The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 42

Tyger Tyger

 

The Island of Dr Moreau?  Since this episode was made long before the 1996 film, we wonder if it may have inspired the film. Selina Kyle is kidnapped and turned into a cat lady by evil scientist Dr Emil Dorian.  He wants a girlfriend for his creation Tygrus.  Why he converted Batman’s girlfriend instead of a random runaway makes no sense.  Also, why didn’t he just make another girl cat from scratch for Tygrus? 

 

Illogical reasons aside, he’s a total loon and Batman has to beat him up.  Tygurs is conflicted but since he’s in love with the cat version of Selina Kyle he opts to embrace the pussy…cat’s side.  Dorian gets himself killed by being a douche. Kyle’s given the antidote to her cat transformation by Tygrus because no one normal wants to be a furry.  Normal people like to dress up in leather outfits of their favorite animal. It ends all artsy with Batman reciting The Tyger by William Blake.  

 

Not a bad episode but Batman had one too many genetic monster episodes and the redundancy of Selina Kyle infected with something was genetic McGuffin as he races to save her was becoming a trope.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 4

Episode 95 In A Mirror Darkly, Part II

 

Evil Archer takes command of the Defiant and learns of his alternate self.  Evil Archer who is typically passive, weak, lacking ambition becomes inspired by this news.  He sets out to prove himself as a competent leader.  He takes tons of different struggles head-on.  

 

Evil Archer fights a Gorn! Star Trek only ever saw the Gorn in the original series episode Arena where Kirk fights a man in a rubber lizard suit.  It’s actually a great TOS episode but limited by its costumes, so it has a lot of campiness to it.  Enterprise makes a much more menacing CGI Gorn for Archer to defeat.    

 

The Defiant’s memory banks holding an alternate history of events also influence other characters in the mirror verse and cause a rebellion lead by T’Pol.  The revolt ultimately fails and Archer maintains his power.  Archer then sets his sights on taking over the empire.  

 

As Archer celebrates his victories, he’s betrayed by Evil Sato who kills him, takes command of the ship, goes to Earth, and declares herself Empress.  It’s a silly twist but it closes out the episode.  

 

It’s another brilliant episode and incorporates so much of Star Trek into the show.  The ending is a little silly but since they are all evil and the Empire doesn’t fall until the time of Kirk and Spock, there’s no real way to craft a resolution that isn’t an entire season of episodes.  Therefore the twist with Sato resolves everything and let’s us move back to the main universe stories.    The best part is all the original series paraphernalia that’s used via the USS Defiant whose origins are from said series.  The costumes, phasers, ship design are all beautifully designed and fun to watch.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 41

Joker’s Wild

 

Cameron Kaiser makes a casino modeled after the Joker.  It turns out to be an insurance scam because his original casino plans cost too much money.  So the Joker theme is crafted to entice the Joker to come to the place and destroy it.  The only problem is, it also attracts Batman because he goes where the Joker goes.  So Kaiser’s plan, which was a pretty solid idea, fails.  

 

Kaiser was a total jerk about it though because he had no concern about the lives that could be hurt with the Joker running around blowing up his buildings.  So poor on execution but still a smart idea.  This also proves Joker had sound logic in trying to trademark his image in Laughing Fish.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 4

Episode 94 In A Mirror Darkly Part I 

 

Such a great episode.  It tells a story in Star Trek’s Mirror universe where all the evil characters have goatees.  There’s no clumsy cross over incident, it’s just a story in an alternate universe.  

 

Archer is not captain in the universe.  Earth is an evil regime.  Archer manipulates the Enterprise to capture a ship the Tholians have possession of.  The ship in question is the USS Defiant that disappeared into a space warp as seen in Star Trek the original series episode The Tholian Web.  The Enterprise writers decided to have the USS Defiant warp through time and space into the mirror verse.  AMAZING!!! This is one pure meta reference and answer which again connects Enterprise to the grander world of Star Trek.  

 

The Enterprise is destroyed while Evil Archer and comrades try to steal the Defiant from the Tholians.  Episode ends on a cliffhanger.

 

So much awesome in one little episode.  Specifically the fact it takes place in the mirror verse is amazing in it of itself.  The callback to an original series episode is brilliant.  Having Tholians in the episode, YES! YES! YES! It has everything a Star Trek fan would want.   

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 40

If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

 

Riddle me this! We finally get The Riddler and he’s awesome!  His real name is Edward Nigma and he’s an arrogant douche who was cheated out of tons of money for a game he created.  He seeks revenge on a former business associate Daniel Mockridge.   Bruce Wayne is trying to cut a deal with Mockridge to bring a tone of jobs to Gotham.  His riddles entice Batman and Robin get involve and save the day.  

 

It’s a fun episode all around and the riddles are as clever as the traps he creates for the dynamic duo.  John Glover as the voice of The Riddler is the perfect casting.  The right tone of arrogance, brains, and subtle fear.  

 

The ending is brilliant and grim.  Batman and Robin save Mockridge, The Riddler escapes. Mockridge is a weasel but he still makes millions in the business deal, lives the rest of his life in pure fear Riddler will come back for him.  

 

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 4

Episode 93 Bound

 

Enterprise inherits some Orion Slave Girls.  They release pheromones on the ship that drive the men crazy.  They use these abilities to try to take over Enterprise and we also learn the women run the Orion Syndicate.  The men are slaves to them.  It’s a great twist that doesn’t undo Star Trek lore since not much has ever been revealed about the Orion Syndicate.  People just assumed the men ran things and the women were actual slaves. 

 

Orion Slave Girls basically have the same affect Famke Janssen had in Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Perfect Mate.  While The Perfect Mate played out quite well as a Captain Picard driven episode.  Bound is more plot driven but manages to develop the relationship between T’Pol and Commander Tucker.  Since Tucker and T’Pol are so in love they are the only people not affected by the Orion Slave Girls and are able to save the ship from being captured.  

 

It is a nice stand alone episode but also calls back to the Augment arc earlier in the the season.  Back when the Orions stole a bunch of crewmembers and Enterprise had to rescue them.  Another episode cementing how brilliant Season 4 of Enterprise truly was. 

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 38 & 39

Heart of Steel: Part 1 and Part 2

Another great two-parter, it’s in the same vein as the Max Fleischer’s Superman short where he fights killer robots.  This a more intricate plot but it’s the same premise.  A super computer called HARDAC wants to take over the world.  He’s replacing key figures in Gotham with robot duplicates but saving humans for research purposes because it’s a children’s cartoon and it would be too morbid to kill them.  

 

Bruce Wayne falls for one of the robots, Miranda who is modeled after Karl Rossum’s late daughter.  She discovers Bruce Wayne is Batman and HARDAC makes a Batman duplicate.

 

The subplot involves Barbara Gordon knowing Commissioner Gordon is acting like a total jerk.  The reason being he’s a robot, she starts investigating in Batgirl fashion.  Her investigative skills bring Batman into the fold.  We learn Harvey Bullock is a robot.  He tries to kill Batman but Batman destroys him in the most gruesome way possible.  BtAS loved killing robots in horrible ways since there were no standards and practices rules which existed about robots.  As AI begins to take shape in the coming years, this rule may change and this episode could become censored or have a warning about robot violence. 

 

Batman tells Babara to chill and hide with a friend but she decides to head to the central computer.  Batman shows up as everything is going down. Massive fights and explosions happen.  Batman saves everyone, Barbara helps evacuate them.  It’s as much of “an awesome robots trying to take over the world” episode as it is “world building” episode for a future Batgirl.  It works on so man levels.  

 

HARDAC as a villain is truly menacing in an old school, 1940s, noir, sci-fi style.  One of the more underrated or perhaps forgotten Batman villains in the DCAU since he’s only featured as a bad guy in three total episodes counting this two-parter.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 4

Episode 92 Divergence

 

In the conclusion, Commander Tucker who left Enterprise only an episode ago has to come back and fix the engine that won’t turn off.  He does some cool transfer from ship-to-ship during warp speed.  It was certainly a new gimmick for Star Trek and thoroughly welcomed.  

 

Once aboard Tucker fixes the engine but has to stick around for repairs.  Lieutenant Reed is in trouble for lying to the Captain because of his affiliation with the Black Ops group Section 31.  A hidden organization that carries out covert stuff in Earth’s best interests and later the Federation’s best interest.  

 

Meanwhile Dr Phlox is working on a cure for the Augment Klingon super virus.  The results cause Klingons to lose their ridges and look more human.  Basically their makeup matches that of Star Trek the original series.  It explains why the 1960s show with less of a make-up budget had the aliens just look really tan.  

 

It’s a gag that started out on the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribulations where the DS9 people traveled back to Captain Kirk’s time.  That episode intercut clips from the Star Trek original series episode The Trouble With Tribbles.  The show had to explain why the Klingon Worf looked so much different than the Klingons in that episode. Saying better makeup effects really wouldn’t work within the show narrative.  Their vague explanation is that Klingons are allergic to tribbles.  So thus, tribbles somehow cured the side effects of Phlox’s cure to the mutated Augment disease.  

 

It’s truly amazing how clever the show was to incorporate the different Klingons.  It’s the result of failed genetic engineering experiments.  It’s a question fans weren’t seriously asking about.  It’s just something people accept as an inconsistency but Enterprise insisted on tightening up the storyline.  Every time Enterprise made an episode that bridged the gap between themselves and the original series, they knocked it out of the park.  Affliction and Divergence are some of the best examples of how to do a prequel story correctly.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 37

The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne

Dr Hugo Strange creates a machine that can read minds.  Instead of selling it to the government for billions of dollars he decides to blackmail random people for tens of thousands of dollars.  Batman investigates the shenanigans and his secret is exposed.  Strange tries to sell the secret to The Joker, Penguin, and Two Face but Batman stops him and manages to prove he’s not Bruce Wayne by having Robin dress up in the best prosthetic Bruce Wayne costume ever made.  

 

A lot of cool stuff happens in this episode.  This is the Almost Got ‘Em episode before that episode existed.  Combining Batman’s biggest rogues is very exciting.  The characters are so well defined at this point, the episodes write themselves when you put them in a room together.  

 

The show does fail with Hugo Strange who’s rather prominent in the comic and other DC media.  The DCAU got so much else right in it’s run, this is an extremely minor complaint for a very adaptable character.

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 4

Episode 91 Affliction

 

Dr Phlox is kidnapped by Klingons who made Augments of their own but with disastrous consequences.  They need his help to stop a super virus.  Commander Tucker leaves Enterprise because he’s heart broken about breaking up with T’Pol.  While Enterprise is searching for Phlox, Augmented Klingons board Enterprise and sabotage the engines.  The episode ends on a Speed cliffhanger where the engine won’t turn off and they cant slowdown.  

 

Bringing back the Augment storyline is a great idea.  Incorporating the Klingon into the fold is a great twist.  The ramifications to the entire Star Trek universe actually clears up some inconsistencies that were made due to budget limitations of the 1960s. 

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com