Dreams in Darkness

The last episode in the Volume 1 box set of Batman: The Animated Series brought back Scarecrow, sadly for the last time. "Dreams in Darkness" was the 28th episode produced and 31st aired on Nov. 3, 1992.

The beginning was intriguing and captivating. Starting with Batman in a straight jacket in Arkham Asylum was a great way to draw in the audience. It also was kind of fun to start the episode in the middle of the story and letting Batman narrate for us. A welcome change of pace that earns a point.

But the score slides back to a 5 because of Scarecrow's henchman, Torchy, who had a robotic hand that could be a power drill or a welding torch. And yes, his name really was Torchy, and yes, he used that hand as his main weapon while fighting Batman. Just all-around stupid.

Luckily, this episode answered one question that so many others fail to address: Why don't you take off Batman's mask after you capture him? Batman gets captured quite a bit, and most of the time the bad guys do little more than removing his utility belt. But here, Batman found himself trapped in Arkham and the orderly tried to remove his mask several times, but the doctor refused, saying the mask was at the root of Batman's delusions, and removing it too soon would cause more psychological harm. Good reason! It also explains why all the super villains in Arkham get to wear their costumes. I'll add a point for that.

I'll add another point for the haunting and rather dark hallucinations Batman had of his parents being shot. For this show, they really pushed the boundaries, and I think it paid off. Again, this show never actually showed Batman's origin story, so any little glimpses we can get like this are gold. Batman's hallucinations here also reminded me of Arkham Asylum the video game. But this episode came first, of course.

One unfortunate thing about this episode was that it followed so closely on the heels of another Scarecrow episode, and there were quite a bit of similarities between the two. In the last one, we got a quick tour through Arkham and saw a few villains, heard their musical themes and even had a quick line from the Joker. In this episode, Batman hallucinated several villains, who were accompanied by their musical themes again, which was nice. But the main villain Batman saw was the Joker, who was laughing. The only problem with that is it was not Mark Hamill's trademarked Joker laugh. Why is someone else laughing for the Joker? Why couldn't the producers go back into their audio files and replay an authentic Joker laugh? That, combined with the inconsistency of Arkham Asylum's design, will drop the score to a 6.

Now, the Scarecrow's main plot here was actually kind of cool. He wanted to pour fear toxin into Gotham's water supply. An idea so good that the wonderful Batman Begins did basically the same thing. I would add a point here, but I really hated that Batman defeated the Scarecrow's goons by whistling really loud into a microphone. Lord Slug, anyone? So sadly, I have to keep the score at 6.

Final score: 6

So that wraps it up for the first season of Batman: The Animated Series. Technically speaking, it wasn't really the first season because the airing order and production order were so messed up and overlapping, but the DVDs were organized this way, so that's what I'm going off. Season 1 had 28 episodes, with an average score of 7.2. Four episodes earned a perfect 10: "On Leather Wings," "The Last Laugh," "Two-Face" and "Heart of Ice." The worst episode was "I've Got Batman in My Basement," with a score of 1. All in all, not a bad start for the first serious, yet still kid-friendly, superhero cartoon. Let's see how Season 2 holds up.