out to Launch," if only because it ISN'T a total snoozefest.  Its logic is equally as shaky, though the shambles probably could have been partially salvaged had Koonce and Wiemers deigned to do even a smidge more homework regarding space travel, had avoided falling back on lazy, out-of-date tropes about Mars, and had tried to characterize Doofus more in the "Hero for Hire" mode.  "The Right Duck" isn't a complete disaster; like an ultramarathon race who's just finished a race, it's just sort of lame all over.

.

.

.

"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) [In] the training sequence[,] Launchpad is judged to be incompetent even though it's obvious that all of his "failures" are mechanical in nature and not remotely his fault...

This logical breakdown is most apparent during the "simulated space-walk in water" test.  Dr. V.G. and his assistant, looking down into the water as they are, should be able to see that Ronnie has deliberately sabotaged Launchpad's space suit.

(GeoX) Two Martians die offstage. Is this the first time death has occurred in a Ducktales episode? 

Interestingly, the on-screen death we'll be seeing in two eps' time also occurs in an episode played for laughs.  It's amazing what a difference some authorial care can make.

(Greg)  So we logically go to the space building which is called D.A.S.A. (Take one guess what the D stands for.) as the male receptionist greets him to the Duckb[u]rg Aeronautics and Space Administration. Basically N.A.S.A in Duckb[u]rg which is funny considering that this takes place in America according to Carl Barks' vision. I guess Duckb[u]rg has a local space program. Wonder if Scrooge had anything to do with it? Hmmmm...

See my comment above.  The notion that Duckburg runs some sort of quasi-independent space program has a long history: see, for example, Barks' story "Raven Mad" (WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #265, October 1962).

(Greg)  So we go to a shot of the planet Mars as the space rocket lands down and Doofus realizes that he will miss supper. Okay; we then cut to a far shot of the alien city as we cut to inside the throne room of the King of Mars as we see green dogspeople wearing purple outfits. Man; even the aliens are like humans only greener...  They spread out and form a line and then declare to their king who is a thinner dogsperson with the same purple outfit but with a red cape and a ruby crown on his head. I'm guessing the guards in question are Terry McGovern and Frank Welker. They call him Ping The Pitiless which absolutely sucks as a name and title. He is voiced by Ronnie Schell...

... and, Greg, you should immediately turn in your Canadian citizenship card for neglecting to mention that Schell was the voice of the immortal Peter Puck!  (BTW, "Ping the Pitiless" wasn't plucked out of thin air; it is a riff on FLASH GORDON's Ming the Merciless.)

 

(Greg) After the commercial break; we return to the building of DASA as we head to Mission Control with Von Geezer pacing back and forth while the rest of the science guys are on the computers are having heart to heart talks. I wonder: dogspeople are the smart ones; ducks are the unemotional ones and the pigs are just pigs. What's wrong with this picture?

I think that Duckburg's equivalent of the Fair Employment Practices Commission might find something wrong with the fact that ALL of the employees of DASA appear to be dogfaces.

Next: Episode 49, "Scroogerello."

Ponapalooza

I have stared directly into the maw of multi-tinted, multi-accessorized, multi-scented MY LITTLE PONY fandom, and yet live!

No, that's not me in the center there, but an amazing simulation.

Right from the time I learned that the sixth BronyCon was being held in Baltimore and expressed an interest in attending, Nicky insisted on coming with me.  Not because she's experienced a "pony epiphany" -- I'm still trying to sell her on the virtues of DuckTales and Kimba the White Lion (without much success).  No, she was concerned about "how it would look" for me to be attending a convention devoted to a pop-culture phenomenon "meant for little girls" without a (grown) female companion at the very least.  I gave her the whole spiel about the show's adult fan base (for some reason, I forgot to pull the Star Trek card and tell her of the role that John "Q/Discord" De Lancie has played in encouraging the fandom) and said that I wanted to attend for just one day, on Sunday when most of the youngsters would probably have gone home and most of the attendees would be adults.  This seemed to satisfy her, so we purchased our one-day tix.

As luck would have it, Sunday's activities included the one thing I definitely wanted to see -- the panel featuring the main talents behind the MY LITTLE PONY comic.  Better yet, the panel occurred right around lunchtime, so we could take our time getting down to the Inner Harbor area via the Metro and get some lunch at Jimmy John's before braving the "mane" crowd inside the Convention Center.  It was a great day for people-watching: in addition to the colorful MLP crowd, baseball fans were walking to Camden Yards for an Orioles game, and there was a seminar for "female entrepreneurs" (Rebecca Cunningham, BE JEALOUS!) in the hotel where we picked up our Con badges and ditty bags.  Said bags contained a program (the cover of which is shown above), a lanyard, and a pair of purple sunglasses with a unicorn horn attached to the temple.  Nicky wouldn't let me wear the latter, potential temporary acquisition of Twilight Sparkle's magical powers be damned.

BAGS, man!

The comic-book panel took place in a gigantic room, which made the attendance seem smaller than it actually was.  (Having attended San Diego on a number of occasions, I had a familiar feeling.)  We sat mid-room and so didn't get any good pictures of the panelists themselves.  I imagine that if you search on the Internet long enough, you'll find a copy or transcription of the panel.  Not that all that much was revealed -- Andy Price and Katie Cook spent most of the time talking about how awesome it was to be working on the comic, about their working methods, and so forth.  I was pleased to hear that Hasbro has been ruling over the MLP franchise, including the comics, with a relatively light hand; would that Disney had followed that policy consistently with its TV-animation properties.  The creators also refuse to look at any of the massive mess of MLP fanfic, partly for legal reasons (not wanting to inadvertently steal others' original characters) but also because they prefer to extrapolate from the TV series itself.  Maybe they'll look at some fic "when they've retired," which will hopefully not be for a long time.

We had made tentative plans to attend a second panel run by a guy who is doing a Ph.D. thesis on the whole "brony" phenomenon, but the comic-book panel ran a bit late, and the panel's (much smaller) room was packed when we got there.  Judging by the pretentiousness of the subtitles on the first PowerPoint slide, it was probably all for the best that we adjourned downstairs to the vendors' room.  I had planned to get some little figurines of the "Mane 6" to add to my extensive figurine collection, but the cheapest ones I could find started at $20 (!!).  Most of the other collectibles on display were priced in a manner that helped me to understand why one of the panels earlier in the weekend was entitled "Brony on a Budget."  You'd almost have to be on one, in self-defense if nothing else.

An amazingly large number of people in the vendor hall were toting pony plushies, which you could buy ready- or custom-made.  Thankfully, the hall wasn't that crowded, so we didn't have to worry too much about unauthorized plushy whackage.  The most unusual vendor billed herself as "The Sudsy Squirrel" and was selling anthropomorphic soap (that's soap in the shape of animals, as opposed to soap that is sentient).  We couldn't help but notice that no one was stopping to look at her wares, which was unfortunate, because some people in the crowd... well, smelled as if they had been bunking with real ponies of late.  We even had to wait for a minute before examining a table of figurines, simply because the guy who was there before us reeked so badly.  He also made some sort of loud proclamation to the proprietor that might have held some pony-related significance to certain people but otherwise creeped us out.  Apart from that, and one oddball making random cackling sounds in the line to get into the comic-book panel, the attendees were well-behaved.  It probably helped that there were relatively few children running hither and thither; these were the hardcore fans, including the "reverse macho male fans" (as in: Are you man enough to love MLP?), and a good number of them were all business, dropping serious coin to acquire some pony bling.

The rumor is that BronyCon 2014 will be held in "Baltimare" (yes, they did "officially" call it that) as well.  Next time, I think that I might try to attend at least one additional day, perhaps to see some of the voice-actor panels and the like.