DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 73, "Super DuckTales, Part Three: Full Metal Duck"

We're in "full hunker" mode here as yet another winter storm appears set to screw up yet another week... 

Is this the most "active" title card DuckTales ever presented?  Usually, the opening scenes are relatively sedate, to the extent that simple scenes like the Nephews walking to Gyro's ("Sir Gyro de Gearloose") or Scrooge's limousine traveling through Duckburg ("Down and Out in Duckburg") come across as relatively lively.  I guess that Launchpad trying to escape the Lost World with the Booby Bird ("Dinosaur Ducks") would be a close rival to "GICU2 Meets All Quiet on the Western Front," but not a terribly close one.

Living up to this initial promise, "Full Metal Duck" never seems draggy, despite essentially being "Super DuckTales"' equivalent of "Bubba Trubba," an episode that is supposed to get us comfortable with the existence of a new figure in Duckburg.  What "Trubba," with its hollow core of aimless "Bubba causes trubba" gag sequences, got wrong, "Metal" gets right.  Before the Beagles use brainy brother Megabyte's remote-control device to gain sway over the Gizmosuit, we see just enough of Gizmoduck in action -- both in casual and in more "formal" battle settings -- to leave us wanting more.  We also see Fenton Crackshell, bereft of the lost instruction manual -- yet another "small detail" in a DT ep the working-out of which has immense ramifications -- "learn by doing" in his efforts to gain more knowledge about the supersuit.  As a result, despite being relatively plotless (a scenario which led to some fairly substantial chunks of footage being deleted for the Magical World of Disney broadcast), the episode never comes across as simple filler.

Greg is just one of a number of folks who have expressed the opinion that they find Fenton to be a much more sympathetic character than Drake Mallard.  I agree with them, and I would also argue that the advantage is "certified" in this very episode.  In the previous two installments, we were quickly filled in on Fenton's hyper, go-getting nature and some of the demons that drive him, but it has to be admitted that he brought a lot of his troubles on himself: dumping Scrooge's cash in the lake, falling for various Beagle Boy ruses, accidentally causing the dam to be destroyed, and bungling through all those efforts to regain the Old #1 Dime.  In "Metal," by contrast, Fenton doesn't sin (by either omission or commission) so much as he is sinned against (not to mention skinned up).  We start, of course, with Gizmoduck getting beaten to an iron-plated pulp by the GICU2:

Seeing as how Fenton still knows very little about the workings of the Gizmosuit, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did against this supposedly invincible robot guard.  The "state of the art Duck" ultimately resorts to "pushing all his buttons," a gimmick that, if anything, was underused during the series.  One can imagine the animators having all sorts of fun trying to come up with new and creative outcomes for this "punch and pray" desperation option.  Here, it results in Gizmoduck turning into a sphere (which has apparently increased in mass??  How is that possible?) and ultimately a projectile that renders the GICU2 harmless.

The victory results in Scrooge giving Gizmoduck the job as his security guard... a decision that, as GeoX correctly notes, raises all sorts of intriguing questions regarding the double-dipping Fenton's prioritization of his McDuck Enterprises-related duties.  The series used the "Fenton has to be two individuals at once" trope to complicate Fenton/Gizmo's love life in "Metal Attraction" but never did explore the idea in a strictly "business-related" context.  The creators did, however, seem to come to an unspoken conclusion that the character of Fenton took precedence over that of Gizmoduck.  In only one post-"SDT" episode ("The Unbreakable Bin") did Fenton appear primarily in the guise of Gizmoduck.  He made several brief appearances there without the suit, but the vast majority of the time, he was in uniform.  Most other future Fenton/Gizmo eps involved Fenton in the story first, bringing in Gizmoduck later as needed.  This had the advantage of grounding Fenton more firmly as a "real character" with problems and crises to which the audience could relate.  Drake Mallard, by contrast, never came across as "his own Duck" as much as he did Darkwing Duck in civilian dress, with all the famed stubbornness and waffle-brainedness of his caped alter ego.  As for Fenton/Gizmo's priorities from Scrooge's perspective, my guess is that Scrooge probably ultimately decided to retain a number of his regular security guards and called upon Gizmoduck to assume primary guard duties only when a serious imminent threat (such as a raid by the newly-freed Beagle Boys) presented itself.  It would be just like Scrooge to have such backup security plans; how else would you explain those famed "overkill traps" inside the Money Bin?

Gizmo's reaction to Scrooge's job offer, and his later reaction to HD&L's formation of the Gizmoduck Fan Club, display a certain sense of humor and perspective that Darkwing Duck rarely evinced, even on his more selfless days.  He lets the flags and rockets do (most of) the talking for him when accepting Scrooge's offer...

... and then lightly mocks his newfound status re: HD&L by coming up with some overblown titles for himself.  His "advice" to the boys has a similar nudge-nudge-wink-winkiness to it.  A lot of the success of these scenes depends upon Hamilton Camp's skill at delivering the lines, but the writing itself bespeaks a lighter touch than would typically be used for either Drake or Darkwing.

HD&L's immediate hero-worship of Gizmoduck doesn't emerge from a vacuum, quite.  True, they have always had a somewhat more realistic view of Launchpad's fallibility than their erstwhile buddy Doofus (Remember him?  You'll get a reminder before long), so it may seem a little strange that they would fall so hard for the new superhero on the block.  But based on their love of Courage of the Cosmos, their excitement at discovering that Scrooge has become "The Masked Mallard," and their canonical enjoyment of the comic books starring Super Snooper, they do seem to have something of a weak spot for costumed crusaders.  It makes one wonder what they thought of "The Webbed Wonder" during the latter's crime-spree; did it affect their attitude towards costumed heroes, and, if so, then for how long?  Based on the available evidence, the effects must have been rather short-lived, as the boys essayed the long-underwear bit themselves (albeit only briefly) after Scrooge retired "The Masked Mallard" for good.  ("T-Squad"?  Never heard of such a thing, sorry.  The particular memory cells in charge of that reminiscence must have been scrambled when I had my unfortunate accident last Fall.  Ducks?  "Scrambled"?  See what I did there??... Um, let's move on.)

To no one's surprise, Mrs. Crackshell is far less enthused about her son's new identity than... well, just about anyone.  We get not one but two "coming-home-to-the-trailer scenes" in this episode, making three for the serial to date (with one big one still to come in "Money to Burn" -- were all those re-dos intended to be a running gag of sorts?), and, in all of them, Mrs. C.'s reactions are pretty much interchangeable.  The only truly meaningful "actions" that she performs in any of them are her accidental discovery of the "secret word" that activates the Gizmosuit and her equally fortuitous use of the remote to set Fenton free.  The latter leads to the frankly depressing line, "Too bad your father didn't see this -- he thought I was worthless!"  For the NBC broadcast, this was changed to "I'm not the only thing that falls apart around here!".  On the surface, this seems like less harsh of a line, but it also seems somewhat less believable coming from Mrs. Crackshell.  Unknowingly pointing up the emptiness of her existence by ridiculing the words of her ex-husband seems like the sort of thing a completely self-absorbed character would say, at least at this point in her development.

Having surmounted his first true "secret identity career crisis," Fenton/Gizmo proceeds to earn Duckburg-wide hero status by taking out the Beagle Boys, who have hatched a plan that seems a little out of character for them: holding hostages (including HD&L) in the Statue of Duckburg until Scrooge, presumably, hands over the key to the Money Bin.  ("Give us what we want!" could have been made a little plainer, fellas.)  Fenton proves that he has thoroughly internalized his lesson from the end of "Frozen Assets," taking advantage of Burger's food-philia to lay the Beagles low.  Darkwing Duck's "learning curves" should have been this shallow.

Even as Duckburg is at his feet -- or, should I say, beneath his wheel -- Fenton manages to maintain some perspective, dutifully going to work in the finest time-clock-punching tradition after receiving an emergency hot-wiring from "M'Ma."  (This entire sequence was cut from the NBC airing, which made sense; it didn't really move the narrative forward in any meaningful way.)  Unfortunately, Gizmoduck soon becomes Duckburg's Public Enemy #1 thanks to the treacherous tech of Megabyte Beagle, a character I should dislike but can't (at least not anymore).  Normally, I dislike such obvious "this guy is a genius" stigmata as bow ties, mortarboard hats, and over-sized glasses, but it's just so, well, refreshing to see an unfamiliar Beagle Boy at a point in the show when (despite the briefly seen mass Beagle confab that planned the Statue of Duckburg caper) the predictable quartet of Big Time, Burger, Bouncer, and Baggy have established their hegemony.  I also like Mega's matter-of-fact attitude, which is punched over nicely by Frank Welker's vocal performance (and is a nice echo of the cocksure demeanor of Bomber Beagle in "Top Duck").  To be sure, Mega isn't the most ingenious bit of cast-building DuckTales ever produced, but he's a lot more memorable than Vic Lockman's "specialty Beagle" Intellectual-176, whose name always reminded me of an interstate highway spur route.

Judging by the number plate, I guess that all those months in stir with Megabyte made the pig prisoner an honorary Beagle Boy.

Uh... so why is there no front gate where the front gate of the prison should be?  City budget cuts?

Gizmoduck's involuntary "shopping spree" includes the first, canonical appearance of an ATM in Duckburg...

... and a brief but effective encounter with a peeved Gandra Dee, whose voice here abruptly changes from the one heard during "Liquid Assets" to the breathy, Marilyn Monroe-inflected one that will hereafter be associated with the character.  Changing a character's voice in the middle of that character's debut adventure seems a bit peculiar.  I can understand the voice directors wanting Miriam Flynn to give Gandra's voice a more ethereal, "unapproachable" sound -- the better to emphasize the fact that she is idealized in Fenton's eyes -- but why was the initial version of the voice retained in that earlier scene?  It was probably a production oversight.

Gizmo's climactic tying-up of Scrooge and Duckworth seems like overkill (I agree with Greg; what WAS the point of this?), but the ep ends on a good cliffhanger, with the helpless Gizmo driving the "big machine" and the attached Money Bin up to Ma Beagle's door.  Megabyte may have provided the tech-related brainpower, but it was clearly Ma, who made the initial discovery of the lost manual and gained inspiration from it, who set this grandiose, and above all successful, scheme in motion.  Remarkably, her most memorable moments of the serial (and, some would argue, of the entire series) are yet to come.

Despite its status as a "bridge" episode of sorts, "Full Metal Duck" maintains "Super DuckTales"' narrative momentum and generally high quality.  Clearly, WDTVA made the right choice in using this serial, rather than "Time is Money," to showcase DuckTales to the NBC audience.  Whether the train will keep rolling in the last two parts remains to be seen...

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Bumper #8: "Carpet" (or, Aladdin's pal's previous gig)

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) Fenton's mother seems to be emerging as a rather delightful character. Her saturnine line delivery is comic gold (her only response to her son showing up in his new outfit: "Fenton--did you join a heavy metal band?" a line that works pretty much entirely because of how she says it...

Oh, I have no complaints with Kathleen Freeman's performance here.  I think that Mrs. C. still has a little ways to go before acquiring enough of a patina of likability to be described as "delightful," however.

(GeoX)  "You wouldna torture innocent people!" "Oh yeah? We'll make 'em listen to bagpipe music!" "Oh, this is worse than the terrorists who held the city attorney hostage with an accordion!" Seriously, the only people who think bagpipe and accordion music is automatically bad are either completely tone-deaf or lazy hacks who don't know anything about either instrument but are eager to pile on for the sake of dumb jokes because they have the vague sense that it's the "cool" thing to do. 

I happen to be "subjected" to bagpipe music on a fairly regular basis.  One of the music professors at Stevenson plays the instrument and always "pipes us in" when the faculty and students process at the Opening Convocation.  I can attest to the fact that bagpipe music isn't that terrible.  The bagpipe and the accordion have been the butts of musical humor for so long, though, that I think you are fighting a losing battle. 

(GeoX) Brief, non-speaking appearance by Doofus. I hadn't even noticed his recent absence, which gives you an accurate picture of how much I'm into the character.  

And he doesn't even get addressed by name; Dewey calls him "Super Buns"!  I suspect that someone (Ken Koonce and David Weimers?) was getting what they considered to be "even" with a character who had already been condemned to be phased-out.  Doofus did have his moments as a character and certainly deserved a more dignified sendoff than this.

(Greg) [Fenton] goes inside his room (complete with crimson red door) and then struggles off-screen badly as there is clattering off-screen which Mrs. Crackshell blows off and goes into the room as Gizmo takes a back drop right into the dresser with a MAN-SIZED bump. Mrs. Crackshell blows him off and suggests a crowbar and she provides one OUT OF NOWHERE and gets on Gizmo Duck and tries to unpry the suit while Fenton protests. No dice so Mrs. Crackshell runs out of the room and returns with her jackhammer...ERRR...I mean makeup remover. Even Fenton thinks she is crazy; so you know she's CRAZY man. Nice to see them playing around with the obvious symptoms of CDS. Gizmo gets dropped and jack hammered to hammer the point home. We go to the outside shot as the suit doesn't come loose; but her false teeth did. And even those have holes in them.

You know what's funnier than anything else in these scenes?  The decorations in Fenton's room.  The clown poster behind the door seems an unusually whimsical touch for a go-getter who's determined to break into the business world...

... while a small picture on Fenton's dresser suggests that Fenton's pre-Gizmoduck love life may not have been as barren as we have been led to believe (or as it will be if Gandra Dee ever sees that portrait!)...

... and the presence of THIS on Fenton's wall raises some unpleasant questions that it would probably be better not to ask.

"Big M'Ma is watching you... during the commercials, anyway."

(Greg) So we head back to in front of the Money Bin in the morning as Gizmo Duck wheels around guarding it. Gizmo sees someone coming and then buzzes and invokes his 2,367 PROJECTITLES OF DOOM for the kill; but it is only the nephews as they cower in fear.

I don't see the infamous skunk in there, do you?  Poor little guy... he would be brought in during "Money to Burn" just to be given the "privilege" of running away to what one would presume to be certain doom.

(Greg) We head inside the damaged building in a room as Big Time is on his wooden crate proclaiming to the Beagle Boys (I think there is Babyface Beagle and Bebop there along with Burger, Bankjob and Bouncer) that they cannot steal Scrooge's money with Gizmo around as Burger seconds the motion and Bankjob stammers on the fourth degree. HAHA! Big Time wants Scrooge to give it to him instead. Riiiiiggggghhhtttt. You have truly lost your mind there Big Time and even Burger sounds smarter. Big Time gets flustered as he has a MIMI JOKE ZONE PLAN as they huddle together.

I know that this scene isn't TECHNICALLY the last appearance for some of these guys -- their appearance on the TV monitors in "The Good Muddahs" is still to come, and there's also the scene in "The Billionaire Beagle Boys' Club" in which some of them serve as Scrooge's "hanging jury" -- but I have always regarded it as writing a final chapter, of sorts, to the DuckTales Beagle Boys saga.  How often did they all get together in this manner, anyway?

(Greg) Fenton... goes over to Mama and grabs the remote control to try to change the channel to get the suit back on. Mama grabs it back and asks what station and Fenton picks channel five and that turns on the monitor on the suit as the music plays and we see an island with palm trees and a turkey with the Gilli[g]an cap on. Mrs. Crackshells calls it Gilligander's Island as Fenton wants channel seven and that is football (Frank Welker), so he tries channel eight and it's a police drama show. Fenton is in trouble so he wants PBS. HAHA!

Actually, these clips are: 

• (Channel 7) A snippet of a Vin Scully broadcast of a Dodger game (which would make some sense, seeing as how "Sport Goofy in Soccermania" previously used Chick Hearn and Scully is even better known as a broadcaster);

• (Channel 8) Jimmy Stewart speaking a line from It's a Wonderful Life (1946) (you know Koonce and Weimers and their love of the classics!);

• ("PBS") Some kind of speech, or conference, or something similar by Richard Nixon.  (I'm the least sure of this one, but, from what I could make of it, it sure as heck sounded like Nixon's voice.  Given K&W's penchant for taking pokes at the likes of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plus the use of "Miss Woods" as the name of the evil HD&L's secretary in "Duck to the Future," why wouldn't they do something like this?)

Next: Episode 74, "Super DuckTales, Part Four: The Billionaire Beagle Boys Club."   

Book Review: THE SUMMER OF BEER AND WHISKEY by Edward Achorn (Public Affairs Books, 2013)

I enjoyed Edward Achorn's previous book about 1880s baseball, which focused on legendary pitcher "Old Hoss" Radbourn's amazing 1884 season.  Here, Achorn paints a wider canvas, discussing eccentric German immigrant Chris von der Ahe's creation of the St. Louis Browns -- the team that would one day morph into the Cardinals -- and the Browns' first pennant race in the two-year-old American Association, the somewhat more loosely-wound rival to the straight-laced National League between 1882 and 1891.  In 1883, St. Louis lost out to the second of what would ultimately be three iterations of the Philadelphia Athletics, but the journey itself is almost secondary to Achorn's picture of the America of the era -- a rough, still somewhat crude, yet exuberant postwar nation that had begun to find its release in an equally rough, yet already quite subtle, bat-and-ball sport.

Achorn claims that the 1883 season "made baseball America's game."  While the addition of a league that sanctioned Sunday baseball, charged only a quarter for admittance, and sold liquor at the ballparks certainly made the pastime more welcoming to many working-class people, and thus helped sustain baseball as a major sport during a turbulent time, I think that the author's claim is mistaken.  Baseball would still have to fight through extreme franchise volatility, a player rebellion that resulted in the brief-lived Players League of 1890, the collapse of the AA in the aftermath of the PL debacle, and the sheer nastiness of 1890s baseball (a good taste of which can be sampled by reading this book) before the arrival of the American League in 1901 signaled the return of the game as a more "family-friendly" pastime.  Even in 1883, fan and player rowdiness vied with rickety and overcrowded grandstands, contract battles between owners and players, and endemic player drunkenness as turnoffs to potential paying customers.  Chris Von der Ahe may have been a great showman who made going to the ball park an experience, but, in addition to meddling with his manager and players, he also encouraged rowdiness, figuring that it would boost attendance.  This darker side of the semi-comical owner does not really come across here.

Of course, a lot of people would argue that baseball wasn't truly "America's game" until the color line was broken by Jackie Robinson.  That story intersects Achorn's, too, as the author devotes a chapter to the trials and tribulations of several black players who attempted to compete in the majors and high minors in the 1880s.  The best-known of these is probably the college-educated Fleetwood Walker, against whom Hall of Fame player and manager Cap Anson famously refused to play, but there were others as well.  Anson gets most of the blame for the color line being drawn, but, in truth, the concern for civil rights was in retreat all across the country as the memories of Reconstruction faded, and baseball simply fell in step.

While I can't really buy Achorn's basic thesis, this is a very enjoyable book for baseball fans and lovers of cultural history.

Don't Worry, Poppa Bear, We'll Get 'Em Sometime This Century.

The Chicago Cubs' new cartoon mascot, "Clark," has ginned up a fair amount of commentary, a good deal of it negative.  The Cubs have had "cubbie faces" and similar things on their jerseys before, but never have they turned the cub character into anything remotely resembling this.  In truth, I think that they missed a trick here.  They should have gone with an established "cub character" with built-in charisma and a proven track record of achievement:

Book Review: A GAME OF BRAWL by Bill Felber (University of Nebraska Press, 2007)

Thanks to expansion, divisional play, and wild cards, we will most likely never again see a "good, old-fashioned" pennant race in baseball.  This book tells the story of the first pennant race to truly capture the entire country's attention.  While the setting and the baseball were old-fashioned, to describe the emotions involved as "good" would be somewhat misleading.  In 1897, the much-hated, cutthroat Baltimore Orioles did vicious battle with the comparatively mannerly, yet no less determined, Boston Beaneaters -- the ancestors of today's Atlanta Braves -- for the top spot in the unwieldy, 12-team National League.  The battle reached a fevered climax when the two teams played a late-season three-game series in Baltimore that author Felber, with only slight exaggeration, calls the greatest event in the country's sporting history up until that time.

Major-league competition in the 1890s was warped by the huge gap between the league's haves and have-nots and, more to the immediate point, by the popular idea that dirty play and intimidation of the umpire were simply part of the game.  The Orioles weren't the only team that used chicanery and bullying to triumph; they were simply the best at it and had better personnel to execute the gamy game plan, including such future Hall of Famers as John McGraw, Willie Keeler, Wilbert Robinson, and manager Ned Hanlon.  The "original O's" won three straight NL titles between 1894 and 1896 and seemed primed for a "four-peat" in '97, but the Beaneaters, whom the Orioles had supplanted as the league's top club, overcame a sluggish start to challenge the champions.  In the process, the Boston club, cheered on by the country's first organized fan contingent, the Royal Rooters, swept up a large number of neutral fans who dearly wanted baseball's original "evil empire" to be humbled.

Due to the frequent descriptions of game action, Felber's book is a bit of a dry read at times, but he mixes in occasional diversions highlighting other aspects of the game in the 1890s, such as the battle over the propriety of Sunday baseball, the hellacious treatment given to umpires (which was frequently reciprocated by the feistier ones), and the use of marionette re-creations in theaters to enable fans to follow their teams on the road.  The world may have been a much lower-tech place back then, but the "prehistoric" version of modern fan culture made up in sheer enthusiasm what it may have lacked in sophistication.

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.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 42, "Time Teasers"

Between TV reruns, repeated viewings of the VHS collection "Masked Marauders," and voluntary video-entertainment choices made during treadmill sessions, I've probably seen "Time Teasers" just about as often as any of the 22-minute DuckTales episodes.  You might gather that I like it a lot -- and I certainly do; I think it's the prolific Anthony Adams' best script for the series.  Though the "Time Teaser" only actually plays a role during the first half of the episode -- with the balance of the adventure comprised of a memorable and funny three-hander between Scrooge, Gyro, and the Ducks, the Beagle Boys "B" team from "Hero for Hire," and a gang of pirates led by Pete (aka Captain Blackheart) -- a lot of the discussion surrounding the ep has tended to focus on which previous "time-travel timepiece" productions may have influenced it, and, more to the Duck-point, whether it influenced Don Rosa to create the suspiciously similar comic-book story "On Stolen Time."  I've gone back and forth on the latter matter several times, and I think that I've finally come to a reasonable conclusion, which I'll detail below.  First, though, we have some back history through which to thrash.

UPDATE (7/4/13):  I've slightly rewritten the historical matter below, based on helpful commentary from Mark Lungo and David Gerstein.   

The idea of a stopwatch that can be used to manipulate time dates at least as far back as the novel THE GIRL, THE GOLD WATCH, AND EVERYTHING (1962) by sci-fi/thriller writer John D. Macdonald.  This effort seems to have inspired similar notions to start ticking away in other creators' brains during the "Era of Fantastic Television."  In October 1963, The Twilight Zone broadcast the episode "A Kind of a Stopwatch," which starred, remarkably enough, King Artie and Rufus B. Pinfeathers himself, Richard Erdman, as the bumbling nebbish who comes into possession of a time-stopping chronometer.  I've never seen that one, but, thanks to Joe Torcivia, I was able to enjoy two fourth-season Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea adventures, "A Time to Die" (1967) and "No Way Back," (1968) guest-starring Henry Jones as Mr. Pem, a strange little man with a "time displacement piece" that he intends to use for evil purposes.  Interestingly, these are the only examples of the genre of which I am aware in which the device was consciously constructed by a villain from the off.  In both "Time Teasers" and "On Stolen Time," of course, the time-stopper was built by Gyro Gearloose, only to be swiped by a group of Beagle Boys.  (I'm being nice to the Nephews, BTW, by classifying their "borrowing" of the Time Teaser from Gyro Gearloose as something other than stealing.)  Mr. Pem's relatively speedy return in "No Way Back" -- which turned out to be the final original VBS episode broadcast -- suggests that he made something of an impression in "A Time to Die," especially since he supposedly died at the end of that initial episode.

Next came a cheerfully cheesy syndicated TV adaptation of The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything (1980) starring Robert "The Forgotten Tony Stark" Hays and Pam "Mindy" Dawber.  The film was offered to TV stations in both a two-hour "movie" version and a five-part "cliffhanger" version (where have we seen that arrangement before?).  It apparently features a rather politically incorrect take on female sexuality, so I don't imagine that it appears on TV much any more, but it does enjoy that nebulous thing known as a cult following.  Given Anthony Adams' interests outside of his relatively brief career in animation writing, I think we are on fairly safe ground in assuming that he had at least some knowledge of some or all of the aforementioned versions of the "time-stop-watch" story when he wrote "Time Teasers."  

Rosa produced "On Stolen Time" four years after "Time Teasers" was first broadcast, with the story's first appearance in American Disney comics taking place in DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #24 (1992).  Clearly, Keno Don would have had ample time (hyuck) to peruse the TV episode beforehand.  For a long time, I assumed that it did influence him in some fashion, even if he would have been loath to admit it.  Now, however, I lean more towards the theory that Rosa came up with the idea independently, or, at the very least, had no knowledge of "Time Teasers" when he wrote his story.  That's not to say that the tales don't have some points of similarity beyond the simple (and, as GeoX points out, the completely logical) notion that Gyro would create such a device and the Beagles would try to use it to rob Scrooge blind.  For example, both stories open with Scrooge tasking his relatives with a seemingly impossible assignment involving the sorting of his money: stacking bills in Donald's case, stacking all the coins by dinnertime (!!) in HD&L's.  At least Rosa, who's never been accusing of giving Donald an easy time of it, didn't impose a specific time limit on Don's task.  Adams, by contrast, seems to have the idea that Scrooge's fortune is a whole lot... well, smaller than we've traditionally been led to believe.  And it won't be the last time that he gives that impression, either.

As one might expect of a detail-obsessed former engineering student, Rosa seems to have thought through the details of the time-stopping matter rather more carefully than Adams.  The latter holds to the relatively simple idea that those who are within the sphere of influence/event horizon/penumbra/whatever of the Time Teaser when the Teaser is activated can move freely, while everything around them is frozen in time (or, more accurately, is moving much more slowly than the "Teased" individuals).  This allows for the many manipulations of the "frozen world" in which Gyro, HD&L, and the Beagles subsequently indulge.  The main problem with this approach is that the characters influenced by the Time Teaser can't interact directly with the immobile folks around them.  Greg correctly notes that this gives the early part of the episode a somewhat static, slow-moving feel, especially when the boys are finagling with the baseball game.  The repetition of the time-stopping gags on the two consecutive pitches does tend to retard the ep's progress.  (For my own part, I found the boys' foiling of the Beagles' attempted robbery and their "surprising" of the high-diving Scrooge to be the funniest parts of this whole business; they're over with quickly and include much better sight gags.)

 

Unfortunately, Adams messes up things in at least one instance; he never explains how Scrooge, HD&L, and Gyro were able to get to the docks in time to see the Beagle Boys leaving the country on the steamer.  You might argue that the Beagles needed a very long time to get Scrooge's money from the docks onto the ship, but the non-Teaser-aided return of the money to the Money Bin, which is tossed off during the episode's extremely rushed final minute, seems to have taken no more than a couple of hours!  Either Scrooge has a relatively modest fortune, or Scrooge and the boys managed to accomplish a moving task that compares favorably with HD&L's original charge to stack all of Scrooge's coins.  This hastily-cobbled-together windup is arguably the one really major weakness of "Time Teasers."

In "On Stolen Time," Rosa literally and figuratively livens things up through his inclusion of the "ten-meter clause" (a direct consequence of the "five-second rule"?) and the stipulation that one has to briefly turn off the time-device before being able to move anything in the frozen world.  This allows for the chase scenes between the Beagles and the Ducks, which are further enlivened by the knowledge that the Beagles will be able to short-circuit the Ducks' attempt to catch them if they can get outside the ten-meter radius.  This represents a distinct advantage for Rosa's story...

... which Keno Don promptly punts away by his questionable handling of the other consequence of his setup: the idea that the Beagles and Ducks are constantly placed in physical peril as they race through the frozen world.  Adams didn't address this at all, allowing the characters' manipulations of time to take place in "wide-open spaces," such as the ball park, the environs of the Money Bin, and the streets of Duckburg.  As Rosa chivvies his characters through a crowded park, the cruel edge that occasionally tainted his stories suddenly comes to the fore, and his attempts to serve up side-splitting sight gags result in a parade of panels that are painful to behold.

Given a choice between enduring these pratfalls and "having my gun replaced with a weiner," I'd gladly swallow my pride and opt for the latter.  The Toon Disney version of "Time Teasers" doesn't even force me to make the choice; it actually snips out the scene in which Louie replaces Bankjob's gun with the hot dog, presumably because we're not supposed to see a kid handling a gun for ANY reason. The scenes of the security guard shooting at the fleeing Beagles, however, are allowed to remain. If GeoX was worried about the ramifications of sanctioning an authority figure's indiscriminate firing at criminals before, then he should really be worried now.

 

Finally, of course, both time devices are smashed... but the destruction of the Time Teaser merely sets the stage for the rest of Adams' episode, while the far more overblown obliteration of the gizmo in "On Stolen Time" serves as Rosa's bravura (and, true to the form of the rest of the story's gags, rather unpleasant) slapstick climax.  Here is where I think a crucial distinction between the stories can be made: While Rosa has a better grip on the logic and mechanics of time-stoppage, Adams delivers the better narrative, in the sense of creating memorable moments, scenes, and character bits that can be fondly recalled long after the episode has been viewed.  This, by the way, is why I now tend to believe that Rosa was not influenced by Adams: Rosa's storytelling style is so focused on detail and minutiae that it's entirely believable that he pulled the "time-stop-watch" idea out of his own mental pop-culture Rolodex and decided to create a story that went to considerable length to examine the logical consequences of having and using such a device.  The result is a fine story that one can marvel at for its ingenuity, but not necessarily a story that needed to be influenced by anything other than Rosa's own highly clinical approach to storytelling.  In short, the two stories are sufficiently different in tone that I'm willing to accept the theory that they were developed independently.

* UPDATE (7/4/13):  David Gerstein provides a reference to this 2003 post on the Disney Comics Mailing List in which Don Rosa claims that he never saw "Time Teasers" and that he got the idea for "On Stolen Time" from John Macdonald's story.

The last third or so of "Time Teasers" -- the point at which Adams and Rosa part company -- is stuffed with incident in the manner of a Thanksgiving turkey, which does result in the episode having what Greg called an "overbooked" feel, but this is also the part that helps boost the ep to classic status.  All of Pete's appearances in the series are good, but this is the one that I would like to think HE enjoyed more than any other, and not simply because he's reunited with his peg leg for the duration.  The sense of "gleeful menace" that has informed many of Pete's most memorable roles over the years has rarely been displayed to better advantage than it is here.

A simple conflict between the pirates and the Time Tub-transferred Gyro, Scrooge, and HD&L would have been enjoyable enough, but for Pete to demand "command performances" from the good guys to celebrate his birthday party... now that's the sort of idea that would be hard to pull off in comics form but is tailor-made for animation.  (We never do find out what nefarious plans Pete has for the Ducks after the party is over, but, in truth, we don't really mind.)  Considering that the Ducks-Beagles teamup plan was of Scrooge's creation, one would think that he and Gyro would have put a bit more effort into their soft-shoe routine...

Uh, second cane?  From where?

... but at least HD&L's *shudder!* breakdancing has the virtue of killing off some time before the Beagle Boys are ready to test their pipes.  I can't say that I was particular wild about the boys doing this even back in the 80s, and the whole business seems horribly dated now, but at least we can draw a direct link between Scrooge's head-bouncing "sea monster" temper tantrum and Louie's ability to revolve on his head while standing upside down.  I didn't realize that such traits could be inherited.

Then, of course, we get Babyface, Bugle, and Bankjob and their out-of-deep-left-field barbershop "quartet-but-it's-actually-a-trio" performance.  I don't know what's weirder, the boys' choice of century-old musical numbers or the fact that they can actually SING.  In the second season's "Beaglemania," part of the joke was that Frank Welker and Chuck McCann's performance of the Beagles' hit song featured more vigor than actual talent; the performance on the Disney Afternoon soundtrack CD was better, but only marginally so.  Peter Cullen, Brian Cummings, and Terry McGovern, on the other hand, do so well that one winds up wishing that at least one of "I Want a Girl," "Sweet Adeline," or "Down By the Old Mill Stream" could have been wedged onto the CD as well.  For sure, this one bit imprints itself onto one's memory far more successfully than anything Rosa included in the busy, busy world of "On Stolen Time."  I'd love to know how Adams came up with this whole idea.

But wait, we're not done; we still have time to enjoy the Beagles' dramatic escape from the pirates as they jump down...a waterfall emanating from a cave shaped like a skull?!  Cornelius Coot didn't mention anything like this in his diary, did he?  Which river was that flowing into the sea -- the Duckburg, the Tulebug, or the Goose?  Given that we saw a couple of Natives in canoes fleeing the scene when the steamer arrived in Duckburg Bay, can we infer that "Skull Cave" may have been some sort of Native shrine?  What entity or entities disassembled that natural formation over the ensuing centuries -- and were there any protests?  A serious "Donaldist" could probably mine a Master's thesis, at the very least, out of an examination of these questions.

In addition to singing, the Beagle "B" team is apparently also adept at long-distance swimming.  At least, they'd better be.

After piling all of these incidents atop one another and then also including the Ducks' final efforts to use the Time Tub to transport the steamer back to modern Duckburg before the pirates can overrun them, Adams whooshes through the denouement with a haste that can only be described as indecent.  At least the Nephews wind up paying for their attempt to "grease the skids" for the Duckburg Mallards... not that we seriously expected any other outcome, of course.

While one can criticize Adams for trying to do too much here, I don't think that one can fairly criticize him for not delivering a first-rate time-travel ep.  In truth, if I could only preserve one of either "Time Teasers" or "On Stolen Time," I would choose the former without hesitation.  It may not be quite as finicky, but it's definitely more FUN.

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) The Duckburg Mallards game is in the morning, for some reason. Also, "by stopping time with every pitch, we can help the Mallards win their first game EVER!" Look: I've watched plenty of really dreadful minor-league baseball teams in my day, and none of them have had anything close to a "perfect" losing record. This would only be possible if the episode were taking place early in the Mallards' inaugural season.

Charlie Brown would like a word with you.  :-)   Yeah, it would have been more believable had the Mallards simply been a really lousy team.  Perhaps they're the perpetual poor relation of the Calisota Stealers mentioned in "Yuppy Ducks."  I always imagined the Stealers as being headquartered in St. Canard, which I take to be a larger city than Duckburg.  Large-market vs. small-market... you take it from there.

As for the fact that the game is in the morning, perhaps this is the Duckburgian equivalent of Patriot's Day in Boston.  The Red Sox have played games with late-morning starting times on that date for a number of years.

(GeoX) I like how HDL apparently were initially under the impression that a frozen baseball game would be fun to watch. A bit slow on the uptake, eh?

I don't know... they were certainly quick-witted enough to cadge refreshments from SOMEWHERE in the frozen world they'd created.  I suspect more "creative borrowing" was involved.

(Greg)  Gyro opens the door and asks them to come in since he has the deliveries ready to deliver so to speak as they go in and we pan over to see Gyro's latest invention for the Invention Of the Month Club: a combination hair dryer/popcorn maker. 

I don't recall Barks ever using the "Invention of the Month Club" idea, which seems rather surprising. Usually, Barks' Gyro worked out of his home/lab (cf. "Sir Gyro de Gearloose"), sold his inventions by pushcart, or was commissioned by the city of Duckburg to perform some task.  BTW, Gyro's dryer/popper combo here was anticipated by Barks on a 1969 cover for an issue of WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES.  I think that Gyro was correct in avoiding the use of a live test subject... and a notoriously volatile one, at that.

(Greg)  So we cut into the office as the Beagle Boys are dressed as movers (check the blue shirts) which would be fine if they didn't [have] those stupid masks on. Gyro decides to demonstrate by invoking the Time Teaser and he disappears as we see some flashing off the coat rack and then Scrooge realizes that he has his top hat and cane OUT OF NOWHERE. One problem: There was no hat and cane on the coat rack. Logic break #3 for the episode as Scrooge calls this fantastic. No; I call this logic breaking from TMS.

Nope; here is the scene outside the vault as the Beagles approach it.  The hat and cane are clearly visible.

(Greg)  After the commercial break; we return as the Beagle Boys return. And since they are fast in time; Scrooge, the nephews and Gyro are frozen in time. One problem; Gyro is now IN the vault when he should be outside.

Again, this is incorrect.  Shown below is the shot of Gyro at the end of Act Two.  He is clearly inside the vault (check the sliver of office space that you can see to the left).

(Greg)  Gyro then takes out a wooden box which contains a thermometer and time places as he puts it into the sky. See; they burned a hole in the fabric of time which makes no sense either way and Gyro needed something to justify the obvious cartoon logic. They went back to 1687 which makes sense for the time period that the Beagle Boys are in; but didn't Gyro already say that they went back 100 years? 

No, he actually said that "That steamer and your money simply slipped into another century."  He didn't specify which one.  I love the way that Scrooge cries "Simply SLIPPED?!" here.

(Greg)  Now the pirates and the [Beagle] boys start singing the song on stage together which is silly considering that now they have a clear line of sight to see the ocean. 

I don't think that you have to worry about the pirates picking up on what Gyro and the Ducks are doing out in the bay.  For one thing, they're swaying back and forth with their eyes closed.  For another, they're probably drunk by now... or at least, they would be if WDTVA sanctioned the use of alcohol.

Next: Episode 43, "Back Out in the Outback."