There has been a run of old shows being rebooted or picking up where they left off. I really don’t have any informed opinion about the trend on how well it’s being done beyond feeling that it’s best to let some programs be (King of the Hill ran its course). When it comes to DuckTales, I think the premise was strong enough to handle the revival. The original didn’t have any continuity or timeliness to it. In short the show is an animated version of Carl Barks’ contribution to Disney’s empire: Uncle Scrooge McDuck.
I was in college during the first DuckTales, a syndicated package for weekday afternoons. I often caught it on TV while I was at my grandmother’s or parents’ house trying to kill my boredom until I could return to college. The show and many of the others which followed (Chip n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin and Darkwing Duck) were surprisingly well done. I guess the people at Disney thought these shows were too good to keep locked up on the Disney Channel (it used to be a pay channel like HBO until the late Nineties) and past weekday cartoons were done on the cheap: He-Man, GI Joe and Tiny Toons readily come to mind. Thus, it should be no wonder Disney XD found a generation raised on this wanting to bring it back and put their spin on it.
Disney pulled out all the stops too. Scrooge has a real Scotsman doing the voice, David Tennant and individual actors for the triplets; thanks to the redesigns, I can finally tell them apart too…green is Louie, red is Huey and blue is Dewey. Webigail is back along with Launchpad. The butler is replaced by a housekeeper who is Webigail’s grandmother.
The pilot is an origin story of how the boys meet Uncle Scrooge and convince the old miser to quit retirement to go on adventures again. (DuckTales always was a duck-centric version of Indiana Jones.) Little do they know their expedition to find Atlantis is a race against Scrooge’s rival Flint Glomgold, an even stingier billionaire duck. Now I want to see how they retool my favorite nemeses of Scrooge, the Beagle Boys.
If you have cable or any access to Disney XD, I highly recommend DuckTales for all ages. It’s the best show they’ve had on since Star Wars: Rebels. I know many love Gravity Falls and Fineas & Ferb, but I’ve never neither of them enough to have a strong opinion.