Batman: TAS, episode #50: Off Balance

With this episode, Off Balance,  we return to being deeply immersed in the mythos. Not only are we plunged right into the action, with The Batman interrogating a source in Twitch (Chick Vennera) about the new gang in town, the Society of Shadows, but we go right from there to an encounter on the dockside involving a special project of Wayne Enterprises which not only introduces the primary opponent, Count Vertigo (Michael York) who's a one-off here since he's usually a Green Arrow opponent, but also Talia (Helen Slater), whose history in the stories of the Darknight Detective is enormously significant since Denny O'Neil first introduced her alongside Bob Brown in 1971 (Detective Comics #411.) Whereas last time we talked mostly about underlying themes and basic elements of the character, this time we're back to being wholly plot-driven as we eventually meet up with one of the main drivers behind much of our hero's existence for the past 50 years, Ra's al Ghul, voiced by the superb David Warner. All of this means that it should be no surprise that a long-time veteran of both The Batman and DC Comics, Len Wein, is once again scripting our tale. By that same token, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the story is a straight adaptation of the aforementioned Detective Comics plot, written by O'Neil, barring a few minor changes, like referring to the League of Assassins as the Society of Shadows and so forth.

Given that we're diving right back into the mythos, it's understood that this is a pretty straightforward adventure tale. In the original story, Twitch is seeking protection for giving the dirt on Dr. Darrk and the League/Society, but he's still meeting The Batman at the Statue of Freedom just as he is here. The Statue is the thin parallel to New York City's Statue of Liberty, which once again emphasizes the loose connection between the real city and Gotham City, which has only rarely been drawn into the light over the decades in the comics, and which hasn't been referenced at all during our overview of the Animated Series. It's kind of a long-running inside joke that ties Gotham City to DC Comics' and Bob Kane's location of origin, but also gives some level of creative freedom to establish locales like Wayne Manor and Crime Alley that don't require changing our reality overmuch. That said, meeting someone at the torch of the Statue is still shining the spotlight/torchlight pretty brightly on what should be a clandestine encounter. The Society agents also seem to commit suicide at the end of said encounter, only for our hero to confirm to Alfred that they instead "erased their minds", which was an obvious dodge to escape the censors for a "children's show." There's a great history moment here, as we see Alfred actually cleaning the giant penny in the Batcave, but also a kind of goofy moment, when The Batman is narrowing the possibilities of where Count Vertigo's hideout could be only to spotlight the most obvious "evil villain hideout" since Castle Dracula.

But before that, we have the fight at the docks over Wayne Enterprises' "sonic drill" that not only brings in the stalwart Lucius Fox (Brock Peters) but also introduces us to Talia. This is one of the more complex characters in The Batman's history and neither Wein nor Slater are ham-handed about her presence. She's depicted as wholly capable in her own right but also obviously acting in her own (and her father's) interests, even when she and our hero are working toward the same goal of dealing with Vertigo. Again, the decision to use a stock Green Arrow villain, rather than the less-imposing Darrk might've been a choice to step away from the "less superpowered" approach that was the path of O'Neil from the outset, as he and Neal Adams were the pair most identified with trying to bring the main character back from the villain-of-the-week-and-his-gimmicks abyss that he had been condemned to through much of the 50s and 60s and restore that Darknight Detective aspect which, in this writer's opinion, revitalized the character and contributed to much of what followed through the succeeding half-century (Englehart, Miller, Nolan, etc.) The subsequent battle where The Batman and Talia are directly introduced is part of that, where there are some great atmospherics as our hero lurks in the trees before presenting a great shadow moment, as the image of the bat descends on the Society of Shadows. There's also a great scene transition from the use of the sonic drill to incapacitate them to where she's creating ripples in the bowl with the cloth she's using to revive him (and, of course, reveal that she's taken off his mask so that she knows who his other self is.) There's also a great technical moment when she drops the rag back into the bowl and we see water splashing out of it (Realism!)

Despite Talia being fully capable in her own right, we're witness to what we think is the enormous willpower of The Batman getting them through the vertigo effect, only to have it revealed to us that it was just a matter of him closing his eyes and feeling his way through it. This was the monosyllabic segment of the episode, where our hero communicates as simply as possible (Jump! Down! Stop! And, in a later scene, Up!) But we get the more complex aspects to both Talia and her "mysterious" father, as she mentions that Ra's departed company with Vertigo when he "... at last came to recognize the blackness of his soul.", which is perhaps lending more weight than needed to what is, again, the stock villain who suggests that "The entire laboratory has been rigged to destroy you!" Having abandoned the sense of sight to get through said lab, only to use Vertigo's sense of hearing to defeat him with the bells in the tower was a nice touch by Wein, certainly, even if our hero yelling at him while they were still running up the long staircase to the tower was unwise. Similarly, Talia testing the sonic drill while flying in a small airplane was also perhaps not emblematic of her character's noted intelligence. In the end, we finally see Ra's, even if he's not named, and find ourselves subsumed in those elements of character and story that O'Neil was trying to revive at the time with the villain's final quote: "Even in defeat, the detective manages to achieve some small manner of victory." Referring to him as "the detective" as O'Neil (and Ra's) chose to see him, rather than a superhero, bodes well for those of us that like stories with more depth. Given that this episode ended on a cliffhanger without really being a cliffhanger is another good sign in that respect and is another measure of storytelling that's different from last episode, but still quite worthwhile.