Justice League, Season 1, Episodes 6-7: The Enemy Below
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FUCK YEAH AQUAMAN!
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| Talking to fish and proud of it |
As one of DC's most major superheroes -- don't laugh, the dude's comic is one of the longest-running ones out there -- it's a bit of a bummer that he isn't on the show's League roster, but hey, at least he got a supporting role very early in the show!
Anyway, this episode is the first to have a major guest star. Aquaman, king of Atlantis, attacks a submarine, the U.S.S. Defiant, and actually was quite ready to leave them to drown. The Justice League (well, again, several of them: Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter) show up and beat up the Atlantanean warships. Superman negotiates with Aquaman and succeeds in earning his permission for saving the crew... but not the submarine. There's a nice little moment where both Superman and Wonder Woman recognize what Atlantis is -- Superman from his prior encounters with Aquaman in his home series, and Diana presumably from being a demigoddess. I also liked Green Lantern's more pragmatic approach, noting that leaving a nuclear submarine in the hands of someone who attacks vessels without provocation is insane, but Superman is more interested in peace.
Sadly, to the detriment of the story, we don't really learn why Aquaman and the Atlantaneans are so exasperated with the surface-dwellers other than vague 'trespass into our territory' and 'pollution' being thrown around here and there. But Aquaman is facing pressure from his military generals like General Brak to take the fight to the surface-dwellers. Aquaman and his wife, Mera, decide to follow Superman's advice and take it up with the world conference, if only to build a peaceful world for Aquaman's infant son. There's a nice little show of subtle political maneuvering from Aquaman's treacherous brother-vizier, Orm, when he tells Brak to stand down because his king knows best. It's a pretty neat moment that shows that Orm is biding his time, a nice bit of subtlety usually lost on comic book villain portrayal on the small screen. His plan in general, which hinges partly on a mixture of assassination and anti-surface-dweller hate propaganda, and the whole political plot that runs through much of the first part really makes me happy to watch this two-parter
I do like how even while vying for peace, Aquaman still goes around with the regality of an angry arrogant king, going around smashing cars on the way to the world conference and kind of threatening them if they do not make peace with Atlantis. Despite Superman trying to mediate peace which 'takes time', Aquaman walks out and gets shot at with a bazooka. There's a hilarious bit of reality where doctors have no idea how to handle Atlantanean physiology (one of which includes being unable to get an IV line because Aquaman's skin is tough) upon which Batman makes a dramatic entrance with the supremely intelligent revelation that... Aquaman needs to be put into a tank of seawater.
Honestly I find this just so hilarious that Batman's entrance is set to such dramatic music when his advice is "hey, let's dip Aquaman in salt water."
Of course, Orm takes over as king in Atlantis, having some creepy vibes with Mera and 'hiding' the prince for safety reasons. Man, Orm is disgusting. Batman sets up a trap for the assassin, Deadshot, by using J'onn as a decoy Aquaman... and what follows is a pretty cool action sequence as Deadshot manages to evade Batman and Wonder Woman through the sewers and the streets. (Though there's no excuse but plot to have the manhole cover stun Superman for a good chunk of the chase) And a nice, hilarious moment of 'getting crap past the radar', as the cool kids on TVTropes call it, where Deadshot implies that he'll spill information if they make it worth his time... while looking Wonder Woman up and down. Batman has several moments of off-screen interrogation -- a hilarious moment, too -- upon which Deadshot spills that whoever paid him paid him with Spanish doubloon gold.
Meanwhile, Aquaman knocks Green Lantern out to return to Atlantis himself. Man, Aquaman is just a huge impatient arrogant asshole! It's hilarious and fun. Aquaman returns to Atlantis to find that Orm has riled up a portion of his military against him, and Aquaman himself is taken into custody. The League (minus Batman) shows up slightly later, and are also taken into custody, sentencing to die by drowning.
Apparently the Atlantaneans, who can breathe in water... have an execution chamber... where they drown people? Um. The weird helmets that cause them to be unable to focus enough to use their powers is suspect enough, but honestly, death by drowning? That didn't make sense. But queen Mera smashes the execution chamber open and frees the League.
Meanwhile, in one of the show's darker moments, Orm chains Aquaman up above a volcanic fissure, and hangs his newborn child next to him, before blasting the rock outcropping and allowing it to sink down to the lava. Orm, of course, doesn't just kill the two of them outright, allowing Aquaman time to break one of his arms free from his bonds... but the rock is sliding down too fast, and Aquaman is forced to slice off his left arm to be able to break free. Aquaman, sans one arm, returns to the throne to meet up with Mera and the League. It's a pretty brutal moment, and also shows just how far Aquaman will go to protect his son. Aquaman replaces his missing arm with a kick-ass hook, while revealing that Orm is likely to use the plutonium he took from the submarine (Aquaman ordered the submarine to be left alone) to power up a weapon to melt the Antarctic polar caps, a last-ditch weapon built by the Atlantaneans. The League, plus Aquaman, head off to the Antarctic and we get a pretty cool scene of the League fighting the Atlantanean forces, including Aquaman summoning a giant whale to fuck up a platoon.
Aquaman, Green Lantern and Batman break through the gauntlet while the other Leaguers hold off the Atlantaneans, and we get Aquaman facing off against Orm in combat, while Green Lantern uses his power ring to protect Batman while he disarms the device. The earthaquakes causes Orm to lose his footing, and Aquaman lets his treacherous half-brother fall down into the deep dark crevice, while Batman, who successfully disarms the reactor, notes that 'we did it', refusing to take single credit for deactivating it. Aw, Bats, you do care.
The two-parter ends with Brak and Orm's loyalists arrested, while Aquaman himself resolves to continue working for peace.
It's definitely a different episode, in that the character that receives the most focus is Aquaman, who won't show up again until like a season later. But it's a very nice bit of worldbuilding and showing how the League deals with a brash, arrogant and uncooperative ally. Aquaman's temper and impatience is shown to be detrimental most of the times -- but at the same time the show consistently shows that he has a good side, like never arming the doomsday weapon despite building it, and the whole noble sacrifice to save his son. There's a bit of mutual respect between Green Lantern and Aquaman at the end of the two-parter after Aquaman helps save the surface world, with John being super-suspicious and super-opposed of Aquaman as an ally from the get-go.
Thinking about it, there's a lot of parts that could've been done better, ways to make Aquaman more sympathetic and perhaps to show that he truly has changed in the end, but perhaps just showing that he's willing to accept help in taking down Orm, when he was all one-man-show when he headed into the world conference or when he escaped from the hospital, is enough? It's a shame that while fighting the Atlantanean army does give some decent action sequences (on Aquaman's part in particular) Orm and Brak themselves are pretty bland and unimpressive villains when push comes to shove. It's a rather bold move meant to show Orm more as a political schemer, perhaps, but I found Orm especially unimpressive.
Oh well, still a pretty enjoyable two-parter, that's for sure. The scripting will continue to be slightly weak at places for a good chunk of these earlier episodes, especially for the non-Batman, non-Superman characters, but they find their groove soon enough.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Aquaman (a.k.a. Arthur "Orin" Curry) is the bastard half-breed child of an Atlantanean princess and a human man. He's appeared in TAS canon before as a guest star in a Superman episode in his original beardless orange-and-green-bodysuit design. His appearance in the Justice League uses his 90's era redesign as this hardcore king of the seas design.
- In the original comics, Aquaman lost his arm to a swarm of piranhas controlled by the supervillain Charybdis, but the producers thought it felt odd since Aquaman himself can command sealife, so they improved on it by making this a literal life-and-limb decision.
- Despite being a relatively prominent Batman villain, this is the first appearance of Deadshot, a.k.a. Floyd Lawton, in the TAS-verse. I mean, you all watched the Suicide Squad movie. You know who Deadshot is. Best sniper in the world, very mercenary, as he's shown here. As a small side-note, Deadshot's role in this episode was apparently a last-minute swap from Black Manta, another one of Aquaman's most prominent enemies, because it didn't make sense for a character like Black Manta to be super-mercenary. Also adds a nice touch of hypocrisy to Orm's big human hate-speech when he employs some to do his dirty work.
- Aquaman and Mera's infant son is unnamed in the show, but is named Arthur Curry Jr in the comics. Tragically, he was eventually murdered by a different supervillain, Black Manta.
- King Orm is Aquaman's treacherous half-brother, and is better known as Ocean Master in the comics. He's never referred to by his comic book alias (a fact common to Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter, who both have only been referred to as Diana and J'onn respectively throughout the show so far), and he wears a pretty generic Atlantanean garb instead of his comic book counterpart's black-and-purple costume. In the comics, Orm is notably Aquaman's fully-human half-brother as opposed to being fully-Atlantanean like he was in the show. New 52, which this show preceeded, would later follow suit in revising Orm's identity as Aquaman's fully-Atlantanean half-brother.
- Summer Gleeson, a recurring character from Batman: the Animated Series, makes a short non-speaking cameo among the reporters that gather outside the hospital.
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