Maybe all the schools are like that in the future?
Seriously though, that is
nothing compared to the horrible deaths of students that occurred at Smallville High during the first two seasons of
Smallville.
Or the body count at Sunnydale High. The WB executives specifically asked Bruce Timm to make
Batman Beyond similar to
Buffy.
You think network interference? She felt like a natural/organic addition to the show.
Well, given the abrupt and drastic shift in emphasis from corporate corruption and intrigue in the first season to "Oh, which of Terry's classmates is evil this week," yeah, I'd say that the addition of Max was part of an overall effort to give the show more of a "youth focus." And see above about the network wanting it Buffyfied.
I kinda wish they did more with her and was disappointed that she wasn't in Return of the Joker (then again, I don't know when RotJ was produced during the course of the series, so maybe Max wasn't around yet when the movie was being created).
I seem to recall the producers mentioning in a commentary that they considered an episode where Terry and Max are attracted to each other and it threatens Terry's relationship with Dana. I wish they'd done that, since it seems natural. I mean, Max was hot, and she could be close to Terry in a way Dana never could. Why wouldn't Terry be interested? (Plus, unlike Dana, Max actually had a personality.)
Another thing the show lacked was an interesting rogues' gallery. What makes Batman's villains so compelling is their personalities, their tragic histories and screwed-up psyches. But BB's villains were nothing more than gimmicks and gadgets. Most of them were just based on random drawings the character designers did, and it shows. Few of them ever acquired any motivations or backstories or personalities of any kind.
I'll partially agree with that. If you are comparing BB with the original Batman (or other superheroes for that matter), I don't know how fair that would really be. With B:TAS, nearly all the villains came from years of backstory in the comics so when they were adapted to the show, they didn't have to necessarly dwell on their backstory as it had a clear-cut foundation.
Maybe with characters like Joker and Penguin, but most of the villains had origin stories revealing their motivations, obsessions, and tragedies -- "Heart of Ice," "Two-Face," "Feat of Clay," "Pretty Poison," "Mad as a Hatter," "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?," "Mad Love," etc. The characters in the show stood alone without the need for prior familarity with the comics. Heck, Mr. Freeze had no personality or backstory until Paul Dini gave him one that totally redefined the character from that point on. Even Penguin was given depth and motivation eventually, in "Birds of a Feather."
And the Joker doesn't need a tragic backstory and is better off without any history or identity, and he has his sheer lunacy and charisma to keep him interesting. Same with characters like the Ventriloquist/Scarface and Ra's al Ghul. Their gimmicks were personal and psychological, quirks or motivations that made them interesting
as people. The gimmicks of BB's villains were purely superficial, technological. They had no personalities. Like the villain Shriek. Okay, he's an audio engineer who's invented a sonic weapon, and Derek Powers asks him to use his weapon to kill Batman, and he says "Okay" and then he's a costumed villain. Uh, why? Why would an audio engineer agree to become a hitman? What aspect of this man's personality makes him do such a strange thing, rather than just selling his device to Powers for use by someone else? We're never told. We're never given the slightest hint of who this man is or why he'd make this choice. He's not a character, just an obstacle. It's boring.
I will grant you that the series didn't really have a whole lot of standout villains. Blight was slated to be Terry's main antagonist, but he, I think, only made two or three appearances during the first season and then completely disappeared. I liked Inque and the Royal Flush Gang (with Terry's Catwoman-inspired love interest, Ten) was interesting to me (though I wish they did more with them).
I figure Blight was probably a casualty of the shift away from corporate villains. Also I bet the network was pushing for more standalones and less arc. The RFG was moderately interesting -- for once, they were villains who were at least as much character-driven as gadget-driven. But Inque was boring, just a Clayface clone with none of the personality, until her final appearance where we met her daughter and finally got to learn something about her as a person.
The thought of Bruce and Barbera was kinda of unsettling. He must have been 47 during "The New Adventures" and Barbera early 30's or 28
By my estimates, the passage of time in the DCAU conforms pretty well to real time. If we assume that the
Mask of the Phantasm flashbacks happened when Bruce was, say, 22 (since I got the impression he was in college or recently graduated) and that the "Robin's Reckoning" flashbacks were in the same year, then the bulk of B:TAS would've happened when Bruce was 30-33. Dick would've graduated less than a year thereafter, and the
Lost Years comics have him training for over two years before his return, so that makes Bruce maybe 36-37 in TNBA. I have him at 39-43 in the JL/U years.
As for Barbara, I put her about a year behind Dick in college, so she'd be about 14 years younger than Bruce -- 22 at the start of TNBA. At the time of
Mystery of the Batwoman, where Bruce and Barbara are apparently an item, I have them at 37 and 23 respectively. Maybe a little older if MotB is assumed to be longer after TNBA, but I put it pretty much right after.
Dini and Timm didn't want to make "The son of the Penguin" or Cyborg two-face type villains for Batman Beyond. Terry needed his own Rouge's Gallery like INK.
Sure, he needed his own rogues. But they could've given them actual personalities. It was the psychology of the original Batman's foes that made them compelling to watch, not their surface schticks.
i gave it a try! love dr
