Plot summary: When Supergirl begins experiencing nightmares of performing heinous acts, she forms an unlikely detective squad with Green Arrow and The Question.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 4 (S1.E4)

Original Air Date: September 4^th, 2004

Directed: Dan Riba (2)

Written: Stan Berkowitz (2) (story) and Robert Goodman (2) (teleplay)

Animation: Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (2)

Music: Michael McCuistion (2)

The episode title comes from the opening of William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’, the second DCAU episode to do this. The episode was originally instead called ‘Galatea’.

Galatea is named for a statue brought to life by Aphrodite in Greek mythology.

This is in many ways the proper kick-off of sewing the seeds for a long arc that also incorporates elements from previous shows, trying in the metahuman program that captured Volcana in STAS and the version of The Royal Flush Gang seen towards the end of Justice League.

On that note, while the first time we saw the obvious Zeta robots in ‘Secret Society‘ I genuinely believe it was a simple re-use of assets, bringing them back here as a key plot point and naming them the model ‘Z8’ feels incredibly intentional.

Question’s ‘I Know’ poster is a clear homage to Mulder’s office décor from The X-Files.

DCAU Debuts

The DCAU version of The Question (aka Vic Sage) became incredibly popular in the fandom for reasons that will become clear in this episode and especially in Season 2. His conspiracy nut gimmick in particular was such a hit it found its way into the comics. Much like Captain Atom, he’s a Charlton Comics creation who was originally intended to be used in Watchmen when DC acquired Charlton, but was instead replaced with the knockoff Rorschach. The Charlton version was a proponent of Objectivism, while DC moved him in a more spiritual and philosophical direction, targeting corruption over petty criminals. Renee Montoya became Sage’s successor in 2007, a role she has maintained on and off ever since. Regardless of who is wearing the mask, The Question is generally a detective who uses a special mask and various gadgets, but Sage was at times given a degree of super powers.

While Galatea is a DCAU original, she is a clear riff on Power Girl, an overly-sexualised alternate universe Supergirl. She’s generally depicted as older and more experienced than ‘our’ Kara, which carries over to this episode.

Recap

Supergirl experiences disturbing dreams of acting villainously, murdering a scientist. J’onn can’t tell if these are dreams or memories so benches her from active duty until she can figure it out.

Green Arrow suggests it’s all in her head, but The Question believes it’s a repressed memory, pointing out she was briefly in a coma at S.T.A.R. Labs and can’t account for that time.

Following this lead, Professor Hamilton (remember him?) insists nothing unusual happened at all, but the trio are attacked by a military force shortly after, deploying a ‘Z8’ robot.

Question points out these bots sat under the purview of General Hardcastle, who has since retired to a cabin in the woods. He reveals a huge government project concerning itself with aliens and metahumans.

When the scientist from Kara’s dream is reported missing, the trio approach his employers, Nuvo-Gen, learning they cloned Kara during her coma after all, creating ‘Galatea’.

The evil doppelganger leads Ollie and Kara into her hard-light training program (the setting for Kara’s dreams earlier) where they brawl all over ‘Metropolis’.

Question deduces that the mental link between Galatea and Supergirl is bothering the evil clone too, giving Supergirl an opening to get the upper hand.

Unfortunately Galatea’s shadowy superiors monitor what’s happening and blow up the entire building, with only our heroes surviving. In the aftermath Prof. Hamilton gets to work fixing up his creation!

Best Performance

Jeffrey Combs is so damn good as The Question, always riding the line between sounding like he actually knows what he’s talking about… and being a total crackpot. He understands what they’re aiming for, making sure the dialogue that could sound accusatory is instead dripping in an almost playful (but pessimistic) curiosity. He says everything with utter conviction, but keeps in mind there is meant to be a perverse humour to the character. That’s why you have lines like “Please. I go through everyone‘s trash” and him singing to himself as he breaks into Nuvo-Gen.

Charles Napier is again pitch perfect as General Hardcastle, Robert Foxworth steps in nicely as Prof. Hamilton, Kin Shriner is still charming as Ollie (he just about makes the wry comment about Galatea’s physique work) and Nicholle Thom puts in one of her better Supergirl performances (twinned with the more sinister Galatea), but nobody here stood a chance against Combs.

Episode Ranking

Ahhh, early 2000s animation beginning to experiment with blending in 3D models with otherwise 2D visuals. Almost never looked good, but boy were so many producers excited about it! I’m referring of course to the ~~killer~~ surgical robot (but also the terrible looking helicopter later.) It’s just so comically nothing like its surroundings that it’s impossible to focus properly when it’s on screen. Although I did like Hamilton’s gaslighting about how the very notion of getting surgery as an otherwise invulnerable being could have caused the nightmare scenario as a way to subconsciously fight off the ‘invading’ robot. Like, that sounds vaguely plausible.

At the heart of it, while the biggest takeaways from this episode are the beginning of the Cadmus arc and the infamous Galatea… it’s really kind of a showcase episode for The Question. The design is excellent, the voice performance is immaculate, and they write him tremendously. His room full of Charlie-style cork boards and string, covered in posters about Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, Stone Henge and fluoride (or rather ‘flouride’) is delightful. I also really like that while he should lose some credibility for his colossal conspiracy of a clandestine cabal dating back to Ancient Egypt, all Ollie and Kara do is raise an eyebrow but follow his lead anyway, because truly what else can you do when you’re not allowed to go on missions until you figure out your weird dreams? Crazy or not, Question’s got a sense of drive.

The unlikely trio of Kara, Ollie and Vic are fun, with the boys on opposite ends of a spectrum and Kara just willing to roll with it because at least they’re helping her, and she has no clue what to believe. Really loved the touch of GA standing in the way of Hardcastle’s single kryptonite bullet and pointing out if he uses it on him then he’ll be defenceless against Supergirl. Nice touch. Likewise Question posing as a cab driver to shake down the reporter who broke the missing scientist story. It’s very funny that for all their differences, Vic and Ollie both end up using disguises to work the case from different angles.

And boy oh boy does their adventure take us some places. From picking up on Prof. Hamilton becoming spooked by Superman’s aggression at the end of STAS, to bringing back the ‘Z8’ robots, to Volcana and the Royal Flush Gang, I love the decision to pick up all these pieces that were left on the table. I said at the end of STAS how they intended Season 4 to pit Clark against the military and try to regain public trust, so it all comes from that pretty big idea, rather than genuinely scrounging around for scraps and inventing something whole-cloth, but I still appreciate the attention to detail to fold other elements into that.

While the mental link between Supergirl and Galatea is a little iffy, logic-wise, I do appreciate the narrative motif of Kara waking from a dream the very next scene after Galatea murders Hardcastle. Likewise, Galatea trying to murder her to ensure she doesn’t see too much, later surmised by The Question to actually be about the evil clone forcibly experiencing the original’s sense of morality and not being able to stand it.

Overall this is a very compelling little episode that teases the increased baseline of quality we’ll be getting with JLU in the future. It can’t compete with the psychologically devastating look into Superman’s deepest desires, but is still great in its own right. I’m a sucker for detective stories and when shows capitalise on their own history to add retroactive meaning on rewatches. The action is solid, and it was nice to pick back up on Ollie & Kara’s friendship from the opening episode, while pairing them up with the oddball tour de force that is The Question.

For the Man Who Has Everything
Fearful Symmetry (NEW ENTRY)
Initiation
Hawk and Dove

Rogues Roundup

Galatea (Nicholle Thom) (first appearance)

I made my feelings on evil versions of heroes and ‘mirror matches’ pretty clear with Bizarro and The Justice Lords, but Galatea has just a tiny bit more going on because of the larger Cadmus conspiracy she’s attached to. Like yes, she’s a slightly older, boobier version of Supergirl who speaks in a sinister manner and tries to murder Kara with identical powers… but it’s the, like, idea of her, man.

To have taken advantage of Kara’s coma from the end of STAS to take DNA samples and have her cloned is just fucked up. To then futz with Galatea and put her through rigorous training to be a good little government assassin is even more so. They then tie one final bow on her: That she’s been experiencing Kara’s conscience, causing her to have guilty nightmares in her uhhh downtime (also very fucked up she was ordered to fuck a reporter to gain his trust so she could leak him the story as a trap for our heroes!)

There’s no way she’s going to finish very high when all is said and done, even with all those little wrinkles, because she is still just ‘Evil Supergirl’, but given how uninspired the villains have been so far… it’s good for second place!

Mongul
Galatea (NEW ENTRY)
Brimstone
Ares (and The Annihilator!)