Batman: TAS, episode #24: Mad as a Hatter

I'm a long-time Alice in Wonderland fan. I always appreciated the outright bizarreness of many of the concepts and characters contained in it; like a fairy tale, but with just that tinge of madness and darkness that takes it one step beyond. I designed a comic series many years ago that involved a number of characters with mental illnesses and one group of primary antagonists were called The Wonderland Gang. (I still have a few hundred pages of script for that sitting around somewhere...) And, of course, with so many of The Batman's opponents afflicted with their own particular issues, it doesn't seem outrageous that one of his enemies would be modeled on a notable character from Lewis Caroll's works. The Mad Hatter was first created by Bill Finger and Lew Sayre Schwartz in 1948 and has been a regular opponent and resident of Arkham Asylum ever since. That said, the Hatter always struck me as a bit of an outsider to the whole Batman milieu. Was he perhaps a bit too on the nose when lined up against more original characters like The Joker? Or is it lingering discomfort from seeing the Hatter's hat eyes shoot lightning that mind controlled people?

As a 5-year-old, that was kind of creepy, even if it later became as ridiculous as everything else connected to the Batman TV series. (Or maybe it was because they used the same visual effect as the Mummy Man from Ultraman, who was genuinely creepy?) Writer/producer Paul Dini fully engages the Wonderland mythos in this episode, establishing Jervis Tetch (strangely, one of the most normal of Batman villain names) as a devotee of Carroll, as well as a scientist at WayneTech. Instead of the hat being his central gimmick, he goes with the 10/6 price tags (the price of a hat (10 shillings, 6 pence) when original Carroll illustrator, John Tenniel, first drew the character) as his method of mind control. It's considerably less elegant than firing beams of light at your target, since you have to assume that everyone that Tetch approaches is going to let him wave a circuit board in the direction of their heads. But this is where fantasy meets reality. BTAS was intended for kids just as much as it was adults. Many kids might not be familiar with Alice in Wonderland and fully immersing them in the character as presented in Carroll's work might be a doorway (a very small door...) into the books where the character was created.

Dini goes full steam ahead with this approach, since the target of Tetch's affection is the department secretary, not only a dead ringer for Alice, but named that, as well. This is where we begin to debate the difference between ripoff and homage. Obviously, there are no illusions here, as this was intended to be a Wonderland adventure, beginning to end. But I couldn't help but feel that the whole treatment was a little heavy-handed. For all that the regular opponents, like The Joker and Catwoman, didn't receive the "origin" treatment or others, like Mr. Freeze, received nicely-woven new ones, this one stayed well within the bounds of what the character had usually been. The main exception was that the Hatter was acting not out of greed, but love unrequited, which is at least a more primal motivation and something that might encourage his more erratic behavior. It doesn't entirely cover all of the erratic behavior in the episode, since "Mr. Hat" didn't tell his would-be muggers to "climb the tower of the nearest suspension bridge and THEN 'jump in the river'", creating a really clumsy setup for The Batman to save them, but OK. Dini also uses lines from the books ("Curiouser and curiouser!") whenever he can.

There's a heavy dose of notable voice talent here, as well. The Hatter is Roddy McDowall of multiple SF production fame (Cornelius in Planet of the Apes, etc.), while Alice is Kimmy Robertson of Twin Peaks and Dr. Marcia Cates is Loretta Swit, most remembered as "Hot Lips" Houlihan from M*A*S*H, which makes her a very appropriate Red Queen, later in the episode. It's certainly arguable that, despite all of the high points, the story as a whole is a bit too much of a setup. Carroll didn't need to explain why the Unbirthday Party was so bizarre or why the Red Queen and her court were so strange because that was part and parcel of the whole adventure. Why everything seems so easy for Jervis Tetch and why Alice seems so willing to just ride along with it, outside of one great line ("This is getting too weird!") is a bit harder to explain. Where do we wobble between well-constructed story and amusement park ride? Certainly, Tetch hoping for Alice's affection makes him more relatable than most versions of the character in the comics or even the one who inspired all of them at the tea table which he attempts to recreate for his test subject rats in the first image of this episode. But it also doesn't make this much more than bog standard super-villain fare, either. But, then, this is a superhero cartoon, highlighted by the best line of the episode, from Alfred: "Then I'll prepare your usual breakfast: Toast, coffee... bandages." Overall, it was decent, but not especially thrilling.

Next time, we get a bit more down to earth, with The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy.