DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 28, "Treasure of the Golden Suns, Part Five: Too Much of a Gold Thing"

And it literally "started from scratch"...

(No, really.  Right after the title disappears, and as we zoom in on the impatiently waiting El Capitan, the "old wheezer" scratches himself.  A clever and subtle reference to the "madness" to come.)

I think that we can safely say that the vast majority of DT fandom is pretty much of one mind about the high quality of this climactic chapter of "Treasure of the Golden Suns."  Back in September of 1987, who WASN'T imitating the gold-hungry Scrooge by the end and shouting, "More, more, I want to see MORE!"?  The visual gloss of and excitement level engendered by the episode haven't dated one bit, with memorable sequence succeeding memorable sequence and the whole kit (not Cloudkicker) and kaboodle (not Kitten) ramping up to a third act that completely blew away anything on offer from any animated series of the first 40 years of television.  The levels of sophistication of such later series curtain-lifters as "Last Son of Krypton" and "Awakening" -- and, yes, Greg, I'm willing to throw in "Plunder and Lightning," at least when considered as a single, sustained narrative -- may have been somewhat higher, and I enjoyed all of these (and others) to one extent or another, but, as they famously say about sex, there can be only one "first time."  When it came to TV animation, "Golden Suns," with "Gold Thing" as its gilt-edged centerpiece, was the ultimate "first time."

*Phew*  Cigarette, darling?

(Or should I also say, "Here we go again!"?)

As spine-shakingly original as "Gold Thing" was in an animated sense, I think that a case can be made that Jymn Magon, Bruce Talkington, and Mark Zaslove had a particular template in mind when crafting their climactic narrative... namely, Carl Barks' "The Seven Cities of Cibola."  In my discussion of "Wrongway in Ronguay," I agreed with GeoX's argument that the "treasure ship" that Scrooge and HD&L find in the Ronguayian wastes may have been inspired by Captain Ulloa's ship in the Barks adventure.  This got me to thinking, and other similarities between the two tales soon began to suggest themselves to me.  It's a little surprising that these didn't originally attract my attention back in 1987; Gladstone had, after all, reprinted the story in UNCLE $CROOGE #217 in February of that year, complete with one of Daan Jippes' fine covers.  I hadn't yet gotten the set of the CARL BARKS LIBRARY containing "Cibola," and I do remember reading over the "new" story multiple times.  For some reason, I didn't pick up on the parallels when I first watched "Golden Suns" in the two-hour format.  But when you consider that "Cibola" was included in that handy-dandy, putative DuckTales reference source, the Celestial Arts UNCLE $CROOGE collection... well, as I said, there just may be a case to be made here.

 

Aside from the blindingly obvious (the ultimate destruction of the treasure site and the Ducks' by-the-skin-of-the-teeth-they're-not-actually-supposed-to-have survival), where else can we see possible links between "Gold Thing" and "Cibola"?

(1)  The "conquistador connection."  Why El Capitan, anyway, as opposed to Le Colonel or der Admiral?  Who knows but that reading "Cibola" triggered the creation of an adversary with a direct link to the conquistadors who, unlike Captain Ulloa and his men, had managed to survive the centuries, thanks to his obsession with the legendary Treasure of the Golden Suns?  The physiological likelihood of such a thing happening is, of course, remote, but the psychological understanding of what drove the ruthless Spaniards is accurate enough.

(2)  The dramatic ways in which the final destination is first revealed to the reader/viewer.  In Barks' story, the Ducks' climb up the cleft leading to Cibola is followed by one of the artist's great splash panels (or polygons, if you want to get geometrically technical).

"Gold Thing," by contrast, obliges the Ducks to pass through a "gauntlet of light," rather than a dark niche, but we wind up getting a very similar "open reveal," albeit from a different (and, for my money, almost equally effective) vantage point.

(3)  The "mounting tension" built into the plots.  Barks takes a fair number of pages to get the Ducks (and, tagging along behind, the Beagle Boys) to Cibola, just as "Golden Suns" takes its sweet time giving Scrooge his crack at the "ultimate treasure."  Once there, the various treasures that the Ducks find get more and more impressive, though we more or less have to take Barks' word on this (the artist shows us a few small-panel shots of various impressive treasures and otherwise assures us in a sidebar that "each 'city' is richer than the one before").  "Gold Thing," with a TV screen to play with, is far freer to sightsee on the trip up the "pecuniary curve."   

(4)  The presence of the "ultimate booby trap."  Barks, of course, lets the Ducks (specifically, Huey) dope out the danger in time to avoid causing catastrophe and gives the cluelessly greedy Beagle Boys the "dishonor" of activating the trap instead.  In "Gold Thing," with Jymn et al. having committed to plugging the infamous "Scrooge gets gold fever" angle from the get-go, it's only logical that Scrooge and the equally lucre-addled HD&L wind up tripping the... big sun clock-gear... uh, thing.  I wonder: had Barks thought up the idea for "Cibola" about five years earlier, when Scrooge was a somewhat more villainous character, might he have been tempted to teach the old miser a similar "lesson"? 

(5)  Scrooge "losing control."  Well, he comes close in "Cibola," though he never quite tips over the edge.  But isn't dizziness one of the first symptoms of, um, fever?  The dollar signs popping from Scrooge's head are a familiar enough motif, but in how many other Barks treasure-hunt stories does he show that weird, glassy-eyed stare?  Are hiccups truly that far behind?  Thank goodness Huey was there to pour the alcohol down the drain, so to speak.

(6)  "Picture talk."  Both stories make use of rebus writing (translated by the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook in both cases) to push the plot along, though the message in "Gold Thing" is rather more important in terms of the Ducks' immediate physical well-being.  The logic of Barks' message is admittedly a lot firmer; assuming that the "dead duck" who wrote the "Gold Thing" rebus died fighting over the gold before he had a chance to trip the booby trap -- and he must have, since, well, the Valley is still intact -- then how would he have known the consequences of tripping said trap?  But it is easy to imagine the "Gold Thing" writers looking at the Barks panels below and drawing some visual inspiration from them, even if they simplified the actual execution.

The one great advantage that "Gold Thing" has over "Cibola" is its ability to literally "bust the boundaries" of traditional comic-book panels and make static visuals "real."  Granted, Barks came pretty damn close to managing this himself on paper, in a famous scene that had an equally powerful impact on pop culture (just ask George and Steven about it sometime).

  

"Gold Thing," however, has the artistic freedom to stack the Ducks up against peril after peril, starting with dangers that are more or less self-imposed by an increasingly demanding and desperate Scrooge...

... and then, once inside the Valley, using various improbable means to keep the pressure on...

 

... leading to the unforgettable scene at the end of act two which -- and I give GeoX full marks for recognizing this -- is unquestionably the psychological climax of the story.  Here is how Geo describes it:

And here, we see what I would call a genuinely great moment; certainly the best in the series so far: [El Capitan] overtakes [the Ducks] and lowers them into a pit of lava to do away with them; as they get to the bottom, it becomes clear that it's actually a pit of molten gold, and in Scrooge's ecstasy at this revelation, we see that the ultimate satisfaction of his lust would be to immolate himself therein. It's really just a momentary thing, but it is authentically frightening.   

I'd add to this the comment that Scrooge is so far gone with "gold fever" by this time that he mindlessly puts his frightened companions in peril at the start of act three by twirling the basket around like some sort of demented ballet dancer.  Even when Scrooge punctured the raft to get away from the caymans, you got the sense that he knew what he was doing (well, sort of) and didn't intend to see the other Ducks get hurt.  Here, he doesn't seem to give a damn about anything but the improbable natural resource boiling away a few feet below.  In completely neglecting the immediate welfare of the other Ducks, Scrooge really does seem to have gone "mad for gold" here, just like El Capitan.  It takes the jealous El Capitan's decision to pull the Ducks back up in order to keep them from "tainting his gold" to finally restore some tiny bit of lucidity to Scrooge, even though it is entirely focused on "getting rid of" the rival to his treasure.

As things literally begin to fall apart, Mrs. Beakley finally gets through to Scrooge by... reminding him that he'll die if he doesn't think of saving his own tailfeathers first.  Unlike GeoX, I don't really see a problem here.  This restoration of the "life wish" to Scrooge seems a fitting response to the "death wish" that he displayed during the scene in the pit.  Once Scrooge decides that staying alive is the first priority, all else follows naturally: his ultimate compassion for the hopelessly insane El Capitan, his apology to Mrs. Beakley.  In other words, Scrooge was "back" well before the young Ducks "officially" welcomed him back.  (Incidentally, no explanation is ever given as to how the Nephews shook off their case of "gold fever."  Perhaps HD&L simply didn't have enough experience with treasure-hunting to be profoundly affected by the "disease" and thus found it easier to purge it from their systems.)

The final rescue sequence, of course, can hardly be faulted on any level, with Launchpad finally slipping out of his episode-long role of interstitial comedy relief and making the ultimate save -- and quite slickly, too.  (It probably helped that, by that time, there was no hard surface left in the Valley for him to crash into.)  The draft version of the script that I own, BTW, would have added to the degringolade by showing scenes of temple gargoyles spitting molten gold and melting away from the intense heat.  Apart from offending Gargoyles partisans, I don't think that this would have added much to the legitimate creepiness of the pre-pickup scenes that did make it to the screen.  These scenes were pretty darn chilling a quarter-century ago and retain their effectiveness today. 

Needless to say, I don't think that there was any way that DuckTales would have killed off El Capitan, especially given the dreadful options that were available for his demise.  There is something truly troubling, though, about El Cap's ultimate fate.  Just imagining him willingly scraping and scrabbling through that dirt and rubble for another few centuries gives me pause, try as Scrooge might to make his own comment on the matter sound a bit light.  El Cap had the "sheer willpower" to live this long already, so one can easily imagine him continuing this pseudo-existence for an indefinite period of time.  Images of the eternal trials and tribulations of some of the "damned" characters in Dante's Inferno immediately come to mind. 

As we prepare to fade out, one rather annoying false note clouds the sunset: Scrooge's claim that he can't be bothered to go on any more treasure hunts, since "there'll never be another prize this big again."  This was too obviously a contrived way to set up the final gag of Scrooge teasing the return of "gold fever."  As such, its logic is about as dubious as that of the whole notion of "gold fever" itself (which I'll address in "DuckBlurbs," in response to GeoX's comments on the issue).  As we all know, Scrooge will NEVER be too complacent, or too crotchety, or too miserly, or too... whatever, to take on a treasure hunt wherever it presents itself.  Indeed, such will be the theme of the remainder of the DuckTales series, just as it is in stories by Barks, Rosa, and other "Duck Masters."  It is the ability to bring the spirit of a Scrooge fortune-seeking adventure to life -- and to do so with style, grace, and visual splendor -- that gives "Golden Suns" its deservedly iconic status as a landmark in TV-animation history.

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"DuckBlurbs"

Look what I found!  An image of the original title card from the two-hour version of "Golden Suns."  It's a bit blurry, but still.  I had forgotten that the title lettering was colored gold (seems fitting, don't you think?).  A leading "The" also seems to be canonical.  I think I'll stick with "Treasure of the Golden Suns" anyway; it seems snappier and more dramatic, somehow.

(GeoX)  The episode creates a parallel between Scrooge's lust for gold and that of Sinister Foreigner (yeah, I know he has a name, but it pleases me to just refer to him as Sinister Foreigner all the time)--fairly sophisticated, you might think, but, well, not really; what this amounts to is that Mrs Beakley ceaselessly and melodramatically maunders about how Scrooge is in the throes of the TERRIBLE GOLD FEVER. Subtle it ain't. I thought the show might make a connection with "The Fabulous Philosopher's Stone" and suggest that he might turn into gold if he keeps this up, but it never goes there. Nor is it at all clear why this particular quest rather than any other should trigger this TERRIBLE GOLD FEVER. Hey, I admire the effort, but I have to say the execution is kind of on the lackluster side.

The original script actually hit the theme considerably harder, especially in the early stages of the episode.  For example, in the first scene on the plane where the scratching and snarling Scrooge has begun his initial descent into "madness," we were originally supposed to get the following highly disquieting exchange:


Mrs. Beakley: Mr. McDuck, can't we please take the children home before you continue this treasure hunt?
Scrooge:  NO!  (whacking a crate with his cane) I want that gold NOW!
Mrs. Beakley:  But it may be dangerous...
Scrooge (swinging his cane like a saber and cutting off Mrs. B. in mid-sentence):  That's too bad, Beakley!  I didn't ask any of you to come along, did I?  So you'll just have to take your chances!

There follows Huey's suddenly-far-more-significant comment, "I've never seen [Unca Scrooge] like this before!"  As harsh as Scrooge's words may sound, I'm somewhat sorry that they weren't included in the final version of the script.  They would have given extra gravitas to Mrs. Beakley's comment that "gold fever" "makes you itch for wealth so much, you forget what's important," and infused the relationship between Scrooge and his companions with that much more tension.  (Imagine the extra edge it would have given the cayman-escape scene, for example.)  If you're going to give Scrooge a contrived malady like "gold fever" at all, then you might as well extract the maximum amount of conflict and turmoil out of it.

I've come to think of "gold fever" as just another example of "80s cartoon ethics" influencing DuckTales in a tangential manner.  It is noteworthy that the series' concluding adventure, "The Golden Goose," which also involved a battle over an "ultimate treasure," used the same theme of Scrooge turning away from his preoccupation with wealth (i.e., trying to save the petrified HD&L by recovering the goose and returning it to its rightful owners) but didn't feel the need to explain Scrooge's gold-lust by appealing to some dubious affliction.  The Scrooge of "Goose" acted much more like the Scrooge of "Cibola": he came close to tipping over the edge when he started turning various objects in and around his Mansion to gold, but he never quite did so.  The Scrooge of "Gold Thing" didn't have to suffer from "gold fever" in order for the adventure to work.  These days, the addition of the theme seems like a bit of moralistic overkill that wasn't really required.

So where did Mrs. Beakley learn all about "gold fever"?  Short answer:  She was the only other adult present (El Capitan doesn't count, for obvious reasons).  Longer, "what-if-fier" answer: during one of her previous periods of presumably exotic employment (her years "in the service of Sir Ruddy Blighter," for all of you RICHIE RICH fans in the audience), she participated in some other treasure hunt and learned about the affliction first-hand.

(Greg)  We begin this one in a bay with a rowboat as El Captain is wheezing about gold again. He also has the telescope which is awesome in one sense; but it's fashioned in banana yellow. El Captain decides that Scrooge is at the Valley of the Golden Suns by now and that he'll just follow him and grab the treasure. And then he'll MURDER Scrooge with his Gedo-laced telescope complete with evil laughter. Ooooo....that would be deadly to both Scrooge's head and his fashion sense if that thing connects. Sadly; he whacked his hand on the miscue and he sells it like a madman. HAHA! Well; with him that is completely apporos.

Actually, El Capitan seems to miss his hand, which makes his reaction seem all the funnier (or crazier).  The original script contained a fairly large bit of additional pre-Valley business involving El Cap jumping up and down for joy when Scrooge's plane arrives, getting knocked into the drink, vowing revenge as a result, etc.  Even the small bits that we ultimately did get were trimmed out of the two-hour version: Who can forget E.C. suddenly appearing from OUT OF NOWHERE on the ancient pathway and following Scrooge and company?  I rather wish that the latter had been preserved in the long version of the story.  The more screen time El Capitan gets at the beginning of the episode, the more time we have to wonder (1) how on Earth he managed to pick up Scrooge's trail again in the first place, (2) why he doesn't seem capable of locating the Valley without Scrooge's assistance now that he's so close to it, especially given that he can literally "feel" the gold's presence.  You would think that after 400 years of searching, having gotten thisclose to his goal, El Cap would have been just a wee bit more proactive.

(Greg)  So we get another scene changer as Scrooge and company go through the jungle pushing red leaf trees in their wake. Huey asks Dewey about the strangeness of this road and Dewey answers that there is not a burger place in sight. Huey corrects him because why build a road if the valley is supposed to be a secret. UH OH! The nephews deduce that this pathway is a trap. NO?! REALLY?!

Nowadays, I can't watch this scene without immediately thinking of the first panel of Barks' "Gall of the Wild":

It's all in the delivery, I guess.  The Nephews of "Gold Thing" sound like regular kids, the HD&L of "Gall" like... well, their Quack Pack selves.

(Greg)  And so we get an awesome running sequence which ends with Beakly and the children getting to the ledge on the sides and then we see the awesome running sequence of Scrooge and El Captain from the opening sequence. Oh; and the temple crumbles into the molten gold of course. Scrooge and El Captain make the leap of faith and manage to grab onto the ledge as the gold bricks fall into the molten gold. 

Just so we can end on a really high note... Sing along, everybody!
  

What to do?  Just grab onto some... ledges!

Next:  Episode 29, "Duckman of Aquatraz."  

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 25, "Treasure of the Golden Suns, Part Two: Wronguay [sic] in Ronguay"

Ah, yes, about that "[sic]".  We need to pause at the title card for a moment before forging onward...

I'm "Ivory Soap" certain (that is, 99.999% sure) that this was ORIGINALLY supposed to read "Wrong WAY in Ronguay."  After all, the pun is directly referenced during the episode itself, when the Nephews realize that the "robot-jacked" Ronguay Airlines aircraft is literally heading in the wrong direction.  I hardly think that Jymn Magon (by far, the most likely suspect among the trio of writers who labored on "Golden Suns" to unleash this kind of groaner) would go to the trouble of cracking the joke without planning to foreshadow it here as well.  Someone along the production line must have slipped up here.

Thankfully, the (IMHO) spelling error is just about the only "uay" in which one can criticize this episode.  Though I remember being a bit puzzled by the seeming finality of the ending -- we wouldn't learn about the rest of the Treasure of the Golden Suns until the start of part three -- Scrooge and HD&L's trek to "the tiny country of Ronguay," their search for the "sunken" gold ship, and their battle with Flintheart Glomgold and El Capitan make for some absolute captivating viewing.  Adventure, rather than character development, is the main focus here; even so, we get one superb "moment of connection" between the boys and Scrooge and are also witness to the definitive revelation of the depth of El Capitan's obsession (though a few hints dropped during the episode as to the wrinkled one's past identity will not be picked up until future installments).  It takes quite a bit of doing to upstage the series' first authentic treasure hunt and the first animated appearance of Glomgold, but El Cap does so.  Fittingly, he gets both the final shot and the final words of the ep.

I've previously discussed some of my feelings as to why the DuckTales Glomgold turned out the way he did.  My idea that Flinty has moved from South Africa to Duckburg to keep closer tabs on Scrooge certainly isn't challenged by Glomgold's first few seconds on screen, in which he's seen watching the doings at Scrooge's candy factory on TV and perusing a massive mainframe that (I guess) keeps up-to-date stats on how his fortune compares to Scrooge's.  Imagine how much more easily Flinty could do this today with the help of the Internet.  The slightly goofy office nerds who "help" Glomgold in this scene are never seen again, more's the pity; at least one of them (my pick would have been the phone-toting guy with the overbite) should have served as Flinty's laugh-grabbing "bump machine" for the remainder of the series.  As it was, we had to wait until the final season's "Attack of the Metal Mites" for a guest-starring Dijon to fill a somewhat similar role.

In the jaundiced spirit of Carl Barks' "The Money Champ," Glomgold couches his initial challenge to Scrooge (which, we are easily led to believe, is not the first such ultimatum) in the form of a money-making contest.  Flinty's approach to the duel, however, is far more "John D. Rockerduck-ian" than it has ever been before (to those viewers who had not read Don Rosa's "Son of the Sun" earlier in 1987, that is).  Glomgold's relatively modest use of shrinking juice on Scrooge's money pile in "The Money Champ" pales in comparison to what the DT Flinty will stoop to in order to get what he wants.  Joe Torcivia once described the DT Glomgold as "a sort of Anti-Scrooge," a description which fits both Flinty's Scottish attire and accent and his flexible morals.

Ever so conveniently, Scrooge's need to dig up some kind of treasure before the two weeks of the contest are up arises just as HD&L have solved the mystery of the wooden ship... and, GeoX, I would argue that it's at least possible that the "insanely idiotic" code that the boys decipher could really, truly be as simple as this. There were more sophisticated ciphers available in the 16th century, when the ship was presumably built, but those other methods weren't much more complicated than the simple letter-number substitution used here.  Besides, if a person didn't know that "Gannaw Ondat" had to be a made-up name because it was carved on a ship originating in Spain, then he or she would glance at the craft and walk away without a clue that it was meant to be a message of some kind.  When HD&L do their "play dumb" routine as a ploy to convince Scrooge to let them come with him, they do so without evincing any fear whatsoever that Scrooge will be able to figure out the mystery by himself.  I think they're at least partially justified in doing so.

Scrooge's promise to let the boys come along with him "just this once!" resurrects some questions that I raised during my discussion of "Don't Give Up the Ship."  Judging by the boys' initial attitude towards Scrooge, I found it rather tough to believe that this version of Scrooge, Donald, and HD&L had gone on very many adventures together.  Scrooge's comment here seems to bear this observation out.  It also suggests that the ensuing adventure in Ronguay will further cement the relationship between the "old sourdough" and the young ducklings, to the extent that Scrooge will never again seriously question the boys' right to accompany him on globe-trotting trips.  This is correct, up to a point; the boys, after all, will have to sneak a ride aboard Launchpad's copter in order to share in the Antarctic adventure of "Cold Duck" and the subsequent trip to the Valley of the Golden Suns.  But the aforementioned "moment of connection" that the Ducks will share during the low point of their Ronguayian trek will have serious reverberations...

It's debatable as to whether any of the sights, sounds, and (plane) sputters of "inhabited" Ronguay would pass muster if they were being newly created in today's uber-sensitive climate.  The stereotypes are a little easier to accept here, I think, because so much of what we see and learn about Ronguay is, well, just plain bizarre -- perhaps not as ridiculously absurd as the depiction of Gwumpki's homeland of Blatismorkia in Quack Pack, but certainly more than sufficient to elicit a few head-scratching "Huh?" moments.  For example, we've seen ramshackle, livestock-filled vehicles like the "usually non-stop" Ronguay Airlines plane in other "Third World" contexts, but who the heck decreed that an old-fashioned, hand-cranked speaker phone should be placed in the cockpit?  What could that thing possibly be connected to?

After Scrooge helpfully comes to just in time to pull the plane out of a dive, the Ducks land at "Ronguay Airport" -- which is actually a soccer field:

Then we get a "Sam Peckinpah Moment" -- I call it such because one of the director's less successful (and more underfunded) movies was once criticized for including the same band of Mexican peasants in literally every crowd scene -- as the crowds of Ronguayians frantically leaving the country to avoid the "Monsapis" include a couple of folks who evidently decided to double their un-pleasure.  Note the stork with the serape and big sombrero, the mustachioed dogface with the green shirt and blue hat, and the bird-woman with the flower in her ear in these two completely separate scenes.  (To make matters worse, the first group is the one that tosses the Ducks out of the plane and then takes off, while the second group appears after the plane has departed.)

The normally censorious folks at Toon Disney must have been so baffled by all of this that they failed to notice the stereotyped fat guy who sells Scrooge the llama and let the entire sequence be rerun without complaint.  Of course, they were all over the scene of Dewey tearing the electrical cord out of the socket like mud on the proverbial pig (probably the same one that tripped Scrooge on the plane) and excised that, leaving the Glomgold robot to short-circuit with no explanation.  Well, I can't say that I can blame them.

Regarding the Ducks' subsequent voyage through the soon-to-be-inundated wastelands, Greg commented that the adventure focused on Scrooge to the extent of making HD&L look weak.  In the sense that Scrooge did most of the actual work and faced most of the actual perils, he's correct.  However, I think that the writers took this approach (if it was, in fact, even taken consciously) to introduce "the adventurous Scrooge" to a TV-watching audience that may never have seen that aspect of the character up to now.  The Nephews, after all, were in plenty of danger throughout "Don't Give Up the Ship," so their "quick, feisty, cunning, sharp, resourceful, etc." bona fides had already been highlighted.  Unless you came to the show already familiar with Scrooge's comic-book adventures, "Ship" didn't tell you very much about Scrooge the derring-doer.  Now, while taming bucking llamas, escaping quicksand (how did Scrooge get that box of scuba supplies open while buried in sand, I wonder?), and protecting the boys from the rain with the "Malaysian umbrella," Scrooge gets a chance to show his mettle and, as Geo points out, reveal some of his past exploits in a very Barksian manner.

While Scrooge may have enjoyed many adventures in the past, DuckTales delicately leaves aside the question of how many adventures he's participated in recently.  Scrooge comes across as such a miser and negative character at the start of "Don't Give Up the Ship" that a "newbie" viewer could perhaps be excused for wondering whether Scrooge had been living an isolated, sedentary life for some time before taking in the Nephews -- perhaps not to the extent of "The Recluse of McDuck Manor," but certainly along those lines.  The possibility that Scrooge's adventurous chops have not been tested in the recent past lends at least some degree of credibility to what would otherwise be a rather problematic scene, namely, the disappointed, rain-soaked Scrooge's declaration that "I'm finished."  A long-time comics fan would probably be taken aback by what would seem to be Scrooge's entirely too abrupt decision to abandon the "hopeless" search for the treasure ship.  Seen in the context of the series, however, this scene is extremely effective, not least because it demonstrates that Scrooge and HD&L can and will function effectively in the future as a mutually supportive team.

The visuals have been getting better and better throughout the episode, and they peak during the cave scenes.  The play of light and darkness, the atmospherics, the legitimate sense of peril, are all splendid.  When I first saw this sequence during "premiere weekend," it simply knocked me out, and I just couldn't wait to see it again during the subsequent rerun on another station.

But wait, there's more -- even though you have to "suspend disbelief" in a manner akin to the Sword of Damocles in order to fully take it in.  Regarding a scene like the "setting sail of the golden ship," sometimes you just have to ignore obvious logical problems and say "Ooooohhhh!" as the Nephews do here.  Perhaps accepting the scene is as simple as figuring that a ship which already held gold ropes and gold sails would probably have had some gold planks and nails lying around as well -- though that still doesn't explain how the boys were able to nail the nails into the planks in the first place.  Besides, Carl Barks himself posited the existence of a seaworthy boat carved out of a giant gold nugget in one of his later UNCLE $CROOGE adventure stories, so this unforgettable scene might be said to have had the indirect sanction of the Old Duck Man himself.

The abrupt return of Glomgold and El Capitan makes for an equally strong ending, the true power of which will not be fully understood until a few more facts about El Cap are revealed.  Huey's line "That guy acts like he used to own this ship!" will ultimately acquire a truly creepy vibe when we learn that (1) El Capitan really WAS the master of the craft all those hundreds of years ago and (2) he has literally refused to die until he finds "every bit of" his lost treasure.  Oddly enough, he seems uninterested in recovering this bit of said treasure after the ship sinks; I imagine he's been fixated on the treasure in the Valley of the Golden Suns for so long that he probably regards recovering the ship's treasure as a mere formality after the bigger prize is bagged.  Before the gold goes gurgling under, however, we see El Cap's grumbling and grousing about "el stupido" Glomgold, which up to now has not seemed all that different from his occasional complaints about working with the "mental midget" Beagle Boys, mutate into something far more sinister than we could have possibly expected when the "old wheezer" first came on the scene.  He's willing to treat one of Scrooge's classic rivals as nothing more than a means to an end, which makes even more of an impression on a viewer familiar with the comics than one who is seeing Glomgold for the first time in any medium.  How he'll get back into the story line, it's impossible to predict at the end of the episode, but there's absolutely no doubt that he WILL return and, moreover, will give Scrooge a hell of a challenge.

"Wrong Way in Ronguay" (sorry, but I am quite insistent about that change) is just about perfect and, though the next two installments are both excellent in and of themselves, won't be matched during this serial until the final chapter.

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) [T]here are three clear Barks call-outs [in the episode]: the ship stranded in the desert recalls "The Seven Cities of Cibola"; [El Capitan], as he's taking Scrooge's gold captain's hat, refers to it as a "golden helmet;" and then at the end...  Glomgold has to eat his hat (okay, so it was Scrooge's hat that he ate in "The Money Champ," but still).

I think that there's a case to be made for all of these references being intentional, but I'm most certain about the connection between the treasure ship and Captain Ulloa's "desert-ed" ship in "Seven Cities of Cibola."  For one thing, there's that pesky Celestial Arts connection to consider: "Cibola" was reprinted in that volume.  For another, the visuals are just too similar, though the treasure ship appears to be in surprisingly good shape for a wreck that has been alternately baked and inundated by water for X hundred years.

The golden helmet ("Check!") that Scrooge sports and El Capitan later reclaims might well be a reference to the miter that gives its wearer ownership of North America, but it could also be... just a plain, ordinary conquistador's helmet that happens to be made of gold.  This particular Barks story, and this particular Barksian artifact, are well enough known to Duck fans such as Jymn Magon that I'm willing to grant Jymn the benefit of the doubt in this case.

The hat-chewing connection is probably the weakest of the three.  Flinty's tam-o-shanter is so garish that the idea to make its consumption the forfeit to be paid by the loser of the bet might simply have occurred by chance.  An intended reference to "The Money Champ," however, certainly isn't impossible.

(Greg)  So we begin this episode back outside the oozing chocolate candy factory as the woman news reporter continues to talk and police continue to surround the place. The news reporter says nothing of note as we head inside and we basically get new footage of the finish from the last episode of the Beagle Boys Chocolate Statues being carried out by two officers as one white haired dogsperson officer proclaims that the bonbon is going to Sing-Sing. Okay; this makes sort of sense from a storyline point of view, but it's a waste of time. Why not show this at the end of the first episode and show El Captain's saying beware from the start? Not a big deal; just an observation. Then logic break #1 for the episode rears it's ugly head as [Burger]'s head gets un-cracked on site with a mallet and chisel as he pops up and eats chocolate. Cute spot though; but all three Beagle Boys were carried out still completely covered with chocolate in the previous episode!  We cut to the female reporter as she continues to fill in the details about the objet d'art that the Beagle Boys were after as the police continue to secure the area and clear out the Beagle Boys. And then more logic is broken as Scrooge takes the ship away from the chocolate wave and he walks off on his own even though we clearly saw him talking to his nephews during that sequence in the previous episode! Now I see why Disney started doing PREVIEWS for syndication episodes?! It was to KILL CONTINUITY ERRORS like this. 

This was rather peculiar, insofar as Disney, to the best of my memory, never tried to do anything like this in any other "recap" in a multi-part story.  Generally, the next part of the tale either struck off in a new direction, assuming that everyone remembered what had happened at the end of the previous episode, or used episode clips to get everyone up to speed.  (In a later series, of course, "Previously on Gargoyles..." became an expected part of EVERY episode.)  Perhaps it was felt that the retrofit was necessary in order to provide a fitting lead-in for the introduction of Glomgold.  It would have seemed rather strange if we'd gotten our first glimpse of Flinty reacting to something that had already happened in the previous ep.

(Greg)  And of course the plane goes into a nosedive as Louie has to go into the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. If Kit [Cloudkicker] was here; this scene would be over in 15 seconds as this would be his wet dream realized. Besides; Kit doesn't need a book anymore he seems to have this down pat...  Sadly; the guide book has nothing about flying an airplane. HAHA! About damn time those nephews got licked; not let's see how well they do without that damn book...or why Kit is so much better you you three combined. 

And so the surprising fallibility of the DuckTales Junior Woodchuck Guidebook is revealed for the first (in "real" continuity) time.

(Greg)  So now Flint throws the dynamite down the hill as he want to bury Scrooge good... El Captain tells him to forget him because it's all about the gold see...  Flint wants to be [better] safe than sorry; but El Captain doesn't want to wait as Flint and El Capitan turn around and they are SHOCKED and APPALLED (in that order) as their jackass is EATING THE MAP on the rock! Wait a minute?! Wasn't it in the pouch?! That's logic break #3 for the episode.

As this screen shot reveals, the map had indeed been taken out of the ice cream cart (by Flinty) before Flinty and El Capitan's mule started noshing on it.  You can see it here lying on the rock in the foreground, with the mule already eying it hungrily.  Nice foreshadowing there.

(Greg)  All hands on deck as the nephews get on board as the sail is also made of gold. Okay that makes even less sense along with the floor repairs. Seriously; and some question Plunder and Lightning's breaks in logic. Why? Because they are Cartoon Ducks and when you see Cartoon Ducks; you accept them without. Since bears are Russian and Russians are EVIL Communists (which is so absurd no one should be caught dead...oh never mind); they are booed. Now you understand the psychology of why people thought Ducktales and Darkwing Duck was better than TaleSpin; even if the quality would prove otherwise in hindsight (not to see the two duck cartoon sucked in any way; but still). It's the “American” way see. Then again; I'm Canadian; and that's why I'm so biased the other way.

"Sorry, lads, I dinna understand that either."

  

Next:  Episode 26, "Treasure of the Golden Suns, Part Three: Three Ducks of the Condor."