Scrooge fires Launchpad for incompetence, though it's not clear why THIS was suddenly the last straw. He tries to go into Duckburg's space program to prove his awesomeness, but actually, the space program people only want him 'cause he sucks as a pilot and they need someone like that to test their new idiot-proof rocket. He gets in the wrong rocket with Doofus and they go to Mars and there are Martians and they get captured and then they escape and they stop the missile meant to destroy Earth and that's it.
The head of the space program, Dr. Von Geezer, is, by his name and his accent, clearly one of those former nazi propulsion engineers who emigrated to the US after the war, where they worked for the government and appeared in Disney TV specials. That's kind of interesting. But that's about all that's interesting. The episode is rushed and jumbled and, really, just plain dumb, from the training sequence where Launchpad is judged to be incompetent even though it's obvious that all of his "failures" are mechanical in nature and not remotely his fault to the really lazy, slapdash depiction of the Martians and their despotic ruler, to--this is probably the worst--Doofus's awful, passive-aggressive whining.
When it seems like the Martians are attacking Earth, there's this incredibly dopey sequence where Scrooge crams all his stuff in closets so they can't take it. That kind of typifies the episode--it was really obviously put together very hastily by people who didn't have any interest in properly characterizing anyone--hence, everyone is just really annoying and dumb. It's amazing how quickly this show can oscillate between really good and plain ol' crap.
Stray Observations
-…and Launchpad submits a childish crayon drawing for his "application." See what I mean? Nobody cared that this made no sense; it was just "Launchpad is dumb, so let's have him do this dumb thing and knock off early."
-Two Martians die offstage. Is this the first time death has occurred in a Ducktales episode?
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