I don’t know if I buy “The Golden Spear’s” throughline–that Penumbra is basically another version of Donald. It’s one of many throughlines that get tossed around here, the main one being the overall contrast between how Della takes in the chaotic, adventurous life (optimistic, carefree, determined) and how Donald takes it (exhausted, world-weary, literally molting). An episode emphasizing the differences and similarities between these two siblings sounds, in theory, amazing. This episode never quite nails down a cohesive, specific point though. It definitely enjoys playing with these characters and making them work (or suffer) through the typical Duck life–Della regales the Moon people with incredible stories of her adventures, while Donald can’t even take a medically necessary nap. But it never quite sets up the side-by-side, narrative/structural relationship that I think it Bob Snow’s script is aiming for.
Story-wise, there isn’t much going on. While Della rebuilds her ship, Penny, er, Penumbra, grows more and more distrustful of her. At first she expects Della to launch an attack, which is mostly due to Penumbra’s inherent warrior spirit and upbringing. But it becomes something more personal/cultural when Della’s stories inspire the people of the Moon (“Moonlanders” the show calls them, per the credits) with the great stories of Earth and everything she did while on it. There’s a sudden conclusion jump in which Penumbra thinks such stories are making everyone think the Moon is weak and uninteresting, a kind of hurt pride/patriotism that is now pushing her more unorthodox behavior (Lunaris calls it jealousy, but that’s not quite what it is). I don’t how I feel about that, but part of the issue is that we never really get a sense of the Moonlanders, or their people, or their society (other than its gold-driven) to compare it to what Earth has to offer.
The episode then has to take some hard-to-swallow leaps in the plot to jump-start and table-set what looks to be the second season’s overall story arc. This includes a scene in which the Moonlanders suddenly want to go to Earth with Della, but she says she can’t, which is clearly since the rocket is obviously too small. It’s unclear why Della never suggests the most self-evident solutions–either to come back with a larger fleet, or just bring a few back to Earth for now–but she then changes her mind and says yeah, she will find a way bring them all. This leads to a seething Penumbra to force Della to launch early (an earlier heart-to-heart with her doesn’t seem to be of any effect), and Della gives Lunaris the instructions to build more ships so they can follow. Lunaris then lies to the crowds, claiming Della betrayed them, fought him off, and left without helping the Moonlanders on purpose, in order to plan his own mass invasion of Earth. There’s a lot of narrative shortcuts that take place here (Lunaris somehow masterminding the whole thing, including Penumbra’s actions, is a big one) but what gets me is how easily and quickly the Moonlanders buy into… well, everything. I mean, I get it–mob mentality, ignorance of the masses, etc.–but that they fail to see obvious issues feels forced, like the ship being too small to bring them all to Earth in the first place. A lot of shows seem to do “whip up the crowd into a frenzy” stories at the expense of making said crowds look really, really stupid. I know the Moonlanders have no idea what Earth is, but it still seems all so forced.
As all this Moon stuff goes on, down on Earth, Donald has to contend with his family’s shenanigans while attempting to get some much needed rest. The good news is, yes, more Donald! The less good news is that the way Donald is utilized here is less than ideal. I don’t want to say “mean-spirited,” since Donald being the victim of things completely outside his control has been part of the character since his inception, but “The Golden Spear!” lacks the low-key emotional underpinning that makes this particular iteration of the character work. If Donald, exhaustively but aggressively, forced himself to contend with the antoginistic forces that threaten his nephews, that would have been one thing. But here, Donald just wants to sleep. Watching him lose more and more feathers as he passively runs from zombies, avoid Zeus’s lighting bolts, and survive some kind of parallel dimension is kind of just uncomfortable, despite all the efforts of the show to portray it as comically as possible. Scrooge and the boys eventually do give Donald a much-needed vacation, but in a final cruel and ironic twist, Donald sees return of the Spear, climbs in to see Della, only to accidentally blast himself back up into space. Again, this feels as narratively contrived as all the stuff on the Moon, but it also all happens in the span of like, a minute, so even that kind of narrative irony doesn’t get a chance to stick.
Donald blasting into space as Della finds herself back home, at least, will provide some really interesting story potential for next week’s batch of episodes. It also helps the audience quickly move on from the harsh narrative changes that occur here into the next episode. Getting a sense of who Donald and Della are, in parallel to each other, is a fun and potentially rich idea on paper. But “The Golden Spear” needed to propel the story arc forward, ultimately weakening everything in the process.
Stray observations
- I don’t think Penumbra is anything like Donald, to be honest.
20 Comments
I’ll agree that this episode had some major problems and would have likely been better if they had been two separate episodes instead of crammed into one, it still had Donald. Like I said yesterday, where an episode is good if it has a lot of Scrooge, the same applies to Donald. I just hope they don’t use this as an excuse to shove Donald aside until the finale.
This had Donald use a chainsaw like Ash Williams. It gets an A+ from me.
Yeah, but I would’ve preferred seeing Donald’s hand-to-hand badassery and yet we didn’t see him fight off the other threats. Even after this brief scene, he was held up by a mere zombie. I really dislike how Donald’s portrayal is coming across: neurotic, exhausted, silly, and almost cowardly when he SHOULD be just as fierce, determined, courageous, and badass as we saw him during “Shadow War!” Otherwise, they’re making it seem as if Donald can’t keep up with his own family when that is NOT the case in the comics where he’s the original adventurer.
I’ve been waiting for the show to finally shows how much of a badass adventurer Donald really is. Let’s hope they deliver.
I spent the whole episode trying to think of parallels between Donald and Penny, but alas I couldn’t find one either. The only think I could think of is that Penny reminded Della of the Donald from before she disappeared, the fearless duck that was Scrooge’s sidekick, instead of the uncle who just wants a couple hours on the hammock to sleep quietly. That said, I enjoyed the Della part of the episode as it was setting the endgame for this season and Lunaris as the big bad. Donald’s was just… Unengaiging I guess? Unfocused and kinda messy up to the point where he was launched in to space.Also, the “ship being too small” issue seems to me like a viewer POV kind of problem. They were seeing it from afar for the most part, it looks pretty big to me for a one person crew, but that’s just me making excuses for the show.Still, I trust Ducktales, and I’m excited for tomorrow.
I thought that Della was thinking of a younger Donald, too. Was he Scrooge’s fearless sidekick, and is that like Penny? He was in the navy, right? So, there’s the military connection.
Yeah, we don’t know Donald then.
Honestly, I blame the writers. This is exactly what I feared. Della comes across as heroic and brave while Donald is lazy, neurotic, or almost cowardly. But I DO think that Donald and Penumbra are similar. They both are fierce, determined, protective, and badass, but the way Donald was PORTRAYED in this episode, his protectiveness comes across as more neurotic or almost cowardly which is wrong because we saw how badass he could be at the end of Season 1. So I don’t know why now, the show is using Donald’s protectiveness as comic relief instead of as genuine courage/badassery. They just need to start portraying Donald’s protectiveness better and not make it into a joke.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t really sure where this one was going. I thought at first the rocket would take off without Della. I also thought they were writing Donald out for a bit with that vacation, which really irked me until the ending.And kinda weird that they set up Moon Leader Dude (I don’t remember his name) as a bad guy in his first appearance, but yet they treated it like it was a surprise here.
Agreed! This episode was a bit weird because 1) the episode before this had Donald almost as an afterthought of his own family since they forgot to tell him the plan and didn’t even refer to him as “uncle” there and 2) they try to draw a parallel between Donald and Penumbra but the way each of their protectiveness is portrayed is very different and again, Donald’s comes across as neurotic and almost cowardly compared to Penumbra’s badass, battle-ready overprotectiveness which is the way I wanted to see DONALD’S overprotectiveness handled.
The zombie bit, complete with The Necronomicassette and some helpful words from the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, was fun. The showdown with Zeus was less fun to me, and we didn’t even see what happened through the goat portal. All in all, those bits declined over the course of the episode.
The Moonlander mob seems really stupid.Lunaris’s plan seems unnecessarily complex. I bet that Della would have helped him build spaceships to visit Earth if he just asked her.
Everyone will think that Donald is on the cruise, not in space.
Penny will eventually switch sides and help the Ducks.
I bet Penny and Donald meet.
I agree that Penny and Donald are not alike, but I can buy that in a broad way, Della sees them as similar enough insofar as they both frequently react to her activities with complaints that ultimately lead to nothing. I was wondering if Penny reminded Della of who Donald used to be (seeing as Della has been gone for a while), but we saw young Donald as almost emo and Penny doesn’t strike me as an emo Moonlander. Penny is a gung-ho warrior woman. I don’t think DuckTales has too many of those. Maybe Mrs. Beakley?
I do think that they’re similar: they’re both determined, protective, and badass. The problem is how the staff are PORTRAYING their protectiveness. Penumbra’s comes across as badass while Donald’s comes across as neurotic. Maybe they did it for comedy, but they need to remember that if they’re trying to make a parallel between the two, they need to do a MUCH better job at taking Donald seriously and showing us his badass side, not only when he has Don Cheadle’s voice. And they didn’t do a very good job at this episode (nor in the previous one) so I can only hope and pray his portrayal is better in the next one.
Could you at least quote the best line of the episode? “Quaacktu Barada Necktie”
Honestly, I DO think that Donald and Penumbra are alike: protective, fearless, badass, warlike, etc. The problem is (which I DESPERATELY hope they fix) is how each one’s overprotectiveness are PORTRAYED. Penumbra’s comes across as more battle-ready and badass while Donald’s comes across (in this episode and some others that I think of) as clumsy, silly, neurotic, and almost cowardly which is wrong when we know he can be badass like he was at the end of “Shadow War!” The problem is that the Ducktales staff are now so unused to actually using Donald in adventures or use him mostly as comic relief that they forget how to use his badassery! He’s just as overprotective as Penumbra and can be just as badass, but we barely saw him in action here. He only got to chop one zombie (and even that wasn’t a total success), we didn’t see how he defeated Zeus, nor did we see what he did in the goat’s dimension…just like sadly, we never got to see how his fight with the Gizmoduck suit ended. I REALLY hope this changes and I tried to warn the staff against this via social media because Donald is truly THE original adventurer and badass duck (in the original Carl Barks comics, he was going on adventures LONG before Scrooge) and so Donald deserves better! But so far, they’re making him seem like unless he’s protecting his family, he’s weak, cowardly, and useless when he’s actually inherently badass. So I don’t know what their intentions were in writing this episode the way they did, but they really need to make Donald come across better. Sure, he can feel fear and still have silly moments (so does every other character), but he shouldn’t be constantly humiliated or have his silly moments outshine his badass moments!He’s the original mighty duck. So please, Ducktales staff, remember that and respect him. Remember, “show, don’t tell.” If you want the fact that Donald is a badass to be taken seriously, then SHOW us that side of him more!
We feel very differently about Donald. I only want to see him be awesome every great while.
It seems like a lot of people here are for some reason upset that Donald and Penumbra don’t seem more alike? But just because Della said off-hand that Penumbra reminded her of her brother doesn’t mean there has to be much similarity. She isn’t necessarily the finest judge of character. Della was impressed and surprised when she saw the statue of Penumbra looking heroic. Maybe that is how she sees her brother too: as a hero that doesn’t look like one at first sight. And of course it could just be that Donald always ended up washing the dishes and nagging Della to help out more around the house too. Donald’s view of himself and how much he has in common with Penumbra is likely very different from Della’s. I was surprised to see that one line has taken up so much of the discussion here. If I have a strong platonic bond with someone in my life, I might say “You remind me of my sister,” and that would indicate more about my own feelings for the person than it would the person’s actual personality.
Donald has always been the perpetual punching-bag and it excites me that this show is addressing more serious long-term consequences of being placed in that role (anxiety, stress) than he’s been given in any other version of the character I can remember. Besides, we’re likely in for some great Donald moments soon.
I would prefer Penumbra remain the baddie rather than do a face turn against Lunaris’s treachery.
Not a bad episode,but so much unused potential. I wouldn’t be surprised if all three of Donald’s adventures were premises that the writers couldn’t make work as full-length episodes but wanted to do anyway.