Bucky O'Hare - 13

"The Taking of Pilot Jenny"
In this season (and series) finale, Bucky O'Hare and his crew run a complicated scheme to retake his home world Warren from the Toad Empire. For starters, this scheme involves... the toads taking his first mate Jenny hostage? (They also capture Blinky, but curiously, none of them thinks to try to ransom him off for anything extra; perhaps because both sides know he can be reprogrammed to be a mole as he was back in episode 5, and thus does not make a reliably desirable hostage?) In the ensuing fracas, Dogstar and his entire crew on the S.S. Indefatigable will also get involved, while Komplex itself will personally intervene on the villains' side; and this will lead to a most satisfying—if incomplete, since the writers still wanted to leave the door open for a sequel—conclusion to the story.Show more

Points of interest:
0:08 Remember how Blinky spoke of achieving "oneness with the universe" in the first episode? Well, this is the final episode, so he speaks of achieving "oneness with the Aniverse" now.
1:46 While encircling Warren's equator does enable the toads to maintain vigilance on most approaches to the planet, it leaves a substantial blind spot if someone were to approach from one of the poles; which just goes to show that as with characters in most space operas (including Star Trek: The Next Generation which was airing at this time), the toads' military strategists (and the show's writers) were stuck in a two-dimensional mindset when thinking of how to conduct a war in space.
1:51 That's their whole armada? If so, the toads' resources evidently are only sufficient to build and maintain one mother ship at a time.
2:03 Notice that Toadborg doesn't even mention the toads are holding Blinky prisoner as well; probably because he's aware that ever since the last time the Toad Empire captured him (eight episodes ago, remember?), Blinky makes rather inferior hostage material. Unlike Blinky, Jenny can't be easily reprogrammed to infiltrate Bucky O'Hare's crew and sabotage the ship at a vital moment, and is therefore obviously more immediately valuable to Bucky and his true companions. In fact, given that other episodes have also established that even the less competent toads do learn from their mistakes (e.g. waterproofing the Void Droid), Toadborg probably just had Blinky deactivated for the duration to ensure he wouldn't be able to pull some act of sabotage against the toads at a vulnerable moment as he also did the last time the Toad Empire captured him.
2:50 Amusing detail for those paying attention: watch as Bucky O'Hare casually brushes off all of Willy DuWitt's attempts to get his attention.
3:45 Once again, we see how just being a science prodigy doesn't keep Willy from thinking like a child: a teenager who'd mastered abstract thinking would realize something must be going on behind the scenes for everybody to be acting so out of character. As a preteen engaged solely in concrete thinking, Willy realizes everyone's acting out of character, but it doesn't occur to him that maybe he should try speculating why.
4:00 Something else we viewers old enough to have mastered abstract thinking may notice: Jenny is visibly struggling to keep a straight face here (although—to her credit—she's succeeding).
4:10 One way to conceal that you're trying not to laugh? Give your audience a good reason why you ought to be amused by—for instance—putting on a little slapstick worthy of the Three Stooges for yourself.
4:18 The slapstick routine works even better if you can get a little cartoon physics involved, as with Frax's remarkably stretchable neck here.
4:28 What would Jenny be mining from these "bog mines" Toadborg mentions, peat moss?
4:43 Once again, Willy realizes his friend is acting out of character, but can't think abstractly enough to try to speculate why.
4:55 Willy also doesn't think to wonder why he's being required to voice the crew's request to the enemy rather than Bucky, who usually speaks for everyone whenever he's present.
5:16 Willy notices that even Dead-Eye is acting out of character. (Normally, one would think he'd be more heartbroken about the toads he loathes so much managing to outgun him.)
5:47 As a certain wise old mentor once taught your pal Bucky, Willy, it is easier to take a fortress from the inside by stealth than from the outside by force.
6:57 Though it didn't go so well for Frix and Frax two episodes ago, ramming the other guy's ship with one's own *sometimes* works in this series—for the heroes, anyway.
7:14 In addition to being a potential basis for another toy (which might have been made had the toy line sold better and the show gotten another season), this "tri-bot" is one of the recurring enemies who turns up in one of the later levels on the toads' magma tanker in the licensed 8-bit NES game.
8:02 Blinky finally reappears on-screen.
8:42 Evidently, at some point (off-screen and between episodes), Jenny told Willy enough about what aspects of her powers she and the other felines of Aldebaran are supposed to be keeping secret from outsiders that he knows to hold his tongue about what he just saw her do.
9:20 If Blinky can do all this when he gets access to one control panel, the toads were definitely right to deactivate him. (Destroying him altogether would have been an even more prudent course of action, but—of course—they couldn't do that in a children's cartoon in 1991.)
9:27 While the computer's being capable of seizing control of any and all of the ship's systems—especially the weapons—from the toads certainly proved to be their downfall, its having such a fatal vulnerability built into it makes sense if you think about it: as the toads' dictatorial ruler, Komplex would naturally insist on having access to any and all of every toad ship's systems through its computer. (Of course, it still should have thought to add a further layer of security somewhere in all toad ships' computer operating systems to keep other artificially intelligent entities like Blinky locked out.)
9:37 Putting some distance between the mother ship and your fighter to get yourselves out of its weapons' range comes to mind.
11:05 You mean *if* he gets down, Frax.
11:43 Just as Jenny and her fellow felines have some kind of matriarch they treat as a quasi-deity ruling over their entire species, so too evidently do Bucky and his fellow hares—or they believe they once did, anyway.
13:09 As anyone from a superhero story could tell you, Bucky O'Hare, never presume an enemy dead until you destroy the body—and not even after that if the enemy in question is some form of artificial intelligence like Komplex.
14:13 True, Willy, but last time you hacked the hardware rather than deal directly with the controls.
14:54 Evidently, Rumble Bee serves Dogstar in the same capacities as Dead-Eye and Blinky serve Bucky.
15:42 Apparently, one of the Aldebaran rules on concealing powers from outsiders is: if the outsiders don't understand what you're doing, your powers are adequately concealed.
16:22 So climate converters can generate atmospheres in space? Or is that actually supposed to be solar wind Willy's throwing at his opponent? (Either way, it shouldn't be making any sound anyone on either vessel can hear.)
16:59 You would have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had done this earlier when that robot was down for the count, Bucky.
17:07 Though we never saw Willy tell Bucky about Humpty Dumpty on-screen, it makes a certain amount of sense that the subject might have come up during some idle conversation they had during some downtime between their adventures.
17:11 Just as the helmet on Jenny's space suit doesn't cover her mane, the one on Bucky's doesn't cover his ears.
17:27 The final level of the NES game is a lot like this.
17:42 The climate converter's in rather better shape than it should be after it sustained so much damage in battle, but let's just pretend we have the attention spans of hyperactive preteen boys and didn't notice that, all right?
18:01 This tactic for clearing the toads out of a planet has always worked before, so why change what works, right?
19:12 That wink means "Also, thanks for keeping your mouth shut about my powers, Willy."
19:22 You ask a silly question, Willy...
19:41 Either brown fur is a recessive trait both of these children just happened to inherit from their green-furred parents, or it's co-dominant with green fur and their fur will get greener as they mature into adults, or they're adopted.
20:01 Bucky bids those of us in the home audience beyond the fourth wall farewell.