Scrooge gets afflicted with "gold fever" in a reference-heavy but very enjoyable DuckTales
TV Reviews Recap
Back when David Tennant was the Doctor on Doctor Who, there were two animated Doctor Who stories in which he also voiced his titular role. Don’t bother to look them up, they’re pretty horrible. But what did stick out was Tennant’s vocal talents; he was able to infuse his animated version with the same “wild-eyed” energy and intensity that he gave to his on-camera role. Back then I had mused to myself that Tennant could be an amazing voice-actor if he decided to delve down that road. Several years later, here he is voicing Disney’s premiere richest duck in the world, and he’s absolutely has grown into the role with an amazing fervor, rivaling his predecessor, the late Alan Young. In “The 87 Cent Solution!”, there is an argument that he might, might surpass him.
“The 87 Cent Solution!” is a showcase for Scrooge McDuck, for David Tennant, as he slowly descends into a disturbing, dangerous madness. An already sick Scrooge visits the money bin to deal with a once-a-year charity event with his rival, Glomgold, but when he dives into his money to refresh himself, he notices that some of the money is missing. When questioned by his nephews, he tells them that he’s missing a whopping eighty-seven cents. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Scrooge freaking out over missing chump change. That’s been his M.O. since forever. The problem is that he’s sick, so some of the nephews aren’t sure if he’s even right, and as he gets worse, he begins to act more and more unhinged. It’s funny at first, with his increased, ridiculous security and behavior inciting a few laughs (the tears over his counts, followed by a two million dollar bounty was a funny scene). But the moment that he literally risks Dewey’s life by mistaking him for a thief, it’s no longer funny.
The shift in the tension of that scene insures that things are taken seriously from that point on; even Webby, the sole supporter of Scrooge’s belief, eventually comes around to realizing that something is very wrong. Tennant, in conjunction with the animators, really work to showcase how dangerous Scrooge comes off, with those rants growing more vicious and biting, with his red eyes and ruffled feathers changing from visual gag to almost-horror villain. He swings in the money bin displaying his theory-filled corkboard like a madman, and even physically fights off everyone trying to hold him back from diving into the bin. It’s a legit tense watch, especially if we believe the “never-wrong” Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, that this “gold fever” is truly fatal. That Scrooge is will to die for this is insane, but feels a part of his character. His absolutely affinity for his money is well-known, but his willingness to dig his heels and commit to his presumptions, refusing to need anyone, is also well-established in this iteration.
It’s the small touches that sell this episode, like the multiple, potential suspects (Magica is name-dropped, and even Owlson comes off a bit too down-to-earth, suggesting that her calm acceptance of Scrooge’s financial losses are maybe part of some plan of hers, which also says something about us–why do we just expect every character to be slightly off in some way?). There’s also just the question of whether Scrooge is right, since we’ve know him to be very knowledgeable about his money, and we known him to be a bit flippant when it comes to the safety and well-being of his family. But he could also be wrong, what with the actually behaviors (boxes on his feet, his clothes being too small, the imaginary “Chester”) coming off legit disturbing. Come to find out, it’s a bit of both. The mastermind this is Glomgold, the person you both most expect and least expect. After bursting into Scrooge’s funeral (he faked his death) tossing money around to a rap song (a darkly funny bit), Huey prods at his pride with a dismissive eulogy, prompting him to rant about how he did it. There’s a lot of conveniences here, particularly with the Time Teaser falling at his feet randomly, but after a 12-month baby-staring content, Glomgold unleashes a disturbing series of minor conveniences and pranks to make the richest duck in the world go crazy. Scrooge dismisses Glomgold latest scheme as no big deal, but it’s good, narratively speaking, that Glomgold now feels like a real threat for the future.
The only thing that hurts this episode is that the moment where Scrooge realizes that he’s gone too far is never given much weight or time to click. He pushes away his family and stares at his valley of gold, then kind of us realizes that, yeah, he’s going overboard. So when he confronts Glomgold and tells him that his family keeps him grounded, it’s not as effective as it should be. The visual image of Scrooge surrounded by his family does the heavy lifting of that beat. Scrooge needing his family to keep him from going too far within his own head when it comes to his riches has been a low-key, nuanced characteristic since his comic days, and seeing it reinforced here gives “The 87 Cent Solution!” a solid ending to this group of familial characters, before we shoot back off to space to revisit Della Duck tomorrow.
Stray observations
- “The 87 Cent Solution” combines two story lines from the original show. The “gold-fever” stuff comes from the “Treasure of the Golden Sun” five-part premiere (I’d love the show to try their take on “El Capitán,” a disturbing villain in his own right and a good example of what Scrooge almost ends up as). The Time Teaser comes from “Time Teasers,” in which the Beagle Boys get their hands on Gyro’s device and rob Scrooge’s bin.
- Another smaller reference is when Gyro’s security system shocks Donald when he walks through the electric wall, a scene from the original show involving Scrooge but also in the theme song. Can’t quite remember which episode it’s from.
- I know I missed way, way more, but can’t place them all. Do you due diligence, commenters!
- (I would say the references work better her than in season one because they add to the rhythms and forward momentum of the story versus feeling like they’re there for the sake of being there.)
- The nephews strictly coming together after Dewey nearly was hurt, even visually, was a very good touch. The nephews work way better as a group than separate, and the show is realizing this.
57 Comments
I haven’t watched this episode yet, but Disney has some really weird scheduling for this show. We had one episode in December, one in March and now Disney is airing eight episodes in the next week. I have no clue why Disney is doing it this way.
It seems like the cartoon network approach.
It makes no sense. This episode didn’t even air on the channel; it went straight to on demand on my service. Why on earth is it on weekdays, late in the morning, anyway? Who is their target audience with that schedule?
Same here. My Xfinity is classifying this one as S2E9 so it’s on demand but I have no DVR of it. But the previous episode is just S2 so it’s not showing in on demand but it was DVRed.
And that’s just this season.
It makes a little more sense when put in conjunction with the rest of Disney’s scheduled programming (specifically the animated stuff this plus Star vs Forces Evil, Milo Murphy, Big Hero 6, Spider-Man, Big City Greens etc – we get roughly one new animated ep every a week and a half when averaged out for most of the year.
I was not prepared for that dark ending, where Scrooge finds himself trapped in Death Valley, handcuffed to the body of his nephew Donald, a sack of gold lying between them.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, has won three BTVA awards and has been nominated for even more.
He was fantastic in that Clone Wars appearance.
Yes, and he played a half-dozen different roles in Big Finish’s Doctor Who audiobooks (including a Time Lord and a UNIT commanding officer) even before he was cast as the Doctor.
He’s done lots of Shakespeare audioplays, narrated all of the How to Train Your Dragon books, giving each character a different voice, and has played different characters in the HTTYD movies and the series, plus he narrated Cressida Cowell’s new book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, James Bond, IHMSS, and lots more. He’s done several things for Disney, was a main character in the TMNT series, did an episode of Thunderbirds Are Go! He’s a main character in the new Rooster Teeth series, the main villain in Final Space, and has done lots of British animated children’s tv series and movies. Not to mention several video games. That’s just off the top of my head. The man never sleeps, apparently.
Man did you get Kinja’d, there’s so many duplicates of this comment in the greys.Informative though, I’d never really looked up his other voice work.
I don’t know what that means, but I only posted it once.
Being Kinja’d means you got hit by one of the many bugs in the Kinja comment system. In this case duplicate posts. It has your same comment like 10 times in the greys.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
David Tennant has been doing voice acting for as long as he has been acting (some 30 years). There are dozens of audioplays and audiobooks as well as many animated movies and tv shows. He won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his role in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and won three BTVA awards and been nominated for even more.
Tennant’s fine as Scrooge, but no, I wouldn’t say he surpasses Alan Young. That’s not even nostalgia talking. Alan had the pitch perfect voice for Scrooge. One moment he could make Scrooge sound like a warm, doting uncle… and then the next a fierce, fiery force of nature! David… just sounds one octave too high, in my opinion. Plus, he’s never been able to replicate that amazing, triumphant cackle that Alan lent to Scrooge.To me, Alan Young is to Scrooge what Mark Hamill is to the Joker: the best. But David Tennant, much like Troy Baker, is a fine second-tier voice for the character.
The Duckblur? That comes from the episode “Armstrong”. I think the amount stolen was also a reference to another episode “Lock o’ the Irish”. When an impish leprechaun pocketed some loot as he fled the money bin.
There’s an ep called “Luck o’ the Ducks.” Was it also called something else?
87 may also refer to 1987, the year the original TV series began.
The “seven percent solution” was a Sherlock Holmes story. I believe it involved him going crazy after overdoing it a bit on the cocaine injections.
This is correct. It’s one of the best Holmes books not written by Doyle. The story was one of the first I can think of of the genre of “looking at an old character from a new angle. The story involves Watson taking Holmes to Vienna to go under the care of a young Sigmund Freud to deal with his cocaine addiction. And then they all end up involved in some pre-WWI European aggressive diplomacy. I think the big thing the story is remembered for is that under psychoanalysis it is revealed that the Master Criminal Moriarty is actually a creation of Holmes’s mind to suppress the memory of his math tutor Mr. Moriarty who had an affair with Holmes’s mother as a child.
One of David Tennant’s finest line readings of all time: “Et tu, Headless Man-Horse?”
wow it’s a cartoon for children, but adults can enjoy it too!
Way too many old school references that kids won’t get. They definitely know 30-somethings are watching too.
Am I the only one who was running through headlines and thought the thumbnail was an image of The Cheat?
Well now I want Trogdor.
First, you did warn us about errors because you’re on vacation.Second, when the show started sometimes I heard Tennant, not Scrooge. That day is long passed.Third, I’m glad the guidebook being on the ground mattered.Fourth
This episode focused on Scrooge, therefore the episode is awesome. Glomgold dancing to a rap song at the funeral was hilarious and perfectly in-character. My only qualm is, once again, very little Donald. When he didn’t say anything in the security videos, I figured he was just gonna be a voiceless cameo, but then at the end he had lines. If they’re gonna give him lines, make him a central part of the episode. More Donald > Less Donald.
I’m surprised they got the rights to that song. It actually took me out of the episode for a second and seems a little too new for Glomgold.
Yeah i worry how much budget got spent on music rights
The two million dollar bounty comes straight out of the movie Ransom. Scrooge is channeling Mel Gibson’s character.
This episode’s title alludes to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a story in which Sigmund Freud treats Sherlock Holmes for symptoms of cocaine addiction. (The movie is good. Watch it.) Obviously, the two works share themes of madness and mystery.
The red string makes a face, but I can’t work out whose.
I have never laughed harder at this show than when Flintheart Glomgold came into the funeral wearing his “G G” glasses, dancing, and making it rain while DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win” played.
Who knew Flinty listened to modern rap.
Give my boi Donald more spotlight, you cowards.
Scrooge McDuck is the world’s greatest capitalist!
Is this the first Disney TV cartoon that used licensed music to score a bit? It’s an expensive thing to do and you rarely see other “kids” shows do it.