"The Lost City of Atlantis"

Water good title.

Season 2 Episode 18 (episode 44 overall)

Original broadcast date: 16th January 1990

Writer: Jimmy Hibbert
Additional voices: Harry/Atlantian/Sviatoslav/ 
                               Slugge: Jimmy Hibbert
                     Bert/Captain Meano: David Jason
               King Neptune/Dmitri: Brian Trueman

Travel location: Atlantis (not by castle)

Castle transport visual not used.
Joke credit: Fish Consultant - Isaac Walton


After ending up on a deserted island, Duckula and company accidentally discover that it is a secret elevator down to a fabled lost city. The for-once-not-punny title should be a bit of a giveaway as to which city that is.

Horror tropes weren't the only ones that this series would use, spoof and explore. Turn-of-the-century style adventure and science fiction popped up frequently too, among various other public domain influences. These led to spoofs and cues featuring character types and settings that the public would already be familiar with, even if only through pop culture osmosis. As well as the over-arcing vampire vein (pun intended) this practise led to us not only having trappings inspired by the likes of The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein and Egyptian mummies, but also from Sherlock Holmes, Phileas Fogg and Jeeves and Wooster. This particular episode, as it's title suggests, takes it's prompt from fantasy and adventure. Specifically, the legend of Atlantis (started by Plato) and (like the Fogg reference) the adventure novels of Jules Verne.

For my money, Igor is the real highlight of this particular episode. He's unbelievably cheeky in his usual dry, work-to-rule sort of way. Some of the rejoinders he gives Duckula could easily count as grounds for dismissal. It's worth noting that, given the apparently hopeless situation in which the characters find themselves in this outing, Igor's veneer of respectfulness has pretty much all but vanished. He rebuffs Duckula's actions, at first politely and then more brazenly and even blames his master for their predicament nearer the end. He's given up all hope!

The cast are lost at sea in a tiny lifeboat. Duckula, of course, blames Nanny for this mess whether or not it really was her fault. Then we get a couple of surreal gags (the lost police car, Nanny's gigantic water bottle) before the trio's lifeboat ends up marooned on a tiny little "The Far Side" style deserted island. Igor sows a plot seed when he expresses concern that he didn't notice it there before. There's a reason for that, and it's not Igor's eyesight failing him.

Time passes as Duckula fruitlessly tries to devise a plan of escape which involves building a plane out of the boat. Igor rightly points out that they don't possess any means of getting it airborne or ideed functioning in any way akin to a flaying machine. Duckula only balks when he realises this also includes no in-flight movies.

Then, it would seem, the island itself comes to their 'rescue'. A glass dome closes over it and it descends into the depths of the ocean before the bickering gets too drawn out. Now the trio find themselves face to face with some angry-looking Atlanians kitted out with bubble helmets and spears. The artists' get round the problem of having the regular characters breathe underwater by designing Atlantis as a weird, almost z-rust, 'retro vision of the future' city, with some old Greco-Roman building designs. This is all contained in an enormous glass bubble. Design work is quite atypical for the series as a whole. This makes sense, as it wasn't every day the characters visited vast underwater cities. Though it doesn't explain how they can breathe in space in other episodes! Jimmy Hibbert speaks for the lead Atlantian with a bubbly filter over his voice.

This also marks a rare instance in the series featuring humanoid characters who don't have beaks. Interestingly, the Atlantians' King (Neptune of course) is portrayed as a bird-person, albeit a gigantic one. This invites some speculation about the nature of hierarchy. Does Neptune represent the Duckula-verse depiction of a god, while the fish-men are lowly sub-humans? At any rate the way he's acted is pretty funny. Brian Trueman comes up with a weary 'can't really be bothered today' type of voice where we would ordinarily expect his booming shout for this kind of character. The King also seems to be suffering from a streaming cold, which doesn't help his mood.

This scene also contains one of my favourite puns. The long list of titles the lead fish-man uses to introduce his leader ends in 'Prince of Whales.' Cringe, but good cringe! King "Get on with it!" Neptune sentences Duckula, Nanny and Igor to be fed to the halibut (not worth it for the sharks!) and Duckula makes the mistake of asking for mercy. This leads Neptune to forgo a 'halibut mauling' and allow them to be slaves instead. He's duty bound to do this as the lead fish-man foolishly offered this option earlier. Bloomin' red tape, eh! So off they go to the slave pits to stoke the boilers for the rest of their lives.

Igor: I blame you for this milord.
Duckula: Me? You blame me? Why me?
Igor: Given the choice I think I would have preferred to take my chances with the halibut milord!

A life of slavery isn't for them so they decide to bolt for it and jump over the bridge onto a passing submarine which has ended up in Atlantis by accident.

The two man crew of the sub' are a really fun and unlikely straight-man and silly assistant double act voiced respectively by David Jason (as James Mason) and Jimmy Hibbert (as Kenneth Williams). It actually took me a while to figure out that the Captain Meano was David, it's such an unusual voice for him to do. The only giveaway is the laugh, which is hard for almost any actor to totally disguise anyway. He emotes very well in a low-key, raspy sort of way, as Mason himself did. It's almost as if he believes he's in a serious film, in total contrast to his assistant, Slugge. He in his turn, acts like that annoying character Tony Hancock ran into on multiple occasions on his radio show. Jimmy-as-Kenneth is very funny, but then I am a sucker for any character that behaves in that daft campy manner so I would say that! I can only imagine if, by some bizarre cosmic re-alignment, Cosgrove-Hall had produced "Taz-Mania" or "Pinky and the Brain", Jimmy would almost certainly have landed roles like Axl and Pinky - both of whom were voiced by Rob Paulsen as it happens. Just really funny acting. Jimmy does a similar turn here in this early 80s sketch show, so there's a rare chance for you to see the man himself  doing his silly voices onscreen!

At any rate, these two hilarious bastions of comedy and adventure have unwittingly rescued our three heroes. It looks, however, like they could be in more trouble as the Captain detests stowaways (or 'styoawaize' and he snarlingly puts it) but thankfully he hates Atlantians too, so off they all go at top speed. The Atlantians give up the chase, but only because a gigantic octopus shows up. The super-sized cephalopod jiggles the sub' about a bit and then throws it out of the water like an American footballer. Guess where it lands?


That's right. Back on that wretched island again! The Captain cries over his wrecked submarine and gives Duckula an epic verbal beatdown. Duckula's response is to cheer everyone up with his awful harmonica playing.

Meano: My ship's completely wrecked! We're stuck on a desert island in the middle of the ocean with practically no hope of rescue! Name me one, JUST ONE thing that we've got in our favour?
Duckula: Well, erm, I've got my harmonica!

As the sun sets on this adventure, the ending manages to be funny, fateful and depressing all at once! Just like the title character's life in general really.

This episode manages to wring out a lot of dry humour despite the obvious peril that the characters find themselves in right from the very outset. Their situation just does not improve much at all from start to finish! We humble viewers can assume they eventually did make it off that island some way or another as this is only the second last episode of season two. Animation is mostly pretty good stuff despite a couple of wobbly bits, with some highlights being the octopus encounter, ship chase and the convincing ocean wave movements. Neptune jabbing his servant in the bum with his trident always raises a smile too. The underwater scenics make a lush and interesting diversion from the expected gloom and doom of a more typifyng episode.


Music

"Island Welcome 1" (Keith Papworth) - Finding the island.
"Private Investigator A" (Grahem de Wilde) - Lost cop car.
"Happy Hula" (Keith Papworth) - ending.

From KPM-0082 - Archives 2 - Drama

"Rescue" - Cecil Milner (track 43) - Duckula falls in the water/escape from Atlantis.
"Disaster" - Bruce Campbell (track 39) - Underwater chase.
"War Games – Build Up" - Wilfred Burns (track 42) - Atlantian explains the trio's duties.

From KPM-0399 - Roads to War (1933-1945) Part Two

"Pathe News Fanfare" - (track 41) - Duckula imagines his fame on the news.

As ever, the clock bats' theme is "Vamp Til Ready" (track 88) by Wally Asp.

Pans and backgrounds
Lots of use of bright colours for Atlantis. The only scene that looks more typically 'Duckula'-ish would be Neptune's throne room, with all that seaweed and dampness.

This one is part of a larger panning background (see above).

This looks like art for the bolier room scene. Drawn by Andy Roper. Found on Jez Hall's Twitter. I do not own this.

Trivia

• Episode does not open in Transylvania.
• Apart from the clock bats scene, the castle is not seen at all in this episode.
• Again, unless we count the clock bats, Transylvania is not seen at all in this episode either. We begin and end on the ocean.
• Episode opens on Duckula's screams and ends on everyone elses'. 
• Rare episode where Nanny does not break anything.
• The narrator states that over 3 quarters of the Earth is covered with water. It's probably closer to 71% - according to Google anyway! 
• The episode starts with the narrator mentioning 'three floundering, bedraggled beings', but at this stage, we can only see Duckula and Igor. 
• The ocean wave animation is partly recycled from "The Mutinous Penguins."
  
• The American cops are seen driving an apparently British car. The steering wheel is on the UK side. David's cop is called Bert - close to Burt, his Crow Brother and Jimmy's cop is called Harry. Harry Slime from 'Avenger Penguins' is also Jimmy, as is the theatre hand in 'Acting the Goat' (Victor and Hugo) and possibly Harry of Harry and Muscles in the V&H episode 'Woof and Tumble' - it's never made clear which character is which there. Harry Whittle was one of Brian Trueman's characters on "The Clitheroe Kid."
• The cops mention the Holland Tunnel, which is located under the Hudson River in New York, suggesting that they somehow drove into the river and eventually out to sea.
• Debatably, Igor may not be exactly right when he says coconuts are nuts. But it is just to facilitate a rude joke, so maybe he's abbreviating. Nanny's no nearer as she calls them berries.
• As in "No Sax" Duckula wears a pith helmet, but here it's only via daydream.
• Captain Meano and the Tortilus is a spoofing of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus from Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". David Jason does an excellent imitation of James Mason for the character's voice. Mason played Nemo in the 1954 film of the novel. He is also designed to resemble the film character. In the film, his sub' also gets attacked by a giant squid.
• Meanwhile, Jimmy Hibbert is doing an extremely funny take-off of Kenneth Williams 'Snide' character for the voice of Slugge. Stop messin' about! I'm unsure if his name is a spoof of anything though.
• There's a theory that this episode is meant to take place immediately after "Mystery Cruise" which is part of season three. Duckula even explains to Neptune that they got on a cruise ship, left in a lifeboat and ended up in Atlantis. Apart from the design of the life-boat, it all ties together perfectly. Like this episode, it's suggested prequel does not have a punny title.
• Brian also plays a King (Arthur) in "Alias The Jester" and King Otto in the Danger Mouse episode "There's a Penfold In My Suit."
• Dmitri's joke references "The Godfather."
• When running away, Duckula makes that stock scream that sounds like he's saying 'Oh God, help!' It's used a few times in other episodes including "Arctic Circles" and "Beau Duckula".
• When escaping, the trio do the 'Igor?' 'Milord?' 'Nanny' 'Yes Duckyboos?' 'RUN!' bit they did at the end of "No Yaks Please We're Tibetan."
• Two of David Jason's characters have titles that begin with C - Count and Captain.
• Second time in the series a submarine appears. Von Goosewing had one in "The Mutinous Penguins."
• The Captain appears to have a picture of his house hanging in his submarine.
• Duckula plays the same ditty on his harmonica as he plays in "Ducknapped" and "The Return..."
• The joke credit is a reference to Isaak Walton, author of "The Compleat Angler". This book title was spoofed in the Wind in the Willows epidode "The Compleat Bungler."



Notice how Von Goosewing and Ruby Wax are credited even though they do not appear.

• This episode was released on it's own along with a colouring book. Same deal as "The Ghost of McCastle McDuckula." 

 Goofs and Nitpicks

• Nothing really beyond a handful of trifling little colour flubs on insignificant character areas. Only one worth noticing is on Captain Meano's hands in one shot.