Some of the humor doesn’t quite work for me in this one, but on the whole, it’s an enjoyable episode. We get some good use out of the main ensemble, which is always appreciated, and David Tennant has some fun stuff to work with.
McDuck Manor has an unexpected, unfriendly houseguest. A man called D’jinn has arrived demanding that Scrooge hand over the Lamp of the First Genie before a crucial deadline, threatening all manner of saber-rattling violence if he fails to do. Only problem? Louie sold the lamp. Not wanting to admit this to their, shall we say, intense, visitor, Scrooge and Webby lead D’jinn on a phony quest to recover the lamp while the triplets try to track down where it ended up.
I’m of two minds about D’jinn. His characterization has a definite orientalist bent to it—he’s noble, poetic, and brutal—but the always-reliable Omid Abtahi voices him with 1000% dedication. I like that Dewey adopts some of his penchant for monologuing, protesting, ““…What? I like D’jinn’s dramatic flair!” And the resolution to the story makes D’jinn feel a little more grounded.
Both main plots are entertaining. I always like seeing the triplets work together, and naturally, everyone they talk to has already sold or given the lamp to someone else, further drawing out their investigation. This leaves Scrooge and Webby on the hook stalling D’jinn, who takes to Webby’s ecstatically invented fake quest with gusto. On both sides of the story, we get some return appearances from past guest characters, which is also fun.
I will say, though, that this episode continues to cement how colonialist Scrooge’s “adventure capitalist” nature is. He regards D’jinn as a dangerous wildcard unreasonably waving his sword around, but Scrooge is the one who took D’jinn’s ancestral relic in the first place and then thought it was nothing but junk, ignoring it to the point that Louie was able to sell it out from under him. Not cool, Scrooge.
Colonialist attitudes aside, Scrooge is a lot of fun here. The fake quest offers all kinds of entertaining material for Tennant to work with. I love that Scrooge is so accomplished and multi-talented, but give him a ruse to play out and his acting is transparently terrible. I also get a huge kick out of him struggling to improvise when D’jinn is too quick to answer his “minotaur’s riddle” in exchange for the location of the lamp: “It’s really more of a quiz. So, a train leaves Duckburg traveling at 60 miles per hour….”
Also, there’s a great bit when Scrooge and Louie are looking for the lamp early on. Louie is exasperated by all the treasure and relics stuffed into the room, all of which is unlabeled and some of which is cursed. He asks, “How’s anybody supposed to know about anything in here?”, to which Scrooge very crankily replies, “Because I know! That’s all that matters.” That is such a Scrooge line, I love it.
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