Batman: The Animated Series
Episode 62
His Silicon Soul
The HARDAC follow-up episode where we get to find out what happens to the Batman/Bruce Wayne robot duplicate. It’s a million times better than the very excellent HARDAC episode and has layers of action and drama you’d never expect from a children’s animated program.
The Batman robot thinks he’s a real person. When he discovers the truth, HARDAC tries to rebuild himself. Robot Batman struggles with conflicting thoughts which could be construed as feelings based on the different actions he’s taking.
When real Batman tries to stop Robot Batman from destroying the world and bring HARDAC back to life, it doesn’t go according the plan. Robot Batman thinks he killed real Batman and has a complete mental breakdown. He stops the destruction of the world by sacrificing his life. And as we’ve stated in prior posts, the DCAU creators loved killing robots in horrible gruesome ways. They didn’t disappoint.
While the standard and practices don’t have an issue with robots dying, the episode implies this robot might have had a soul. So kids got to see a fairly gruesome death of a living being. The death of Optimus Prime in Transformers traumatized thousands of children in the 80s. It makes one think that TV standards and practices might want to redefine their policies about living robots.
The concept of machines having a soul is still in the science fiction realm but the depth at which it explains what a soul is to children is well defined in the episode. The emotions, actions/reactions, feelings of Robot Batman cement the idea of how precious life is in a brilliant way that doesn’t preach and gets the points across. A somewhat underrated episode in BtAS.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
