Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episode 1: Splicers; Episode 2: Earth Mover
Episode 1: Splicers
We start off with a pretty simple episodic one, though. "Splicers" has all these crazy kids in 2039, who gets sucked into the latest craze of splicing animal DNA into themselves into what's basically extreme body modification. And the episode has about the same sort of subtlety about how 'ex-treeem' some of these guys are with their metal punk outfit and how they're oh-so-willing to tattoo get body piercings splice animal DNA into their bodies. Although to be fair, with the furry community out there, I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if this is exactly what happens should Splicing actually be a thing in 2039.
Terry, of course, is a good, conservative protagonist main character, so ends up going off to investigate the Chimera Institute after seeing so many of his friends get, like, cat eyes and snake fangs and stuff. We do get a wee bit of attempt at debate with Dana trying to tell Terry to keep an open mind about what these dang kids are doing right about now, while Old Man Bruce (who, to be fair, have dealt with way too many mad scientists making half-animal hybrids in his own show) is your typical grumpy old man. There's even a weak attempt at Terry and his mom comparing splicing as being far more extreme than tattoos, but the episode itself leans so much into how splicing is bad that it sort of loses any attempt at ambiguity.
Because, see, dr. Abel Cuvier is actually evil, and not just trying to profiteer from body modification. He's a straight-up megalomaniac with an army of animal-men thugs and he wants to, like, make everyone in the world into half-animal hybrids. Crazy furries! The investigation is honestly pretty formulaic. Some of the Spliced teenagers cause some trouble, and Terry takes Dana to the Chimera Institute to investigate (the scene of them shopping for body modifications has to be intentionally filled with innuendo, right? Or is it just me seeing things that aren't there) before Terry goes Batman and investigates the institute and fights Cuvier's animal-men minions.
Because Cuvier is a comic book supervillain in a cartoon, all he does is inject Batman with some bat-DNA and has to del with not becoming Man-Bat Beyond as he tries his best to continue doing his job while fighting off his animal-man transformations when he goes off to save Barbara's husband Sam from Cuvier's werebeast assassins. Batman arrives to save Sam, but in the process becomes so consumed by the animal DNA that he ends up rampaging and really delivering a brutal beatdown on one of the thugs. We get a short sequence of mutant-Terry arriving at the Batcave and engage in a bit of a scuffle with Old Man Bruce before Bruce stabs Terry with the antidote for Splicing. The climax basically has Terry bring around Ace to help him sniff out where dr. Cuvier is hiding, and we get the expected fight scene as Batman engages Cuvier and his henchmen again, ultimately curing the henchmen but overdosing Cuvier with the DNA serums, turning him into a giant rampaging monster that sort of blows up the factory that he's in, presumably also killing him.
Like... I dunno. It's not a terrible episode by any means, and a pretty solid one, but the visuals and concept aren't particularly fresh, the episode sort of stumbles over itself in the first half on just how it wants to portray the Splicing thing, and Cuvier is such a one-note villain defeated in a way that doesn't really make much sense. It's an okay episode, but one that's pretty forgettable. I did like Ace actually doing stuff in this one, though, and I do like Barbara thanking Terry while also simultaneously telling him to get out of this crazy vigilante gig before it's too late.
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Episode 2: Earth Mover
Terry, of course, is a good, conservative protagonist main character, so ends up going off to investigate the Chimera Institute after seeing so many of his friends get, like, cat eyes and snake fangs and stuff. We do get a wee bit of attempt at debate with Dana trying to tell Terry to keep an open mind about what these dang kids are doing right about now, while Old Man Bruce (who, to be fair, have dealt with way too many mad scientists making half-animal hybrids in his own show) is your typical grumpy old man. There's even a weak attempt at Terry and his mom comparing splicing as being far more extreme than tattoos, but the episode itself leans so much into how splicing is bad that it sort of loses any attempt at ambiguity.
Because, see, dr. Abel Cuvier is actually evil, and not just trying to profiteer from body modification. He's a straight-up megalomaniac with an army of animal-men thugs and he wants to, like, make everyone in the world into half-animal hybrids. Crazy furries! The investigation is honestly pretty formulaic. Some of the Spliced teenagers cause some trouble, and Terry takes Dana to the Chimera Institute to investigate (the scene of them shopping for body modifications has to be intentionally filled with innuendo, right? Or is it just me seeing things that aren't there) before Terry goes Batman and investigates the institute and fights Cuvier's animal-men minions.
Because Cuvier is a comic book supervillain in a cartoon, all he does is inject Batman with some bat-DNA and has to del with not becoming Man-Bat Beyond as he tries his best to continue doing his job while fighting off his animal-man transformations when he goes off to save Barbara's husband Sam from Cuvier's werebeast assassins. Batman arrives to save Sam, but in the process becomes so consumed by the animal DNA that he ends up rampaging and really delivering a brutal beatdown on one of the thugs. We get a short sequence of mutant-Terry arriving at the Batcave and engage in a bit of a scuffle with Old Man Bruce before Bruce stabs Terry with the antidote for Splicing. The climax basically has Terry bring around Ace to help him sniff out where dr. Cuvier is hiding, and we get the expected fight scene as Batman engages Cuvier and his henchmen again, ultimately curing the henchmen but overdosing Cuvier with the DNA serums, turning him into a giant rampaging monster that sort of blows up the factory that he's in, presumably also killing him.
Like... I dunno. It's not a terrible episode by any means, and a pretty solid one, but the visuals and concept aren't particularly fresh, the episode sort of stumbles over itself in the first half on just how it wants to portray the Splicing thing, and Cuvier is such a one-note villain defeated in a way that doesn't really make much sense. It's an okay episode, but one that's pretty forgettable. I did like Ace actually doing stuff in this one, though, and I do like Barbara thanking Terry while also simultaneously telling him to get out of this crazy vigilante gig before it's too late.
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Episode 2: Earth Mover
For an otherwise throwaway, standalone episode that has a somewhat-overdone sci-fi supervillain as an antagonist that appears for this exact one episode, "Earth Mover" is... it's a very solid one. I just really don't have a whole ton to say about it. The plot's relatively simple and you see the twists coming from a mile away. Terry and Dana's friend, Jackie, complains of being seemingly stalked and followed by someone, and Terry's attempt to tackle the stalker ends up with said person breaking apart into dirt.
We also discover that Jackie's guardian, Bill, isn't her real father, but her dead father's old best friend, who took her in. Their relationship's a bit estranged, and Bill takes Jackie, Terry and Dana to a place where he's planning to build a new factory... and then earthquakes and more dirt-men arrive and attack them, and apparently Bill recognizes this as the work of Tony, Jackie's supposedly-dead father. We then get your classic Silver Age supervillain backstory -- Tony and Bill were working on a project to get rid of toxic waste, but a tragic accident causes Tony to be trapped underground with the toxic waste, presumed dead but actually mutated into a monster with superpowers. As the two Batmen wonder what to make of this, Tony (or, well, "Earthmover", which is apparently what he's called now) attacks and straight-up swallows Jackie's entire house in a pretty cool visual.
Also cool is the creepy painted aesthetic of Tony's desiccated corpse with toxic waste veins feeding into it, which is such a stark contrast with the normal DCAU art style. It's a pretty great visual, and the fact that Tony's voice comes out of an unmoving skull mouth also adds to the creep factor. Something that I do appreciate from this episode is the subversion of some tropes common to superhero stories, especially those of that time -- Bill may be a businessman and entrepreneur, but he wasn't like, soulless and cartoonishly trying to destroy the environment or sabotage his friend, and he was genuinely sorry for what's a freak accident. It's also neat that the adopted parent trope is played so positively in a cartoon of that period, too. Tony, meanwhile, might be crazy and evil, but it's hard to truly blame the man when he's clearly driven insane by his situation. And poor, poor Jackie is stuck in a situation where her insane superpowered real dad (who she thought was dead until this episode) is trying to murder her adopted dad.
Ultimately, the way the episode ends is kind of bland. Batman's new Bat-submarine-drill-tank thing gets him into the core of the Earthmover's subterranean lair, there's a bit of a fight with the dirt golems, one last bit of humanity as Tony realizes what's going on and allows Jackie to escape, and Batman beats the enemy by overloading it with sci-fi chemicals. The resulting earthquake destroys Tony and kills him as he is disconnected from the toxic waste things.
Overall, it's... it's a neat episode, a solid story that takes a simple formula and a bunch of tropes and tries to bend them around a little just to make a neat little distinctive derivation. Nothing too special about this one, but I enjoyed it.
We also discover that Jackie's guardian, Bill, isn't her real father, but her dead father's old best friend, who took her in. Their relationship's a bit estranged, and Bill takes Jackie, Terry and Dana to a place where he's planning to build a new factory... and then earthquakes and more dirt-men arrive and attack them, and apparently Bill recognizes this as the work of Tony, Jackie's supposedly-dead father. We then get your classic Silver Age supervillain backstory -- Tony and Bill were working on a project to get rid of toxic waste, but a tragic accident causes Tony to be trapped underground with the toxic waste, presumed dead but actually mutated into a monster with superpowers. As the two Batmen wonder what to make of this, Tony (or, well, "Earthmover", which is apparently what he's called now) attacks and straight-up swallows Jackie's entire house in a pretty cool visual.
Also cool is the creepy painted aesthetic of Tony's desiccated corpse with toxic waste veins feeding into it, which is such a stark contrast with the normal DCAU art style. It's a pretty great visual, and the fact that Tony's voice comes out of an unmoving skull mouth also adds to the creep factor. Something that I do appreciate from this episode is the subversion of some tropes common to superhero stories, especially those of that time -- Bill may be a businessman and entrepreneur, but he wasn't like, soulless and cartoonishly trying to destroy the environment or sabotage his friend, and he was genuinely sorry for what's a freak accident. It's also neat that the adopted parent trope is played so positively in a cartoon of that period, too. Tony, meanwhile, might be crazy and evil, but it's hard to truly blame the man when he's clearly driven insane by his situation. And poor, poor Jackie is stuck in a situation where her insane superpowered real dad (who she thought was dead until this episode) is trying to murder her adopted dad.
Ultimately, the way the episode ends is kind of bland. Batman's new Bat-submarine-drill-tank thing gets him into the core of the Earthmover's subterranean lair, there's a bit of a fight with the dirt golems, one last bit of humanity as Tony realizes what's going on and allows Jackie to escape, and Batman beats the enemy by overloading it with sci-fi chemicals. The resulting earthquake destroys Tony and kills him as he is disconnected from the toxic waste things.
Overall, it's... it's a neat episode, a solid story that takes a simple formula and a bunch of tropes and tries to bend them around a little just to make a neat little distinctive derivation. Nothing too special about this one, but I enjoyed it.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- A portrait of Commissioner James Gordon is seen hanging over Barbara's fireplace.
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