Scrooge in New Ducktales was not especially tied to the Old West. Neither was Goldie.
They kept the Klondike gold rush backstory for both of them, though. And then set the stories they're telling in the present day. And instead of ignoring or handwaving the temporal problem this creates, they made the mistake of trying to solve the problem with explicitly described supernatural life-extension, for Scrooge, Goldie, and even Scrooge's parents.
That's the thing. They only really called notable attention to the Old West in the flashback/time travel episode. And again, Scrooge never was shown as going through a great change in it. He was already himself then.
"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."
#5.—Disney Afternoon Guest Stars
A. The Trouble With This D.W.
Darkwing/Drake Mallard was the only one of the Disney Afternoon heroes to be used as a semi-recurring cast member on New Ducktales—not surprisingly, since Angones has repeatedly stressed his great admiration for the original Darkwing show. I can believe that Angones was more fond of Darkwing than of Ducktales or Talespin, since it was much looser and wackier in its plotting and characterizations than those shows were, and since it was built entirely around superhero tropes. However, based on what we saw of Darkwing and his universe in New Ducktales, I doubt that Angones’ enthusiasm for Darkwing extended beyond “hey, remember that funny superhero cartoon show when I was a kid?” For example, I don’t think he could have come up with the version of Steelbeak that he did if he had been a Darkwing devotee of the caliber of say, Aaron Sparrow or the late Christopher Barat.
Steelbeak wasn’t the only aspect of the Darkwing universe that was mishandled by the Angones crew; broadly speaking, the universe itself was mishandled. In making Darkwing Duck a show-within-the-show, Angones was obviously trying to tap into the nostalgia of the real Darkwing show’s many fans, who he doubtless expected to identify with New Drake and New Launchpad’s fanatical fondness for the show’s counterpart. However, Angones apparently expected to simultaneously exploit nostalgia for the original Darkwing series while changing most of the things that made that series work.
One of the best running jokes of the original series was Drake Mallard’s insistence on taking his own self-created and over-dramatic superhero identity absolutely seriously and his exasperation when others failed to find his dramatics as awesome as he did. His resentment of rival superhero Gizmoduck was an aspect of this image-consciousness, as was his insistence on appearing properly cool and dramatic at all times, even when doing so actually inconvenienced him (as when his various “I am the terror that flaps in the night” intros delayed him long enough for the villains to shoot at him or clobber him).
New Drake, on the other hand, is not a self-dramatizing superhero who insists on believing his own hype, but a roleplaying fanboy merely imitating a TV character that he hero-worships. New Drake's occasional displays of Original Drake’s traits, like his dislike of Gizmoduck, feel oddly out of place, since there’s no real reason for this humbler, more aspirational version of Drake to be jealous of another superhero. As with New Fenton, New Drake may be a “nicer” and less egotistical character, but he’s also a much less interesting one. Also, as with New Fenton, New Drake feels like a superhero fan’s wish-fulfillment fantasy (in this case, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could cosplay as a superhero and use all my nerd knowhow to save the day”) than an actual parody of superhero characters, which the original was.
Angones’ reboot of the Darkwing characters also jettisoned another key aspect of the original series—i.e., Drake’s relationship with Gosalyn, which in the original show was used both for humor (Drake’s efforts to juggle crimefighting with the equally difficult task of parenting a rambunctious tomboy) and for occasional touches of genuine sentiment. That’s all gone in New Ducktales, with Gosalyn becoming a grim, capable Action Girl with zero quirks or personality, instead of an adventurous and mischievous kid, and being given a missing parental figure to look for in the future, instead of being an orphan who forms a new familial bond with Drake. This Drake and Gosalyn aren’t the odd but tightly-knit family unit they were on the original series; they’re merely a crimefighter and his sidekick, who have little in common other than the fact that they fought the same villain and have no real reason to team up long-term other than the fact that they were a team in the original show. Original Gosalyn was an integral part of the original Darkwing series; here, she felt like a bland afterthought who was put in because someone was checking off a list of characters from that series. It didn’t help New Webby had already coopted Gosalyn’s rowdiness and wackiness (and taken it to new and off-putting heights) long before New Gosalyn debuted.
As for the rest of the original Darkwing cast, none of them fared much better than Drake or Gosalyn. I've already covered Steelbeak and FOWL. Quackerjack and Megavolt both came off like their old selves (thanks in part to the voice work), but were reduced to being mere action-scene punching bags (and, of course, serving as nostalgia bait). Liquidator, on the other hand, was not only underused, but lost his established voice and his one defining gimmick—the amusing flow of advertising slogans that he used to communicate with—to become just a henchman with visually flashy powers. Bushroot fared the worst of the “Fearsome Four,” though, being radically changed from a hapless, lovable misfit into a screeching, inhuman monster. There was some speculation that Angones went this route because Bushroot’s voice actor, Tino Insana, has passed away, but it appears to have been driven merely by more of Angones’ self-indulgence and fondness for imitating superhero comics. From Angones’ Tumblr:
Commenter: So what’s the story behind bush root design for the “LET’S GET DANGEROUS” special?
Angones: The story is that the “Twin Beaks” episode of Darkwing Duck absolutely traumatized me as a kid and it felt like a fun opportunity to play with that version of his design. Also liked the idea of him being a bit more primal/elemental, like Swamp Thing, a man trapped inside a monster.
Groan. The whole joke of Original Bushroot was that, in spite of his monstrous plant form, he was a mild-mannered, neurotic goofball—a spoof of creepy superhero-comic characters like Swamp Thing. Angones, as with so many other superhero-spoof elements of his source material (Gizmoduck, Darwking, FOWL), missed the joke entirely here, because superhero tropes are about the only things he takes seriously (as opposed to myths, treasure-hunting, etc.)
Taurus Bulba, like Gosalyn, was so radically altered—from a suave, cunning, but physically overbearing master criminal to a hypocritically jovial and hucksterish mad scientist--that he felt like he was only in New Ducktales because he was in the original Darkwing pilot; there was no reason to simply not create a new mad-scientist villain here other than the desire to call back to the original show (especially since Bulba’s Russian accent was eliminated, destroying the clever literary in-joke contained in his name).
As for Negaduck, I think the whole elaborate attempt to give him an origin story (and a rather tragic one at that) entirely missed the point of the character. The original version, with his outrageous nastiness, was a great spoof of the over-the-top, evil-for-evil’s-sake villains so prevalent in 1990s comic books (the modern Joker being the most egregious example). Having him be a good guy (or at least a guy with some good qualities) gone wrong, and giving him more mundane personal motives for his insane villainy, as opposed to a perversely pure devotion to wreaking havoc, made him a less effective parody and a less entertaining character.
Negaduck’s “arc” on this show also felt like all setup and no payoff; we never saw him again after he morphed into his familiar self. The same was really true of all the Darkwing plot elements on New Ducktales: the Fearsome Four were pulled out of another dimension, then sent right back to it; Drake and Gosalyn met and teamed up, but then never really worked in tandem again. The Darkwing characters (not counting Launchpad) also had next to no impact on the overall story arc of New Ducktales; they felt like they were merely marking time until they got a show of their own. I definitely got the impression, as others on this thread have suggested, that Angones expected to spin off a Darkwing reboot from New Ducktales, only to be blindsided when the Rogen reboot was announced instead.
Although I don’t expect the Rogen reboot to amount to much, a spinoff of Angones’ version of Darkwing would definitely not have been very interesting either, based on the uninspired way he handled the character and his universe on New Ducktales. He appears to have liked the original Darkwing show not because it was a funny cartoon spoof of superheroes, but simply because it was a cartoon with superheroes. As J.R.R. Tolkien once pointed out, there's a distinction between being a great admirer of something and being a perceptive admirer. Angones may have liked Original Darkwing, but he didn't really have much of an understanding of what made Darkwing and his world fun.
I think that making Darkwing Duck an actor is a neat way to address his theatrical behavior, but yeah I don't think the direction they went for works out overall if the plan the whole time was to set up a reboot. It'd risk making it way too self-aware. Especially since they insisted on making most of the Fearsome Five just television characters.
As for Negaduck, I think it's for the best we never saw how would he have ended up. Going from How Steelbeak and F.O.W.L. were handled I'm sure he would've been handled in the same disrespect (which is key for Negaduck since his character depended on how he was Darkwing if he was always in "Let's Get Dangerous" mode at the expense of having any reliable friends/family).
In retrospect, it's amusing that Angones chastised the Three Callaberos show over having a human-looking character (Sandra) since Barks himself had no problem with including humans when it suited the plot it wanted to tell without resorting to magic. Supposedly Barks only included all the dogfaces since he wanted to have more humans but he wasn't allowed to.
I might be biased since I'm used to old works like Looney Tunes and back the Duck Avenger comics with the alien empire which both talky animals casually hanging around humans.
I think that making Darkwing Duck an actor is a neat way to address his theatrical behavior, but yeah I don't think the direction they went for works out overall if the plan the whole time was to set up a reboot. It'd risk making it way too self-aware. Especially since they insisted on making most of the Fearsome Five just television characters.
As for Negaduck, I think it's for the best we never saw how would he have ended up. Going from How Steelbeak and F.O.W.L. were handled I'm sure he would've been handled in the same disrespect (which is key for Negaduck since his character depended on how he was Darkwing if he was always in "Let's Get Dangerous" mode at the expense of having any reliable friends/family).
Oh, I definitely didn't want to see more of Angones' Negaduck; I just wanted to note how the character was given an episode-long introduction/origin, and then never heard from again. That's bad story construction by any normal standard, and only makes sense on a "meta" level of nostalgia bait and/or setting up a backdoor pilot for another show. As for addressing Darkwing's theatricality, I agree having his "real" job be that of an actor has some logic to it, but I prefer the idea that his theatricality is part and parcel of his fanatical commitment to being a superhero; that way, the character is not just funny in himself but a spoof of superhero over-dramatics in general.
"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."
#5.—Disney Afternoon Guest Stars
B. Spinning in the Wrong Direction
As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I have a high opinion of Talespin; in fact, as much as I like Original Ducktales, I would call Talespin the best of the Disney Afternoon shows. At its best, Talespin was not only funny, colorful and adventurous, with a great exotic/period setting, but was also able to venture into emotional depths unexplored by Original Ducktales or Darkwing Duck. In episodes such as “The Old Man and the Sea Duck,” “Bygones,” “Her Chance to Dream,” “Stormy Weather,” and the four-part pilot “Plunder and Lightning”, the show was repeatedly able to deliver genuinely stirring, sad, heart-warming, or bittersweet moments, without making the sentiment seem forced or contrived, which was not always the case on other Disney Afternoon shows. The man behind Talespin, Jymn Magon, was, not surprisingly, a big Barks fan; while the show was quite different from any of Barks’ comics, it echoed Barks in the way it was able to make its characters feel human, without sacrificing their comic and cartoony qualities.
The two most fondly-remembered original characters from Talespin are definitely Kit Cloudkicker and Don Karnage, so it’s not surprising that Angones chose to use those two in New Ducktales. Nothing in his use of either character, however, indicated that he had any idea of why they were popular. I’ve already discussed how he made Don Karnage merely stupid instead of crazily cunning; his handling of Kit was even worse, since, in “Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker,” it felt like he not only misunderstood the character but deliberately went out of his way to deconstruct him--much like the handling of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars sequels.
The real Kit Cloudkicker, as seen on Talespin, was a remarkably successful take on a character type that can easily become obnoxious—the scrappy, street-smart, but lonely orphan who forms a familial bond with the adult protagonist. One of the keys to the success of Original Kit as a character was the absolute seriousness of his devotion to becoming a flyer; instead of being depicted as too “cool” to really care about anything, he was instead shown as earnest and driven when studying aviation or acting as Baloo’s navigator, and awestruck but highly capable whenever he got the chance to actually fly a plane. Original Kit was also consistently depicted as more impetuous but also more savvy in some ways than the easy-going Baloo; for example, in the pilot episode, it’s Kit who warns Baloo about letting unpaid bills pile up, and who realizes that Baloo’s plane is going to be repossessed before Baloo himself does. He respected Baloo, but was also aware of his flaws and could even get resentful of him on occasion, as in the two-parter “A Bad Reflection on You” when, because of an attempt by Shere Khan to con Baloo into undertaking a dangerous mission, the older bear keeps getting sole credit for heroic exploits in which Kit played an equal part.
So, of course Angones chose to not only ignore but contradict all previous depictions of the character--in order to show New Kit as a terrible pilot who really only became a flyer because he felt it was “expected” of him, and as a brainless slob who lazily lets his own bills pile up and loses his business as a result. He even has him claim to be “really bad at math”—which either feels like a deliberate mockery of the original character’s depiction as a skilled navigator, or colossal ignorance of what a navigator actually does (hint: math plays a huge part in it). Essentially, he gave Kit all of Baloo’s flaws of laziness and sloppiness, but denied him any of Baloo’s ace-level flying skills, caginess, or laid-back sense of humor.
Angones defended this depiction of Kit by harping on the fact that he was “raised” by Baloo and thus naturally would become like him. Like Angones’ absurd insistence that Huey, Dewey and Louie’s “birth order” defined their personalities (as Matilda has frequently pointed out, it simply doesn’t work that way with twins or triplets), or like his depiction of Lena as a “normal” teenager despite her status as a magical construct, this defense betrays an apparent ignorance of how human personalities actually develop. Aside from the fact that many children grow up to be very different from their parents, biological or adopted, Kit was supposed to be twelve years old when he first met up with Baloo; a child’s personality is already well on its way to being formed by that age, and it’s ludicrous to suggest that all of Kit’s personality traits somehow disappeared and were replaced by Baloo’s, or that his deep-rooted devotion to piloting arose from mere uncomprehending filial loyalty (Baloo didn’t get Kit interested in flying, as Angones appeared to think—it was Kit’s interest in flying that first drew him to Baloo in the Talespin pilot episode).
So, in summary, Angones took a youthful hero with the talent and the aspiration to do great things, and turned him into a pathetic, washed-up “sidekick” who had to learn that he would never amount to much, and whose only real function was to help ram home a banal and questionable moral (stick to what you’re “good” at) and serve as a foil to highlight the superior awesomeness of the insufferable duo of Della and Dewey. Any character could have played this part, and it’s genuinely insulting to Talespin’s many fans to use Kit for such a nostalgic bait-and-switch, exploiting fondness for the character while simultaneously doing him terrible disservice. A few hours’ Internet search would have given Angones an idea of what the Kit character meant to Talespin fans, and the essence of his real personality. This four-minute music video, for example, gives a better snapshot of the real Kit than all the reams of dialogue featured in "Lost Cargo."
Angones fortunately made very little use of Molly Cunningham (and none at all of the other Talespin characters), but still managed to get her all wrong during her brief time on screen. Molly on Talespin was adventurous and mischievous, but sweet-natured and genuinely fond of Kit, with whom she had a convincing sibling-like relationship; having her show up at the end of “Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker” to take financial advantage of Kit, and effectively flaunt her greater success in his face, depressingly diminishes her character. Also, if Angones had actually engaged with the original show, he should have realized that there would have been no need for her to take possession of the Sea Duck at the end—her mother, Rebecca, was the owner of both “Higher for Hire” and the Sea Duck on the original show; it would have made much more sense for Molly, not Kit, to be the new owner of the plane and the business in any continuation of Talespin. Either Angones was unaware that Rebecca owned Higher for Hire (which is quite possible, since “Lost Cargo” refers to Baloo as the business’s founder), or he thought that having Molly manage her own cargo business was an insufficiently "kickass" thing for a female character to do (remember, in Angones’ world, women have to be outrageously reckless daredevils, before they can be taken seriously).
If Angones had wanted to intelligently revisit the Talespin characters in a “many years later” scenario, and give Kit a dramatic, learning-a-lesson “arc,” the way to do it would have been to depict Kit as having abandoned cargo-freighting and Higher for Hire to become a successful hot-shot pilot, only to become dissatisfied with his exciting but rootless lifestyle and ultimately reunite with Molly at Higher for Hire, choosing the family business over fame and fortune. Alternatively, he could be shown as having stayed put in Cape Suzette to work for Higher for Hire, while secretly chafing over having passed up the chance to become a famous flyer (much like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life), only to ultimately realize the value of sticking with the family business. Stories like these would have fit Angones’ professed theme of “family”, while also doing justice to the Talespin characters—but they would have also required Angones to take his sentimental rhetoric seriously, and engage with the source material he claimed to be paying homage to, two things that he and his crew regularly showed themselves unable or unwilling to do.
I don't think Angones noticed that Danger Woman was a radio character. Not just Molly's persona. Her growing up to call herself that is like a little girl who grew up on the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman to call herself WW as a stuntwoman.
I don't think Angones noticed that Danger Woman was a radio character. Not just Molly's persona. Her growing up to call herself that is like a little girl who grew up on the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman to call herself WW as a stuntwoman.
That's a good additional point, which, like the confusion about the ownership/founding of Higher for Hire, shows how little Angones knew about the Talespin characters; in the real world, New Molly would be getting a cease-and-desist order from her universe's version of Warner Brothers in short order if she tried to use the Danger Woman name for her aerial show.
I don't even know how Molly would have absolute rule over the company unless Rebecca willed it to her. And after everything she and Baloo went through I don't see how she wouldn't let Kit have just as big of a share since he was more or less her and Baloo's son.
I don't even know how Molly would have absolute rule over the company unless Rebecca willed it to her. And after everything she and Baloo went through I don't see how she wouldn't let Kit have just as big of a share since he was more or less her and Baloo's son.
The way "Lost Cargo" presented it, it appeared that Kit was the sole owner of Higher for Hire and had gotten hopelessly in debt to the bank; Molly talked as if she had bought the business through the bank and had never owned any interest in it up till then (this was an imitation of the Talespin pilot, where Rebecca acquired the "pink slip" for Baloo's plane after buying it through the bank). This made no sense unless you assume, as Angones appears to have done, that Higher for Hire was Baloo's business handed down to Kit, instead of Rebecca's business, which would logically have been handed down to Molly as well as Kit; there would have been no need for her to buy it from Kit's creditors.
"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."
#5.—Disney Afternoon Guest Stars
C. Goofproof
I never really got into Goof Troop; as a kid, I was only interested in the adventure-oriented Disney Afternoon offerings, while as an adult I find that I prefer animated comedy in the theatrical cartoon-short format rather than as an imitation of live-action sitcoms. Still, it had its good points, chief among them the Goofy-Pete dynamic (Jim Cummings' Pete voice-acting was hilarious, and I wish he'd been given the chance to voice a Gottfredson-based Pete at some point).
Compared to Original Ducktales, Talespin, and Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop survived a "homage" from the Angones crew more or less unscathed. The New Ducktales crew doesn't really deserve much credit for this. Goofy is almost writer-proof, being a very hard character to get completely wrong; even in Fallberg's bland Mickey serials and Lockman's dashed-off backup stories from Donald Duck, some of his entertainingly off-the-wall personality manages to come through. Also, I'm sure that Disney's executives are much more protective of him than they are of characters like Gyro Gearloose, Glittering Goldie, Steelbeak, or Kit Cloudkicker, so it's not surprising that he retained his usual voice and a recognizable version of his established personality.
Having Goofy play the Wise Fool and provide Donald with eccentric but helpful advice felt entirely in-character for him. However, the advice, in the context of New Ducktales' dysfunctional universe, came off as horribly inapposite for Donald (i.e., he should let his family keep making him miserable by risking their lives and his), which I don't think was the idea. Also, the mechanism for introducing Goofy was ridiculously contrived, and ultimately wound up making no sense other than on a breaking-the-fourth-wall level.
This is as good a place as any to mention Angones' attempted spoof of Quack Pack, since it was combined with his Goof Troop homage; like most Duck fans, I think Quack Pack was dreadful, and bitterly regret that Jymn Magon's "Duck Daze" pitch was rejected. However, Angones' crew really couldn't satirize Quack Pack with any bite, since many of that show's mistakes--the resolute refusal to take sci-fi/fantasy elements seriously, the individualized and obnoxious Nephews, the off-puttingly snarky sense of humor--were mirrored in New Ducktales. The lame one-liners and other bits parodying Quack Pack and "bad" sitcoms in general were hardly distinguishable from New Ducktales' usual hollow sense of humor, aside from having their lameness more deliberately highlighted.
D. The Rest of the Afternoon
The Rescue Rangers were fortunate to be relegated to non-speaking cameos, which allowed them to retain a degree of dignity and even made their appearances more successful in evoking a nostalgic thrill than most of the other Disney Afternoon guest shots; I admit to feeling a momentary wave of amusement and excitement when their theme music (the best of the Disney Afternoon themes, I would say) began playing as they executed their first rescue in "You Only Crash Twice"--even though I was aware, on a rational level, that I was falling for nostalgia bait and that the the versions of the Rescue Rangers on this show would have been disappointing if given any further exposure. Making them lab animals given sentience by a ray destroys the central, delightful gimmick of their series--the idea of an entire universe of intelligent animals who can communicate with each other and who maintain their own society outside of the knowledge of humanity (much like the Basil of Baker Street books and Robert Lawson's Rabbit Hill stories, two childhood favorites of mine). Their new origins effectively foreclosed the existence of such a society (they're an artificially-created exception, not the norm, in the animal world) and without it the Rescue Rangers would have lost most of the things that made them interesting.
If you're bound and determined to tie the Gummi Bears' medieval-fantasy universe into the world of the Ducks, then I will admit that making Gummiberry Juice a MacGuffin for the heroes and villains to fight over is a pretty clever way of doing it. Still, the references to the Gummis were bound to seem like a rather bizarre non sequiturs to anyone who's not familiar with the original series, as were the various dialogue references to the theme song ("Mass destruction that's beyond compare!"). The shout-outs really served no purpose beyond (to paraphrase GeoX) pointing and saying "look, here's a reference to a thing you liked!" In a show less heavily drenched with casual supernaturalism, it could have been a fun twist to have some guardian Gummis step out of the shadows towards the end to make sure their ancient potion was removed from FOWL's hands--but given New Ducktales' uniformly dreadful handling of mythic elements, it's just as well their usage of the Gummis didn't go beyond a few in-jokes.
As for the Wuzzles, their reimagining was probably the most desperate and absurd attempt at exploiting nostalgia of all of Angones' Disney Afternoon references. Anyone who was a fan of that mild-mannered show was hardly going to enjoy seeing "realistic", monstrous versions of its characters, and the references would be uninteresting or meaningless to people who didn't like or weren't familiar with the series.
That concludes my coverage of the Disney Afternoon; I'm going to take one post to cover a few additional New Ducktales characters who didn't fit conveniently into any other category, and then move on to discussing in-depth several of the recurring issues I've touched on in these character entries (like the treatment of the supernatural).
For one, having him be wary of earth was an interesting idea - stuff like his fearful reaction to the slap bracelet. It could easily have been developed in a way that his fear of the unknown was what led to the invasion, rather than the "We're better than them!" mindset. Rather than him being evil all along, it would have been interesting to have Della and Donald accidentally do things that make him more wary and suspicious of Earth; they could even bring Scrooge up in these contexts, which might actually make sense of Lunaris considering him to be a serious threat. He might, over time with Della, come to the conclusion that he's right to fear earth - with so many things being weaponized, the frequent warring... seeing as Della was able to reach the moon and was able to adapt, he could think "It's only a matter of time before the more hostile ones come for us!" and decide to get them before they got him. Having him be evil all along, and manipulating everyone... it takes away a lot from his character. I get that they were going for a twist/fake-out, but they put too much sincerity in his kindness before that. They have him constantly explaining to Penumbra that Della isn't to be feared, and that the earth isn't something to be feared... and then he explains to her that his actual plan was to manipulate the Moonlanders by using Della as a scapegoat. It's so framed around the 'twist' that his actions really don't make much sense. Why is he so insistent that Penumbra trust Della, only to then tell her that he was manipulating everyone? His excuse of getting her to move there didn't make much sense because, again, he was so insistent on Penumbra being a friend to Della - if he failed, there was no point in doing that. If he succeeded, he shouldn't then expect that she'll happily invade Earth.
Since Frozen, twist villains have become almost a cliché in Disney animation--which is not a good trend, since it calls for a delicate balancing act that many writers can't really pull off; even Agatha Christie in her prime wasn't always able to make her murderer reveals credible. If you make the twist villain's likable traits too convincing, the reveal will be hard to accept, while if you try to foreshadow the twist by hinting at the character's sinister side, you run the risk of making the "twist" so predictable that it becomes pointless. I think the showrunners fell into both traps with Lunaris; his dialogue came off as convincingly wise and kindly, making his sharp turn into evildoing feel jarringly arbitrary, but at the same time his militaristic appearance, forceful gestures, and commanding voice are all so evocative of the Evil Space Tyrant stereotype that they telegraph his "hidden" evilness and make his turn as predictable as jarring. Frankly, twist villains in general and the secretly corrupt authority figure in particular have become so hackneyed in popular culture that it would really have been much more of a twist to have his character not turn out to be evil.
As to Lunaris being motivated by fear of Earthlings' warlike nature instead of more banal ambitions of conquest, that's definitely an idea that a more Barks-based show might have gone with. I can see Barks, in one of his more darkly cynical moods, doing a good story in which the Ducks go to outer space and the flaws and foibles of Donald (if it's a ten-pager) or Scrooge (if it's a long adventure story) make such a negative impression on the people of some other planet that they decide to invade Earth in self-defense. After all, Barks, in his few space-alien stories ("Island in the Sky," "Micro-Ducks," and the later "Officer for a Day") liked to use human interactions with space aliens as a means of commenting on human shortcomings, much as C. S. Lewis did in Out of the Silent Planet or H.G. Wells in First Men in the Moon.
Angones eschews any attempt at commentary on humanity with his Moon plot thread, and instead opts for a standard Space Invasion, since that's what's typically used as a Big Climactic Event in superhero movies and TV shows. Such invasions can be entertaining enough if handled with proper panache, but, as Aldwayne points out, since Angones depicted virtually all of the Moonlanders as good-natured and hapless figures indistinguishable from Earthlings, he couldn't even manage to make the "Moonvasion" seem like an actual superhero-comic-style threat/event. There's nothing really dramatic or climactic about being invaded by sitcom suburbanites, no matter how grim and sinister their leader is.
"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."
#4.—The Villains
F. Blotted Out
The Phantom Blot has no one established persona; the original Gottfredson Blot was a cool, calculating and murderous master spy-for-hire. The Western Publishing Blot of the 1960s was a gloating master criminal ("Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!") with ambitious but somewhat unrealistic and cartoony master plans, a sort of kiddie version of contemporaneous non-Disney comic-book supervillains. The Blot of Martina and Scarpa's "Blot's Double Mystery" was a frighteningly vindictive killer with no other motive than revenge who felt the most like a logical development of the Gottfredson Blot; Byron Erickson has done a good job in carrying on the vengeance-driven Blot in his occasional Mickey stories for Egmont. The Blot on Original Ducktales was an over-the-top supervillain (essentially a development of the Western Publishing Blot); the Blot of modern Italian comics is also a supervillain, but (from what I've seen) can vary widely, from comically conceited and over-theatrical (Cavazzano's "Sound-Blot Plot") to intimidatingly serious and powerful (Casty's "Darkenblot" saga).
The New Ducktales Blot has nothing in common with any of these past depictions of the Blot. Angones claimed that "Our version of the Blot is a new character that takes bits from the original Mickey nemesis, Shadow Blot from Epic Mickey, and Blot from the original DuckTales." The only part of that sentence that's accurate is "Our version of the Blot is a new character"--and, unfortunately, he's not a very interesting or well-constructed one. The New Ducktales Blot isn't out for money (unlike the original character) and isn't out for power (unlike most later versions of the character). It's ironic that, in a show crammed with superhero/supervillain takes on other comics characters, he isn't depicted as a would-be world-conquering supervillain, even though in his case there is actually some precedent for such a depiction. Instead, Angones basically chose to define the new version of the character by a play on words--someone on Tumblr asked Angones if this new Blot was still called the Phantom Blot, and Angones replied "Yes, but because he seeks to blot out phantoms."
True, the New Ducktales Blot is out for revenge, like the Martina/Scarpa/Erickson Blot--but not for twisted, villainous revenge on Mickey, who of course isn't a cast member here. Instead, his vengefulness is tragically motivated by Magica's murder of his family--but this backstory is hurriedly tossed off and wins him less sympathy from the showrunners than the mass-murdering Magica's "tragic" transformation of Poe does. His confrontation with Magica is played largely for laughs, and despite his having a genuine wrong to avenge, we're apparently supposed to regard him as just as bad as Magica--or worse, because he doesn't make "funny" remarks the way Magica does, and since the real unforgivable sin on this show is taking anything too seriously. They have to have him try to kill Lena in order to stack our sympathies against him--but even that doesn't remove the bad taste of having the good guys prevent him from destroying Magica, since Magica herself has been just as nasty to Lena in the past.
Angones has made it clear that he came up with the unpleasant Blot/Magica backstory not because he really wanted to explore its dark and unsettling implications, but because he thought it would be fun to have the characters' two voice actors play off of each other; when asked on Tumblr why he cast Giancarlo Esposito as the Blot, he explained "I was excited to use his still, theatrical menace as a counterpoint to Magica’s chatty unhinged nature." I've beat this point into the ground by now, but it bears repeating yet again: If you are going to use grim and/or horrifying plot points--like the Blot being a survivor of a magically destroyed village--you need to take them seriously; otherwise, there was no point in introducing them in the first place.
In the same Tumblr post, Angones also demonstrated yet again how his work fails even on his own stated terms. Regarding the Blot, he stated that "We loved the notion of treating him a little like the Terminator: menacing and unstoppable." Yes, so unstoppable that he's first thwarted by three little girls and then later by the squabbling, sitcomish McDuck clan and their freakin' emu; so menacing that he's paired with a comedic, constantly babbling sidekick. This Blot is too bombastic and humorless, and has too dark of a backstory, to be amusing, but he's too ineffectual to be menacing, leaving him a truly pointless misfire of a character. When he was first introduced, as a FOWL agent, at the end of Season 2, I remember noting that having the Blot be a spy at least looped back to his Gottfredson roots, but also reflecting that the show would mishandle him as a character somehow. I had no idea they would mishandle him up as badly as they did, however--particularly since they cast a voice actor who, though a celebrity from another Disney property, actually could have done a good suave and sardonic take on the character if he hadn't been instructed to be so relentlessly and humorlessly hammy. They even messed up his wonderfully simple and striking visual design (which has been justifiably praised by generations of cartoonists) in order to give him that clunky, obviously Thanos-inspired magic-destroying glove.
If the showrunners were bound and determined to use the Blot, a much better idea would have been to make him a sort of espionage consultant, a master spy hired by FOWL for really big jobs, much the same way that Darkwing on the original Darkwing Duck show was periodically brought in as a freelancer by SHUSH. Failing that, they could have at least harked back to later Blot comics and to Original Ducktales and made him an ambitious high-tech supervillain out to rule the world. Instead, he became a one-note vengeance-driven monomaniac with no ambitions beyond destroying "magic." This version was so entirely disconnected from any prior version of the Blot, and so poorly developed in his own right, that about the only positive thing I can say about him is that at least they didn't make him an archenemy for Scrooge, unlike most of the other Big Villains.
G. Destroying Doofus
Alquackskey has already analyzed the many, many problems with this show’s horribly wrong-headed villainous version of Doofus much more thoroughly than I could, but I still want to add some additional thoughts. The Doofus of Original Ducktales really should have been given a better character name (how about “Rufus,” or “Buford” or “Herbert”? Something that had a somewhat comic sound to it but wasn’t as on-the-nose and unimaginative as “Doofus”). However, the original character wasn’t the mere “walking fat joke” that he’s sometimes been described as; he served an important function as a sidekick for Launchpad, someone to cheer him on while also providing him with an occasional reality check. He also was allowed to be resourceful at times in quirky ways; his bonding with the dolphins in “Aqua Ducks”, for example, was genuinely endearing.
Pete Fernbaugh, on his now-defunct “Caught at the Crossroads” blog, pinpointed the key characteristics of Original Doofus perfectly, by quoting Sancho Panza’s introductory song from the Man of La Mancha musical—“I’ll tell all the world, proudly, that I’m his squire—I’m his friend.” This Quixote/Panza relationship between Launchpad and Doofus is what should have built on in any reboot in order to clearly establish Doofus as much more than a questionably-named joke character. His friendship with Huey, Dewey and Louie and his Woodchuck membership also provided traits that a reboot could have built on to good effect—have him be more eccentric, befuddled and timid than the Nephews, but also capable of surprising moments of outside-the-box inspiration.
So, did Angones and company look at the original Doofus, analyze what worked and what didn’t about the original character, and then discuss ways of building on that and improving it? No, that would have required them to actually engage with their supposed source material, which, as we’ve repeatedly seen, Angones couldn’t be bothered to do. Instead, they simply decided that they were going to, in effect, punish him for the fact that they disliked him on the original series. To quote Angones:
In that Twilight Zone ep, part of what made Anthony so scary is that he seems so innocent and enthusiastic until he turns. We thought that would be an interesting way to use what we knew of Doofus and come at it from a new angle. We also settled on Doofus because he was the one character on original DuckTales that we just did not like as kids. For all the great stuff in that show, it did not have the best record with fat shaming, especially when it came to kids. There are whole episodes that hinge on Doofus’ love of pie getting in the way of saving the day. And he was impossibly clumsy to boot. We’d already changed up some other characters to get away from that idea (Beakley as a badass, for example), so we knew we wanted to strip out that element. And trust me, before we made the change, I did a deep dive on the internet to make sure that there wasn’t some passionate “Cult of Doofus” fandom that would be devastated by a change to their favorite character in all of fiction. I literally only found a couple of drawings of him falling down and kissing a hamburger.
First off, the line about “whole episodes” being hinging on Doofus’ love of food preventing the good guys from saving the day is sheer misrepresentation; Doofus’ eating habits on the original series were either used for throwaway gags or were used to comically help save the day—like his peanut butter becoming the key instrument of Gyro’s escape plan in “Aqua Ducks” or his spelling out a message to Launchpad with pancake syrup in “Hero for Hire.” This is another example of Angones simply making stuff up in order to flaunt his progressiveness and sensitivity, as with his “Goldie pining for Scrooge” nonsense.
Furthermore, even if Angones’ description of Original Doofus was accurate, he fails to explain why in the WAK he tried to “improve” on a character that he felt was mishandled by making him ten times worse—i.e., by changing him from a clumsy and gluttonous but lovably naïve and good-natured sidekick into an irredeemable, outrageously “creepy”, and off-putting sociopath; even his phonily sentimental reconciliation scene with Louie in “Life and Crimes” takes pains to have Louie preface his forgiveness by referring to Doofus as a “monster.” Angones on his Tumblr even tries to “humorously” imply, repeatedly, that Doofus is some kind of unspeakably horrifying pervert:
Commenter: I still can't figure out what in the world Doofus Drake was gonna use the umbrella and the walnuts for???
Angones: Legally not even allowed to type it in the State of California.
Commenter: What was Doofus Drake going to do with those Walnuts and the Umbrella?
Angones: Unspeakable acts not suitable for television.
Commenter: So what WERE the walnuts and umbrella for?
Angones: Unspeakable things.
The depiction of Doofus on the show, and the disgusting Tumblr “jokes”, don’t come off as “how can we fix this character”, but rather as “how can we utterly dehumanize, demean, and destroy this character as revenge for his offense to our childhood sensibilities.” The fact that, as Alquackskey has pointed out so eloquently, so many of the “weird” and “creepy” aspects of this Doofus are so uncomfortably similar to real-life neurodivergent issues is a particularly clear indicator that Angones, despite his pontification, wasn’t concerned with “getting away from” traits of Original Doofus that he found offensive, but rather unfunnily and despicably mocking the character for his own warped amusement ("Let's see how much more of a weirdo/loser I can make this weirdo/loser"). This last Tumblr quote is graphic evidence of his self-indulgent fondness for his own terrible creation:
Commenter: Is there any character in Ducktales 2017 you love to hate besides Doofus Drake?
Angones: Oh I love 2017 Doofus. I also don’t know what’s good for me.
Sigh. You also don’t know what’s good for character development or story construction, Mr. Angones.
Hoo boy, I've had a lot on, so I missed a lot in this thread! It'll probably take a few posts to really get into everything, but I'll do what I can! On twist villains, I'd say it goes back as far as Wreck-It Ralph (Though that one handled it really well). Frozen's twist villain was awful (I understand that there were significant rewrites, but they could have done what they wanted to without having him be so obnoxiously evil), and Zootopia's in particular was painful; almost to the point of ruining the film for me, honestly. Lunaris isn't quite as bad as Frozen or Zootopia's villains, but the twist is still really poorly done.
I haven't much to add on the Blot - I've gotten to a point where I can trust what you say on Angones' tumblr. I'd be interested in seeing a source on that comment about the "blotting out phantoms" comment, but... ugh. Really? The first paragraph is honestly the main reason I take issue with the Blot here - I think that, while it's good to have a character be varied, the Phantom Blot honestly suffers from the bizarre number of intepretations. Honestly, I like all of them (Except for maybe the original Ducktales version), but they don't really feel like the same character in many cases. With so many interpretations, why add yet another to the bowl? I don't really like the fact that he was included, but if you're going to include him, just... stick with what's there. In all honesty, there's not much I can really say that your last paragraph on him doesn't.
I think I've said enough about Doofus, but one last point to add on him. Those tumblr comments you put in about Doofus using walnuts and an umbrella? Utterly disgusting. I'm doing my damnedest not to get personal with my comments, but that's horrible on every level - it's disgusting and it's just using grossly inappropriate humour that's not necessary or funny whatsoever. I'm not wholly on top form right now, so I'm not going to comment much further. All I'll say is that it sucks to see that this is what I am, and what other people like me are, to the Ducktales team - weird, creepy losers that you can only love if "you don't know what's good for you".
"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."
#4.—The Villains
H. “It is I, Don Karnage, speaking to you without my voice.”
I hesitated on whether to cover Don Karnage later, under “Disney Afternoon crossover characters”, but I decided to include him with the other recurring villains, since he was treated as Dewey’s own personal recurring archenemy, and made numerous appearances both before and after the “official” Talespin crossover episode in the last season. The “Dewey’s archenemy” business is as good a starting point as any for explaining just why this version of Karnage was a failure, both in comparison to the original version and on his own terms. Simply put, like most of the villains on this show who weren’t created by Angones himself, this version of Karnage couldn’t be taken seriously as a menace, even a comic menace. New Don Karnage’s completely unembarrassed and unselfconscious vendetta against Dewey served to cement the character as a bizarrely oblivious man-child—much like how New Launchpad’s completely unembarrassed and unselfconscious devotion to Dewey as his best friend cemented him as a bizarrely oblivious man-child. It was not a coincidence, I think, that Karnage was depicted as the villains’ equivalent of Launchpad in the “Glomtales” episode.
The design and modus operandi of New Don Karnage and his crew also helped to make them worthless as credible villains, as well as making them less funny than the original versions. The pirate crew of the original Talespin series had a delightfully motley and scruffy look to their outfits and to their weaponry; they looked like what they were supposed to be, a gang of seedy but tough 1930s-style aviators. Part of the humor of the pirates’ interactions in the original series came from the contrast between the snappily-uniformed Karnage’s theatrically genteel pretensions and the thuggish unpretentiousness of his crew. This joke was of course lost by having the air pirates in New Ducktales ape the look of actual 18th-century seagoing pirates (bandanas, pirate hats, peglegs, eyepatches, old-time peacoats, etc.), making all of the air pirates seem just as theatrical as Karnage himself. More seriously, their nautical-piratical roleplaying made them seem like a bunch of childish poseurs engaging in overelaborate games instead of actual criminals (the “sky sharks” were particularly embarrassing). The individualized traits of the original show’s pirate crew—Dump Truck’s cheerful slow-wittedness, Mad Dog’s irritability and nervousness, Gibber’s wily mumbling—are all missing too, turning them into a basically interchangeable chorus with no function other than to serve as foils and musical backups for Karnage.
Worst of all, by having Karnage’s band rely on pseudo-Gilbert-and-Sullivan musical numbers as their primary weapon, rather than the firepower seen on the original series, Angones made it utterly impossible to accept them and their airship as an actual threat. In making “song-and-dance man” (to quote Steelbeak) the sum of Karnage’s persona, he also entirely missed the point of the terrific little “We Are Pirates” song from the Talespin pilot. That number was the TV equivalent of a Disney feature’s “villain song”—i.e., it used music to illustrate the bad guy’s personality and explain his scheme, like “The Elegant Captain Hook,” “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind,” or “Be Prepared.” It wasn’t intended to establish musical performing as one of Karnage’s defining traits, as Angones appeared to think.
New Don Karnage would have been a disappointment as a villain in any event, but he’s even more disappointing in view of how much fun the original character was. I would rank Jymn Magon’s original Karnage right alongside Gottfredson’s Pete as a great, multi-faceted humorous villain; the character was flamboyantly theatrical, outrageously conceited, and comically quick-tempered, but also sarcastically humorous and genuinely cunning. He could be ruthlessly cold-blooded, but also showed a sense of honor at times, and always seemed more than a little crazy (but hated to be called crazy), in an entertainingly unpredictable way.
Angones emphasized theatricality and conceit in his depiction of Karnage (hammering on these traits in his usual Flanderizing style), but captured none of the crafty, sinister, honorable, or deranged qualities of the original character. He also decided to make absent-minded obliviousness a new major trait of Karnage, epitomized by his smug but brainlessly overconfident default facial expression—it’s very telling to contrast screen grabs of the new Karnage’s expressions with the more crafty and sinister expressions of the old one; you can immediately see the differing approaches to the character in the images alone.
Angones’ most damaging move of all in regards to Karnage, however, was in choosing to literalistically pigeonhole Karnage as Hispanic/Latino and, as a result, jettisoning Jim Cummings as the character’s voice in the name of ethnic accuracy. Although Magon and the original Talespin animators deserve credit for Karnage’s conception and development, Cummings was the key to the original Karnage’s success, being largely responsible for creating his unique and hilarious speech patterns. As Cummings explained more than once, Karnage’s accent was a mixture—Spanish and Cuban, with several touches of French (like his frequent “ ‘Allo!” for “Hello”) and occasionally Italian. It wasn’t one recognizable national accent, but rather the character’s own unique idiom, much like Pete’s dialect in the Gottfredson comic strips combined New York tough-guy speak, sailor jargon, and Western outlaw lingo into the villain’s own personal patois. The recasting of Cummings resulted in the loss of this idiom, and with it all the entertainingly eccentric dialogue that Cummings delivered so amusingly in episode after episode of the original Talespin (there’s a reason why there are multiple highlight videos of Don Karnage’s best moments on Youtube).
So, in summation, New Don Karnage was deprived of his original personality, his original crew, his original pirating methods, his original design, his original accent, and his original voice actor, leaving nothing but a one-dimensional, narcissistic, dull-witted, fancy-dressed clown. Angones claimed after the fact that this Karnage was a “descendant” of the real version, but like his “Steelbeak is learning; he’ll get more formidable” claims, this felt like an after-the-fact justification of his utter disregard of the original version of the character. Besides, even if this Karnage was really conceived as a “descendant” of the original, then an effort should have been made to either make him a worthy representative of all the key qualities of his “ancestor” or establish him as a different but equally entertaining character in his own right. This Karnage was neither; instead, he came off as what he was, a sketchy knock-off by people who really weren’t interested in the character they were adapting and were only anxious to capitalize on that character’s considerable fan-following by hurrying a superficial new version onto the screen.
I. FOWL Play
Steelbeak and the FOWL High Command, like Don Karnage, were imports from another show, but were used so often and so thoroughly forced into the role of the Ducks' antagonists that, like Karnage, they should be covered here, along with the FOWL heavies original to this show. Also, as with their handling of Karnage and his gang, the Angones crew in their handling of FOWL showed that they really weren't any more interested in doing justice to the Disney Afternoon characters than they were to comic-book characters like Gyro, Goldie, and the Nephews.
Steelbeak in particular provides a strong clue to the real extent of Angones' knowledge and understanding of the Disney Afternoon characters. Original Steelbeak, as I and others have pointed out on this thread many times before, was a truly one-of-a-kind villain--a combination of a Bond mastermind (the high-living lifestyle), a Bond henchman (the brawniness and the steel beak), and Bugs Bunny (the wisecracking, street-smart Noo Yawk tough-guy voice and the unflappably flippant attitude). He was one of Darkwing's most entertaining foes, and his refusal to take anything or anybody seriously was a perfect counterpoint to Darkwing's overdramatic self-importance. We saw nothing of this Steelbeak on Angones' show; New Steelbeak's characterization began and ended at "big, mean, loudmouthed and stupid;" Angones' thinking here appears to have been "big guy with dangerous metal prosthetic = mindless goon." Without his flippancy, his slickness, and his smarts--and without any real opportunity to interact with Darkwing--there was nothing left of the original character, and nothing to make him any more interesting than any other run-of-the-mill dumb thug.
I think Angones realized that he goofed up badly with Steelbeak, but as always he couldn't admit to his bad decisions, and kept insisting that he had a plan for the character. This insistence was, frankly, not credible; read the following quotes, from Angones' Tumblr, and tell me if they accord with the Steelbeak actually seen in this series:
Commenter: what led to the idea of revamping Steelbeak's villainous personality as well as recasting him with Jason Mantzoukas?
Angones: We liked the idea of young Steelbeak just starting out at FOWL (Heron mentioned she just busted him out of a St Canard prison and clearly gave him that beak) full of unearned confidence. This was great especially as a counterpoint to LP in this episode, who has zero confidence in his abilities; it was a lot of fun to pit a novice hero that doesn’t believe he can be a spy with a novice Bond villain who thinks he’s ready to be in charge even though he’s not. We talked a lot about young Steelbeak being somewhere between Bond in “Casino Royale” and Kevin Kline in “A Fish Called Wanda”; all deadly skills, rough edges, and ego. This isn’t the last you’ll see of Steelbeak as he gets more capable, and more dangerous.
Angones here appears to be trying to pretend that New Steelbeak is depicted a promising rookie villain who will develop naturally into a top bad guy in time. What we see is a sub-humanly and incorrigibly dumb thug who finally has to zap himself with an artificial intelligence ray in order to gain "smarts"--but who really doesn't progress beyond a loudmouthed bully even after the supposed brain boost.
Another of Angones' Tumblr commenters summed up the massive Steelbeak misfire, with questionable punctuation but unquestionable accuracy:
Commenter: as a small request frank for Steelbeak , please dont make him dumb...look we darkwing duck fans loves SB because he was a funny suave, smooth talking, sarcastic, calm, collected criminal mastermind. i know you want to make ducktales 2017 appealing to the audience which you did 100% also Jason Mantzoukas is a great choice to play. but honesty you really goofed when you made him dumber honesty you really did not understand the character my request is that we want to see him get smarter.
Angones: I know how we’re using the character and I humbly disagree.
Angones' "Showrunner knows best" pose notwithstanding, the commenter is quite right about Angones not understanding the things that made the character entertaining in the first place.
Black Heron usurped a good deal of Steelbeak's functions as FOWL's sly top agent, but wasn't a fraction as unique or interesting as Original Steelbeak was--she was effectively a hammy, one-dimensional supervillain with no motivation or identity beyond gleefully reveling in over-the-top EEEEEEEEEVIL. April Winchell, a genuine voice actress instead of an out-of-place celebrity, at least did a good job of giving her plenty of cartoony gusto, but she couldn't do anything to overcome the flat and generic presentation of the character. Her dynamic with Bradford--he insists he's engaging in villainy only for good motives, while she embraces villainy for its own sake--could possibly have been used to interesting effect, but this supposed ideological conflict was played at too broad and silly a level to be taken seriously--even its eventual conclusion (with Heron's death at Bradford's hands) was played for laughs. She would have been fine as a one-shot Darkwing Duck villain, but as a long-time adversary of Scrooge she was fatally lacking in depth or gravitas.
Before moving on from Black Heron, I should give a dishonorable mention to her proteges, May and June; by the time of the show finale, Angones and company had insulted, belittled, and misunderstood so many good characters that I didn't think I could be any more irritated with the show than I was, but wrenching two of Daisy's nieces completely out of context and turning them into villainous products of FOWL experiments (not to mention the reveal that the third member of the trio, April, was really "Webby") really rubbed me the wrong way. This had nothing to do with any prior aspect of the characters, and was unsettling and distasteful in its own right--not only in making Webby/April, May, and June clones created in a lab instead of normal little girls, but also in showing that May and June apparently grew up in a secret FOWL base with Black Heron as their only parent-figure; once again, Angones and company tossed off a really unpleasant idea without bothering to think it through.
I'm also cynical enough to suspect that this handling of April, May and June was partly motivated by the desire to indulge in a bit of sniping at the showrunners of "Legend of the Three Caballeros," which Angones disingenuously tried to disparage before it was released and which used the three girls as regular characters--I can just hear Angones and company thinking, "Well, they beat us to the punch with adapting these obscure characters to the cartoons, so let's come up with our own wildly different and completely jarring take on the same characters--that will make everybody forget those upstarts' depiction of April, May and June."
As for FOWL's High Command, Alquackskey has already made the excellent point that bringing FOWL's leaders "out of the shadows" and having them get defeated by Scrooge and the Kids effectively negates the reason for their existence in the first place. The FOWL High Command on Darkwing Duck was a constant in that show's universe, always on hand to provide a new plan for Steelbeak to execute, but never to be captured or unmasked or have all their schemes and motives exposed. Giving the FOWL leadership in the person of Bradford a name, backstory, and motivation not only destroyed the menacing aspect of FOWL's shadowiness, but also destroyed the amusingly whacky aspects of the organization--in keeping with the Darkwing universe's more wild and cartoony nature, the FOWL schemes on that show were typically bizarre and outrageous spoofs on the type of plans that SPECTRE, HYDRA, or THRUSH would have come up with in more "serious" franchises--like the scheme to make the world stop spinning in "Trading Faces" or the creation of a giant rubber ball to smash St. Canard in "Smarter than a Speeding Bullet."
Angones, on the other hand, asked us to take FOWL and its plans seriously--effectively turning a spoof of HYDRA and its ilk into HYDRA itself, or at least a kid-friendly facsimile thereof, just as he turned Gizmoduck from a parody superhero into a conventional superhero. However, even while expecting the audience to regard Bradford and FOWL as a grand climactic menace, Angones couldn't stop himself from undermining his own uber-villain. As I stated previously, Bradford was presented as a villain along the lines of Thanos in the MCU or Ras Al Ghul from the Batman animated series--a ruthless villain who believes that he's committing his evil deeds in order to save the world. There are no bad guys like this in the Ducks' world that I'm aware of, and if handled right, Bradford could have been genuinely interesting. However, to really succeed as a "twisted idealist" villain, Bradford would have had to be presented as passionate, brooding and grimly self-possessed; instead, he was stuffy, smug, and snappish, a small-minded businessman/bureaucrat and not a driven ideologue.
It wasn't just Bradford's personality that deprived him of gravitas; his goal of making Scrooge and everyone else stop "adventuring" in order to make the world dull, safe and predictable lacked the tragic, frightening grandeur that a twisted-idealist villain's master plan should have. Having his goal be motivated not by a misplaced and fanatical devotion to "order" and instead be due to childhood trauma arising from unwanted childhood adventures served to strip his scheme of what little impressiveness it had left.
All that said, Angones wasn't even able to make Bradford stick to his own established personality and stated goals--by the finale, he's turned into a stereotypical Supervillain who's completely consumed by a desire to personally defeat and injure the Superhero (Scrooge), who gleefully murders his own accomplices, and who reneges on his "deal" with Scrooge by attempting to murder Donald for no obvious reason other than Sheer Evilness, while engaging in the maniacal laughter which he previously snapped at his followers for engaging in. I quoted C. S. Lewis in this connection earlier, and will do so again: "Many a promising bad character has been spoiled by the addition of an inappropriate vice." Bradford the conniving, risk-averse schemer wasn't all that promising of a character, but he at least was more distinctive than Bradford the ranting, murderous supervillain, who felt like an entirely different person.
With Bradford, I ultimately got the impression that Angones belatedly realized that he had turned all of Scrooge's original arch-enemies into jokes, and decided to awkwardly cram all their characteristics into a single character in order to provide an Epic Boss Fight for the show finale, with lots of generic supervillain traits thrown in for good measure. Like Glomgold, Bradford's a rival businessman who wants to personally beat Scrooge; like the Beagles, he controls a vast criminal organization; like Magica, he's possessed of arcane magical lore; there was nothing that Bradford and his version of FOWL brought to the table that couldn't have been brought by a team-up of more comics-accurate versions of Scrooge's comic-book rogues' gallery--other than the supervillain shenanigans, which wouldn't have fit the comics characters--but which also didn't really fit Bradford, as presented throughout most of the show.
That concludes my overview of the Villains; my plan now is to cover the Disney Afternoon crossover characters and a few additional miscellaneous guest stars from the cartoons and comics, then discuss the show's depictions of the supernatural in depth. After that, I plan to talk about its animation style and voice acting, and add concluding thoughts.
Karnage's feud with Dewey falls into the same category as Ma's with Scrooge, to me - it only serves to disrespect the original character and takes away a lot of their agency and individuality. Much like Ma constantly bringing up her status as one of Scrooge's nemeses, Karnage does the same with Dewey... but somehow even worse. I don't have much of a background with Talespin, but as a standalone character, this version of Don Karnage is just painful. Honestly, I could have lived with him being a showman - 'Sky Pirates in the Sky' had some enjoyable musical numbers, in my opinion. The issue was that, following that episode, they refused to stick with their own interpretation of the character - he once again fell victim to the snarky nature of the show. He was always being shut down, and told that his singing was annoying, and that he couldn't do it - they gave him one character trait, and then decided that he wasn't allowed to be that character so they could make gags about everyone hating his singing. I won't bother commenting on the racial depictions with the character, myself - I've probably done enough of that.
As for FOWL... oh boy, they're one of the worst changes the show made.
Again, you go the extra mile to really highlight the problems with the design of the show - I'm really, really trying to give benefit of the doubt where I can, but these tumblr posts really show that it's just not warranted. "Humbly disagreeing" isn't flat out ignoring a fan's accurate interpretation of a character. That statement alone is infuriating. Steelbeak was painful to watch - I cannot fathom how someone could watch any of Steelbeak's content in the original series and decide that that was an appropriate route to take the character. Steelbeak's confidence works because it's earned - he's FOWL's top agent for a reason. Ignoring the issues I've mentioned previously involving the Intelli-ray, having Steelbeak be more stupid than people who have been made as stupid as possible with it... it's just insulting to the original character. It doesn't help that, again, the change wasn't for the better - they take a character who's actually interesting (It's not often for the genius bruiser to be anything other than a serious, dangerous threat - seeing Steelbeak be both a genius bruiser and being susceptible to zany antics was a pretty original element of the character) and turn him into a cliché, but do nothing with it.
Black Heron... eh. I think she was interesting in concept and design. If she was played off of a better villain, she would have been able to shine more - she was pretty decent as a character, given what else there was to work with, though.
Bradford... bleh. They ruined the High Command, Bradford was uninteresting... honestly can't say much that you haven't. Honestly, I'm just completely burnt out here. I just can't add anything constructive to the conversation on him - he had potential, but it went grossly unrealized. There was an episode of Fairly OddParents called "The Same Game" which offers far more in one episode than Bradford did in an entire season - it gives the idea that you can strip down individuality and make everything as lawful/orderly as you want - people will always find a way to get around it. Same concept could have applied to Bradford, but no, he had to be made as generic as possible... ugh.
I didn't watch Season 3, so I'm confused about how Bradford Buzzard went from minor background character to main antagonist of "the entire show". Was it as forced as it sounds? And what happened to the other two vultures?
All of this "It was Bradford all along" business reminded me of how the recent Bond films, after lucking into the reacquisition of the Blofeld character (who had belonged to another producer for years), then tried to retcon him into the previous Daniel Craig Bond movies by having him proclaim that he had been the "author of [Bond's] pain" the whole time. It also recalled the out-of-left-field resurrection of Palpatine in the new Star Wars sequel trilogy, which came off as a desperation move to woo back fans of the original trilogy who were disappointed by The Last Jedi. As with the contrived Blofeld and Palpatine revelations, there was no sense with Bradford that this had been the creators' plan all the time, but rather that they were scrambling to retroactively insert their uber-villain into the timeline and build him up into a mega-threat in time for the grand finale. All this boosting of Bradford as the Biggest Villain Ever, in addition to seeming contrived, was continually undermined by the petty, small-minded way he was presented--his "backstory" was that he hated adventuring but was forced into it by his grandmother, and that as a result he had determined to take over the world in order to eliminate adventure and unpredictability. Having made that his motivation, however, and established him as a cautious schemer who liked to work behind the scenes, Angones couldn't even stick to that characterization, and turned him into a superpowered warrior (via the magical "Sword of Swanstantine") who engaged in a lengthy physical combat with Scrooge for the series climax, and who then gleefully tried to murder Donald for no other reason than to hurt Scrooge, after achieving his own stated goal of ending Scrooge's adventuring.
As for your question about the other two buzzards, they were casually murdered by Bradford by being pushed into a black hole/vortex (along with Black Heron) after Scrooge pointed out that Bradford would need to eliminate FOWL as well if he wanted to end adventuring and unpredictability. It seemed to be implied they had been Bradford's clones and not his brothers, but this was left unclear, and it was never exactly explained why Bradford needed them around in the first place (other than to provide two other shadowy figures to match up with the FOWL silhouettes from Darkwing Duck).
I don't know if there is an official term for the villainous equivalent of a "Mary Sue," but Bradford definitely was one--he was presented as the Most Dangerous, Most Intelligent, and Most Evil villain in the entire show, and the effort to make him the sum of all foulness turned him into an entirely unbelievable, forced, and incoherent character.
"It was Bradford all along", eh? Brings to mind another contrived villain reveal in recent history.
Resident autistic, diabetic duck fan.
I love hearing about bizarre/obscure Disney works - recommendations welcome!
I said it once and I will repeat it: DT17 liked the nostalgic idea of the Disney Afternoon to draw in viewers more than they actually liked the content. Because they sure as Hades didn't do the characters justice.
I haven't much to add on the Blot - I've gotten to a point where I can trust what you say on Angones' tumblr. I'd be interested in seeing a source on that comment about the "blotting out phantoms" comment, but... ugh. Really?
I dug up the specific Blot quote from Angones' Tumblr:
Commenter: Is the Blot in DuckTales still called the Phantom Blot?
Angones: Yes, but because he seeks to blot out phantoms.
By the way, good to see you commenting again, Alquackskey; your input is always great to read.
In regards to the Talespin episode, they missed that both and Rebecca had their points of wisdom and ignorance. Baloo was undereducated but rather worldly. Rebecca well-read but sheltered. Kit and Molly in DT17 are just "fat man child and her far more capable female friend who puts up with him."