Batman Beyond S02E10-12 Review: G-G-G-Ghosts

Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episodes 10-12

Episode 10: Mind Games

I think I'm going to go for a shorter versions of these Batman Beyond episodes, because... a lot of these early season 2 episodes honestly feels more like the production team is experimenting with the sort of stories that they are trying to tell. "Mind Games" is kind of an interesting one, where Batman ends up saving and encountering a mysterious girl with psychic powers that keeps contacting Terry and appearing as an apparition. The idea is a neat enough episode hook, but I don't think that it was honestly enough to carry the whole episode. A lot of the episode's conflict is built up around Terry's own reluctance to believe in the supernatural, but nothing really honestly came out of it. The idea of what's going on is delivered quite well, there's this evil organization that's kidnapping metahuman children under the cover of 'we're taking them to a special school', and Batman just stumbled upon their newest victim. This isn't really explored all that much, though, since ultimately it's just Batman going through a bunch of nameless minibosses before he reaches Tamara.

That said, the short, somber scene where Batman meets up with Tamara's beleaguered parents is extremely well-done, and the voice-acting for Tamara does work really well in portraying a girl who's trying her best to be confident but is also really scared. It's a small thing, but the not-Teletubbies doll being a psychic link is also a neat bit that helps to give the episode just a bit of spice. It's just that the actual villains, the Brain Trust and its members (Bombshell is the only one that's named in the episode) feels very bland and just ends up being a bunch of quirky dudes that Batman needs to take down one by one. 

Again... it really feels like they could've done more with them. They had such a strong core with Terry and Tamara's little psychic link, but ultimately the episode feels so simple, just an excuse to jump from one action sequence to the next. 

_____________________________

Episode 11: Revenant

The next two episodes feature returning villains from the first season, and "Revenant" here is... a pretty interesting one. Mostly because the first half is just wacky high school hijinks involving the supporting cast speculating that the school is haunted by the ghost of Garrison Jacobs, a handsome student that was killed. Terry and Max are the only ones that are skeptical, but Dana and her groupies are so delighted at the idea that... they hold a séance with an Ouija board because they really, really want to summon the ghost of the handsome student. That... that honestly didn't really sit right with me, the fact that these girls are so lusting over this dead friend of theirs. Either they're completely stupid or completely insensitive, and honestly, the whole scene felt like it could've worked better if one of the girls was actually Jacobs's girlfriend or something. Not that it meant much, anyway, since the whole dead student bit turns out to be completely irrelevant to the episode. 

We do get a bit of seeming poltergeist haunting, though, because Nelson gets attacked by the entire gym when he kicks the Ouija board (and gets saved by Batman in a rather questionably-safe move) and later on Dana's group gets spooked by malfunctioning shower heads in the locker room (Willie's a pervert). Again, the scenes themselves are actually done well and I would say that this is one of the few episodes that actually star Terry's school life and balances it well against his Batman part. 

Terry quickly realizes through his own investigation that it's not a ghost, but rather there's something that connects all the victims of the haunting -- Willie Watt, a.k.a. "Golem". Turns out that Willie's gotten real jacked and muscular in juvie, even if he's apparently never been visited by anyone. It's kind of interesting that Willie actually genuinely lets his guard down around Terry since the two of them did have a somewhat positive interaction in Willie's debut episode, albeit Willie's doing so under the guise of gloating over his newfound powers. I did like the scenes of Terry figuring out the holes in Willie's story -- which were all foreshadowed organically (if obviously) in the conversation with the guard. 

Granted, the episode is kind of ambiguous about the specifics of Willie's power -- it's powerful enough to affect specific parts of the school, but it follows 'programmed' patterns like continuing to attack Nelson and ignoring anyone else? Eh. Willie displays his powers in front of the prison cameras, psychically beats up the guards and escapes. Commissioner Barbara gets the principal to shut the school down, but that's too late because Willie arrives to quite literally crash Nelson's car. 

Again, Willie's character is pretty solid throughout this episode as this former bully victim who's relishing in his power. Hell, he even challenges Nelson to a physical fight... although his prison bod is apparently not quite enough and he ends up resorting back to psychic attacks again. He also gets all creepy with Blade before Batman shows up. The actual ending sequence of a fight is honestly pretty simple as Willie unleashes his psychic powers on Batman... but knocks himself out with a tree uprooted by his powers. 

Also done extremely well? The bit of a framing device where halfway through the episode Terry and his mother have to deal with Terry's brother Matt, who gets so enthralled by the idea of an Ouija board allowing him to speak with the dead -- since Matt wants to speak with his dead dad because he's afraid he's forgetting what he's like. That's such an amazingly strong and powerfully emotional moment in what's otherwise a pretty standard episode. Sure, we don't actually get any real development between this character beat and what Terry does throughout the episode, but the ending scene of Terry pulling out photo albums to get Matt to realize that their father's memory lives in them? That's very, very sweet. Honestly, these two short scenes really ends up elevating this episode up a lot in my mind.

A bit of a rough episode that probably could've used a bit of tightening (what's with the dead student subplot? And Willie threatening Terry's family goes nowhere) but ultimately actually a pretty solid episode. 

_____________________________

Episode 12: Babel

Another one featuring a returning villain; this one also starts off with a seemingly unrelated (and pretty long) side-plot of animals in Gotham City going wild. Including Ace the Bat-Hound, who attacks Terry and old man Bruce. And gets injected with a tranquilizer. No! I'm not entirely sure where Bruce stashes Ace while he goes off to deal with the rampaging elephant and gorilla in the zoo. That action scene did admittedly stretch a bit too long but it is Batman fighting a gorilla so I'll chalk it up to rule of cool. 

Shriek's back for revenge, but honestly? Unlike Willie, Shriek feels really... simple. Even the addition of the pleasure-addicted junkie Ollie doesn't really do a whole ton here for him. Shriek has a pretty standard vengeance plot going on, and all he wants is to take Batman down. By using a giant tower as a tuning fork to drive animals crazy and to fuck with air molecules and cause everyone to speak gibberish. The actual 'Tower of Babel' story in the comics had Ra's al Ghul do the same thing, but IIRC he targets the part of the brain that comprehends language with a sci-fi frequency. It's established pretty quickly that you can just type or write what you're going to say and the other party will understand you, so it does feel like after the initial outbreak of confusion and falling construction equipment, everyone was kind of over-reacting with how Shriek will 'destroy and kill millions'... but, okay, sure. 

There's also a running theme of sacrificing yourself for the city and sometimes going in despite knowing it's a trap, which I felt was the far more central theme to the episode. Bruce tells Terry about a story where he was rescued by Robin from a trap even though he had no real guarantee that Robin would make it in time. Later on, we get an argument between Barbara (who wants to protect the city and guarantees Terry's safety) and Bruce (who refuses to let Terry be used as a bargaining chip); while Max gives Terry a huge speech about how him giving himself up isn't a million-to-one numbers game, since Terry's loss would be devastating to his family and friends. One of the more powerful scenes in this episode is, of course, the news reporters interviewing people in the city, and some include the zookeepers and construction workers that Batman saved earlier. There's a bit of a surprising emotion in Old Man Bruce's voice when he sneers at the ungrateful bastards.

Of course, Terry being Terry, he ultimately makes his decision to not care about the ungratefulness of the citizens since that's not what he became Batman for. And... and it's not something particularly new in the realm of superhero stories, but it's certainly one that's executed well. Again, the final battle is... it's pretty all right -- even if Shriek's battle tactics is pretty samey with his first appearance. Shriek is seemingly killed when the tuning fork towers collapses. You can totally tell this episode was made before the 9/11 attacks on America, huh? 

I do like the conclusion to this episode. Terry might have gotten his groove back, but he was super-cold to the emergency workers who attempt to give him a hand, and Terry himself refuses to give a solid answer to Bruce's later question if Terry would give himself up to Shriek if they hadn't managed to figure things out in time... and it's a surprisingly humanizing moment when Terry simply just refuses to commit to an answer. I get the feeling that he doesn't know, and I really do like this episode a lot. The Shriek story is pretty whatever, but I really did appreciate everything that went into Terry's development here. 

_____________________________

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Sort of a retroactive canon-welding, but the unnamed, mostly-silent large metahuman (credited as "the Albino") would show up in the later-produced Justice League Unlimited episode "Double Date", where it's revealed that he's the son of the crime boss that menaced the Huntress, Steven Mandragora. 
• Terry rattles off the names of the American presidents in history, but stops at Bill Clinton, who, of course, is the president of the USA when this episode was produced. 
• In episode 11, when talking about his experiences with magic, Batman alludes "immortals, witch-boys and demons". Witch-boy is a very obvious nod to Klarion the Witch Boy, who made an appearance in The New Batman Adventures. Demons is a reference to Etrigan, who also debuted in TAS canon in the same episode. Immortals could range from anywhere from Ra's al Ghul to Wonder Woman to any of the many, many mystical beings Batman meets over the course of Justice League. 
• Batman name-drops Robin in episode 12, referencing a non-specific incident where Robin saved him.