Plot summary: Scarecrow is trying to tamper with Gotham’s water supply, but Batman has bigger problems as he finds himself an unwitting patient of Arkham Asylum!
(Originally published on The Reel World October 11th, 2020)
Notes
Original Air Date: November 3rd, 1992
Directed: Dick Seabast (6)
Written: Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens (1)
Animation: Studio Junio (2)
Music: Todd Hayen (2)
The first of three episodes penned by the husband and wife duo of Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, best known for their work on the Star Trek franchise (mostly novels)
Loosely based on ‘Batman: The Last Arkham’, albeit with some character substitutions, it began life as an adaptation of Garfield Reeves-Steven’s Batman short story ‘Masks’.
Dr. Bartholomew may be a nod to ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and Dr. Bartholomew Wolper, a psychiatrist who falsely declares Joker and Two-Face to be cured.
Loren Lester (Robin) provided Joker’s laugh.
Recap
We open in Arkham Asylum with Doctor Bartholomew talking to a pair of orderlies about their newest patient. Who could it be? Mad Hatter? Scarecrow? The Joker? No! It’s Batman, of course! Strap in.
Bats does himself no favours by ranting about how little time they have, demanding they contact Commissioner Gordon. Bartholomew shakes his head and leaves Batman to it, who narrates – a first for the series – about how there truly is no time left for Gotham and all he can do is remember the beginning while waiting for the end. Emo, much?
Flashing back, Batman investigates a suspected robbery at a luxury spa only to discover a hired goon named “Torchy” tampering with the facility’s drinking water. A scuffle ensues, with Batman getting the better of it. He disarms the device but gets gassed in the process.
Believing he suffered no ill effects, Batman took the machine back to the Batcave for study… where he spotted the Joker creeping up on him! Only when he turned around it was just Alfred…
Apologising, he related his limited findings and then departed to interrogate Torchy, who was suffering from the effects of Fear Toxin.
He expresseed anxiety about potentially being affected too, allowing a doctor to test his blood aaaaaand, I’m sorry, but we’ve surely just solved the mystery of who the Batman is, no?
Anyway, Doctor Wu stated he would begin to show symptoms within 24 hours, offering him an antidote that would put him into a 2-day coma. Bats being Bats, he refused the antidote, feeling that the police couldn’t handle it without him.
Realising Scarecrow is behind the caper (we heard his voice over Torchy’s radio but Batman didn’t), Bruce raced towards Arkham but hallucinated Robin standing in the middle of the road and crashed trying to avoid him.
Waking up strapped to a gurney, Batman’s incoherent ramblings saw him locked up in Arkham. An orderly attempted to remove his mask but Dr. Bartholomew warned that it was tied to his delusions and to forcibly remove it might harm his psyche. A cute way around a glaring issue.
Bartholomew interviews him later about the Scarecrow’s plot, dubious that such a complex scheme could be enacted without anybody noticing. My dude, I have 27 episode recaps you may want to read.
Dr. Bart declares him delusional, questioning why he’d come to Arkham if not to be committed. He reasons that a patient couldn’t possibly run an operation while safely locked up, and that he saw Dr. Crane in his cell that very morning…
FOUR episodes ago, Batman visited the Asylum and found Scarecrow had escaped without the staff noticing! Anyway, Scarecrow and his cronies are tampering with water pipes under Arkham.
The door to Bats’ cell swings open and he is bathed in red light. Standing, he walks into the light and finds himself no longer straight-jacketed, but instead in Crime Alley chasing after his parents but unable to catch them.
A flash of light causes the ground to crumble beneath him and the alley becomes the barrel of a gun that cocks and fires at him. Gnarly.
Scarecrow activates a five minute timer on his pump system, keen to enact the largest fear experiment in history. If you’re that excited, why even put a timer on it, my guy?
Batman fights off the orderlies attempting to sedate him, frees himself from the straightjacket and demands a guard take him down to the basement where he’s able to make his way into the cavern below… where he starts tripping balls.
Among his hallucinations are Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Robin, Alfred and Scarecrow himself, all transforming into each other and changing sizes, reducing him to a screaming wreck.
Poetically, a bat snaps him out of it and he is able to confront Scarecrow and his henchmen, who are initially reluctant to fight him, but Scarecrow points out he’s been gassed.
Sure enough, when they advance Batman instead sees hideous monsters, and as he’s afraid to fight them, he instead grabs a nearby microphone and whistles loudly into it, deafening them. Weird!
Scarecrow flees and Batman is hesitant to give chase, having developed a fear of heights. After overcoming his various halucinations he disables the machine with 1 second left on the clock. Who saw that coming?
The machine explodes and Scarecrow gets gassed, mumbling to himself as he’s put back in his cell above. Dr. Bartholomew gives the orderlies some lip about keeping him locked up this time.
Alfred administers Dr. Wu’s antidote as Bruce begins his two-day recovery in the cave, rather than upstairs in one of the many comfortable bedrooms. A bat poses in front of one of the lights, casting a huge shadow of his logo over him. A tad much.
Best Performance
Kevin Conroy wins this in a walk. Not only is he as excellent as ever, having to sound terrified when under the influence of Scarecrow, but he is also entrusted with some new territory such as narration and the delirious ramblings that get him locked up in Arkham. His ability to play in all these lanes and deliver perfectly distinct Bruce and Batman voices in a range of emotions is why he is the irrefutable best Batman performer.
It certainly helps that he isn’t getting much competition as he dominates the script, with Henry Polic II barely being in it despite being the feature villain, Takayo Fishcer’s Dr. Wu having only a single scene and Loren Lester essentially doing a cameo as Robin (and subbing in as Joker).
The only other person with a look in is Richard Dysart as Dr. Bartholomew, but I just don’t think he’s compelling enough in the well-trodden ground of a doctor who think they’re being reasonable, but still acts as an obstacle to the protagonist and draws the ire of the audience.
Ranking
I appreciate what this was going for, with Batman falling victim to gaslighting thanks to Scarecrow’s latest strain of fear toxin, and starting things off with him as a patient of Arkham is a great way to build intrigue right from the jump. It’s just that the show is going to take both of those elements and do them much better in the future, and we’ve seen Scarecrow hallucinations twice already.
They’re always appreciated from an artistic standpoint of course, lending themselves to some of the most compelling visuals to date, including Crime Alley turning into a giant gun and a parade of enormous villains transforming into each other. A lovely touch sees Two-Face toss a buzzsaw at him, and though he ducks, we see nothing fly past him, giving a contrast between what he sees and what is actually happening.
It’s not the most compelling argument for the competency of the Arkham staff, whose assertions against Bruce can be dispelled with minimal effort, so it doesn’t manage to get the most fun part of this story trope right. Plus the enormous plot hole of a doctor having Batman’s blood on file.
When all is said and done we have had a trio of Scarecrow episodes now, and I think I like this one the least. I want to reward the excellent hallucinations, which are getting better each time out, but for me there are diminishing returns when the episode around them isn’t doing enough. They’re trying SO hard to make Scarecrow episodes a big deal, but they’re undone by a deluge of logical inconsistencies.
- Heart of Ice
- Two-Face Part I
- Joker’s Favor
- Feat of Clay Part II
- Beware the Gray Ghost
- Mad as a Hatter
- Vendetta
- Appointment In Crime Alley
- Feat of Clay Part I
- On Leather Wings
- Pretty Poison
- Two-Face Part II
- It’s Never Too Late
- See No Evil
- The Clock King
- The Cat and the Claw Part I
- P.O.V.
- Christmas with the Joker
- Fear of Victory
- Be a Clown
- The Cat and the Claw Part II
- Nothing to Fear
- Prophecy of Doom
- Dreams In Darkness (NEW ENTRY)
- The Last Laugh
- The Under-Dwellers
- The Forgotten
- I’ve Got Batman in My Basement
Villain Watch
Scarecrow (Henry Polic II) (third appearance)
I’m in two minds about bumping Scarecrow down the list given his minimal involvement in this episode, watching on from afar and delivering some clumsy exposition before ultimately getting hit with his own gas, AGAIN. There’s not much for Polic to do, and it could honestly have been assembled with rejected lines from his other appearances. The mask has been slightly changed again, but not in a tremendously meaningful way.
BUT, Dr. Crane has escaped Arkham twice now, something only the Joker can match, which I suppose is enough to keep him in place? Or maybe I’m just lazy.
It’s also cute that he tried to administer his fear toxin via the water supply just like a movie that some people have called the best live action Batman film. Me. I’m some people.
- Joker
- Mr. Freeze
- Two-Face
- Clayface
- Mad Hatter
- Poison Ivy
- Catwoman
- Clock King
- Killer Croc
- Rupert Thorne
- Lloyd Ventrix
- Scarecrow
- Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
- Red Claw
- Arnold Stromwell
- Mad Bomber
- Man-Bat
- Nostromos (and Lucas!)
- Harley Quinn
- Penguin
- Sewer King
- Boss Biggis
The Matt Signal 
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