Ducktales, Season One, Episode Twelve: "Sir Gyro de Gearloose"

Well, after two lousy episodes in a row, this comes as a relief--definitely one of the better ones we've seen so far. Feeling that his abilities are going unappreciated, Gyro builds a time machine out of a bathtub with an eye towards going back to Medieval Times™ to be a knight. Actually, it's not just a time machine; it's also a dimension machine that takes you to pasts that "might have been." How this actually has anything to do with the past that he and HDL end up going to is unclear (I think the writer must've initially been planning to go in a direction that he ultimately didn't, and that bit just got left in accidentally), but I suppose if we wanted to, we could use it to hand-wave away all the inevitable anachronisms that pop up.

Anyway, in The Past, the waterfowl fall in with "King Artie" and Gyro impresses him with the power of Science. The local wizard, Moorloon, gets jealous, however, especially when Gyro's able to stop a dragon and he isn't (though looking back, it's hard to say why not, given that Moorloon is indeed shown to have totally sweet magical abilities later on). There's also an evil king with sharp teeth, Lessdred. Moreloon betrays Artie in order to get rid of Gyro, but when Lessdred betrays him in turn, the kids teach him that his situation--the whole being-taken-for-granted bit--makes him just like Gyro! Boom!

Entertaining secondary characters (especially Moorloon), cool action (including the bit from the opening credits where Gyro uses a unicycle of indeterminate origin to hold his lance up), and a good but not overly heavy-handed "message"--what more do you want? This is similar to the previous episode in that it too feels somewhat Lockmanian, but a much higher class of Lockman, certainly.

I am not going to end this entry by saying "more like this!" or words to that effect, because it's pretty clear by this point that the series is just going to have its ups and downs and that's all there is to it. Hopefully the former will outnumber the latter.

Stray Observations

-No Scrooge whatsoever! I wouldn't be surprised if that turns out to be a unique occurrence in the series.

-It's sometimes a little hard to tell who's talking, but it's pretty clear that, when HDL are climbing down a drainpipe and getting captured one by one, the names get mixed up.

-Lessdred's assistant appears to be an ostrich. How would an ostrich get to Medieval England? Preposterous! They really dropped the ball on that one!

-Awfully fragile helmet Gyro was wearing if the kids can cut it off with a Swiss-Army-Knife can-opener!

-That goose who dropped his wallet back in "Magica's Shadow War" reappears as a disgruntled customer of Gyro's. His name is revealed to be "Vacation van Honk." That is all.

-The exaggeratedly-breathy crane-woman who in the beginning snaps at Gyro when he can't immediately fix her toaster and then at the end hits on him is kind of amusing. Make her a recurring character! Gyro needs a love interest!