Other Doctor Lives: DuckTales: Season 2, Episode 2 – “The Depths of Cousin Fethry!” (2018)

Not much Scrooge in this episode, but still a good one. A nice side adventure for Huey and Dewey, who always play well off of each other.

When Scrooge gets an urgent call from his cousin Fethry, who works in an underwater research base, he’s inclined to ignore it as yet another of Fethry’s harebrained non-emergencies. But Dewey and Huey are both thrilled at the thought of an underwater research base, for entirely different reasons, and set off to meet this cousin. The resulting adventure isn’t what either of them expected, but they’re in for quite a ride.

Stories that set up Huey and Dewey opposite each pretty much always pay off, because their personalities are so different and they spark off of each other in such entertaining ways. Here, Huey is dreamy-eyed at the thought of all the science that awaits him at the research base while Dewey is obsessed with the thought of discovering a cool new sea creature and naming it after himself. The Dewey-related pun game is top notch, with such prospective names as, “Dewificus magnificus,” “the Great Blue Dewphin,” “dreaded dewsaurus of the deep,” and “the dewnificent krilldebeast.”

But like I said, the adventure isn’t exactly all it’s cracked up to be, in no small part because Fethry seems a bit cracked himself. Dewey quickly sours on the expedition, but Huey clings to a waning sense of optimism. It’s hard to ignore the similarities between Fethry and himself, and Dewey is very quick to point them out, so Huey is determined to come away with a positive impression of his off-kilter relation. “He’s a classic eccentric genius,” Huey tells his brother snippily. “‘Eccentric genius’ is the top rung of scientists! Don’t you know anything?”

Plenty of fun to be had here, a good mix of actual underwater science (which is definitely Earth’s closest equivalent to sci-fi exploration) and whimsical details. I love that you get to the research base via a lighthouse whose tower is actually a subaquatic elevator—yes!! And of course, it wouldn’t be DuckTales without some good old-fashioned threats of outrageous destruction.

Very little Scrooge here. He only appears in the cold open, setting up who Fethry is and giving Huey and Dewey the impetus for their adventure. Fortunately, the series is enjoyable enough to me that I really don’t mind the occasional episode that’s light on David Tennant, since the other characters/cast members are more than enough to hold down the fort. But even in a brief appearance, Tennant gets in a few good lines. I enjoy his cranky/bemused tirade about Fethry always calling him down to the bottom of the ocean “all to see a barnacle formation in the shape of a tractor, or some such nonsense.” Hee!