“Shadow of the Bat Part 1”
Written by Brynne Stephens
Directed by Frank Paur
Episode #057
Music by Shirley Walker
Animation Services by Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD.
Original Airdate—September 13th, 1993
Plot: When deputy commissioner Gil Mason arrests Jim Gordon on corruption charges, Barbara Gordon begs Batman to attend a public rally in support of her father. When Batman refuses, Barbara pretends to be Batman, just as the rally is attacked by thugs….
And so, at last, we have our first real superhero on the show other than Batman and Robin. While we have had a couple of non-super versions of other heroes, and several villains that are dark reflections of Batman, Batgirl is the first character Batman directly inspires to put on a costume and find crime.
In some ways, Batgirl’s introduction is done very well. Brynne Stephens also wrote Barbara’s first episode, “Heart of Steel,” and has a good understanding of the character. Having already established that Barbara is brave and loyal, this episode adds that Barbara is an accomplished gymnast, as we first see her flipping around the gigantic gymnasium the Gordons apparently have in their basement (No wonder people believe Gordon is on the take). Her athletic skills lead to a very bouncy fighting style, jumping all over the place, grabbing passing banners and such. That’s helpful, as this Barbara has no combat training at all (in the comics, she at least had a brown belt in judo).
Unfortunately, Barbara’s motivations for putting on a costume make no sense. Whatsoever. Of course Batman refuses to appear at a rally. Batman avoids the media like the plague and tries not to even go out in daylight. Of course he’d think actually finding the man who’s framing Gordon is a better use of his time. And why would an appearance by Batman help Gordon? Wouldn’t it just remind the public that Gordon is a guy who uses extra-legal vigilante tactics to bring down his enemies?
On the other hand, Barbara’s right, “Batman” appearing at the rally does gather support, but it’s only because the animation cheats. She looks just like Batman while she’s swinging in public, but as soon as she lands it’s clear that a) Barbara is a head shorter than Bruce and b) she’s much curvier than Batman, even her face. Why would anyone say “Hey, that’s Batman” and not “Hey, that’s a short woman dressed as Batman”? Why does Robin have to see her hair before he realizes she’s a woman?
But then it makes no sense for Barbara to continue to go from pretending to be a superhero to really being one. After discovering that Gil Mason is behind her father’s frame job, Barbara says (to her previously introduced teddy bear Woobie) that “there’s no one I can trust.” But Gil is relatively new. How about trusting some of Gordon’s older friends on the force, like Bullock or Montoya? Also, Barbara doesn’t know that Batman’s been captured by this point, why wouldn’t she try going to him?
In the larger sense, why does Barbara become a vigilante at all? It makes sense for Bruce and Dick. They both have immediate tragedies in their lives that the police failed to resolve. They have reasons not to trust the cops, and to instead trust their own ten years of training. If Barbara wants to fight crime, out of duty and for the thrill, why wouldn’t she follow her father’s footsteps and become a cop herself? (In fact, later on, much later on, she will).
Besides our hero, this episode introduces two other important names. The first is Matches Malone, Bruce’s go-to alias when he’s undercover in the underworld. One may wonder why Matches keeps getting hired, because you’d think he’d start to get a reputation as Bat-Bait. This is his only appearance in the cartoon, but it’s a fairly memorable one, especially the well done bar scene where his lip reading skills are conveyed through shot choices, music, and Matches narrowing his eyes.
The second intro is district attorney Janet Van Dorn. She only has one scene, but it’s clear she strictly adheres to the law. And though they don’t say it, that puts her on a collision course with Batman.
Frank Paur really takes advantage of the two-part structure to deliberately pace this episode to set up the mystery. He gives the viewer the full half hour to figure out what’s going on. Clues are placed, some subtle—Gil ducking before shots are fired—some not—a building that is perfectly new on its left face, run down on its right—allowing the viewer to guess who’s behind the crime. And it’s fun watching the three heroes follow three different paths to get to the same conclusion. Batman uses boots on the ground undercover work. Robin rewatches footage of the crime. Batgirl does research at the police station.
But all roads lead to Two-Face.
“Shadow of the Bat Part 2”
Written by Brynne Stephens
Directed by Frank Paur
Episode #061
Music by Harvey Cohen
Animation Services by Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD.
Original Airdate—September 14th, 1993
Plot: When Two-Face and deputy commissioner Gil Mason capture Batman and Gordon, Robin and the new Batgirl must rescue them.
As part 2 has the same writer, director, and animation studio as part 1, the only difference between the two halves of “Shadow of the Bat” is the music. Harvey Cohen takes over for Shirley Walker, and he brings a noticeably jazzier score, especially when Two-Face is blasting away at the Dynamic Trio in the subway.
As he has only appeared as a supporting character in couple of episodes, this is the first episode about Two-Face since his origin. We get a lot more of how he works as a villain here than we had before. For one, he has completely rejected the name Harvey Dent, screaming in rage when Gil calls him Harvey. (Of course, Poison Ivy and the Joker call him Harvey all the time). He’s interested in corruption, lies, and deceit, framing a good man for being corrupt, setting up a corrupt man as a paragon of virtue. He’s got back up plans for his back up plans. Shooting Batman and Robin, then blowing them up, then drowning them. And giant prop coins continue to be his undoing, as this one flips him in the air then cartoonishly flattens him.
His scheme, by the way, is perfect for Two-Face and Two-Face alone. On the one hand, he is doing good by helping the police bring down other ganglords (including Rupert Thorne, for an extra bit of revenge). On the other, scarred, hand, he’s using the police to take out his rivals, thus giving his own gang more power and moving his puppet into a position of power. That kind of grand, Machiavellian scheming seems beyond the other Arkham inmates, who are more interested in the immediate crime, and too complicated for the “mundane” mob bosses. If his plan had succeeded, Two-Face would have been controlling both the cops and the robbers in Gotham.
A city where the cops are just as corrupt as the crooks might have been an interesting setting for Batman, and that the ending nips that idea in the bud shows how far the series has come since the pilot. “On Leather Wings” implied Mayor Hill was super corrupt and Harvey Bullock was openly gunning for Gordon’s job. Now, Bullock is Gordon’s most loyal attack dog, and the citizens of Gotham are shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear that Gordon has been accused of corruption.
But really this episode is about Batgirl and Robin. I’d hesitate to say they “team up,” since they spend the first half of the episode dramatically not working together, and Robin spends the second half not drowning, but the tension between the characters is palpable. As soon as he meets her, Robin is immediately flirt/fighting with her, talking about “girls in his club” and telling her to go home, this is too dangerous.
And he never gets comeuppance for his patronizing attitude because, in a sense, he’s right. Batgirl doesn’t know what she’s doing, almost kills herself swinging across the street, and messes up Robin’s rescue of Batman by tripping. Instead of giving Robin a lot of attitude, she should have said “Oh hey, established superhero with years of training and Batman’s ear, here’s everything I know about Gil Mason and the mole-faced goon.”
Maybe Robin’s attitude was to contrast his years of training with Batgirl’s “can-do attitude,” but really it just comes across as sexism. Which brings us to the sexism of calling her “Batgirl” instead of “Batwoman.” Barbara is no more a “girl” than Dick Grayson is a “boy.” She’s old enough for her father to be setting her up with his second in command. She just can’t be “Batwoman” because that would set her up as the equal of Batman, and we can’t have that. At least she’s still not fighting crime with cosmetics… as she did in “Heart of Steel.”
They set up a Robin/Batgirl relationship (Robin negs Batgirl for half an episode, disappears, then jerkily asks “Miss me?” and it turns out that yes, she did) but they’re also setting up the Robin/Batgirl/Batman love triangle that really gets going in the New Batman Adventures. Both Batman and Robin assume Batgirl is the other one’s date—“I thought she was with you. She’s got your taste in clothes”—and Batgirl is definitely excited to see Bruce change into his Batman clothes for more than just crime fighting reasons. Though, look at that hairless chest. Wouldn’t you be?
Robin is more quippy than usual this episode. Not only is he constantly flirting with Batgirl, he openly laughs about their chances from escaping a flood, complains about subways getting more dangerous after they crash through a wall, and nonchalantly takes out Two-Face’s goons in a way that reminds you, oh, yeah, circus acrobat.
As for Batgirl, it’s not clear how her secret identity survives the ending. Gil pulls off her mask before crashing and ending up in a coma, setting up his return. But since he never comes back, I guess he died in that coma? On the other hand, Jim Gordon meets Batgirl face to face. Even if the costume is that good, he also hears her voice. Why aren’t his first words, “Barbara, what are you doing in that costume?”
Steven Padnick is a freelance writer and editor. By day. You can find more of his writing and funny pictures at padnick.tumblr.com.
So, did you really enjoy Q getting decked by Sisko, or what?
hahahahahahahahahaah
At first I really hated the idea of Q. As a sci-fi fan, I hate the way sci-fi and fantasy are often lumped together in the same category and I saw an omnipotent alien as a way to sneak an element of fantasy into a sci-fi series. And that did happen: in the TNG episode “Qpid” — the last time we saw Vash — Q took the Enterprise crew on a romp through Sherwood Forest.
Nevertheless, in time I became a big fan of John de Lancie. His fun, charming and one-of-a-kind performances earned him complete ownership of the role. I couldn’t imagine another actor playing Q. This episode is not de Lancie’s best; it aired about the same time as the TNG episode “Tapestry” and I always thought that “Tapestry” was the stronger performance. Still, I enjoyed this one, too.
Vash is an interesting character because she represents one of the first efforts to steer away from Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future where humans are no longer motivated by profit and material gain. That vision was most evident in the first season of TNG and it often had a whiff of smug triumphalism about it. The franchise was already backing away from that vision in TNG Season 3 when we first met Vash. In “Q-Less” — the last time we see Vash in TV Star Trek — the transition is complete. Vash may very well be a misfit in 24th century human society, but misfits make interesting characters and one of the refreshing things about DS9 is the way characters are given more individuality and are not merely stereotypes of their respective cultures.
I liked the sexual tension between Vash and Bashir. It looked like Julian was about to get lucky but then Q intervenes and sends him to bed — alone! The oo-mox scene with Vash and Quark was hilarious.
Q is seriously my ALL TIME FAVORITE SNG charachter ever!! I don’t think I’ve disliked a single episode he’s been in. He’s especially amazing in Voyager!! Him and Janeway crack me up lol
@2: I tend to agree: DeLancie’s performance was the only thing that made the ludicrous concept of Q palatable.
But this episode illustrates how the writers often seemed to use Q as a sort of audience stand-in, voicing the criticisms you’d hear from viewers and basically giving the characters a chance to respond to those criticisms. The fact that he actually used the word “technobabble” in onscreen dialogue makes that clear; until then, that was just a bit of fan/producer vernacular, a teasing nickname for the technical dialogue. Q was almost a metatextual character, coming ever so close to breaking through the fourth wall and acknowledging the audience.
On the pre/post-ganglionic thing, I never felt that later fix was necessary. I never took his line here to mean that he mistook the actual items for one another, but rather that he misread a written question, thinking it said one thing when it actually said another.
Why does the Daystrom Institute, which is named for a computer scientist, have an archaeology department? I think that once the Institute was introduced, there was too much tendency by later writers to use it as a catchall science institution, which is a case of small-universe syndrome.
This in some ways seemed more like a half-baked idea than a fully thought out episode. “Hey, what if Q shows up on DS9?” says one writer. “But he has Vash with him” says another. “Bring her along and let her be disreputable with Quark” says the first. “What’s the problem in the episode?” says the second writer. “Make something up- it’s a Q episode… just technobabble a b plot…”
While I love the interaction between Q and Sisko (it further differentiates that Sisko is not Picard just as Picard was not Kirk) but there really isn’t anything happening here. As you pointed out, Vash has chemistry with just about everyone except Picard, but I think that’s because Picard is a very responsible and mature individual and you can’t quite imagine him involved with someone as irresponsible and immature like Vash. Picard is simply too serious to get involved with Vash, whereas Quark is appropriately irresponsible, Bashir is appropriately immature (and young enough to be motivated by lust) and Sisko isn’t so “by the book” like Picard is.
To follow up on CLB’s point in #4 about the Daystrom institute, I agree with your basic issue. The only thing I could think is that like Harvard University, which was built as a divinity school and remained as such for almost 170 years before it was secularized. Perhaps Daystrom started out as a computer/AI institute but became involved in other areas as it grew. A real world example is the US’ supercomputer network, run by the National Science Foundation. The supercomputer network is run by NSF’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure but it touches on almost every other scientific discipline because of the growing abilities of computer based experimentation and modeling. But unless that’s what happened, Daystrom institute has basically been a catchall for non-Starfleet or Vulcan scientific research.
@@.-@ and @5: As for the Daystrom Institute, consider MIT. It is generally considered an engineering/applied science school; yet it has a stellar linguistics department and even the philosophy department is well regarded. Nevertheless, in a Federation of hundreds of worlds one would expect a number of top-notch research institutes. Perhaps the Daystrom Institute is the MIT of 24th century Earth and it appeals to Vash because Earth is home.
As much as I love John Delancie, I generally hate Q episodes (“Tapestry” is a major exception, perhaps because it’s never entirely clear whether or not it is a Q episode). But here at least he keeps this from becoming merely a Vash episode. Vash is never a good idea. Hetrick’s lack of on-screen chemistry with Patrick Stewart is odd, since they apparently had a fair amount of it off screen, even being engaged at one point. Still, that lack of chemistry poisoned the character for me forever. She’s never written very well either.
I do like that neither Vash nor Q recognize O’Brien at first. We know him, because he regularly had lines to speak and interacted with the main cast. But for guests of the week, he really was just the guy who pushed the buttons for the transporter (which meant that Q really never would have had anything to do with him).
@@.-@: I really like your explanation for Bashir screwing up the question by misreading it. Happened to me in high school where I flipped biography and autobiography in a test because I was going too fast. Unfortunately, the way the line is written it is difficult to interpret it that way. I think I’ll do so anyway, though.
One of my favorites from season 1. Sisko decking Q is also a favorite scene of mine.
Bobby
http://www.bobbynash.com
I had stopped watching early in the 1st season, so when I decided to pick it back up again, this was the last episode I remembered watching, so I started back up with the next ep. (Unfortunately I had already seen the next 3 eps. Just didn’t remember that I had.)
I always thought Q had a personal connection to Picard, but his appearance here made me wonder if Q pestered other Starfleet ships and outposts, not just those that happened to have a tv show. I haven’t read any of the novels, so I don’t know if that’s been addressed. I suppose it probably has.
I see the bug lunky alien that’s always hanging about is in the picture with Q and Sisko dueling (no idea whatsoever what his name is). Is this his first appearance? Personally I think he should have a section in the recap just letting us know if he appeared and where he was hanging out (you could even mention what he was doing, which would just be hanging out).
I always loved this episode because it really underscored the difference between DS:9 and TOS/TNG, as well as between Sisko and Kirk or Picard. “Picard would never hit me!”
DS:9 was a much darker, more violent – and yes, far more exciting – series. Sisko isn’t the Gorn; I seriously doubt Kirk & Picard together could take him in a fistfight.