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Danny Phantom

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Danny Phantom
File:DannyPhantom.jpg
Danny Phantom, as seen on the show's opening sequence.
Created byButch Hartman
StarringDavid Kaufman
Colleen O'Shaughnessey
Rob Paulsen
Kath Soucie
Rickey D'Shon Collins
Grey DeLisle
Ron Perlman
Cree Summer
Martin Mull
Country of originUnited States
No. of episodes37 (at present- 53 final count)
Production
Running time22 minutes per episode
Original release
NetworkNickelodeon
ReleaseApril 3, 2004 –
(TBA-Feb. 2007)

Danny Phantom is an American animated television series created by Butch Hartman for Nickelodeon, produced by Billionfold Studios, and distributed outside the United States by the Canadian animation company Nelvana, the same as The Fairly OddParents.

Premise

The series primarily takes place in the city of Amity Park, and focuses on the life of a 14-year-old boy named Danny Fenton. The son of a pair of ghost hunters, Danny was involved in an accident in his parents' lab that ended up bonding ghost ectoplasm to his DNA. This resulted in him gaining ghost powers that enable him to go invisible, walk through walls, fly, fire ectoplasmic beams of energy, and recently use a super sonic "ghostly wail". Danny, as a ghost, Goes by the name "Danny Phantom" but his ghostly enemies never figure out it's him.

Throughout the series, he learns how to use his ghost powers as his alter-ego, Danny Phantom. He uses them to primarily defend his friends and family from troublesome ghosts that escape from the Ghost Zone, another dimension that can be accessed through a portal Danny's parents built.

Danny's best friends are Sam and Tucker, who know his secret. Like with Butch Hartman's other show, The Fairly Odd Parents, the main character is in love with a popular girl who does not acknowledge his existence. The stories are driven by Danny's balance between his schoolwork and his secret life as a superhero.

Though the show does have a comedic element to it, the show focuses primarily on action. Like many Nickelodeon shows, Danny Phantom seems mostly "episode-centric" (each episode has its own plot, villain, and characters and is generally unconnected to other episodes). However, though each episode can generally be viewed on its own and out of order, there is a specific continuity to the series - whenever Danny gets a new power, discovers a new villain, or is introduced to another new gadget of his parents' invention, said power, villain or invention will usually be used again in later episodes, and the characters will show familiarity with it. Examples of this include Danny using his Ghostly Wail technique on enemies after the episode "The Ultimate Enemy."

Production

The show was created by Butch Hartman, who also created the television series The Fairly OddParents. Nickelodeon ordered an initial thirteen episodes, after which there was a long hiatus of six months where no new episodes were produced due to financial difficulties. The first episode aired in the United States on April 3, 2004.

The designs were done by veteran character designer Stephen Silver, with Butch Hartman adding his own touches. All Danny Phantom human and ghost characters have necks and five digits on each hand. The majority of the stories are usually written by Steve Marmel with input from Mark Banker, Butch Hartman, Marty Isenberg, and Sib Ventress. The music for the show, as with another Butch Hartman show The Fairly OddParents, was written by Guy Moon.

The show was expected to end its run in February of 2007.

Characters

Major Characters

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  • Daniel "Danny" Fenton/Phantom (voiced by David Kaufman): The titular hero of the show. Danny is a 14-year old boy who accidentally gained ghost powers from a lab accident. He later chooses to use these powers to fight against malevolent ghosts, which have begun to regularly escape the mysterious Ghost Zone and plague the town. He is the son of Jack and Maddie Fenton, a pair of obsessed ghost hunters. He has had a crush on Paulina (popular girl), but after a while he began to like Valerie Gray, eventually he got a crush on her. He really likes her, even after she dumped him to fight his ghostly form, even though it hurt Valerie to do so.
  • Tucker Foley (voiced by Rickey D'Shon Collins): A geek obsessed with technology and Danny's best friend. When not obsessing over gadgets, he's obsessing over girls. Like Sam, he shares in Danny's secret and often helps out when it comes to returning ghosts to the Ghost Zone.
  • Samantha "Sam" Manson (voiced by Grey DeLisle): Danny's other best friend. Though technically wealthy, she chooses to hide her family's monetary success for quite some time, in favor of being liked for who she is instead of her net worth. A strident individualist, Sam is a practioner of an extreme form of vegetarianism (referred to in the series as "Ultra Recyclo-Vegetarianism"), a frequent protester for such things as animal rights, and a self-proclaimed "Goth" who prefers heavy metal music and favors an all-black, Punk-influenced fashion. She also designed Danny's emblem in the episode "Memory Blank".
  • Jasmine "Jazz" Fenton (voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey): Danny's know-it-all (and somewhat overprotective and perhaps overhelpful) older sister; a smart and highly sociable overachiever. Jazz considers her parents' obsession with ghosts as as sign of needing psychological help. Discovers that Danny has ghost powers in the episode "My Brother's Keeper", but does not reveal her knowledge of it until "The Ultimate Enemy", in favor of waiting until he's ready to talk about it with her.

Key Antagonists

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  • Valerie Gray (voiced by Cree Summer): A kid whose life was accidentally turned upside-down by Danny's ghostly alter-ego, Danny Phantom. She bears a grudge against him and has vowed to hunt him down, mostly using equipment given to her by a mysterious benefactor (who turns out to be Vlad Masters). In one episode, Technus (A techno-ghost) exposes Valaries's crush on Danny and pushes them together, thus almost destroying Danny by using his weakness (Valarie) and frustrating Sam (One of Danny's best friends) beyond belief.
  • Vlad Masters/Plasmius (voiced by Martin Mull): An old acquaintance of Jack and Maddie Fenton. The only other known half-ghost like Danny. Having been in love with Maddie since their college days, he is resentful of Jack having married Maddie and uses his powers to get his own way and attempt to destroy those that wronged him. Often referred to in the series as Danny's arch-enemy.

Episodes

All episodes are 22 minutes, making Danny Phantom the second non-Klasky Csupo Nicktoon to do this; Pelswick is the other series.

NOTE: All episodes are listed chronologically in order of occurrence within the Danny Phantom universe. Also, hour long episodes were originally made as two-part episodes and should be listed as such

Season 1: 2004-2005

  1. Mystery Meat (4/3/2004)
  2. One of A Kind (4/9/2004)
  3. Parental Bonding (4/9/2004)
  4. Attack of the Killer Garage Sale (4/16/2004)
  5. Splitting Images (4/23/2004)
  6. What You Want (4/30/2004)
  7. Bitter Reunions (5/7/2004)
  8. Prisoners of Love (5/14/2004)
  9. My Brother's Keeper (6/18/2004)
  10. Shades of Gray (9/24/2004)
  11. Fanning the Flames (10/8/2004)
  12. Teacher of the Year (10/15/2004)
  13. "13" (11/5/2004)
  14. Public Enemies (2/4/2005)
  15. Fright Night (10/29/2004)
  16. Maternal Instinct (2/18/2005)
  17. Lucky in Love (2/11/2005)
  18. Life Lessons (2/25/2005)
  19. The Million Dollar Ghost (6/3/2005)
  20. Control Freaks (6/17/2005)

Season 2: 2005-2006

  1. Memory Blank (6/24/2005)
  2. Doctor's Disorders (7/15/2005)
  3. Pirate Radio (7/22/2005)
  4. Identity Crisis (9/23/2005)
  5. Reign Storm (1 hour) (7/29/2005)
  6. The Fenton Menace (10/7/2005)
  7. The Ultimate Enemy (1 hour) (9/16/2005) * also made into Game Boy Advance Game
  8. The Fright Before Christmas (12/6/2005)
  9. Secret Weapons (12/9/2005)
  10. Flirting with Disaster (1/13/2006)
  11. Micro-Management (1/27/2006)
  12. Beauty Marked (2/24/2006)
  13. King Tuck (3/17/2006)
  14. Masters of All Time (3/24/2006)
  15. Reality Trip (1 hour) (6/9/2006)
  16. Double Cross My Heart (5/5/2006)
  17. Kindred Spirits (4/7/2006)

Season 3: 2006-2007

Thirteen episodes are currently scheduled for the third season in late 2006 and early 2007, bringing the total number to 53 episodes.

  1. Urban Jungle' (1 hour)

Trivia

  • The name of the town the series takes place in, Amity Park, is a reference to the real world town of Amityville, where the paranormal novel/movie The Amityville Horror took place.
  • The name of Danny's high school, Casper High, is a reference to the classic cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost.
  • In the episode What You Want, the arcade game at the movie theatre is entitled Crash Nebula.
  • In Splitting Images, Danny (or rather, Poindexter in Danny's body) did the Chip Skylark dance when he made the goal. Chip is a superstar in the animated series The Fairly OddParents.
  • In lieu of swearing, Mr. Lancer the English teacher shouts out the name of a famous book, short story, novel e.g. "Lord of the Flies!" Vlad, more or less, does the same thing, only he uses snack food names e.g. "Oh, sugar cookies!"
  • The upcoming TV movie, Reality Trip, was originally entitled as School Spirit. As a recent commercial revealed, the catchphrase for the movie is "School's Out, Ghoul's Out".
  • Danny's costume is nearly identical to the version the Fantastic Four used for years after an adventure in the Negative Zone in the early-1980s. In both cases the black-and-white costumes were created by weird energies affecting their previous clothing, causing a "negative image" effect. Starting with the second season opener, "Memory Blank," the "DP" logo was added to make Danny's costume more distinctive.
  • The doors in the Ghost Zone are probably a reference to Beetlejuice due to their random shapes and sizes
  • There are references made in the show to the setting of the show being somewhere in or around the Chicago metropolitan area. The Box Ghost mentions Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Other cities in the area that are mentioned are Kenosha, Madison, and Green Bay in Wisconsin. Another clue to the Chicago area is a Northwestern University test being taken during one episode.
  • In the episode Mystery Meat, Jack Fenton begins to tell Danny and friends how he grew up in a log cabin and wanted a pony. This is a reference used in the Fairly Oddparents episode "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker" as Crocker was giving the townspeople a speech about his life and started with that he was born in a log cabin ten years ago and when he was four he wanted a pony.
  • This show has many Star Wars references. This is mostly because creator Butch Hartman is a huge Star Wars fan.
  • Danny's cell phone number is 555-1221
  • In Double Cross My Heart, Sam, Tucker, and Gregor are in a bookstore looking at books. Among these is a book by George McFly, father of Marty McFly, titled "A Match Made in Space". The same book can be seen at the end of the first Back to the Future movie, and the cover characters represent Marty (in his "Darth Vader" getup) along with his parents.

Voice cast

Attempts to stop Danny Phantom from cancellation

In January 24, 2006, Butch Hartman made an announcement on his forums that the Nickelodeon Executives had decided not to purchase more episodes. Many fans reacted with outrage with the news and sent petitions to Nickelodeon, in order to stop the show's cancellation and to keep the show in production.

These groups have coined the terms "Save the Phantom" and/or "Keep Flying," and were taking steps as far as making shoe-polish DP symbols on their cars, and having a rally in New York City.

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Danny Phantom.

References

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