"Time and Punishment" is the sixty-fifth episode of Darkwing Duck. It aired on February 27, 1992.
Synopsis[]
Megavolt and Quackerjack, using a larger version of Quackerjack's Time Top, escape into the future to retrieve high tech weapons and toys. Along the way, they accidentally kidnapped a sulky Gosalyn Mallard, who is dragged along with them into the far future of St. Canard after trying to prevent their escape after being told to wait in the Ratcatcher by an even more concerned Darkwing who tells he wouldn't know what to do if anything ever happened to her.
While they are in the future, the evil duo and the little girl witness a far more malicious version of Darkwing who calls himself "Darkwarrior Duck", harassing a pedestrian and sending him to prison for simply jaywalking before leaping into a huge tank and rolling away. Shortly thereafter, Darkwarrior's robot enforcers impound the time top for illegal parking, and then imprison Megavolt and Quackerjack.
Gosalyn manages to escape and makes her way to Darkwing Tower within the Audubon Bay Bridge. Once there, she finds it largely abandoned, occupied only by an older version of Lanchpad, who reveals that Darkwing went mad with depression when Gosalyn went missing; believing she had run away because he did not allow her to help him that night against Quackerjack and Megavolt (in fact she fell into the timestream). One night, he came across someone who was in need and reminded him of Gosalyn. Rediscovering his purpose, he became a much more public menace and deadlier than many of his foes such as Steelbeak and NegaDuck. However simply defeating the supervillain menace of St. Canard is not enough for Darkwarrior; and he becomes a militaristic dictator, declaring martial law over St. Canard. He would punish anyone for minor offenses. Launchpad is no longer a sidekick to him because Darkwarrior accused him of being too soft on crime after he said criminals should be arrested before they were sent to the electric chair.
Gosalyn convinces Launchpad to help her find Darkwarrior and talk some sense into him. Eventually she determines the best way to get his attention is to deface his prized statue, now a massive monument in the center of the city. When he encounters Gosalyn while patrolling in his modified and beweaponed Thunderquack, DW tries to reconcile with her. He also, beneficently, only sentences Launchpad to life in prison because obviously he is not a criminal mastermind. He fashions a suit of armor similar to his own for Gosalyn so she can help him patrol the city and rid it of crime. Gosalyn was unhappy with Darkwarrior's extreme views on crime fighting and was not impressed with the armor as she could hardly move in it. When she protests his twisted views after inadvertently revealing the presence of the evil duo and the time top, and demanding that the three of them be returned to the past to set things right; he has her arrested and sent to prison, declaring she had gone bad.
In the meantime, Darkwarrior seems finally to go completely round the bend, determining to use the power of the Time Top to completely rewrite history in his own image, plotting to go back in time to the beginnings of law enforcement in ancient Babylon, or even further, to when the first proto-duck left the oceans. this pointedly contrasts with Gosalyn's desire to use the time top to simply go back and stop herself from disappearing in the first place.
Gosalyn leads Lanchpad, MegaVolt, and Quackjack in a prisionbreak so she can return to her own time and prevent the dystopian future of Darkwarrior ever occurring. When she tries to save Megavolt and Quackerjack from being killed by Darkwarrior, he points a version of his gas gun in her face. Gosalyn notes she's not afraid of it; but seemingly incredulous, he replies that hasn't used a gas gun in years, promptly changing it into a very lethal missile launcher. He again turns against her, noting that all her past attempts to misbehave were signs he should have realized about her being a bad egg from the start. He is about to use his weapon to execute her but then resists the impulse, saying that he just can't do it: underneath it all, Gosalyn is still his baby girl, revealing that there is still a caring father deep inside of him. He is quickly knocked out by Launchpad allowing Megavolt, Quackerjack and Gosalyn to return to the present, apparently preventing the Darkwarrior timeline from existing.
Once in the present, Darkwing's shadow terrifies Quackerjack and Megavolt into feinting away. He finds Gosalyn within the time top and immediately grounds her for a month because she has disobeyed his order to stay in the Ratcatcher, which she gleefully accepts as a just punishment compared to the tyranny of Darkwarrior.
Voice Cast[]
- Michael Bell - Quackerjack, Darkwarrior-bot
- Don Bovingloh - Jaywalker
- Dan Castellaneta - Megavolt, Man on Street
- Cathy Cavadini - Woman on Street
- Christine Cavanaugh - Gosalyn
- Jim Cummings - Darkwing Duck/Darkwarrior Duck
- Terry McGovern - Launchpad
Uncredited[]
- Jack Angel - Liquidator
Trivia[]
- As an in-joke there is a street sign named after Frank Miller, author of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns which inspired several of the elements in this episode.
- Darkwarrior Duck would appear again in the Darkwing Duck comic story arc "Crisis on Infinite Darkwings", as one of the multiple Darkwing Ducks of other dimensions that were brought to St. Canard by Negaduck and Magica De Spell. On a side note, he is also the only Darkwing that did not need to be brainwashed by Magica in order to be abducted from his home dimension.
- During the episode, set presumably ten-to-twenty years into Darkwing's future, several characters reference Gosalyn's apparent lack of aging, assigning it to her growth being stunted by all the junk food she consumed as a kid.
- DarkWarrior Duck is most likely a reference to or parody of the future Batman portrayed in The Dark Knight Returns, where an older and embittered Batman viciously and ruthlessly deals out his own brand of justice to evildoers.
- The Dark Knight Returns would later again be homaged as the title to Boom Studio's comic story "The Duck Knight Returns" and the DuckTales 2017 episode of the same name.
- There are also elements of the hyper-violent Judge Dredd comic, particularly in the body-armor, robot enforcers, and heinously overblown criminal charges DW hands out as a one-man judge, jury, and executioner. While Frank Miller was name-dropped in the episode regarding Dark Knight Returns, No aspect of Dredd was.
- Steelbeak, Ammonia Pine, Liquidator, Bushroot, Tuskerninni and Lilliput make a brief cameo appearance during Launchpad's flashback. The episode shows them smashed by a large Ducksmasher (anvil), and it is implied that they did not survive.
- The title is a pun on the title of the 1866 novel "Crime and Punishment"
- Toon Disney's broadcasts of this episode cut out Darkwarrior pulling out his missile gun and Gosalyn initially thinking it's his old gas gun.
Gallery[]
