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Batman TAS

Because I rather like the Justice League Cartoon, I thought I'd give the Batman Animated Series a try too. So I now have copies of most of the episodes of Batman The Animated series, plus the first season of the Gotham Knights series. Almost 100 cartoon episodes, yet with no real time for a cartoon marathon of watching all episodes in order in my immediate future. Hence I've been wondering which episodes are the highlights? Which ones are essential for cartoon continuity, the mytharc episodes so to speak? Any recommendations which eps I should pick from those of you familiar with the cartoon?

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For serious drama:

"Perchance to Dream" -- one of the best eps of BTAS bar none. Bruce Wayne wakes up one morning in a world where his parents aren't dead, he's engaged to be married, and everything seems just great... Notice the wacky forties styles as far as clothes, cars, etc.

"Heart of Ice" -- Introduces Mr. Freeze. An early episode, and you can see them finding their feet. On the one hand there's goofy jokes about Batman having a cold, and Mr. Freeze's minions wear silly Eskimo parkas. But the story (coldly callous cruelty that leads to colder revenge) is a stunner. Freeze is one of the best antagonists of BTAS-- even his episode of "Batman Beyond" chills me.

"Two-Face" -- How Harvey Dent became Two-Face. Of course you know the story, but they do it so *well*. Follow up with "Second Chance." ANGST. WOE.

"Robin's Reckoning" -- The origin of Robin are told in flashback, while in the present day, Robin and Batman clash over a certain case.

For humor:

The Harley Episodes. "Harley & Ivy," in which she's kicked out of Joker's gang and goes on a crime spree with Poison Ivy, "Harley's Holiday," in which she's declared sane, released from the asylum and... things go downhill from there, and "Harlequinade," in which she and Batman become unwilling partners to save Gotham from destruction. OK, she's my favorite character, but honest to god, each episode just gets funnier. Arlene Sorkin is hilarious and sad and sweet and just *awesome* as Harley. You gotta love a character who can make *Batman* double-take once in a while.

Another classic Joker episode is "The Laughing Fish" -- Mark Hamill turns the crazy up to eleven. Nice.

Personal favorites:

"House and Garden" -- Poison Ivy appears to have reformed. But has she really? Creeptastic, lurking horror and a nice humanizing look at one of the cooler villians.

"Feat of Clay," parts one and two. -- It really only kicks into gear in the second act, but the animation *rocks*. Clayface turns up again in JL's "Secret Society."

"Joker's Favor" -- Hitchcockian suspense and a nice little twist at the end.

"Tyger Tyger" -- Selina Kyle is kidnapped by a mad scientist. Not really the best episode ever... really, I don't know *what* it is, but whenever I say "Hey, I've got some BTAS" episodes, everyone always asks "Hey!! Do you have that one!?" I think it struck a chord in all our middle-school girl hearts.

"Zatanna" -- An old crush of Bruce's comes to Gotham; Batman has to help her when she's accused of a crime. I just love Zatanna-- she's spunky and cute and funny, and the flashback to young!Bruce is adorable beyond words.

"Heart of Steel" (two parts) -- creepy 'Pod People' type suspense, and freaking *fantastic* fight scenes. (The antagonists are robots, so the usual rules restricting the types of violence they could portray went out the window.)

"His Silicon Soul," sequel to "Heart of Steel," -- utterly glorious over-the-top ANGST!! ANGST!! WOE!! I can't resist angsty robotic!Batman. Once again, props to Kevin Conroy for *awesome* voice work.

Thanks for those description and your recs, it'S good to have a starting point.

As for the second series, The New Batman Adventures...

Drama:

"Old Wounds" and "You Scratch My Back" tackle the problematic Bruce/Dick relationship more or less successfully. Good, character-driven stories, and the animation is just *sleek*. "Sins of the Father" introduces Tim Drake as Robin, but otherwise isn't really a must-see.

"Never Fear" is a much better Tim episode, showing him holding his own as Batman's partner. Impressive little guy. *grins* And if you find that you like Tim, "Growing Pains" is an adorable Robin-focused episode that still manages to yank your heartstrings.

"Over the Edge" is mind-blowing and terrifying and *good*. Four stars.

For humor:

I like "The Ultimate Thrill," in which bad-girl stuntwoman Roxy Rocket takes on Batman in order to experience, well. The ultimate thrill. SO worth it, if only so you can spend hours wondering how the *hell* they slipped all the double entendres past the censors. *grins*

"Beware the Creeper" is funnier, though-- more re-watchable, more of a wacky-funny episode, *and* it has Harley! The pudding scene never fails to slay me.

Personal favorites:

The Superman crossover episodes. I just love 'em. "Knight Time" is sort of a Superman-and-Robin episode, and very cute. "Girls' Night Out" teams up Batgirl and Supergirl, and is pretty much just fanboy candy-- pretty girls and lots of stuff blowing up. Adorable.

And finally there's "Mad Love," Harley's origin story, which goes from being funny to tragic so fast it'll make your head hurt. *sigh*

Seems the more interesting episodes are mostly in the second half of the series. At the moment I only have the first thirteen of that one, I haven't found the second half yet. And I don't yet have the Superman Animated Series either, and I think Knight Time was an episode from that one.

If not someone happens to conviniently torrent whole cartoon seasons, I find it a rather hard and slow process to find old cartoon eps somewhere. Well, I should be busy with the Batman Animated Series for a while yet. :)

I should also rec "Night of the Ninja" and "Day of the Samurai," if only because they have NINJAS. And also flashbacks to young!Bruce doing his martial arts training in Japan.

-wandering in from friends friends list-

Wow, liviapenn just gave an awesome summary of the best episodes, and I agree with all of them for B:TAS. I especially agree with the Harley episodes - Harley Quinn is an absolutely fantastic character and is always a funny and menacing highlight of any episode she's in.

The one that she didn't mention that I absolutely loved was 'Almost Got Him' where the major villains of the series (Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, the Croc and Poison Ivy) play poker while trying to top each other's stories of how they almost killed Batman. Excellent episode.

Another one that I liked was 'Mad as a Hatter,' which explains the origins of the Mad Hatter. Very sad, with a great performance by whoever does the voice of the Mad Hatter - I think it's Malcolm McDowell but I'm not sure.

Among the Joker highlight episodes (and there are many) is 'Joker's Favor,' when an ordinary man has the unfortunate luck of encountering Joker and...well, it's Joker. Someone has to pay.

There are also episodes with one-shot villains that I particularly liked, although I'm aware not everyone shares my fondness for them. One of them is 'Read my Lips,' about a killer ventriloquist dummy. And that's not a typo of any sort! Great animation, and watch for what I thought (and still think) was a shockingly brutal and effective sequence involving the dummy near the end.

I also have a soft spot for 'Baby Doll." It's a flawed episode about a child star gone nuts. Tt seemed like the writers couldn't decide on which tone to strike so they hit all of them, but I love the episode regardless.

Have a blast watching them! B:TAS was a fantastic show.

Thanks for more episode recs, and I believe the Ventriloquist episode could be good, I rather like the Ventriloquist with his evil dummy Scarface in the comics, he's scary in a disturbing kind of way.

As mentioned above, "Mad as a Hatter" is one of my favs, as I'm a long-time collector of Alice in Wonderland ephemera and books. It first debuted on Dec 8, my birthday, which was something of a little over-the-moon fangirl prezzie for me that day. ;) Roddy McDowell did the Hatter's voice, not Malcolm. More trivia: he also played a character on the original Batman series, he was a second-string Evil Bad Guy, The Bookworm.

But my absolute favorite episode is The Gray Ghost episode, which had Adam West (squee!) doing the voice of the has-been actor who played The Gray Ghost, Bruce Wayne's favorite TV show when he was a kid. We see that Bruce got his inpiration for Batman from that show (YES!! BRUCE WAS A FAN!!!) This episode actually makes me cry, and it has the best ending ever.

God, the entire series was a-freakin'-mazing. You can get it bootleg on eBay, but I would much rather buy the DVDs from Warner Bros, if they'd get off their clueless butts and put them out in series form for us to buy instead of a couple of eps here & there.

so, uh, I can't help you but as a new fan, with relatively little money, I'd be willing to give postage, blank CD-Rs, and fic in exchange for animated series episodes...

*bats eyelashes*

Well, I'm not sure me sending them to you would be the most practical way to get the episodes, at least not if you're in the US, because I'm in Germany, and regular, non-priority packages tend to take forever these days (okay, four to five weeks, but before 9/11 it used to two to three weeks, sometimes less), and of course the postage would be more expensive than for packages inside the US too, and sending money is more of a hassle as well. That said, if you don't know anybody else who'd send you episodes, I do have most of the Batman: TAS episodes in avi file encodes of about 100mb per episode, which isn't the greatest quality but quite watchable, and I could make copies for you and send them for the cost of the blank CD-Rs and postage for sending them to you.

well, I'm not sure who to ask, being totally new to the fandom. Do you have any idea about how much Germany-U.S. postage on a fairly light package like this might be?

Unfortunately the postage for international packages doesn't get progressively cheaper for lighter packages below a certain weight. I checked on the website of the postal service, and if I interpret their information correctly (of which I'm not entirely certain), if I manage to package the CDs in a way that it could be still sent as a letter (the weight probably wouldn't be a problem, but possibly the format) the cheapest (i.e. the slower transport without insurance) would be 7 Euro, if I could only send it as a small package the cheapest would cost 12.30 Euro.

BTW, if you have a decent internet connection and no problem to leave you computer on for a while, you might want to check out suprnova.org, because right now there are active torrents for the Gotham Knights sequel series to Batman TAS in their cartoon section, and you could just download those.

Hey-- I've got a ton of episodes and I'm totally willing to burn CDs-- I've already got like ten people on my list. :) Drop me a note at livia001@hotmail.com, k?

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