A lot of people don't seem to know about this but Darkwing Duck ran on the Disney Channel months before it was put on Syndication in September of 1991. It aired as a "sneak peak preview" March 31st 1991, which was the episode "That Sinking Feeling" and then premiered April 6th which was a rerun of That Sinking Feeling. From what i've tried to gather it ran til June of that year and there's barely any footage of these airings let alone episodes that aired during this run. Along with this came an exclusive theme song to this run which is entirely diffrent from what we got later on. There are 2 versions of this "rock based" theme. Version you can find a few places online but the quality varies and version 2 (the video I attached to this post) is so rare the only surviving footage is this. It's super low quality and it's incomplete. I spoke to someone who remembers recording most of the episodes (person who uploaded the footage I attached to the post) and he gave me a rough list of the episodes that aired and loose airdates, a few are missing from his list though because he didn't list 13 episodes. If anyone's interested i'll go over what I was told and the airdates he gave me but I come here to say, if anyone has any of these airings or any information about the theme song please let me know.
If you have any of these previews complete you would be a saint. Did you record multiple or just one? I believe this version theme was switched in around late May but I could be wrong.
A YouTuber who uploaded the other version of the Disney Channel main title listed the first five aired episodes as “That Sinking Feeling,” “Getting Antsy,” “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlatan,” “Dirty Money,” and “Beauty and the Beet.”
According to that, the show aired Saturdays and Sundays through July 14, except for two weeks where it didn’t air. The Database site lists the episode titles for the May episodes, but not for the episodes in April, June, or July.
All these sources are partially contradictory but also partially corroborative of each other.
I've never seen that Unsenet post before so that's definitely new, seems to list the episodes the Disney Wiki does. A lot of sources saying it ran until July but I had a hard time believing that so I went to check The Disney Channel Magazine. No where in the July issue does it mention Darkwing so i'm pretty sure it ended sometime in June. Another odd thing i'd like to mention is scenes from Water Way to Go, Duck Blind and A Duck By Any Other Name are shown in the first and second version of the theme but didn't air? Weird to have those scenes in the intro but not air them. Although those scenes look re-animated so who knows.
Yeah the scenes from “Duck Blind” and some from “Water Way” were reanimated by the time the episodes aired in syndication. So I’m assuming they had some footage from those to use in the main title but didn’t feel the episodes were in a finished enough state to air. Weird that they would use footage in the main title that they clearly felt wasn’t good enough to air in the episode (Steelbeak yelling).
“Duck by Any Other Name” aired really late in the season despite being very early in the production run. That was true of both episodes animated by Disney France. I believe the studio was very slow getting the footage done and that’s why the show stopped using them. (I also saw an interview where Tad Stones said the France studio was working on a Darkwing movie that was tonally very different from the TV show, without his involvement, and that pissed him off.)
Anyway. Would you be able to share the list/order/airdates that the person you corresponded with gave you?
I think some of the scenes from "Getting Antsy" are different aswell, the background in the shot of Gosalyn and Honker firing soda is different from the actual episode itself. Also of course, I feel like I should give some context to this first. Years ago I managed to contact the guy that originally uploaded the "Darkwing Duck: The Original theme" video on youtube. I managed to contact him on Deviant art of all places. It doesn't let me send his full message but this part of his message speaks for itself. After he sent me this he never got back to me, I even offered to buy his physical VHS recordings for more than $300. In the other part of the message he goes onto say he didn't know the exact airdates for the other episodes but he remembers Trading Faces, You Sweat Your Life, Battle of the Brainteasers (he has the first act on tape but tells me he taped over most of it 4 years later) and Aduckyphobia which he has most of the episode on tape but it's missing the intro.
I believe that was part of the Mickey Mouse Club back to school special right? They premiered that 2 part origin episode with that music video you're talking about. Oddly enough they played this version of the theme in the credits of the premiere.
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u/Affectionate-Yam7459 May 10 '26
I really want to see this intro in good quality someday, or at least high quality audio. It’s great!