'Toon Reviews 5: DuckTales Vol 1 Part 15

Superdoo!

This episode gives us some insight on Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s Junior Woodchucks troop.  However, the character we focus on here is Doofus Drake.  I have to be honest, out of all the characters in this show’s cast I’ve seen so far, Doofus is my least favorite.  His design and voice lack the charm and appeal of almost everyone else, he doesn’t really do anything substantial aside from providing Launchpad strong moral support and initiative in the last episode we discussed, and as the opening of this episode shows, he isn’t truly useful to those around him.  As you can see, there’s very little to convince me that Doofus is a strong enough character to be the focus of an entire episode.  Still, I can sympathize with him being unable to earn a merit badge or be good friends with the rest of the troop aside from Launchpad serving as scout leader.  The plot really gets going when two random aliens from outer space hide a power crystal on earth, and Doofus just happens to find it when it becomes active and it gives him super powers.  From there, we get a plot that seems to enforce the unfortunate implication that if you have great talents or strength, that makes you an arrogant jerk.  You see, Doofus goes on to use his super powers to help him earn every merit badge possible, and he just goes around bragging about his accomplishments and belittling everyone in the troop, even Launchpad.  I see very little prompting for this behavior.  It’s just nowhere near the character traits we’ve seen from Doofus, even undermining the sympathy established earlier, and feels like it’s only there to follow the convention.  Not to mention, it’s especially out of character for him to treat Launchpad the way he does since the previous episodes he was in showed how much he worships him.  Thankfully, what we see is still enjoyable for the ways Doofus uses his powers to get the badges, and all the ways he saves the scout troop from the havoc the aliens cause in an attempt to get the crystal back as a super hero called Superdoo.  Plus, it’s good that Doofus realizes how smug he was after his identity is revealed, and he willingly throws away the crystal which honestly anticlimactically albeit humorously gets the aliens out of the story, and decides to try and earn the merit badges without powers.  If that’s not enough, the episode closes with implied benefits of the real Doofus as his clumsy ways save the Junior Woodchucks from timber wolves.  I must be clear; Doofus and this episode are not bad.  They’re both decent for what they are, but in the grand scheme of the series, character and episode-wise, there just isn’t much that’s great to make them stand out. 7/10

The Ranking

1. Hotel Strangeduck
2. Hero for Hire
3. Robot Robbers
4. Magica’s Shadow War
5. Duckman of Aquatraz
6. Armstrong
7. Sir Gyro de Gearloose
8. Master of the Djinni
9. Sphinx for the Memories
10. Send in the Clones
11. The Lost Crown of Genghis Kahn
12. The Money Vanishes
13. Where No Duck Has Gone Before
14. Dinosaur Ducks
15. Superdoo!

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where a trip to Valhalla gets Mrs. Beakley in on the action in "Maid of the Myth."

If you would like to check out other reviews on this blog, click here for the guide to all the reviews posted so far.