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

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

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 36

Cat Scratch Fever

 

Roland Daggett is infecting stray cats with a virus that he will then release into Gotham to get everyone sick and then sell them the cure.  Catwoman’s cat goes missing and gets caught up in the shenanigans.  Catwoman is infected and Batman has to save her.

 

Daggett never gets his due in BtAS.  He’s this corporate jerk who keeps squeaking by.  Even if Batman stops his major plans, Daggett never gets tossed in jail.  This is the first episode we see Dr. Milo in.  He’s a recurring jerk throughout BtAS who finally gets his comeuppance in Justice League Unlimited almost a decade later.  

 

Perhaps the episode is a bit too honest.  It’s entirely believable if actual pharmaceutical companies did this.  

 

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 90 The Aenar

 

Enterprise and friends travel to a remote area of the Andorian home world to try and stop the drone ship causing problems in the area.  They befriend a girl who’s the sister of the Andorian controlling the ship for the Romulans.  He went missing months earlier.  Enterprise crew accurately believe he is the one piloting the drone.  

 

Jhamel goes to Enterprise and helps contact her brother who learns the Romulans are deceiving him.  He agrees to destroy the ship even though it will kill him in the process.

 

It’s a nice wrap-up that features our favorite aliens the Andorians.  Another great story arc in the season.  It keeps the viewer enthralled in each episode.  It somewhat wraps up the Romulan threat established in the Vulcan story arc.  Later season might have fleshed the Romulan wars more.  But it’s still satisfying conclusion.  

 

Season 4 really figured out the formula by this point and sadly it’s the show's last season when it occurred.   

 

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

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

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 35

Night of the Ninja

 

One of the first Batman origin episodes we get.  It revolves around an old rival of Bruce Wayne’s terrorizing his company.  Kyodai Ken blames Wayne for his downfall and plots revenge to destroy him.   We learn Wayne received martial arts training in Japan before he became Batman as part of his grand plan to be a vigilante.  A nice prequel buildup to Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.   Ken kidnaps Bruce Wayne and reporter Summer Gleason.  During their captivity Wayne challenges Ken to a Samurai fight.  Since Summer is there, Wayne has to throw the match so she doesn’t learn he’s Batman.  Robin in his attempt to rescue Wayne sees the him throwing the fight and obstructs Summer Gleason’s vision.  At that point Bruce Wayne goes full Batman on Kyodai Ken and totally annihilates him in the battle.  Ken fakes his death until we see him again many episodes later. 

 

A truly original Batman episode that goes into his pre Batman years and the steps he took to become the best fighter in the world.  It deviates from the comic and in a nice way.  A solid backstory the show builds on in later episodes.     

 

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