Spin It! (A Talespin Retrospective)

[djnyr]

I have a tendency to yammer about Talespin in other discussions, so I decided it might not be a bad idea to give the show its own thread (I also recently completed a rewatch of the show, in part prompted by a desire to purge my brain after subjecting myself to the entire run of Ducktales 2017).  

One interesting phenomenon I've observed about Talespin is that, while it has a fervent online fanbase, there is fairly little overlap between that fanbase and the wider world of Disney comics.  Devotees of the Duck comics, for obvious reasons, tend to pay more attention to Ducktales, Darkwing Duck and (usually only to gape in horror) Quack Pack then they do to Talespin.  However, I would argue that, if you ignore the speciation differences between the Duck "universe" and the Talespin world, Talespin is actually closer in spirit to the world of Disney Duck (and Mouse) comics than any other Disney Afternoon show--and is, consequently, the best of the Afternoon's slate of shows.  Joe Torcivia has expressed a similar opinion, and although I'm rarely on the same page as him, in this case I entirely concur.  Joe and the late Chris Barat are two of the only Disney comics buffs I'm aware of who are/were big fans of Talespin; it was Chris' frequent references to the series in his other blog entries that made me interested in checking out the show for myself (like, I suspect, many other Disney comics devotees, I had tended to assume the series had no points of interest for a Barks or Gottfredson fan and was just a clumsy attempt to cash in on the reissue of The Jungle Book). 

Thus, unlike my experience of Ducktales, which I encountered as a kid, I came to Talespin with adult eyes and sharpened critical sense--and was honestly surprised by how much I liked the series.  I intend to use this thread (as my schedule allows) to explain just what I liked about it and to engage in a retrospective of the show, with a special eye to demonstrating how it internalized and skillfully utilized so many of the elements of the best Disney funny-animal comic books.  

Spin It! Part 1--Origins: Kipling to Disney to Cape Suzette

Talespin has a remote, tangled, and outwardly rather bizarre genesis.  Its lead character, Baloo, and one of its primary antagonists, Shere Khan, both hail (pretty much in name only) from a British children's book published almost a hundred years before the show began--i.e., Kipling's Jungle Book. 

Rudyard Kipling's original Jungle Book and Second Jungle Book rank among my all-time favorite fantasy/adventure stories, on a level with Tolkien, Lewis, and Richard Adams' Watership Down.  I read them after I encountered the Disney feature "adaptation", and the far richer stories significantly diminished my enthusiasm for the movie, which I'd quite enjoyed when I saw it for the first time (its 1990 reissue was one of the first movies I saw in a theater).  The movie has something of a cult, since I think it served to imprint a lot of young Boomers on the art of animation, but my own opinion of it was perfectly summed up by a commenter on the late Michael Sporn's animation blog--in brief, it's Walt Disney's equivalent of John Ford's Donavan's Reef or Howard Hawks' El Dorado--a great filmmaker in his twilight years kicking back and amusing himself with hijinks by some colorful characters, but not really paying much attention to plot or structure or emotional depth. 

The Disney version of Baloo was a Disney original, essentially created from scratch for the movie; the bear of that name in Kipling's stories was a grave, sober schoolmaster-like figure (Bagheera was actually the reckless and fun-loving one in the books!), nothing like the jovial "jungle bum" of the film.  Movie Baloo has remained the best-remembered character from the movie ("Bare Necessities" got an Oscar nomination, after all), and thus it was not all that surprising that he would be recruited when Disney was expanding its TV offers in the late 1980s/early 1990s.  Few could have predicted the TV vehicle that he would receive, however.  

Jymn Magon (who I will be talking about a lot in this series) was the man primarily responsible for the show that ultimately became Talespin.  He had been involved in the creation of both Ducktales and Gummi Bears, and thus when the Disney Studio decided to debut the "Disney Afternoon" programming block, it was to Magon that they turned to come up with a show to run in that block alongside the Ducks, the Gummis, and Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers.  Magon's original pitch was for a sitcom called "The B Players", about one-time Disney animation stars and would-be stars trying to win comeback or first-time roles in a Toon version of Hollywood; Baloo was conceived of as one of the leading characters of this show (Horace and Clarabelle would also have been regulars), but there wasn't much interest in the idea. 

Magon then dusted off an idea that had surfaced during the developmental phase of Ducktales; evidently, at one point there had been some consideration of making Launchpad the operator of an air freight service and the main character of the series (probably when there was some uncertainty as to how many of the "classic" Duck characters they'd be allowed to use--Mike Peraza has indicated that some negotiations were necessary to get the Nephews on board).  Anyway, Magon combined the cargo-pilot idea from the old Ducktales pitch with the character of Baloo from the "B Players" pitch--and a new show emerged from a very eclectic matrix.  

Sources:

Magon talks about the series' genesis in these posts on the old Talespin Animation Source website:

www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/custom_questions/Why-The-Jungle-Book/157.html&nump=1338

www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/custom_questions/The-B-Players-.../156.html&nump=1338

Peraza's post about the early days of Ducktales, referencing the negotiations for use of the classic characters, is here:

michaelperaza.blogspot.com/2010/08/days-of-ducktales-part-1.html

Spin It! Part 2--The World of Cape Suzette

The universe of the new show was eclectic too; its time period was never specified within the series itself, but it was definitely a pastiche of the late 1930s.  As Magon stated in a 1990 promotional piece for Buena Vista Television:

"Well, the time and locale of the show both suggest those old movie serials of the thirties.  It was a very exciting time to be a kid, when things were still exotic and mysterious.  So we wanted to do a 'Terry and the Pirates' kind of show.  Also, what appealed to us about that era was the scale of things.  Today, technology has miniaturized everything, which isn't visually exciting.  But in that era, anything powerful was really big, which is great for a cartoon show.  We've also got the atmosphere of that time with the nightclubs, art deco, and old cars.  It gives the show an exciting feel." 

To Magon's comments, I would add that not only did the show's period setting evoke Terry and the Pirates (the greatest adventure comic strip of the 1930s and 1940s), but it also called to mind the 1930s Gottfredson Mickey Mouse strips, particularly the aviation-centered continuities like "The Mail Pilot", "Island in the Sky" and "The Pirate Submarine," where flying is inherently adventurous and exciting, not just another means of mass transportation. One of the many strengths of Talespin was the fact that it played the "romance of aviation" theme entirely straight; flying was something special on the show, and something that the lead characters (Baloo and Kit Cloudkicker) were truly passionate about.  That passion was taken seriously; there were no wink-wink benefit-of-hindsight jokes about how clunky the planes of that period were and how much better modern aviation technology is. 

In short, the series made a genuine effort to enter into the spirit of the period it was depicting, not merely copy the period's trappings.  To quote Magon again, in another quote from the same 1990 promotional piece, Magon remarked that "Today, kids are exposed to so much.  They're a little jaded.  So the challenge was taking the excitement of an older time without making it look old fashioned."  I will carefully try to avoid bashing New Ducktales too much in this series, but I can't help but remark that this attitude of trying to awaken a sense of wonder and excitement, instead of simply trying to play down to modern kids' (presumed) jadedness and cynicism, as New Ducktales did, is a vastly preferable approach to animated storytelling (or any kind of storytelling).  

Returning to the Mickey Mouse comparisons, another way in which Talespin echoed the early Mickey strips was in the diversity of species among its cast; like the goats, monkeys, pigs, rats, cats, geese, hens, horse, cows and wide varieties of dog breeds that peopled earlier Gottfredson stories, the characters on Talespin weren't just humans with little black noses, but rather animals that had been mostly but not entirely anthropomorphised; their wardrobes were rarely complete, like those of the early Mickey characters (more than half of them didn't wear pants, and hardly any of them wore shoes), and every now and then there'd be a gag to remind one of their non-anthropomorphic counterparts (like Louie the orangutan using his feet to shake hands). Unlike the largely barnyard cast of the Mickey strips, however, most of the Talespin cast were wild critters--bears, big cats, apes, hippos, wolves, wild boars, foxes, and the like.  In this regard, it was also more than a little reminiscent of the 1970s Disney Robin Hood animated film. 

Talespin's zoofull of characters leant enormous visual variety and appeal to the series, making even minor guest characters entertainingly idiosyncratic to look at.  The generally perceived "personalities" of the various species also allowed for effective visual shorthand in establishing characterizations (tigers as ruthless capitalists, monkeys as fun-loving partiers, bulldogs as army generals, and so forth) as well as humor derived from playing against the usual expectations for the species (belligerent military poodles, porcine sanitation inspectors, etc.).  

In keeping with the jungle origins of the leading characters, "Cape Suzette," the massive Art Deco city in which the series was based, was clearly tropical; its location was never directly tied to any place in the real world.  It was reminiscent at times of Sydney or Hong Kong--a modern city within flying distance of more exotic and remote locales and in the same hemisphere as a Soviet Union equivalent ("Thembria"), but it was also obviously American in a cultural sense; much like Barks' Duckburg, it was both a part of America but yet at the same time its own thing (the Thembrians would also refer to Baloo and company as "Cape Suzette swine" as if the city was an independent nation, much as Barks' Duckburg has its own consuls and embassies).  The reference in Talespin's pilot episode to the "Sox" (i.e., the Red Sox, then on a seventy-year championship-free streak) as having won the Series felt like a definite acknowledgment that the show was set in our world but not quite in the world as we know it. 

Sources:

Jymn Magon's own blog provided the full text of the Buena Vista Television promotional piece for the Disney Afternoon quoted above:

finetooning.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/disney-afternews/

Next Up:  The Characters 
 

[aldwayne]

It needs to be said that Talespin obviously took notes from Tales of the Gold Monkey and Hogan's Heroes.

[djnyr]

Tales of the Gold Monkey was most definitely a source for the show; Magon and Mark Zaslove (the other main creator of Talespin) both referenced it as a source; Baloo's plane, the Sea Duck, was obviously inspired (both visually and in its name) by the Grumman Goose used on Gold Monkey, and both shows had a character named Louie running the local watering place. Both series were part of the 1930s-style retro-adventure trend in entertainment that began with the first Indiana Jones movie (The Rocketeer and the Billy Zane Phantom movie were other examples); the greenlighting of the original Ducktales show itself, of course, also grew out of this phenomenon (although unlike Talespin and the live-action adventures mentioned here, it didn't have a period setting). The short-lived "Perils of Mickey" marketing campaign felt like part of this wave, as well.

As to Hogan's Heroes, though, I don't see all that much resemblance between it and Talespin, unless you mean the Colonel Spigot and Sergeant Dunder characters; they have something in common with Klink and Schultz--but they also resemble any number of other overbearing martinet/long-suffering underling combos in comedies and adventure-comedies over the years, so I'd be hesitant to tag Hogan's Heroes as their sole source. I'll be discussing them, and their nation of Thembria, in more detail as this series proceeds.

[That Duckfan]

I don't know much about TaleSpin, but I'll be watching this thread with great interest!

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 3--The Characters

The basic premise of Talespin was that Baloo, an ace cargo pilot but a very careless businessman, lost his air-freight business to a foreclosure; the bank subsequently sold the business to would-be entrepreneur Rebecca Cunningham (or “Becky,” as Baloo called her), who rechristened "Baloo's Air Service" as "Higher for Hire" and kept on Baloo as her pilot. Baloo, Becky, and Baloo’s navigator, an orphaned youngster named Kit Cloudkicker, were the three central characters of the show; Becky’s six-year-old daughter Molly, Baloo’s mechanic Wildcat, and Baloo’s buddy Louie (the proprietor of an island restaurant/bar/airplane refueling station) were the principal supporting protagonists, while the main recurring villain was the flamboyant air pirate Don Karnage. Colonel Spigot, commander of the Thembrian Air Force, and the ruthless businessman Shere Khan were sometimes villains as well, but sometimes functioned as allies or quasi-allies.

In the same Buena Vista promotional interview quoted in the prior section, Jymn Magon was asked if he was hoping to “attract a more adult audience” with Talespin; in response, he mentioned that “We’ve always had in the back of our minds that we wanted to do something a little grittier than, say, Ducktales or Rescue Rangers, and when this [Talespin] came along, we said, ‘Oh boy, this is great!’ As far as it being an adult cartoon, it definitely has a sophistication that a lot of other TV animation lacks.” This section of the interview is available at this link: finetooning.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/afternews-90-scan-151021-0005.jpg

Now, every showrunner tends to talk about his show like it’s something New and Different, but this particular statement was not mere puffery. Talespin did have a higher level of sophistication than the Disney Afternoon shows that preceded it, and a lot of this sophistication manifested itself in the characters’ personalities and dynamics. Unlike Ducktales, where the main characters were all either children (Webby and the Nephews) or eccentric grown-ups with offbeat preoccupations that separated them from the average Joe or Jane (Scrooge, Launchpad, and later Fenton), two of Talespin’s three leading characters were adults with relatable adult concerns. Baloo wanted to get enough money to buy back his plane and become his own boss again, and wanted to be both a father and a best pal to Kit; Rebecca wanted to make a success out of her fledgling business while trying to find time to raise her daughter Molly. Also, unlike Rescue Rangers, where the characters were full-time crimefighters all working together as a quirky but generally united team, the protagonists of Talespin were never catapulted into conflicts with villains by choice, but rather when the protagonists’ own pursuits led them to cross the villains’ paths; the same pursuits often put the Talespin protagonists into conflict with each other, not just with the bad guys.

Although the characters and their dynamics were quite different, the principal players on Talespin really had more in common with Donald and the Nephews in the pre-Scrooge Barks stories than they did with the characters on the other Disney Afternoon shows. Like Donald and the boys, the main Talespin characters had strong but flexible personalities that allowed them to be used in a wide variety of stories, from treasure hunts to slapstick escalation battles to workplace comedies to battles with pirates.  They were even strong enough to support occasional forays into dead-serious drama, cutting deeper and more genuinely into human emotions than original Ducktales ever did. There was no single “formula” for the series; it really was the combination of High Adventure/Energetic Comedy/Heartfelt Drama that new Ducktales desperately wanted to be.

Returning to the Barks comparisons, the Baloo of Talespin was much more affable than than the pugnacious Donald, but, like Donald in Barks' stories, he was very much a comic Everyman who could be heroic, panicky, clumsy, skilled, scheming, or selfless, often in the same episode. Becky, unlike so many other female characters both on the Disney Afternoon and in Disney comics, also had a full set of positive, negative, and very funny traits that made her as well-rounded a character as Baloo. Kit was a resourceful daredevil who was more enterprising than Baloo and more fun-loving than Becky, but who had his own flaws of impetuosity and overconfidence.  None of the supporting characters were mere paragons or mere buffoons, either; Molly Cunningham was cute but more than a little of a handful (like most real six-year-olds), with a willfulness and wild imagination that frequently caused trouble for herself and others. Wildcat was a sort of “idiot savant” who, like the early Gottfredson Goofy, lived in an off-kilter mental world of his own that made him a great source of comedy, but was also capable of surprising ingenuity and touching kindness. Louie was breezy, cynical and roguish, but also good-hearted and often wise—the friendly bartender of thousands of live-action films.

Even the villains were not one-dimensional; Don Karnage was a swaggering, deranged comic narcissist, but also had courage, humor, cleverness, and even a sense of honor; Colonel Spigot was a bully and a blowhard, but you could sympathize with him in his harried efforts to stay on the good side of Thembria’s formidable “High Marshal”; Shere Khan was ruthless and manipulative, but was scrupulous about paying debts and honoring agreements, and could even be quite generous provided it didn’t interfere with his schemes. In short, the treatment of both heroes and villains on Talespin called to mind Barks’ famous remark about how all of his good guys had some bad streaks and all his villains had a few good streaks.

I had originally intended to do much lengthier analyses of each of the main characters (as I did with New Ducktales), but I decided it’d be more interesting and enlightening to examine them in the context of each of the show’s episodes, instead of in the abstract. I intend to use this thread to work my way through each of Talespin’s 65 episodes; I can’t promise anything as in-depth as Chris Barat’s Ducktales reviews, but I intend to be as thorough as my schedule will allow.

[aldwayne]

Nov 19, 2021 1:25:39 GMT djnyr said:

I don't see all that much resemblance between it and Talespin, unless you mean the Colonel Spigot and Sergeant Dunder characters; they have something in common with Klink and Schultz--but they also resemble any number of other overbearing martinet/long-suffering underling combos in comedies and adventure-comedies over the years, so I'd be hesitant to tag Hogan's Heroes as their sole source. I'll be discussing them, and their nation of Thembria, in more detail as this series proceeds.

I don't agree. Spigot and Dunder with the High Marshall were surely modeled on Klink and Schultz with their general.They have the obvious connection of being two soldiers and their immediate superior under a dictatorship. Gruel and Unusual Punishment was more or less a plot from Hogan's Heroes turned into a Talespin episode.

I neglected to say that another sure source of inspiration was Cheers. Baloo and Rebecca's dynamic was based on Sam and Rebecca's. One writer even admitted to trying not to commit the same mistake as that show did by making their relationship not go too far into being outright.

[djnyr]

Cheers was another acknowledged influence; I think this Q&A post by Magon may be the quote you're recalling: www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/custom_questions/Does-Baloo-have-feelings-for-Rebecca/149.html&nump=1338. I would add, though, that the Baloo-Becky relationship went beyond the Cheers inspiration in at least one very significant way; the Rebecca of Cheers was a manager working for a corporation, while Becky on Talespin was operating her own business and trying very hard to keep it on a paying basis, which made her exasperation with Baloo's laziness and irresponsibility a lot more easy to sympathize with than if she'd have been hassling him merely to improve some faceless corporation's bottom line. Judging from early concept art and promotional materials, Becky was originally conceived of as more of a high-level corporate type (complete with business suit) and was described as having inherited the air cargo business from her father (apparently, in this early conception, Baloo had never owned the business himself). Changing her to a creative if somewhat erratic rookie entrepreneur with her life savings riding on her business was a much better idea, in terms of making her a relatable character.

In regards to possible Hogan's Heroes influence, though, I'm still not convinced; I see your point, but, again, there are so many examples of the Spigot/Dunder dynamic (going back at least as far as the 1942 comedy To Be Or Not To Be), that I don't see Hogan as the obvious source for the dynamic (Spigot and Dunder also called to mind Daffy and Porky at times). Magon, in the days when he used to answer questions online, was quite open about describing pop-culture influences on the show, and I've never heard Hogan cited as one; when asked if there was any specific character that Spigot was based on, he referenced Wallace Shawn, not Klink (see this thread: www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/custom_questions/Origin-of-Thembrian-Character-Design/243.html&nump=1338). The "Gruel and Unusual Punishment" episode did have a prison camp, but the prison scenes felt more like a spoof of Bridge on the River Kwai (the sweatbox, the tropical setting) than Hogan, and the episode's climax had Baloo basically working with Spigot and Dunder to save Thembria from a mad scientist, which is not something you'd ever see on Hogan's Heroes. The original script for that particular episode didn't even have Spigot, Dunder, or the Thembrians in it (it was originally pitched as a two-parter called "Bedevilled Egghead" with a setting in a quasi-Dutch country).

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 4--Production

Before going into the individual episodes, I wanted to touch on the animation, voice work, writing staff, and a few other production aspects.

A. Visuals

The animation, which was handled by a much wider range of studios (including Walt Disney Japan and Walt Disney France) than the animation for Ducktales, was consistently fluid and engaging—think of the bouncier, most expressive “look” of the second season of Ducktales and some first-season Ducktales episodes like “Double-O Duck” and “Send in the Clones” rather than the more sedate movements in early Ducktales episodes like “Back to the Klondike.” Even when the characters were static, the wide variety of anthropomorphic designs, as previously discussed, made them fun to look at.

The Talespin episodes animated by the French unit were particularly striking—both in character movement (which was sometimes almost too manic and quirky) and in visual effects of light and shadow (think of Treasure of the Lost Lamp, which was also worked on by Walt Disney France). The episodes animated by Walt Disney Japan and by Sun Woo Animation (South Korea) didn’t have as many flourishes as the French ones, but were notable for some memorably rich colors—jungle greens, dark-blue night skies, black and spooky caves. Whatever the animation crew, the series’ visuals were always distinguished by the Art Deco buildings and big old aircraft associated with its retro setting; computer animation was used for some of the airplane movements in the early going, but abandoned when it ultimately proved easier to animate the planes by hand.  Magon talks about this a little at the following link:

www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/custom_questions/About-Talespin-and-CGI/257.html&nump=1338 


Above: An expressive Don Karnage in the French-animated first part of the pilot, Plunder and Lightning.  


Above: Rebecca and Molly in a darkened movie theatre--an example of the lighting effects favored by the French unit.


A jungle island setting by Walt Disney Japan.


The Sea Duck swoops past Khan Tower in a night sky from the Japan unit.  


B. Voices

The voice cast of Talespin was a well-chosen mixture of veteran voice actors, “face” actors with distinctive, cartoon-friendly voices, and actors with both voice and face experience. Phil Harris was originally tapped to reprise his role as Baloo, but at 85 wasn’t quite able to recreate his old Jungle Book voice; the logistics of getting him to recording sessions (involving a four-hour round trip from Palm Springs) also proved daunting.  This link describes the abortive Harris casting:

www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/custom_questions/Voice-actor-decisions-Baloo-and-Kit/158.html&nump=1338)

Ultimately, Ed Gilbert, who’d done face acting in the 1960s and 1970s but had become primarily a voice actor beginning in the 1980s, was cast as Baloo instead. His voice was a shade deeper than Harris’, but he did an excellent job of capturing his delivery and cadences, and recreating his distinctive quasi-Southern drawl. His characterization was more mercurial than Harris’ laid-back Baloo, with frequent gruff frustration or panicky comic hollering along with easygoing cheerfulness—but that fit with the new conception of the character, who had a lot more things to worry about than just the bear necessities.

Sally Struthers, of Norman Lear sitcom fame, was cast as Rebecca Cunningham; before her days with Lear, she had done the voice of the teenage Pebbles in Hanna-Barbera’s Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm show, so she was not a complete stranger to voice acting. After Talespin, she did quite a bit of cartoon voice work—not surprising, since as Becky she proved very well-suited to voice acting. Unlike some modern face actors doing voice work (certain New Ducktales cast members, coff coff) Struthers knew when to go broad (her exasperated shout of “Balooooooooo!”) but also when to underplay (her deadpan “Oh dear” in serious situations was particularly good), and she was excellent at handling the show’s actual dramatic and emotional moments.

Kit was voiced by two different child actors, first Alan Roberts and then R. J. Williams (who was also Cavin, the page boy on Gummi Bears, for a time). Molly Cunningham was also voiced by a genuine child, six-year-old Janna Michaels. Although the ages of the children limited their work schedule and prevented them from appearing in every episode (Molly in particular was frequently absent from episodes without any real explanation), having real kids voice Kit and Molly really paid off for the show, and not just because the kids in question did good acting jobs. The genuineness of the voices gave sentimental moments centered on the child characters an added simplicity and sincerity that even a good adult actor like Russi Taylor (Webby and the Nephews) or Kristine Kavanaugh (Gosalyn) could not equal. The kids’ voices (especially Molly’s) also gave an added degree of humor to comic lines, ala the Peanuts voice cast.

Royal Shakespeare Company alumnus Tony Jay (later Frollo in the animated Hunchback of Notre Dame) was the voice of Shere Khan, and did a dead-on impersonation of the late George Sanders’ voice. This version of Khan was more consistently icy and less mockingly humorous than the one in Jungle Book, being presented as a sort of inhuman law unto himself, and Jay did an admirable job of vocally dominating every one of Khan’s scenes without ever once hamming it up or otherwise breaking his ominous calm.

Pat Fraley, a veteran voice actor who went back to Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, was Wildcat, using an inherently amusing spaced-out voice that echoed Hanna-Barbera mainstay Daws Butler’s old riff on radio comic Frank Fontaine. Most of the other recurring roles were played by voice-acting vets as well. Chuck McCann and Charlie Adler were Don Karnage’s two principal henchmen, the dim-witted Scandinavian-accented Dump Truck (a Great Dane), and the whiny, bad-tempered Mad Dog. Michael Gough (not the British actor of that name), who was contemporaneously voicing Gopher in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, was Colonel Spigot, whose peculiar snorting lisp both called to mind Daffy Duck and also seemed appropriate for a character who always talked with tusks in his mouth. Lorenzo Music, Tummi Gummi on Gummi Bears, was the kindly and easygoing Sergeant Dunder, Spigot’s long-suffering aide.

I’ve left the series’ arguable MVP for last. Good as the entire cast was, the show would not have been the same without voice-acting legend Jim Cummings. Cummings voiced Louie, Don Karnage, and a host of guest characters. His voice for Louie was an excellent recreation of Louis Prima’s (too much so, unfortunately; Prima’s wife later threatened to sue Disney for appropriating her husband’s persona, which led to the omission of Louie from Jungle Book 2 and the use of an ersatz “King Larry” character in Louie’s stead on House of Mouse). Cummings’ Karnage was a comic treasure; Cummings created his eccentric accent (which he described as “a little Spanish, a little French, a little Ricky Ricardo), and improvised much of his dialogue; according to a “Making of” documentary on the show, he would be given a basic script and then mark it up with his own lines. Karnage’s dialogue was marked by both scrambled metaphors (“It was, how you say, like taking candy from a baby child—falling off a piece of cake—easy as pie on a log”) and bizarre asides (“I am DON KARRRNAGE—roll the ‘r’”), and punctuated by a sharp, crazy-sounding laugh, all combining to make him one of the most vividly realized characters in the show and in the entire Disney Afternoon.

C. Writing

Talespin maintained a much more consistent standard of writing than Ducktales; Jymn Magon’s status as supervising producer—effectively, the showrunner--undoubtedly had something to with this (he was only a writer and sometime editor on Ducktales). The series’ sense of humor was sharper and the visual and verbal gags much more rapid-fire than on the earlier episodes of Ducktales or on Rescue Rangers, but it avoided the Looney-Tunes-inspired “anything for a laugh” style of humor that sometimes made it hard to take the plots of Darkwing Duck and the second-season Ducktales episodes at all seriously.

The show’s writers included Mark Zaslove, who, along with Magon, was responsible for Talespin’s creation; Bruce Talkington, who had worked with Magon and Zaslove on Ducktales’ “Treasure of the Golden Suns” pilot; Len Uhley, who had helped Magon develop Rescue Rangers; Alan Burnett (who subsequently became one of the writing/producing mainstays of Bruce Timm’s DC animated shows for Warner Brothers); David Weimers and Ken Koonce, who had written a lot of the wackier and more loosely-plotted episodes of later Ducktales but who fortunately were kept on a shorter leash on Talespin; and none other than Don Rosa, who did the writing for two of the show’s earliest episodes. I will go into the contributions of these and others in more depth when I cover individual episodes. The Talespin writer with the most impressive track record of all, however, was Libby Hinson, who was as good at writing comedy as any of the others, but was unmatched when it came to doing moving or haunting moments; she was responsible for nearly all of the show’s most emotionally powerful episodes.

4. Music of the Skies

Michael and Patty Silversher did the theme song for Talespin, a catchy, calypso-influenced number that effectively conveyed a sense of rollicking tropical adventure. The episodes themselves were scored by Christopher Stone, whose work rivaled that of Ron Jones on Ducktales; among his most memorable pieces were light, racing theme for Kit Cloudkicker’s cloud-surfing, the ominous march-like theme for Karnage’s airship the Iron Vulture, and the twittery music that accompanied Wildcat’s antics. Best of all, though, was the theme used for the Sea Duck’s takeoffs, dives, and other dramatic action moments, an incredibly rousing piece of music that could also be slowed down for reflective scenes. Go to the 1:07 mark in the video below for a listen; it gives me chills no matter how many times I hear it:




Next: The Episodes

[juicymcduck]

Another very interesting, very in-depth thread, as usual! :-) Reading all this makes me want to rewatch Talespin (or Super Baloo / Looping, as I knew it back in the day)...

I have a question: apart from the thing that happened in the Ducktales reboot (upon which I refuse to elaborate), has there ever been a crossover between the Duck universe and that of Talespin? In the latter, Shere Khan seems to be one of the richest men in the world (if not THE richest). I think it might have been interesting to see him interact with Scrooge. (Of course, Talespin seems to take place in the late 1930s, but that's not a problem at all for Scrooge.)

[djnyr]

The closest thing to a Ducktales-Talespin crossover was the five-part "Legend of the Chaos God" comic by Bobbi JG Weiss from the Disney Adventures digest; Weiss was the only comic-book writer who actually "got" the Talespin characters (she did some excellent stories in Disney's short-lived Talespin title), but "Chaos God" was disappointing as a cross-over in that none of the characters from the separate Disney Afternoon shows interacted, save Gizmoduck and Darkwing (who had already interacted on television). The Talespin world, in "Chaos God," was depicted as being fifty years or so in the past of the Ducktales/Darkwing world, so interaction between, say, Baloo and Launchpad wouldn't really have been possible--although, as you say, a young Scrooge could still have been fitted into Cape Suzette. I would love to see a genuine crossover, perhaps with an up-and-coming Scrooge vying with Shere Khan's more established business empire (if you're following the Rosa Life and Times format, it could be called "The Capitalist of Cape Suzette.")

[juicymcduck]

Nov 25, 2021 0:09:29 GMT djnyr said:

The closest thing to a Ducktales-Talespin crossover was the five-part "Legend of the Chaos God" comic by Bobbi JG Weiss from the Disney Adventures digest; Weiss was the only comic-book writer who actually "got" the Talespin characters (she did some excellent stories in Disney's short-lived Talespin title), but "Chaos God" was disappointing as a cross-over in that none of the characters from the separate Disney Afternoon shows interacted, save Gizmoduck and Darkwing (who had already interacted on television). The Talespin world, in "Chaos God," was depicted as being fifty years or so in the past of the Ducktales/Darkwing world, so interaction between, say, Baloo and Launchpad wouldn't really have been possible--although, as you say, a young Scrooge could still have been fitted into Cape Suzette. I would love to see a genuine crossover, perhaps with an up-and-coming Scrooge vying with Shere Khan's more established business empire (if you're following the Rosa Life and Times format, it could be called "The Capitalist of Cape Suzette.")

Khan would make an interesting foe for Scrooge, I think, because he's different from both Glomgold and Rockerduck. He'd make a type of billionaire adversary we haven't really seen yet.

[djnyr]

Yes, Shere Khan is in some ways a more "realistic" businessman than anyone in Scrooge's universe--unlike Glomgold and Scrooge, he spends his money freely to make more money, and unlike the show-offy, high-living Rockerduck, he's a serious and committed titan of industry continually working to practically expand his money and power.  You could actually use Khan, in a Rosaian context, to demonstrate how Scrooge developed from a loner prospector to a titan of industry himself--have Khan get the better of Scrooge through the superiority of his business organization, and have Scrooge realize that he can't go it alone if he really wants to become the richest man in the world and that he will have to start learning to delegate and organize.  

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

I decided to imitate Christopher Barat’s approach to reviewing Original Ducktales in production order, as opposed to release order, the better to trace the development of the show and its characters—although Talespin was much more fully-formed to start with than Ducktales, and changed much less over its 65 episodes than Ducktales did over its 100 episodes, so the production-order approach won’t provide as many dramatic turning points as the same approach did for Ducktales. For the production order, I am indebted to Gregory Weagle’s Unofficial Kit Cloudkicker Homepage, which features a production-order episode timeline furnished by none other than Chris Barat himself. See the link below:

cloudkicker.50webs.com/Info/timeline.htm

These reviews will be replete with spoilers, so proceed with caution.

I. “I Only Have Ice For You”



This was the first episode in production order, and one of seven episodes (the other six will be noted in due course) which aired on the Disney Channel as “preview” episodes in May 1990, before the two-hour pilot movie, “Plunder and Lightning” aired in September 1990, immediately followed by the series’ debut on the Disney Afternoon. The credited writer was Don Rosa, who did storyboards as well as a script; according to Rosa himself, his script was almost entirely rewritten—presumably by Mark Zaslove, who is credited as story editor for the episode. Rosa’s account of his involvement with the show, together with a sample storyboard, can be seen at the link below:

www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/comments/Don-Rosa-on-TaleSpin/3436.html

The storyboard, which uses earlier models of Becky and Wildcat very dissimilar to their eventual animated versions, shows that the central idea of the episode—the aerial transportation of an iceberg—was in Rosa's treatment; this was retained in Zaslove’s rewrite. I have no proof, but I am fairly certain that other elements of the finished episode are traceable to Rosa, even though he describes his script as being based on an outline by the producers. There is an elaborate and very funny gag early in the episode, which plays silently while Baloo and Becky are arguing and which simply screams “Rosa” to me, calling to mind any number of pantomimed background jokes in Rosa’s Duck stories (it involves Wildcat's attempts to load a spare airplane propeller inside the Sea Duck, and his comically drastic abandonment of the attempt). A later, less elaborate pantomimed gag, involving Kit, a candle, and a leaky roof, also feels very Rosa-ish.



One of the episode’s central plot devices also appears to have come from Barks by way of Rosa; at the beginning, we see Baloo foil Don Karnage by hiding rubies in strawberry jam—which leads Karnage to jump to the conclusion that the iceberg being hauled by the good guys later in the episode must contain diamonds. This calls to mind Barks’ “All at Sea” (with the gold/corn camouflage) and “Status Seeker” (with the candy-striped ruby/peppermint camouflage), and the Beagles’ recollection of the prior story which punctures the subterfuge in the second story. The iceberg in “I Only Have Ice For You” is, however, not camouflage but a genuine iceberg, being shipped to an eccentric and wealthy desert prince (Prince Neverhas-ben-Broke, which also has a very Barks-by-way-of-Rosa ring to it).

“Ice”, as so many later Talespin episodes, interweaves a basic action-adventure plot (transporting the iceberg while fighting Karnage’s air pirates) with a comic character-driven plot (Baloo’s pilot license is suspended, and Becky takes it upon herself to fly the Sea Duck for the iceberg assignment, sticking rigidly to an expensive instructional book). The character-driven part of the plot provides a good example of the way the show made both Baloo and Becky flawed and funny, without ever making one character the designated “always right” or “always wrong” person. Becky is somewhat more at fault in this particular episode, but Baloo is not exactly blameless either. We witness him being crafty and cool-headed at the start of the episode, as he prevents Don Karnage from hijacking a cargo of rubies—only to then make a colossal, hubristic blunder by gloating to the pirate before the Sea Duck is safely inside the cliffs of Cape Suzette; the resulting pursuit forces Baloo to make a desperate unauthorized landing and results in his license suspension. At this point, you can understand Becky’s decision to fly the plane herself in order to deliver the iceberg—but she promptly falls victim to her own disastrous form of hubris, stubbornly insisting that all she needs to fly is her book, and resolutely ignoring any practical advice that Baloo attempts to offer (“What do you know, Mr. No License?”). Baloo only aggravates her stubbornness by alternately insulting the book and attempting to con Becky away from the controls, while Kit tries to mediate between the two adults.


This situation leads to a good string of visual and verbal gags, with Becky’s rigidly by-the-book flying alternately provoking sarcasm and terror from Baloo. Becky, despite some rocky moments, brings the Sea Duck successfully to the pickup destination for the iceberg, but her book provides her no tips for evading pirates, and Karnage’s airship, the Iron Vulture, is able to capture the Sea Duck and the iceberg on the return trip. This leads Becky to finally admit that being Baloo’s boss doesn’t mean she knows how to do his job; Baloo then spearheads a jailbreak from the Vulture’s brig, but ends up incapacitated during the group’s climactic escape flight, forcing Becky to execute a desperate emergency landing, this time trusting in Baloo’s advice—given sincerely and non-sarcastically for a change—instead of the book. The two protagonists then are briefly at peace, and even respectful of each other, before returning to their more wary and squabbling relationship for a final gag.

Other shows might have had Becky turn out to be better at flying that Baloo in every way, or have had Baloo execute the climactic landing instead of Becky, letting her tearful apology in the brig prematurely conclude her arc in the episode. By instead having the two characters cooperate to save the day at the finale, we’re left with a much more satisfying storyline, one which gets laughs out of both characters while allowing them both to ultimately get the job done when it counts.


Baloo and Becky are the focus of “Ice,” but it also provides a good introduction to Don Karnage, who gets several typically funny lines, particularly when he’s trying to figure out what the good guys are hiding in the iceberg (“I will ask the prisoners! No, I will boil them in vinegar first! Vinegar--and maybe some salt!”) His luckless henchman Mad Dog is also given a full introduction, whining comically when assigned to an ill-fated mission. Dump Truck appears as well, but is not really individualized at this point. The only other regular air pirate with a distinct personality, Gibber (voiced by Chuck McCann) makes his debut here too, along with his amusing gimmick of perpetually whispering unintelligible advice or suggestions into Karnage’s ear. Kit doesn’t have as much to do as the adult characters (good and bad) in this episode, but we’re given a couple of good examples of his characteristic resourcefulness and enthusiasm for flying.


I would still like to know how much of the finished episode was Rosa’s and how much was Zaslove’s, but in any event the two of them provided the series with a thoroughly entertaining inaugural outing.

[Mesterius]

Nov 26, 2021 1:55:02 GMT djnyr said:

I. “I Only Have Ice For You”

This was the first episode in production order, and one of seven episodes (the other six will be noted in due course) which aired on the Disney Channel as “preview” episodes in May 1990, before the two-hour pilot movie, “Plunder and Lightning” aired in September 1990, immediately followed by the series’ debut on the Disney Afternoon. The credited writer was Don Rosa, who did storyboards as well as a script; according to Rosa himself, his script was almost entirely rewritten—presumably by Mark Zaslove, who is credited as story editor for the episode. Rosa’s account of his involvement with the show, together with a sample storyboard, can be seen at the link below:

www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/comments/Don-Rosa-on-TaleSpin/3436.html

The storyboard, which uses earlier models of Becky and Wildcat very dissimilar to their eventual animated versions, shows that Rosa came up with the central idea of the episode—the aerial transportation of an iceberg—which was retained in Zaslove’s rewrite. I have no proof, but I am fairly certain that other elements of the finished episode are traceable to Rosa as well. There is an elaborate and very funny gag early in the episode, which plays silently while Baloo and Becky are arguing and which simply screams “Rosa” to me, calling to mind any number of pantomimed background jokes in Rosa’s Duck stories (it involves Wildcat's attempts to load a spare airplane propellor inside the Sea Duck, and his comically drastic abandonment of the attempt). A later, less elaborate pantomimed gag, involving Kit, a candle, and a leaky roof, also feels very Rosa-ish.

(...)

I would still like to know how much of the finished episode was Rosa’s and how much was Zaslove’s, but in any event the two of them provided the series with a thoroughly entertaining inaugural outing.

Only gonna comment on this part (at least for now), as I don't think I've seen the episode and I might want to do so before reading a full review of it. But I'm a bit confused by your conclusion that the storyboard shows that "Rosa came up with the central idea of the episode—the aerial transportation of an iceberg". Clicking the Animation Source link you provided, the quote from Rosa says that he wrote "I Only Have Ice For You" based on a story synopsis given to him by the producers. So wouldn't this central idea most likely have been in that synopsis?

[djnyr]

Oops; that'll teach me not to post after Thanksgiving dinner (too much turkey evidently fogs the brain). It'd been a while since I read that Rosa quote in full, and I obviously forgot the bit about the producer-provided synopsis. I've revised the original post accordingly; thanks for the correction. Rosa’s full quote leaves me wondering, though, just what elements of the original synopsis "wouldn't work" in animation and were jettisoned, since the most implausible (but visually entertaining) gimmick of the synopsis--the iceberg airlift--stayed in.

[djnyr]

Spin It! Part 5--Episodes

II. "A Bad Reflection on You" (First Draft)

This two-part episode poses something of a conundrum when covering the series chronologically.  According to the Barat list from Greg Weagle's site, the first part of "Reflection" was the second episode in production order, while the second part was the sixty-third episode in production order.  Based on the fact that both the first and second part have sequences where Kit is voiced by Alan Roberts (who was the character's first voice) and other sequences where Roberts' replacement R. J. Williams voices the character, it would appear that the episode was originally conceived as a stand-alone, then set aside and eventually expanded into a two-parter towards the end of the production process.  I would guess the expansion idea came from Magon himself, who is credited as story editor on Part One (with Chuck Tately as writer) and as both writer and story editor on Part Two.  While the finished two-parter has some bits that feel like padding (particularly Wildcat's slapstick hijinks with a motorized delivery bike), most of the expansions work very well, like Kit's protracted dodging of the pirates aboard the Iron Vulture, which makes the characters' eventual getaway feel more difficult and more "earned,"  and the heart-to-heart conversation between Baloo and a frustrated Kit in the airplane junkyard in the finished part one, which lays a stronger emotional groundwork for, and sets up a neat parallel to, Kit's exhortations to a dispirited Baloo in a flooded plane in the finished part two.  



Since the two-parter wasn't really completed till late in the show's run, I'll save further discussion of the storyline and character interactions of the completed episode until I come to the second part's place in the production order.  I will add, though, that the basics of the plot (mysterious cargo-plane disappearances along a "jinxed" aerial run) strongly call to mind Gottfredson's "Mail Pilot."  The two-parter also provides our first extended look at Kit, giving him an excellent showcase and demonstrating his pride and quick temper along with his heroic and cool-headed side.  Louie is introduced here as well, getting some good irritated reactions to Baloo's braggadocio and delivering an ominous warning about the jinxed "Master Run."  Molly Cunningham also debuts, but without dialogue.  The finished version gives her a nice wordless character bit (clapping enthusiastically as Wildcat's bike runs wild, giving an indication of her childishly fearless and reckless personality), but this was part of the later expansion; in the original uncompleted one-part version, she appears to have been strictly an extra. 

The most dramatic character debut is by Shere Khan, who is introduced here in a nicely ominous sequence that has the camera panning through the storm-swept nighttime streets of Cape Suzette as we hear the voices of Khan and his executives discussing his business enterprises , then zeroing in above the storm clouds to the pinnacle of Khan's tower and taking us inside, where exhausted executives are nervously giving corporate briefings to their inexorable and tireless CEO.  We also get a good sample of Khan's ruthless ways, as he effortlessly cons Baloo into becoming "a patsy...a chump...a flying fool" and taking on the Master Run, as well as his capacity for generosity, as he ultimately rewards Baloo handsomely for a job well done.  Khan's pilots, all of whom are black panthers visually reminiscent of Bagheera (though with no voice or personality similarities), also make their first appearance, as does Wiley Pole, a grizzled old cougar aviator who has his most extended role in the series here; he would never rise above the level of recurring bit player in later episodes, but would be utilized to good effect a couple of times by Bobbie JG Weiss in the Talespin comic books.