Recap / DuckTales S1E1 "Treasure of the Golden Suns"

In the feature-length pilot, Donald Duck leaves his nephews in the care of Uncle Scrooge McDuck when he sets off to join the navy. The arrival of the nephews coincides with the appearance of an aged Spaniard named El Capitán who wants a relic contained in Scrooge's offices, which turns out to be a treasure map that leads Scrooge, his family, and friends on a globe-trotting trip that leads to a fabled hidden treasure.

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This episode contains examples of the following tropes.

• Alcohol Hic: In part 5, Scrooge (and later El Capitán, and briefly the nephews) start hiccuping whenever they mention gold, as a symptom of their gold fever.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Mrs. Beakley snaps Scrooge out of his Gold Fever by asking him "What's more important, being a rich duck or a dead duck?"
• Ash Face: in "Don't Give Up the Ship", this happens to Donald when he looks into a jet engine during his time working for the Navy.
• Bait-and-Switch: During Launchpad's first scene, the air controller tells him to bail out. Launchpad retorts, "Never!", implying that it's a style thing...and then he says that he gets airsick when using parachutes.
• Bilingual Bonus: "El Capitán" means "the captain" in Spanish. He is the leader.

• Chekhov's Gun: The tuning fork serves as one in part 4. Huey, Dewey, and Louie use it for a prank at the start of the episode, then Mrs. Beakley gives it to them so they can bust out of the ice prison.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: El Capitán can't bear to be separated from the gold, not even a single coin. This obviously leads to complications when he teams up with other villains in for a share.
• Clothes-Eating Wager: In part 2, Flintheart Glomgold ends up eating his hat after losing a bet with Scrooge.
• Death by Materialism: Downplayed in part 5 where the valley is about to cave in, El Capitán desperately tries to cling to the gold that the others have to drag him along. Scrooge himself almost met this fate, but his family snapped him out of it.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Part 1 is about Scrooge warming up to taking care of the boys. Part 4 is about the three warming up to Webbigail.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Scrooge tears into an employee for whistling while he's working. The employee, flustered, protests that he wasn't working.
• Dire Beast: The "prehistoric wooly walrus" that shows up in part 4.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Scrooge taking a plateful of free samples and his exchange with a charity collector from the first episode establishes how stingy he is.
    Collector: Penny for the poor?
    Scrooge: They're not worth it!
  • The moment when Launchpad crashes spectacularly into the ground and then walks over to Scrooge and Gyro, completely unfazed, sums up the mixture of Action Hero stunts and Cloud Cuckoolander antics that define him for the rest of the series.
• Evil Is Petty: El Capitán due to his gold obsession. Joaquin Slolei also takes a quick dislike to Scrooge and sends all his forces after him the moment their deal is fulfilled.
• Exact Words: The terms of Scrooge's and Glomgold's bet in part 2 was that if their opponent made more money from scratch in two weeks, the loser would have to literally eat Glomgold's hat. Thanks to Glomgold tossing him a coin as a mocking gesture and setting off El Capitán's destructive Berserk Button, Scrooge technically wins the bet when the rest of the treasure goes under.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: This exchange in "Wrongway to Ronguay" when Scrooge wanders into a pit of quicksand:
  Louie: Aaahh! Uncle Scrooge, you're in quicksand!
  Scrooge: Oh, good. I thought I was getting weak. (Beat) Quicksand?!
• Extreme Omnivore: Burger shows how he'll eat anything when he eats a chocolate-covered bomb. His brothers have to keep him from eating the rest so they can use them to escape.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Launchpad and Donald initially do not get along very well, but that changes during the course of the adventure. By the end of the episode, they're on pretty friendly terms. Launchpad even sticks up for Donald when his superior criticizes the frazzled sailor for not immediately saluting.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: A Gold Fever-induced Scrooge is left choosing between the treasure and the welfare of his family (along with himself) in part 5. This ultimatum is enough to snap him out of the trance and save them all.
• Gold Fever: Scrooge, and later the triplets fall victim to this as they reach the treasure in Part 5. Mrs. Beakly and Webbigail don't succumb to this, the latter reasons that this is because they aren't as exposed to money as much as Scrooge's family.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Upon being tripped up by the triplets, Bigtime exclaims "dash plash gosh darn blankety heck!"
• GPS Evidence: In "Don't Give Up the Ship", the nephews track the Beagle Boys to their meeting place with El Capitán when they find a map of Scrooge's museum the Beagles dropped, written on the back of a flyer for an abandoned theater.
• Graceful Loser: At the climax of Part 5, both Scrooge and El Capitán discover the ancient vault of treasure is buried under a heap of dirt after the valley caves in. While a horrified El Capitán desperately tries to dig it up, Scrooge just laughs it off and strolls away, having fully overcome his gold fever.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Donald serves as this during Part 3, where he accompanies Scrooge and Launchpad on their trip to the Andes Mountains while he's on leave but has to return by the time it's over.
• Harmless Freezing: In part 4, Webby and her grandmother are startled by a colossal "wooly walrus", encased in a solid block of Antarctic ice. Their penguin friend and guide tells them he's been trapped in it since prehistoric times. Yet when the ice later melts, the beast is not only alive and unharmed, but can also leap and move like no time at all had passed.
• Hats Off to the Dead: When Launchpad's opening flight ends with his plane crashing and exploding, Gyro takes his hat off. Launchpad, however, is fine aside from his scarf being aflame.
• Here We Go Again!: At the end of "Too Much of a Gold Thing", Huey, Dewey, and Louie call the trope by its name when Scrooge begins to fall back under the effects of Gold Fever.
• "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Scrooge and Donald say that they can't look and cover their eyes during one of Launchpad's landings. Launchpad says he can't look either and covers his eyes.
• Insult Backfire: When Mrs. Beakley calls him "mad" for claiming to be centuries old, El Capitán retorts, "Of course I'm mad! I'm mad for gold!"
• Jail Bake: In "Don't Give Up the Ship", El Capitan sends the Beagle Boys explosives disguised as bonbons. When Burger eats one, it explodes in his stomach.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Scrooge and the nephews wind up leading Glomgold and El Capitán to the ship that contains the first set of lost treasure. After they recover it and repair the ship so it's seaworthy, the duo appears and holds them at gunpoint before forcing them off the ship. Interestingly, Glomgold and El Capitán wanted to avoid this trope and make it to the treasure first, but when their map was destroyed, they had no choice but to follow Scrooge's party.
• MacGuffin Melee: In "Don't Give Up The Ship", Huey, Dewey, Louie, and the Beagle Boys fight over the eponymous model ship.
• Map All Along: The model ship El Capitán hires the Beagle Boys to steal from Scrooge's Money Bin contains a set of coordinates that leads to a hoard of treasure looted from the Valley of the Golden Suns.
• Mid-Battle Tea Break: In part 5 when Scrooge and El Capitán wrestle around, they notice the floor is about to collapse, so they declare a truce and run to safety and after that proceed their fighting.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Mrs. Beakley's claim that walruses eat penguins is highly suspect, given that walruses are found only in the northern hemisphere and penguins only in the southern.
• Monster in the Ice: While exploring a penguin civilization in Antarctica, Mrs. Beakley and her granddaughter come across a giant "prehistoric woolly walrus" frozen in ice. Later, when Scrooge and the nephews free themselves from the penguins' prison with a tuning fork, the shattering noise from the fork also frees the walrus.
• Multi-Part Episode: As with the later two TV movies that would come afterwords ("Time is Money" and "Super Ducktales") this one was split up into a Five-Episode Pilot for later reruns:
  • "Don't Give Up the Ship"
  • "Wrongway to Ronguay"
  • "Three Ducks of the Condor"
  • "Cold Duck"
  • "Too Much of a Gold Thing"
• My God, What Have I Done?: Scrooge's reaction after realizing that his greed may have led to the deaths of himself, the nephews, Webby, and Mrs. Beakly.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: In "Too Much of a Gold Thing", Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, Webby, and Beakley are surrounded by a congregation of alligators. Scrooge pops the raft they're on to get it to deflate its way away from the alligators and to dry land.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If Glomgold had never tossed the one gold coin to Scrooge to mock him, then Scrooge would have never won his bet with him. He also would never have learned of the full treasure of the Golden Suns.
• No, You: Glomgold and El Capitán devolve into this when they both try to pull You Have Outlived Your Usefulness with a cannon.
• Obligatory Joke: One that actually works literally in context. When Launchpad tells Donald's superior to go easy on him, he asks if the man doesn't know that Donald just flew in from the Andes. Donald (who had to row the entire way to keep the Condor airborne) quips, "And boy, are my arms tired!" before collapsing.
• Oh, Crap!: When the nephews escape from Scrooge's attic using a homemade hang glider they built following instructions from the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, Huey and Dewey ask how they're supposed to land with it. Louie panics as he realizes there was one more thing he needed to do.
  Louie: Land?! Uh oh, I forgot to read that chapter!
• Offing the Annoyance: Joaquin Slolei refuses to bargain with Scrooge until the antics of his crew irritate him into submission. Out of spite, Slolei sends his people to kill them straight afterwards. This Villain Ball ultimately ends up costing him all his power.
• On a Scale from One to Ten: A non-number example; in "Cold Duck", after Launchpad manages to cross a canyon on a raft pulled by a walrus, he says "Hey, nice landing! On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a C+."
• Ow, My Body Part!: Mrs. Beakley and Webby say "Ow, my eyes!" when Scrooge opens the door leading to the temple holding the Treasure of the Golden Sun, as a golden light shines in their eyes.
• Punny Name: Joaquin Slolei, modern-day conquistador and self-proclaimed high priest of the sun worshipers in part 3. The same goes for his great-to-the-umpteenth-power grandfather Marchen Slolei and Marchen's partner Juan Tanamera.
• Quicksand Sucks: In "Wrongway to Ronguay", Scrooge wanders into quicksand thanks to Glomgold hiding the warning sign. Huey, Dewey, and Louie try to pull him out with a rope, but he sinks. Fortunately, Scrooge managed to have some scuba gear on him, which he uses to swim his way out. He also manages to find the sign that Glomgold hid, which is how he suspects that Glomgold is trying to win the bet by cheating.
• Really 700 Years Old: El Capitán, who claims he's managed to stay for 400 years through "sheer willpower".
• Rocky Roll Call: This exchange in "Wrongway to Ronguay" when Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louie come across Glomgold and El Capitán:
  Glomgold: Scrooge!
  Scrooge: Glomgold!
  El Capitan: Los niños!
  Huey, Dewey and Louie: That guy!
  Glomgold: We'll do lunch sometime.
• Save the Villain:
  • At the end of "Wrongway to Ronguay", the ship sinks when Glomgold and El Capitan both try to take each other out. Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, and Louie both come back to save them but only manage to rescue Glomgold. Glomgold tells them that El Capitán sank to the bottom with his gold, but El Capitan really held onto some debris and survived.
  • Near the end of "Too Much of a Gold Thing", El Capitán is danging over a vat of molten gold by a rope. Scrooge insists that he rescue him, despite the fact that El Capitán would much rather be left to his fate.
• Self-Disposing Villain:
  • El Capitán actually manages to obtain the treasure from Scrooge in each of his appearances, though his manic obsession always sets off a chain of events that leave him with nothing.
  • Played with for Slolei, while Scrooge and co defeat him, it is this chain of events that cost him his tyrannical rule over his village, thus it is still his extreme pettiness that gets him dethroned.
• Shout-Out:
  • Huey, Dewey, and Louie reference the former competition.
    Be very very quiet; we're hunting Beakley.
  • When Launchpad gets attacked by a constrictor in part 5, he states he hates snakes, then changes his mind and declares it's someone else who hates snakes. He changes his mind after nearly getting killed by it.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Downplayed and then subverted; when Launchpad's first flight (in the series) ends with a crash and an explosion, Gyro takes off his hat and says that Launchpad may have been a bad pilot, but he wasn't a bad person. Of course, Launchpad emerges completely uninjured.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Scrooge develops a stressed stare when Gyro brings up Launchpad McQuack as the pilot he had in mind who is dumb/competent enough to fly the Golden Condor.
• The Unintelligible: Launchpad doesn't start to understand Donald until they need to work together to get back home and he views it as a sign of how bad things are that he can finally tell what the other duck is saying.
• Verbal Backspace: When Scrooge asks him who is going to fly the Golden Condor, Gyro says there's only one pilot stupid enough and then backtracks and substitutes "capable."
• Villain Ball:
  • Done each time by El Capitán due to his obsession with the gold.
  • Joaquin Slolei in Part 3, not too happy about having to bargain with Scrooge, decides to set his worshippers on him after he obtains his part of the bargain. The scuffle ultimately leads to him losing both of his coins and thus all his power.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Joaquin Slolei breaks down crying when he loses both the gold coins that marked him as a high priest to the sun worshipers, and his followers refuse to take his orders anymore.
    Slolei: Listen to me! I am your master!
    Natives: No gold sun! No gold sun!
  • El Capitán becomes more and more unhinged with each attempt at the treasure. By the time his final attempt starts to go pear-shaped, he has become Laughing Mad.
• Villain Team-Up:
  • Glomgold and El Capitán in Part 2. It naturally doesn't last, as El Capitán's extreme greed eventually leads the two to have a falling out.
  • He attempts to start one with the Beagle Boys in Part 1 by busting them from prison. It doesn't even set off, however, since they don't comply unless they get a share of the gold (he was hoping they would just be grateful enough to help him for free).
• Women Are Wiser: Justified example. Mrs. Beakly and Webbigail do not fall victim to Gold Fever during the finale, leaving them the voice of reason as the situation worsens. Mrs. Beakly reasons that's because they are not exposed to the same amount of wealth as Scrooge and the boys, so they cannot be triggered as easily.
• You Are Grounded!: After catching the triplets trying to take the ship model, Scrooge tells them they're grounded until further notice.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Attempted and even quoted by El Capitán in Part 2, threatening Glomgold with a ship cannon after he throws away a coin of his gold. Glomgold, however, doesn't take it lying down and sets the cannon onto him, leading to a "No, You Have Outlived Your Usefulness" argument. They both fight over the cannon until eventually the bomb fires up in the air and hurtles back down to the ship, with the expected results.