Bucky O'Hare - 10

"The Artificers of Aldebaran"
Willy DuWitt (and the audience) gets a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Jenny's home world Aldebaran when her understudy Princess Felicia goes rogue and ends up getting captured by the toads. When Toadborg takes a personal interest in the secret source of the Aldebarans' quasi-supernatural powers hidden deep in the Dark Heart Nebula, Jenny also goes rogue, absconding with the S.S. Righteous Indignation with Willy aboard to attempt Felicia's rescue. Meanwhile, Bucky O'Hare and Mimi LaFloo's potentially romantic relationship undergoes some development when she brings him and the rest of his crew aboard her S.S. Screaming Mimi to help them recover their rogue crew members (and ship).

Points of interest:
2:27 Here it's confirmed that Aldebaran technology employs the same "magic" power source as the cats themselves do; one more reason I believe everyone's universal translators are also derived from Aldebaran technology.
2:37 Something never completely spelled out in this animated series is the extent to which the Aldebaran cats are supposed to keep their powers a secret from outsiders. While this episode clearly establishes they're never supposed to reveal the source of their powers (although notably, none of them made much of an effort to keep Willy from discovering it here), they don't seem to be required to keep the existence of these powers a secret, only their capabilities; e.g. Bucky O'Hare and his crew all seem well aware Jenny and her people have telepathic powers, though not so much of her energy-generating and telekinetic abilities.
4:09 Despite having a personality very much like Darth Vader's, Toadborg seems to know his limitations.
4:30 This is why, though they share a power source, I don't believe the Aldebaran sensors and universal translators to be the same thing: even entities hostile to the Aldebaran cats (such as the Toad Empire) have those universal translators, but when they need sensors, they're forced to build their own.
5:41 That Felicia already has a ship prepared for her unauthorized expedition and either nobody noticed or nobody thought to report this to her grandmother (and no one challenged her for being in Aldebaran airspace without permission during liftoff) suggests maybe these cats just aren't very attentive to things like their planet's (and trade secret's) security.
6:36 While she gives very similar instructions about keeping the secrets of their powers safe, Felicia's grandmother (Queen Katrina) is clearly not the same entity as the green-furred "Mother Aldebaran" Jenny contacted back during the show's pilot to ask permission to use her powers. I'm thinking that whereas Felicia is royalty and therefore contacts her family's matriarch here when she's in a jam, Jenny is either nobility or just a very accomplished commoner on her home world, and therefore contacted her entire species' matriarch when she was trapped and needed permission to use her powers in the presence of outsiders.
8:22 While it seems odd that no one notices the noise this tracking device makes throughout the scene, it's probably actually silent to feline and human ears, and we in the audience are hearing how it sounds from Blinky's perspective.
8:36 Though a bit reluctant, Jenny sure doesn't put up much of a fight against Willy's coming with her. Of course, he does have a point about needing to stick with the ship (and he's already privy to some of her species' secrets), but one also suspects she's still quite taken with the boy and appreciates the opportunity to spend some time alone with him.
9:24 You probably should have tried to act like your "torture" was more distressing to you than that, Felicia.
9:49 That random green-skinned background character holding the newspaper looks a lot like a certain invincible character imprisoned on the toads' magma tanker in the licensed Bucky O'Hare NES game who goes berserk and attacks the player character if you make the mistake of shooting at him.
10:06 For fan fiction writers trying to ship Bucky with Jenny, this is just about the only other evidence they have (besides the ending to the fourth episode) of there being anything between the two; but (of course) the kind of fans who think they see any romantic tension in his little speech about his sincere respect for his first mate here are the same kinds of perverts who insist on seeing homoerotic tension in every same-sex friendship in every work of fiction they enjoy. Granted, Mimi LaFloo comes off looking (and sounding) a little jealous in this scene, but what does she know? If she perceives any rivalry with Jenny here, then like Red Jack's "rivalry" with Dead-Eye for Lanelle's affections in the previous episode, it's pretty one-sided.
10:39 In any case, Mimi's not too jealous to lend Bucky and his crew a helping hand (and her ship) here.
11:31 Just as Toadborg enjoyed showing off how he can leap higher than Bucky O'Hare the last time they met in person, so too must he appreciate the irony of using his retractable claws (seen only here) to threaten to use a cat as a scratching post.
12:28 Felicia wasn't wearing her helmet in the previous scene, but (of course) she is here. While Toadborg would naturally want to keep his hostage alive until he doesn't need her anymore, one wonders how exactly he knew how to get that helmet on over her hair; more on that in a minute.
12:54 Once again, Willy's got a point, but Jenny doesn't seem to be putting up much more than token resistance to taking him with her.
13:20 Notice how Jenny's hair is outside the helmet as the visor closes down over her face. While it's fair to assume that full mane of hair she's got is attached mainly to the back of her neck, and the back of the helmet is sealed around it, one does wonder how exactly her species' space suits can be airtight with all the cats we see sporting that same mane.
14:00 Viewers mature enough to know their facts of life, of course, will suspect that as with Darth Vader, there's *one* part of Toadborg's anatomy his being transformed into a cyborg has rendered permanently non-functional (whether his cybernetic parts are working or not).
14:53 While this series' writers seem to be using the word "demon" here in the sense that the Japanese language does (i.e. referring to just about any kind of magical creature and/or spirit, not just to the fallen angels who serve Satan as the term is used in some translations of the Bible), one has to admit *this* planet-sized "demon" is doing a pretty good imitation of Chernabog from the "Night On Bald Mountain" sequence in Disney's Fantasia.
15:26 Giving up already, Jenny?
15:31 Considering this eldritch abomination is the source of all the cats' powers, the history of how their species first figured this out (and how they managed to tame and/or put him to sleep in the first place) would probably make an epic tale for some future episode, had there been another season.
15:37 As many fans have noted, this scene establishes that—unlike, say, Wonder Woman and her fellow ageless Amazons—the cats of Aldebaran do reproduce; yet we never see their men, only their women. So, how is this possible? (Fan fiction writers, let's have no nonsense about sapphic or sexless reproduction out of you, please; even if same-sex reproduction or mammalian parthenogenesis were possible in nature—and copious applied scientific research has demonstrated they are not—Jenny's physical and romantic attraction to the decidedly masculine—if rather nerdy and puny—Willy DuWitt and the genetic diversity of her species pretty decisively prove the males must exist.) Exploring where the Aldebaran males are and why the sexes are living apart from each other would also have been an entertaining story for an episode of that later season that never got produced.
15:59 If those "quark demons" are supposed to be his offspring, then here you're technically seeing an incident of cannibalism in a children's cartoon!
18:08 While some think this is an animation error, it looks to me like the main gun on the S.S. Screaming Mimi is just completely differently configured; as in, whereas the gun on the S.S. Righteous Indignation has grips, an adjustable position, and a targeting device, this one is apparently just a fixed installation with a button on the back you push to fire it, and Captain Mimi has to swing the ship itself around in order to do any targeting. (That does mean she needs to get an upgrade on the gun, however.)
18:25 It's a pity that unlike Dogstar and his S.S. Indefatigable, we never got to see who Mimi usually has crewing her S.S. Screaming Mimi when she's not carrying Bucky and his companions with her. Again, that would have been an entertaining subject for one of those future episodes that never got made.
19:27 Who's that cat in similar attire standing next to Queen Katrina, Felicia's other grandmother?
19:30 So Aldebaran society (or at least the part of it to which Jenny belongs) is indeed a political sorority; does this imply that the males likewise live together in a political fraternity?
19:40 It seems Jenny's not the only feline who thinks Willy's cute; and here we have another proof of these feline females' heterosexuality (and thereby the necessary existence of their male mates).
19:57 We here behind the fourth wall love you too, Bucky, but—like Jenny there—only as a friend.