Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers

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(Redirected from Gadget Hackwrench)

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers is an animated series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. It features the classic Disney chipmunk characters Chip 'n Dale, with three friends, as detectives.

The concept began life as a two hour standalone television special, Rescue Rangers: To the Rescue. The series itself began airing on March 5, 1989, often paired in an hour-long show with DuckTales. The last episode aired on November 19, 1990, by which time the series was a part of the then-fledgling Disney Afternoon and continued to air for some time thereafter in its lineup.

65 episodes were created in total; To the Rescue was broken up into five half-hour segments (episodes 14-18).

It was last seen on Toon Disney, but due to bad scheduling and the addition of JETIX, it is barely there anymore. It was removed from the schedule along with a number of other shows in November 2004. However, the series returned to Toon Disney in May 2005, but airs at late night, at 4:30 AM E/P. Also, Disney has announced a 3-disc DVD set of Rescue Rangers will be released on November 8, 2005, and will contain the first 27 episodes of the series.

Contents

Characters

Heroes

Image:Rescue rangers.gif

In this show Chip wears a fedora and a flight jacket, much like Indiana Jones. He serves as the leader of the Rescue Rangers and spends his free time reading detective fiction, his favorite character being Sureluck Jones, apparently a play on the names of Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones. He is presented as very dedicated to his duty, and usually somewhat serious and responsible.

Dale wears a red and yellow Hawaiian shirt. Though also dedicated to duty, he is presented as a fun-loving, mischievous prankster and somewhat irresponsible. He spends his free time reading comic books, playing video games, watching Sci-fi and horror movies, mostly B-movies and eating candy.

Monterey Jack is an Australian muscle mouse who has a constant craving for cheese and a pesky fear of cats. Monty first met Chip and Dale on their first case as Rescue Rangers. He joined them along with his companion Zipper and Gadget Hackwrench. Monty is protective over Gadget, having somewhat of a father-daughter relationship with the younger mouse.

Gadget Hackwrench is a young female mouse and the mechanic and inventor of the team. She is the daughter of deceased inventor and aviator Geegaw Hackwrench, an old friend of Monterey Jack. She first met Chip and Dale on their first case as Rescue Rangers and has joined them along with Monterey Jack and his companion Zipper, since she had nowhere else to go after her father's death. Both Chip and Dale are very attracted to Gadget, but she usually does not notice because she is working on her inventions most of the time. The character is arguably the most popular introduced in the series and has a steady fanbase in the Internet. Her sweetness, innocence and unattainability (at least as far as Chip and Dale are concerned) make her a "good girl" pin-up goddess for male viewers of the furry fandom persuasion.

Zipper the Fly appears as Monterey Jack's sidekick and the mascot of the Rescue Rangers. Using his ability to fly, Zipper often handles the little jobs that the rest of the Rescue Rangers cannot do.

Villains

Fat Cat, a felonious grey tabby who plays the role of a crime boss. He has four sidekicks who include an alley cat named Mepps, a lizard named Wart, a mole named Mole, and a rat named Snout. Mepps is one of Fat Cat's cronies. An alley cat, he is the only member of his gang who is the same species as his boss.

Professor Norton Nimnul is a mad scientist and also one of the Rescue Rangers' most frequent enemies. He is identifiable by his oddly-shaped skull, his receding red hair, and very thick glasses, as well as his high-pitched laugh. Sometimes Professor Nimnul has "help" from his obnoxious nephew Normie.

Jim Cummings voiced both the Rangers' primary foes; however, they appeared together only in the pilot episode, as the faithful pet and the science officer of a megalomaniacal crime boss.

Episode list

  1. To the Rescue (1)
  2. To the Rescue (2)
  3. To the Rescue (3)
  4. To the Rescue (4)
  5. To the Rescue (5)
  6. Catteries Not included
  7. Three Men and a Booby
  8. The Carpetsnaggers
  9. Piratsy Under the Seas
  10. Adventures in Squirrelsitting
  11. Flash, the Wonder Dog
  12. Pound of the Baskervilles
  13. Parental Discretion Retired
  14. Risky Beesiness
  15. Bearing Up Baby
  16. Out to Launch
  17. Dale Beside Himself
  18. Kiwi's Big Adventure
  19. A Lad in a Lamp
  20. Battle of the Bulge
  21. Normie's Science Project
  22. Ghost of a Chance
  23. An Elephant Never Suspects
  24. The Luck Stops Here
  25. Fake Me to Your Leader
  26. Last Train to Cashville
  27. The Case of the Cola Cult
  28. Throw Mummy From the Train
  29. A Wolf in Cheap Clothing
  30. Prehysterical Pet
  31. Robocat
  32. Does Pavlov Ring a Bell?
  33. A Creep in the Deep
  34. Seer No Evil
  35. The S.S. Drainpipe
  36. Chipwrecked Shipmunks
  37. The Last Leprechaun
  38. Chocolate Chips
  39. Song of the Nightindale
  40. Love is a Many Splintered Thing
  41. Weather or Not
  42. Out of Scale
  43. Gadget Goes Hawaiian
  44. Double-0 Chipmunk
  45. Good Times, Bat Times
  46. Short Order Crooks
  47. When Mice Were Men
  48. It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!
  49. They Shoot Dogs, Don't They?
  50. One-Upsman-Chip
  51. Zipper Come Home
  52. Shellshocked
  53. A Case of Stage Blight
  54. Mind Your Cheese and Q's
  55. Dirty Rotten Diapers
  56. Pie in the Sky
  57. Le Purrfect Crime
  58. When You Fish Upon a Star
  59. Rest Home Rangers
  60. A Lean on the Property
  61. The Pied Piper Power Play
  62. Gorilla My Dreams
  63. Puffed Rangers
  64. A Fly in the Ointment
  65. A Chorus Crime

Spin-offs

Two Rescue Rangers platformer video games were produced for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Capcom. A third (this of category "other") was made for the PC. In the video games, the Rescue Rangers fight against villains from the show. Some of the missions even match some of the plots depicted in the cartoon show. For example, in one of the levels, the Rescue Rangers has to stop Professor Nimnul's static electricity robot, which was one of the main episodes of the cartoon series. Also, a lot of the supporting cast appears as characters in the games. For example, the recurring mechanical dog in the cartoon series is a common enemy throughout different levels in the video games.

A monthly comic book based on the show was published by Disney Comics in 1990, running for 19 issues. Subsequent comic stories were printed in Disney Adventures from 1990 to 1995, as well as in the Disney Afternoon comic book published by Marvel Comics.

Fandom/Controversy

While the show was removed from the 1993 Disney Afternoon lineup in order to make room for Bonkers, its fandom remains strong and loyal, if not as numerically large as more popular franchises. Starting with the creation of the Disney Afternoon mailing list in 1991 and the inception of the D.A.F.T. (Disney Afternoon File Time) zine in 1992, the Rescue Ranger fandom has been noted for its high level of devotion to the series, despite what many "Rangerphiles" (as Ranger fans like to call themselves) perceive as Disney's neglect of the series. All 65 episodes have found their way onto the internet as high quality video files ensuring fans never lose their favorite show.

While the Ranger fandom has produced fan work of virtually every sort, one of the most noticeable has been the area of fan fiction. As of 1999, there were at least 128 Rescue Ranger fan-written stories on the Internet and that number has grown to at least one thousand, if not many more. While these works have ranged from crossover and parody to encompass virtually all possibilities of fan fiction, more recent Rescue Ranger fanfiction has sought to achieve a level of depth and maturity beyond what the show's writers had originally provided. Starting with Michael "Questy" Demcio's Rhyme and Reason, Rangerphiles have sought to address the areas they believe the official Rescue Ranger canon "left hanging," such as: the unresolved love triangle between Chip, Gadget, and Dale; Gadget's relationship with her father Geegaw (who is mentioned only once in canon, as she apparently mourns his death); the relationships of "one-shot" characters Foxglove, Tammy and Lawhinie to the Rangers; and the like. While there are obviously too many stories to link to even a small percentage here, the reader could do worse than to start with works such as Steve "Indy" Hamrick's "The Untold Ranger Tales," Meghan Brunner's Final Curtain, "Jareth"'s The Return of Winifred, and "The J.A.M."'s Death of a Comedian (itself a sequel to an offshoot of a fanfiction story, namely Roy Neal Grissom's Consummation, a Dale+Foxglove work).

Other forms of "fanfic" have emerged as well. In 2003 Chris "Fish" Fischer released the webcomic Of Mice and Mayhem, which gained widespread notice in the fan community for its artistic content, story depth, and length; its notoriety has spread outside of the original fans as well, especially to the furry fandom. The author of the story is currently working on a sequel, which should be released (to quote the author directly) "sometime in the next Ice Age."

Fischer's work bridges the gap to the other major form of fan expression: artwork. Pictures by the thousands can be found online with a simple search, or at some of the fan sites linked above. Many of them are of fan favorite Gadget (see for example The Internet Gadget Archive), but all save the most minor characters seem to be preserved in their own body of work.

Gadget's popularity is actually a source of some controversy in the fandom. Some of this work is decidedly adult in nature. Due to the G-rated nature of the original show, some fans strongly object to such representations as inappropriate; but they remain among the most common forms of Gadget art, and thus of Ranger art in general.

On February 21 1990, a character named Foxglove made her debut in the episode "Good Times, Bat Times". She worked for the villain Winifred Witch to get ingredients to cast an evil spell. The Rescue Rangers saved her, she saved them, and then the bat fell in love with Dale. Many thought she would be a perfect addition to the Rescue Rangers, even though after the end of the episode she simply disappeared, never to be mentioned again on the show. Entire websites were created that were dedicated to Foxglove, based on this single appearance. The voice behind Foxglove, Lahwhinie and several extras - actress Deborah Walley, who played in the fifties teen movies "Beach Blanket Bingo", "Gidget Goes Hawaiian", and "Ski Party", among others - died in May 2001; she was the only cast member of the Rangers known to have had contact with the fandom, and her loss was keenly felt.

See also

External links

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