100 Favorite Shows: #59 — DuckTales (1987 & 2017)
“Oh, cool! A big budget reboot of a thing I loved as a kid! Those are always great.”
Based on Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge comic books that expanded the world of popular Disney cartoon characters, the original DuckTales series from Jymn Magon and Brad Landreth was a watershed moment for Disney’s television animation division. In 1987, it was their first major foray into a high quality cartoon series for kids and it spawned a massive legacy. The story centered around Huey, Dewey, and Louie (Russi Taylor and Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz, and Bobby Moynihan, respectively), Donald Duck’s (Tony Anselmo) nephews, as they came to live with Scrooge McDuck (Alan Young and David Tennant) and embark on adventures alongside him, his pilot, Launchpad McQuack (Terry McGovern and Beck Bennett), his caretaker, Mrs. Beakley (Joan Gerber and Toks Olagundoye) and their friend, Webby (Taylor and Kate Micucci). Over four seasons and 100 episodes later, DuckTales was a massive hit, spawning myriad original Disney cartoons based on classic characters, a spin-off movie, DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, and an eventual, high-concept reboot of the same name from Matt Youngberg and Francisco Angones for Disney XD. The remake debuted in 2017 and, after three seasons of bringing the avian creatures of Duckburg to new heights, will conclude this spring.
(The lore of Disney’s ducks is expansive, so this essay is a stay-away if you’re spoiler-averse to them because we will be covering all sides of the canon.)
“Life is like a hurricane / Here in Duckburg / Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes / It’s a duck blur.” So goes the opening beats of the iconic DuckTales theme song, now stretched across the centuries. While it may be unclear to the world what exactly a “duck blur” is (sounds like the worst Thanksgiving imaginable), it’s equally unclear to kids what exactly “derring-do,” as sung later by Jeff Pescetto, means. That’s the level of wordplay and vocabulary that helped set DuckTales apart. Not every word or double entendre (“When it comes to courage, I’m full of it,” quips the phony Hollywood star, Major Courage (McGovern), in “Where No Duck Has Gone Before”) was meant to be understood by the youngest audience. They’d be satisfied with the high-octane energy and colorful cast of characters. Wordplay like this was meant to hook the adults, too. In television animation, DuckTales was the first time Disney ever consciously played to both audiences.
Of course, DuckTales was also grounded in the larger universe of Disney’s core characters: Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. Because — at the time — Donald was too valuable a property to “languish” on the animated equivalent of an adventure sitcom, DuckTales focused on a subset of Mickey and Donald’s world. So it was that Duckburg was conjured to life from the comic books (Fenton Crackshell’s (Hamilton Camp and Lin-Manuel Miranda) Gizmoduck superhero resembles the kid-friendly page turners most prominently) onto the small screen as a niche corner of their anthropomorphic universe.
The duck side of the canon was vastly more fertile than that of Mickey’s estranged sister and Goofy and Pete’s endless debates as to what kinds of house pets they were. As such, when Michael Eisner’s era of Disney focused on revamping the characters with a flurry of properties (especially around Christmas, as Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas gave Huey, Dewey, and Louie a starring segment and Mickey’s Christmas Carol placed Scrooge McDuck as the lead character — still unclear to me if he was named Scrooge for such a purpose), DuckTales was an obvious way to flesh out the world of Mickey Mouse without “damaging” the purity of the corporate mascot. Instead, DuckTales became one of the best versions of the adventure-of-the-week, Saturday morning cartoons geared towards children.
The storytelling style of DuckTales took a cue from the old “Peabody’s Improbable History” segments of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Any episode of DuckTales could be based around any goal (the ducks hunt for treasure, navigate a spooky castle, parlay with British knights of the “ye olde” round table). Just as Mr. Peabody and Sherman quipped their way through history, the characters on DuckTales were often globetrotting across mysteriously promising corners of the planet. Granted, their adventures were built on the back of Scrooge’s capitalist empires (Huey, Dewey, and Louie embody wealthy privilege when they’re launched into space solely because Scrooge has enough money to support Gyro Gearloose’s (Hal Smith and Jim Rash) inventions), but they also came from a Scrooge who was post-Carol. A Scrooge who prioritized the lives of his loves (especially Webby) over a measly dime.
From time to time, episodes would revolve around disenfranchised talking animals yearning to steal Scrooge’s fortune and we’d root for the ducks to clobber them away, as if the Disney brass at the time was preparing us for their eventual monopolization of the film industry. But DuckTales also operated on the level of a pop culture pastiche, as almost every episode was based on some book or movie or fable.
The early stories of the series were familiar and highly referential, but every now and then, DuckTales could be ahead of the curve. The season one episode, “Dinosaur Ducks,” for example, aired six years before Jurassic Park delighted children at the multiplex. The theme of helping a young dinosaur (who was scared of the ducks) came eighteen years before Pooh’s Heffalump Movie would tackle similar concepts of animal rights and common enemies.
It also doesn’t hurt that “Dinosaur Ducks” is one of the original series’ very best episodes, working to distill the essence of DuckTales into the simple conceit of adventurous explorers dreaming of discovering all sorts of creatures. It just so happened that this particular episode was interested in dinosaurs (and “cave-ducks,” as well, posing the question of time travel in addition to lost civilizations).
Initially, “Dinosaur Ducks” was supposed to star a quest from Scrooge and Launchpad only. But as most DuckTales episodes tend to unfold, the three nephews (and Webby) find a way to circumvent the obstacles and throw themselves right into the thick of danger. In real life, a T-rex would rip all six birds to bits in an instant, never allowing them time to trick the dinosaur into slipping on stone marbles. In DuckTales, though, it’d be a bit morbid to see Dewey’s bloodied feathers strewn about. Instead, the danger posed to them is only the kind of danger that kids are worried about in their youth. Like John Mulaney said, quicksand is not as big a problem as you think it is while watching Saturday morning cartoons. T-rexes and quicksand, body swapping and mind control. They’re all wackadoodle constructs, but to a kid, they’re as terrifying as they are awesome.
The emphasis on a child’s influence is also well-trod territory in “Where No Duck Has Gone Before,” also from season one. Unknowingly launched into space, Major Courage hams up the hero persona the three kids ascribe such reverence to. In actuality, Launchpad is steering the spacecraft away from an asteroid belt because he’s the only one who realizes they’re actually in peril. Of course, once Major Courage realizes he’s in outer space, he instantly cowers. But up until that point, he received the credit for “saving” the ducks over Launchpad, who spent the episode proving his mettle inside the rocket. No harm, no fowl, though. They’re just kids, after all, and as soon as they realize Launchpad’s the real hero, they set upon Major Courage with another childlike invention: a food synthesizer. I’m still not entirely sure what it is, but I know it’s not an effective weapon.
Major Courage was just one tiny little waterdrop in the massive, feather-laden bucket of incredible character names on DuckTales. From my perspective, Magon and Landreth were second only to Michael Schur when it comes to concocting ingeniously silly and delightfully campy character monikers. I took to ranking my eleven favorites. Clear the lane, y’all, I’m coming in on one of my favorite things to write about!
11. Bigtime Beagle (Frank Welker and Eric Bauza)
10. Goldie O’Gilt (Joan Gerber and Allison Janney)
9. Gladstone Gander (Rob Paulsen and Paul F. Tompkins)
8. Burger Beagle (Chuck McCann and Bauza)
7. Gyro Gearloose
6. Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera
5. Bankjob Beagle (Peter Cullen)
4. Flintheart Glomgold (Hal Smith and Keith Ferguson)
3. Magica De Spell (June Foray and Catherine Tate)
2. Webbigail Vanderquack
1. Launchpad McQuack
These are all excellent names. Webby being short for Webbigail, straight up naming a character Burger, going all in on alliteration. It’s just fantastic stuff. But it’s hard to not put Launchpad right there at number one. He loses points for the “Mc” in his surname, which seems cheap, but Scrooge McDuck has it, too, so I imagine it’s a U.K. type deal. Besides, Launchpad as a first name is incredible enough alone to carry him to the number one spot. Not to mention that the conception behind Launchpad’s character (he’s a duck-pelican hybrid with a deep voice whose sole purpose is to crash into things) is one of the best in television history.
As much as I adored Launchpad McQuack in the original DuckTales series, he’s even better in the 2017 reboot, which fleshed out his character further. (Launchpad is primarily an agent in his own destruction and, crucially, intentionally funnier. “I have this friend,” he remarks. “Let’s call him ‘Not Launchpad.’”) Hell, the updated take on the series fleshed out everyone way more than they used to be. Fenton Crackshell added “Cabrera” to his name when Lin-Manuel (who has a perfect voice for duck-ly enthusiasm when exclaiming, “Blathering blatherskite!”) came to play. Ma Beagle took on sinister streaks beyond a villainously hokey creation when Margo Martindale took over for Foray. Even Huey, Dewey, and Louie got to have distinct personalities for the first time, thanks to a differentiated voice cast and individual character arcs (Huey is academic, Dewey is bombastic, and Louie is just vibing).
Everything that was possibly flawed with the original 1980s series was amended in the new series and everything that made the original great was only enhanced. The new, speedier DuckTales dialed up the meta right alongside the new, potentially-on-meth Mickey Mouse cartoons (which star Chris Diamantopoulous as the titular rodent). It maintains the demeanor geared towards children while updating the series with a stronger, more nostalgic heart and much bigger swings for Disney Channel myth-making.
In addition to orchestrating story arcs and continuity for the first time in DuckTales lore (the Duck family is under siege by F.O.W.L., Della Duck (Paget Brewster), the boys’ mother, fights her way home from the Moon), the 2017 reboot also expanded the roster, en route to crafting a pseudo-Avengers out of the characters from the old programming block, The Disney Afternoon. There were more tales beyond Duckburg and it was almost mind-blowing to the child within me when Don Karnage (Jaime Camil) from TaleSpin turned up, when José Carioca (Bernardo De Paula) and Panchito Pistoles (Arturo Del Puerto) reunited with Donald, and when teases of Goof Troop and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers grew more and more frequent in the series.
Furthermore, the new DuckTales embraced whip-smart story progressions that managed to harken back to the classic conceits of episodes from the 1980s. For example, “Beware the B.U.D.D.Y. System!” directly parallels “Where No Duck Has Gone Before” by ostracizing Launchpad from the group and reuniting him with Scrooge and the ducks by seeing him prove himself as a worthy member of the team. In the new installment, Launchpad was tasked with rescuing Scrooge, Gyro, and the nephews after Mark Beaks’ (Josh Brener) stolen A.I. vehicle went rogue and threatened to demolish the ducks. Not only does the episode show us Launchpad earning Scrooge’s approval (and a driving license), but it also shows us the origin story of Fenton’s Iron Man-like Gizmoduck superhero. That’s what impresses me most about the new DuckTales. It was never content to force the audience to accept plot developments and specific characterizations. Instead, the creative team went to admirable lengths to show us how our favorite characters of yore came to be.
This heroic milieu of Duckburg was depicted in a similarly rousing fashion to the original series, working to disarm the fans who might be reluctant to accept a radical take on the old comics and a new animation style. The subversions continued to “Last Christmas!,” which poked fun at the Dickens formula present in Scrooge McDuck’s own past, and “Treasure of the Found Lamp!,” an obvious dig at the first DuckTales film. If you’re able to keep an open mind, you’ll be exposed to creative brilliance not often depicted on the Disney Channel of old. Between the new Mickey Mouse shorts (currently unfolding as Disney Plooos’ The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse) and the award-winning DuckTales reboot, there’s impeccable work unfolding from Disney’s television studio right now.
The most subversive installment of the new DuckTales, however, is absolutely “The Duck Knight Returns!,” which resurrects one of the greatest Disney Afternoon characters of all-time, Darkwing Duck (Jim Cummings). In this DuckTales universe, Darkwing Duck is not an actual crime-fighting critter, but rather, a television character portrayed by “Jim Starling,” an actor. Like us, Launchpad grew up watching Darkwing Duck (in the old series, he appeared on it) and he has immense reverence for both the character and for Starling, who winds up proving to be the duckian embodiment of “don’t meet your heroes.”
Paralleling the studio setting of “Where No Duck Has Gone Before,” “The Duck Knight Returns!” sees the characters spend time at Scrooge McDuck’s movie production offices. There, a reboot of Darkwing Duck has been ordered from Alistair Boorswan (Edgar Wright), a director with a dark, mature vision for the character. Instead of Starling, though, Boorswan is casting younger for the revamped version of the character, setting his sights on Drake Mallard (Diamantopoulos). Quickly, this prompts Starling to lose his sanity in his many attempts to slaughter Drake Mallard and win the part back for himself.
At first, through Launchpad’s loyalty, we’re on Starling’s side and we’re similarly downtrodden that he’s been overlooked for the newer make and model of heroic duck. But when we see Drake playing with Darkwing Duck toys and confiding in Launchpad that he’s living his childhood dream, it’s clear that Starling is actually the antagonist of the episode. Drake is a real fan of the character and he only wants to do right by him in the updated version. Starling can’t accept any changes to his beloved role and grips so tightly to the traditional rut that kept the character away from the zeitgeist for years.
“Darkwing Duck is bigger than one man,” Launchpad realizes in an attempt to help Starling come to his senses, but he’s too far gone. I don’t think anyone (save for Don Rosa, the creator of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck) was livid about a refreshed vision for DuckTales to the same extent that Starling was for Darkwing, but the episode still operates as a meta commentary on the dangers of devoted fans who tie their nostalgia for a TV show or movie too closely to their own identity. It’s why The Last Jedi was so divisive for so many Star Wars fans; it dared to try something new, as if it was supposed to cater directly to the fans who couldn’t let go. Even if the story isn’t necessarily supposed to remain stagnantly and eternally theirs.
Granted, Scrooge owns the studio and hasn’t seen a movie since 1938. And yes, Boorswan’s vision for a grittier Darkwing Duck sounds absolutely insufferable (this also works as a criticism of the Batman character, who used to be for kids, right? That’s why it’s great to see Dewey in charge of a film that’s “crazy,” “huge,” and possibly “not any good”). But Starling makes the mistake of hinging his hopes for renewed success and relevance on a series that has passed him by. In most reboots, he’d probably have a cameo, rather than the starring role again. Ideally, this would be enough because Darkwing Duck is, of course, bigger than just one man. And so is DuckTales.
It’s about what the series mean to so many people who envisioned themselves in the place of the ducks on the ‘round-world adventures. It’s about dreaming bigger and growing your imagination so the stories you tell one day can make someone else feel as thrilled and enthralled as you once did while watching crime-fighting, dinosaur-helping ducks. It’s about passing down the characters and shows that defined our childhood and sharing them with the next generation, making them a little better along the way.
Jim Starling missed that Drake Mallard was just a kid at heart. It’s for kids, after all. We’re not kids for the new DuckTales anymore; it belongs to the new generation. Just like the 1987 version, though, they’ll throw a bill to the adults every once and a while. The best stories are the ones we share with one another, the ones that strike the right balance between devotion and reverence, and the ones that can make us sit up and say, “So cool!” right alongside Darkwing Duck and Launchpad McQuack. Because, after all, it’s been over thirty years and they’re still sharing the television screen together. In Duckburg, does it get cooler than that?
