Danny Phantom

I just thought it was incredibly lazy of them to just call him "Dan Phantom." I mean, what an underwhelming name for "the ultimate enemy," and also I can't recall them actually referring to him by that in the show. I remember finding out his name via a GBA game based on that episode. (For the record, the game isn't that bad, but it's nothing spectacular, kind of a bog-standard licensed platformer.)

edited 3rd Sep '15 3:16:45 AM by Odd1

Debra stopped being funny when she stopped being an actual person and turned into a caricature.

edited 3rd Sep '15 7:27:45 PM by LSBK

I liked Debra in the early to mid seasons, but both she and Ray slowly got less and less entertaining as the show went on. By the end both of them were pretty terrible.

To be fair, the show itself got kinda meh by the end. It's the curse all long-running sitcoms face.

Yeah, the show upped everyone's negatives and quirks to obnoxious levels while removing most of what was good about them. The only one that didn't happen to was Frank. And Amy but she wasn't a part of the core cast long enough for it to happen.

You know, I think the show should have let Danny's parents be aware of things after the whole movie with Freakshow. He had absolutely no reason to wipe their memories of the truth. It was clearly done because Status Quo Is God.

edited 4th Sep '15 9:49:21 AM by LSBK

Which is a shame, because a season where his parents knew and were trying to get used to the idea / were introduced to how ghosts really are, while the family fights evil togther would've been awesome.

I also wish they had actually done something with the whole "Jazz has ghost envy" bit.

Now, let's be fair, Frank's negative traits are pretty much what defined him and what made him endearing And Amy was kind of always the ingenue.

Yeah, getting back on topic, I agree completely. It's weird how much the show changed up the status quo on other things, yet that one issue is the one thing that kept on holding on until the end. Just another thing to add onto the Spider Man parallels, I guess, hint hint.

I still really wish they hadn't fired the other showrunner (I'm blanking on his name right now...pretty sure it wasn't Guy Moon, but I could be wrong) (EDIT: Steve Marmel) who had those big plans for what direction in which the series could be taken. Butch Hartman, you could've had an amazing series on your hand, but instead it's merely pretty good.

EDIT: This post I found sums up a lot of the problems with season 3 quite well: http://dragonrex1.deviantart.com/journal/Let-s-talk-about-Season-3-of-Danny-Phantom-376800988

I think I finally understand the pain that Gargoyles fans went through.

edited 3rd Sep '15 7:52:08 PM by Odd1

Also that supposed dropped subplot where if again given the right direction, Dani would have been adopted by Danny and family, while becoming a part of the team and struggling with her deformity as a frequent risk of using her powers. It seems a little more likely given his friends were complaining about being his only sidekicks with the workload.

Personally I think given everything, the third season could have been a lot worse, and the finale though imperfect did leave the series on a sufficiently high note. That's more than you can say for other story-heavy cartoons like Spectacular Spider-Man and Witch.

I thought W.I.T.C.H. had a very satisfying ending. A bit unexpected but good nonetheless.

Chances are Butch thought that if the series becomes darker, "Younger fans would be turned off by all the spooky drama and consequences", and he didn't like it so he trashed the idea. Or maybe he thought since it wasn't his idea or Original plan, he fired Marmel because there can only be one head writer.

Just a theory, but I remember reading that most of the inspiration for Hartman's shows come from his own childhood, and it's one reason why we'll never see the rich kids in FOP change their ways. Maybe Danny and Sam's romance was based on a love he use to have.

edited 4th Sep '15 6:42:16 PM by NegaKingKix

They got away a dark on The Ultimate Enemy. If he did oppose it I don't quite understand why.

If you think about it FOP and Danny Phantom has some really screwed up premises. Instead of Danny implied to of been sorta kinda killed by the Ghost Portal he could of been flat out stated to be killed by it. The implications behind fairies aren't to pleasant as well. If you believe the Timmy is just imagining his fairies theory the show comes off as even more depressing.

edited 4th Sep '15 8:08:57 PM by Bleddyn

Then Danny was dead all along and everybody in town just went crazy? I don't like the idea of that.

No I mean that instead of Danny being half-ghost he could of been full ghost that was really powerful due to the accident. The show could of definitely gone more into the supernatural ghostly aspect. The ghosts in the show were presented more as either mindless monsters or weird people with obsessions. The Ghosts are dead people aspect was never really explored albeit it was implied though.

Still if the shows were played completely straight then it would of been a lot darker....

Full ghost still means he's straight dead making it real depressing, but would probably be a good set up for a Teen Casper-like story while still defeating all other ghosts.

There is a few fanfiction authors that has done it well (I think one of the fics is recommended in the recommendations page for Danny Phantom). It's quite interesting if done well. Alternatively there is a author that writes Danny as a half ghost (his death was a lot more violent though and his ghost form looked a lot more like a burnt corpse then a white haired human, imagine Dan but with ash gray skin and visible burn marks) but the horrifying implications of that are heavily drawn upon as he starts seeing things (ghosts feeding on people's life energy) that no one else can see.

His ghost form in that fanfic also has a mind of it's own. It wants to drain and kill Tucker and Sam. Those two are scared of Danny due to that....

"Just a theory, but I remember reading that most of the inspiration for Hartman's shows come from his own childhood, and it's one reason why we'll never see the rich kids in FOP change their ways. Maybe Danny and Sam's romance was based on a love he use to have."

Also Butch like cliche...a lot, it not surprising the normal kid against the rich one, it basic storytelling from the 90

"If you believe the Timmy is just imagining his fairies theory the show comes off as even more depressing."

Nah, after the pokemon theory I have seen to much of the "everything show is not real" that is become a cliche way to make a creepypasta

"The Ghosts are dead people aspect was never really explored albeit it was implied though."

It was in first season like box ghost,pointdexter or ember showing how they die but soon after they drop it, also it never explain things like Skullker or plant monster, it bring intersting theories around....

If it stayed at Ultimate Enemey levels, it would be fine. The mix of humor kept a good balance most of the time. A lot of fanfic premises for the show sound too serious and dark to work much as DP fanfiction, even if heavily inspired by it.

And I think the firing was a lot more complicated than that, but we'll likely never know.

Ah I forgot about the implications behind Pointdexter, Youngblood, and Ember being ghosts. The latter even sings a song that makes sense in the She died heartbroken in a fire theory. Pointdexter wasn't flat out stated but it was pretty obvious to the older audiences that he committed suicide. And Youngblood likely drowned playing pirate. There was also Klempler who I find a bit depressing to think about considering he seems to be a young, deformed kid who got left out to die in a blizzard.

I think only Box Ghost and Desiree were the only adult ghosts that had implied backstories to how they died though.

edited 5th Sep '15 12:38:18 PM by Bleddyn

Desiree has pretty much stated. Dont know what's the other, Box fell on him?

Killed in a shipping container accident

Wait, was Youngblood implied to have been a dead human? I thought that as far as the show established he was just a ghost who happened to be a kid. I don't recall there being any Word of God on the subject either.

IIRC, Ember's bit is Word of God, which doesn't make it any less valid or anything but does make things weird since the writers' approach to what ghosts actually were clearly changed several times over the course of the series. It's difficult to use the early ghosts as an indication of what they were doing with the later fleshing out of the Ghost World as a result.

edited 5th Sep '15 4:14:25 PM by KnownUnknown

I'm a little confused at calling Dan's backstory convoluted.

First, the "you still turn into me" bit, IIRC, this was Dan's misconception - he believed that Danny still became him, but the episode ends with the information that Dan Phantom now exists outside the timeline, and that Clockwork had to keep him contained.

Second, convoluted? He was evil and decided to destroy the world and torment mankind for lulz. Then his younger self incidentally went forward in time because of Clockwork, and he took Danny's place to ensure that the events leading to his birth still came to pass. I'll admit I'm sketchy on the rest, but I remember it seeming fairly straight-forward. Everything was eventually explained by Dan gaining Time Travel Immunity.

They were forced to cut a lot of plots near the show's end. Dan was put into a thermos and left on a plot thread. Valerie was left on a plot thread. And I'd imagine there was more plot threads that were not followed up on....

A little surprised they never revealed what any of those were, assuming they were written.

I really need to rewatch this show, it's been years and I drifted away during Season 3, the last episode I really remember was the one with the evil plant that possessed Sam, and then I only checked back in for Phantom Planet. I think Vlad was mayor of Amityville during that season too...

-

I know this is a long shot, but Nickelodeon used to air a commercial for "The Ultimate Enemy". It was well-edited, and I remembered a part where they used Dan's "Your time's up Danny... it's been up for ten... years''..." line, shortly before he attacked. I've looked for it and haven't found it, has anyone else stumbled across that commercial?

Nick and CN would air some damn good commercials that probably never saw the light of day after those shows went off-the-air. So displeasing.

edited 5th Sep '15 5:25:35 PM by Soble

That's not his origin, those are his motivations. His origin goes like this:

• Danny cheats on a math test.
• Lancer invites his parents and Jazz to a conference that happens to take place at the Nasty Burger which coincidentally explodes, killing everybody.
• Danny is sent to live with Vlad, as his closest... something. This step and the next only happen because Danny is too depressed to stop them and doesn't know any better.
• Actually acting out of a twisted sense of compassion for once, Vlad decides that Danny would be happier without his human emotions dragging him down - so he decides to rip Danny in half.
• Danny's ghost half (now an explicitly evil and chaotic monster in this instance and this instance only) is set free and kills his human half.
• Danny's ghost half then splits Vlad in half and absorbs his ghost half, creating Dan.
• Bad stuff.

His actual backstory has a kind of perfect storm angle. A bunch of really unfortunate stuff lines up perfectly to make something even worse. Dan's main failing is that he assumes (and, thus, so does the plot) that every step after the first is inevitable, but it's more like really, really bad fortune.

Plus, Dan's creation relies on a bunch of Vlad related stuff that have little to do with Danny's parents dying beyond that giving Vlad the opportunity. Dan isn't really Danny, he's specifically the fusion of Danny and Vlad's ghost halves, created by a very unlikely series of events. Not only does this make his attempts to make Danny doubt himself fall flat (it isn't actually Danny doing all the bad stuff), but now that he knows what the results will be Danny has no reason to allow any of it to happen even if Dan did succeed in blowing up his parents.

It's a miracle Dan didn't disappear into a puff of logic the moment Danny found out what happened.

So Dan claiming that he's inevitable and Danny will still turn into him at the end never made a lot of sense. The movie doesn't actually contradict him, either. Clockwork takes him out of time after he says this, he doesn't just end up that way.

That line was just a bit of cliche "I'll be back" villain drama that wasn't fired well.

edited 5th Sep '15 9:01:36 PM by KnownUnknown

Switch the second to last two. It wasn't his ghost half being evil, it was just bad writing in having his ghost half do something that made no sense at all.

Hmmm how do I explain this...from what I recall watching the show Youngblood being a dead human was more of a Fridge Horror moment full of depressing implications. I don't recall when exactly he appeared (I think he appeared after Poindexter and Ember? The former was heavily implied to be a suicide victim who was driven to that by heavy bullying) but if I am recalling it correctly he appeared right around near when the other young ghosts did.

I honestly think the show was way to spotty about what they wanted the ghosts to be. Some were mindless monsters (Ectopusses, the ghost animals, the clones, skeletons, and other lower level ghosts) others were obsessed to the point of no return and the certainly didn't look as human as the others (Undergrowth, Vortex, Nocturne, and Vlad probably counts as this) and they were higher threats, the more tamer ones had obsessions but weren't as damn near homicidal or powerhungry as the other group (although the Lunch Lady, Technus, and Skulker could of easily killed humans on many occasions) but they weren't like Desiree or the younger looking ghosts either that just wanted to cause mischief (well accept for Ember, she wanted control and attention).

I think the only ones who stand out of those groups were Spectra and Bertand. I found Spectra's powers quite interesting....

edited 6th Sep '15 4:19:47 AM by Bleddyn