Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century

Daffy Duck (Mel Blanc) stars in director Chuck Jones' Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, a delightful vision of the far future in which shaving cream has become a scarce resource and every skewed surface is plugged into the grid, replete with curling wires that hum with incredible electrical energies. In Duck Dodgers all technology is both farcically convenient and fantastically violent. The benefits of the Atomic Age scaled up in such a way as to express a ubiquitous but explosive sense of expedience. So, rather than detonate at the slightest launchpad inconvenience, the rockets in this time are completely invincible. Able to be started in reverse and burrow deep into the ground, without harm, before their gears are correctly aligned to blast off towards uncharted star systems. The Dodgers persona, modelled after the derring-do of serial heroes and (much) later the subject of a short-lived television series, is perfect for a Daffy Duck who has, by 1953, evolved from a screwball foil for dopey hunters into an absurdist leading man. There's enough of a task in place to demand that Daffy continuously try his luck, battling the scuttling Martian competing for ownership of the barren Planet X, but not so much that you feel like any real importance has been attached to the assignment that powers this self-important lunatic.