Darkly Dawns the Duck

Darkly Dawns the Duck is the two-part pilot of Darkwing Duck. Originally aired as a 48 minute featurette, the episode tells the story of Darkwing Duck's origin and his first battle with Taurus Bulba.

Summary
Darkwing Duck is an up-and-coming superhero who wants to be famous but is stuck busting regular criminals in the bustling metropolis of St. Canard. Annoyed that he isn't getting enough attention from the press, Darkwing longs to fight a super-villain. He gets more than he bargained for however when he stumbles onto a fiendish plot by criminal mastermind Taurus Bulba to steal a top-secret weapon from the military: an anti-gravity beam cannon called the Ramrod.

Darkwing fails to stop Taurus Bulba's three henchmen, the hard-headed Hammerhead Hannigan and the clumsy Hoof and Mouth, from stealing the Ramrod, despite "help" from his biggest (and only) fan, accident-prone pilot Launchpad McQuack. Furious at having lost Bulba's henchmen, Darkwing turns down the hopeful Launchpad's request to be the hero's sidekick.

Meanwhile, Bulba discovers that although he has the Ramrod, he lacks the arming code. An earlier botched attempt to steal the weapon resulted in the accidental death of its inventor, Professor Waddlemeyer, before Bulba could learn the code. He sends Hammerhead, Hoof, and Mouth to kidnap the Professor's granddaughter, Gosalyn, from the St. Canard Orphanage, on the gamble that she knows the arming code. Darkwing, having discovered what Bulba's henchmen stole, races to the rescue and snatches Gosalyn out of the henchmen's grasp.

After a car chase, Darkwing returns to the safety of his hideout with Gosalyn, promising to protect her until Taurus Bulba is brought to justice. As he and the child bond, he discovers, inadvertently, that the arming code for the Ramrod is hidden in the lyrics of a lullaby taught to Gosalyn by her grandfather. But can he keep her safe from Bulba, who even now is hatching a plot to capture them both by exploiting Darkwing's desire to be a famous crimefighter?