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Going Through The DCAU Part Sixty-Three

tomk74 February 18, 2019 13 min read

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Jimmy and Tom return to discuss more Batman Beyond with the episodes "Eggbaby," "Zeta," and "Plague."

So, these chats come about because Jimmy and I use a channel in the Gabbing Geek Slack account to discuss the episodes, and then I cut and paste them into the website here, edit them a bit, and voila.

But there was a small problem this time around.  Sometimes Slack deletes old conversations if a channel remains inactive for too long, and that happened this time.  As such, we lost some of the conversation around the first episode, “Eggbaby.”  It looks like most of it was still there, but we couldn’t find the beginning, so be aware.

Oh, and we’re also covering the Batman Beyond episodes “Eggbaby,” “Zeta,” and “Plague” this time around.

“Eggbaby”

Terry has a school project he must pass involving caring for a robotic baby in the shape of an egg.  So, he has to not only stop some thieves but also keep the baby bot happy at the same time.  What can go wrong?

jimmy:  Back to your previous point, it was definitely a kid friendly episode. Almost too kid friendly for me. But I’m an old man. And get off my lawn!

tomk:  I’m old enough to remember this being a common sitcom plot about the time this episode first aired.

jimmy:  Very.

So…who was the less responsible “egg parent”? Terry for bringing it out fighting crime…or his partner for basically abandoning it at the drop of a hat?

tomk:  Terry did everything he could, unlike Blade.

It’s not like e didn’t try to find a sitter.

jimmy:  The vampire hunter?

tomk:  Isn’t that her name? She’s been on the show before. She’s the girl Willy Watt stalks.

jimmy:  Yes, Blade is her nickname. I was just having fun. Remember fun Tom?

tomk:  I used to. Now I write nonstop articles to keep someone else’s website afloat while listening to podcasts that say I don’t.

Here’s where we once again see if anyone reads these.

jimmy:  Commence breath holding.

tomk:  Might be a good idea depending on what the wormy son voiced by Andy Dick is spraying around.

jimmy:  Not the greatest henchmen. And the fact that the villain was a giant middle-aged woman wearing a bonnet, also lends to the kid friendliness of the episode.

tomk:  Her name was Ma Mayhem. That’s another hint.

jimmy:  And of course, this episode obviously would be a contender to win 2 Emmy awards.

tomk:  How’d you like this one? You can be harsh on the more juvenile episodes.

jimmy:  As I said above…”This actually wasn’t too bad an episode…for being completely ridiculous.”

I mean, it had Bruce making a Wizard of Oz joke!

tomk:  Well, let me ask you this: we’re probably about halfway through this show. What do you expect from Batman Beyond?

jimmy:  Going forward?

tomk:  In general, but sure. What kind of show do you think it is?

jimmy:  I think it’s average…but can lean on the Batman mythos to rise above that at times. It’s not a kids show. Probably darker at times than BTAS, and definitely darker than STAS.

tomk:  Justice League can be pretty mature at times, too.

But good point. It’s not a DCAU highpoint, but it’s probably better than whatever the Ninja Turtles were up to at that time.

jimmy:  And this episode aired in 2000, which would be long after I had gotten up on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons.

tomk:  Just out of curiosity, how familiar were you with any of these shows before we started this project?

jimmy:  I had watched A LOT of BTAS, but not all. I think the redesign was new to me. I’d watched some STAS. I can’t say for sure I ever watched an episode of Batman Beyond, but was very familiar with the concept. (Looking forward, I don’t think I’ve ever watched JL, JLU, etc.)

tomk:  That sounds about right judging by your reactions to stuff.

But surely you recognized the voice of actress Kathleen Freeman as Ma Mayhem.

Here she is in what is probably her best-remembered role:

jimmy:  I sure…have no idea who that is.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Blues Brothers in its entirety.

tomk:  …

Well, she was the one without the sunglasses.

jimmy:  Ah. Seems like a cult movie. But that’s another discussion.

tomk:  I don’t know if I’d call it a cult movie, but we can always claim it is later.

You know, we shouldn’t be surprised Terry did so well on this project. If he’s Batman, we know what Batman does with young sidekicks. Was the Eggbaby a Robin egg?

jimmy:  If so, let’s be glad there were no Jokerz or crowbars around.

tomk:  We did get a moment when Terry almost asked Bruce to babysit.

jimmy:  Who knew cartoon characters could give someone the stink eye?

tomk:  Bruce can do it (with preparation). He’s Batman.

jimmy:  Exactly. HE’s Batman.

tomk:  What does Terry have to do to become Batman? Almost drop a large, middle aged woman off a roof?

jimmy:  It’s a start. 🙂

Seriously though, and we keep having this conversation it seems, I don’t think he will ever be THE Batman. Though I should give him more credit as A Batman.

tomk:  It’s a start. 😉

jimmy:  Heh

So does Mamma Mia and the Here We Go Again Gang ever return?

tomk:  Nope.

jimmy:  That was my guess. What about the Eggbaby? 🙂

tomk:  Say hello to his new sidekick!

Did you have any other questions about Terry’s Family Studies class?

jimmy:  I assume the Family Studies class will be a regular fixture of the show going forward, so we can talk more when it reappears.

tomk:  Sounds good. Anything else?

jimmy:  I guess not. You?

tomk:  I do have one question: did you know Batman Beyond had a spin-off?

jimmy:  ……….umm, what now?

tomk:  Well, you’ll see for yourself very soon.

jimmy:  Yay?

“Zeta”

Government agents come to Gotham to find a shape shifting robot! Is it dangerous?

tomk:  So…an actual spin-off episode.

jimmy:  …does Zeta get it’s own show?

tomk:  He did.

Completely recast Zeta and Bennet, plus made Zeta’s robot form more human.

jimmy:  The Zeta Project?

tomk:  That would be it.

jimmy:  That sounds vaguely familiar, but I wouldn’t have known what it was.

tomk:  I only saw bits of it. It was more aimed at kids than Batman Beyond was.

jimmy:  Aim the reformed killer robot show at kids. Makes sense.

tomk:  Terminator Junior!

jimmy:  Terju.

tomk:  Still that is what this story sounds like. Or it rips off the Hulk instead of Spider-Man with the whole government agent trying to capture or kill Zeta.

jimmy:  You won’t like Zeta when he’s angry.

tomk:  Thanks for the notice, Thunderbolt Jimmy.

jimmy:  Decent enough episode though. Do you know if going into it they had further plans for Zeta?

tomk:  Not sure. They did recast the role with Dietrich Bader as Zeta and Kurtwood Smith as Bennet. Zeta also got a kid to travel around with.

And Bader of course also played Batman on The Brave and the Bold.

jimmy:  Interesting.

And we’re not planning on watching Zeta Project right? Though it does take place in the DCAU.

tomk:  I think we can skip that one. It’s not even on DC’s streaming service. Unless it’s on DVD, I wouldn’t know where to find it and I’m not really interested anyway.

jimmy:  Agreed.

tomk:  I don’t remember it being all that distinctive outside the voice cast.

jimmy:  Dear God…this can’t be the opening credits..

Better quality, but apparently so:

tomk:  Oh yeah.

Do you prefer the boomerang head?

jimmy:  Well, a bit more distinctive at the very least.

tomk:  He’s also got Gary Cole’s voice here, and he played a different character in Office Space than Bader.

And yes, my favorite scene in Office Space was when Lumberg and Lawrence went into space to find the missing stapler.

jimmy:  You think everyone goes into space.

tomk:  Everything does go into three dimensional space.

Unless you mean outer space.

jimmy:

tomk:  See? Even Homer Simpson has gone into space.

jimmy:  Obviously…

tomk:  That is one happy man. The NSA isn’t dogging his every step.

jimmy:  So…did anyone go find the teacher that Zeta impersonated at the beginning of the episode?

tomk:  The one voiced by Edie McClurg who even looked like Edie McClurg?

jimmy:  Yeah, the Edie McClurg one.

tomk:  I dunno. Probably. Hopefully not by some Quagmire from Family Guy type.

jimmy:  That sounds like a joke I should get.

tomk:  Nah. Just remembered an episode of Family Guy where notorious creep Quagmire found a junior high cheerleader tied up in a locker after Stewie knocked her out.

jimmy:  Yeah, that would not be good for her.

tomk:  For a lot of people.

jimmy:  The gag with Zeta having the ski through his torso was funny though.

tomk:  Everybody gets one.

jimmy:  A torso?

tomk:  A good gag.

Man, I keep referencing Family Guy in this chat and I haven’t watched that show in years.

jimmy:  And I The Simpsons and ditto. 😛

tomk:  Though, to be fair, I was referring to a specific Family Guy reference that fits in well with some of our general Batman Beyond observations.

jimmy:  Haha. Spidey’s the best.

tomk:  We don’t seem to have much to say about this episode.

jimmy:  I noticed. I enjoyed it. I never would have thought it was a side door pilot for a Zeta show.

tomk:  I think that’s why there isn’t much to say here. There’s nothing wrong with it, but the point is to introduce a character who is going to go off to have adventures on a completely different show we won’t be watching.

Though Zeta does come back for another episode of this show later.

jimmy:  According to Wikipedia, I think Terry appears on an episode of that show too.

tomk:  I would be surprised if he didn’t.

So, Jimmy, did this episode leave you at all interested in Zeta’s show? Assuming you hadn’t looked up the opening credits…

jimmy:  Uh…no. I assumed Zeta was one of those characters that popped up for an episode and was never seen again.

tomk:  Good guess. Wrong, but a good guess.

jimmy:  In either case, it never left me thinking I’d like to see the continuing adventures of Friendly Terminator.

tomk:  Then shall we move on to hopefully more substantial conversations?

jimmy:  Unless you have more to add?

tomk:  Not really.

Shall we move on?

jimmy:  Let’s.

“Plague”

 

Terrorists smuggle a deadly disease into Gotham! Who can Batman trust to find the vial of death before it’s too late? 

jimmy:  I always thought Cobra was G.I. Joe’s problem.

tomk:  It’s Kobra at DC.

Longtime terrorist group, like Hydra with a religious angle in that they worship a destroyer snake god.

jimmy:  What about this guy?

tomk:  Um, no.

DC does have its own SHIELD to oppose them called Checkmate.

jimmy:  Checkmate? Well, that’s a silly name. I suppose the hierarchy of command is all based on chess pieces.

tomk:  Yes, they do.

jimmy:  Predictable.

tomk:  They’ve had some high profile creators work on them.

jimmy:  I do like the Rucka.

I’ve read some Checkmate over the years, but I would guess only issues tied into one Crisis event or another.

tomk:  Rucka did good work on that book.

Especially since one of the main characters was one he created for his Detective Comics run.

jimmy:  Mr T?

tomk:  No, not Mr. T. Or Mr. Terrific. The woman with the gun. Her name is Sasha Bordeaux. The board for Wayne Enterprises originally hired her to be a bodyguard for Bruce Wayne.

jimmy:  Huh. Never heard of her.

tomk:  I don’t think she’s been seen much since Final Crisis.

jimmy:  Which now never happened…

tomk:  Is that a Convergence reference?

jimmy:  More a New 52 reference.

tomk:  I wouldn’t know.

jimmy:  New 52 pretty much erased the occurrence of ANY Crisis events in the current timeline.

Anywho, this is not the DC chat, it’s the DCUA chat.

So, there was something about this episode that annoyed me. Can you guess what it was?

tomk:  That False Face’s first appearance was the old Adam West show?

jimmy:  It was?

tomk:  Indeed it was. This episode is like a weird grab-bag of bad guys. Kobra, as mentioned, is from the comics. False Face is from the Adam West show. And then, somehow Stalker got over being hit by a train.

(EDITOR’S NOTE:  False Face actually appeared once in a comic book in 1958 before he met Adam West’s Batman.)

jimmy:  Stalker. False Face. Kobra. Man, they weren’t even trying to come up with good names any more.

tomk:  What would you have gone with?

jimmy:  Kraven The Hunter. Clayface. Sneaky Snake Guy.

Hey, I never said I could do better…

tomk:  Well, was it the names that really bothered you?

jimmy:  Nah.

It was my common complaint. A “normal” guy with a taser and a lead pipe defeated Stalker AND Batman.

tomk:  You didn’t know his old alias was “Taser-Pipe!”

And yes, the exclamation point was part of that name.

jimmy:  Heh.

It was also kinda dumb that they couldn’t track him in the crowd. His clothes never changed.

tomk:  Terry still found him when they had to.

jimmy:  Only because he chose a face Terry was familiar with. Which seems stupid, but I guess he wouldn’t know that Batman would know a random teenager.

tomk:  Would you? He needed someone roughly his size and build.

And gee, we love seeing Flash Thompson screw up.

jimmy:  I just read “What If Flash Thompson Became Spider-Man” and let’s just say, he keeps the screwing up at a maximum.

tomk:  He’s better off with a symbiote.

Terry is better off not getting sick from guys with weird faces.

jimmy:  Sneaky Snake Guy with the killer Plan B.

tomk:  Kobra does become reoccurring villains.

jimmy:  Hopefully they’re more competent in the future.

tomk:  Not a fan of nameless hired goons, I see.

jimmy:  Oh, I don’t care. They just didn’t put up much of a fight. Maybe if they had a taser or a lead pipe things might have worked out better for them.

tomk:  Not everyone remembers to bring those things to a germ fight.

jimmy:  Or maybe they need stacks of credit cards….apparently they are tough to dig yourself out of.

tomk:  Those magnetic strips can attract each other and form a much stronger bond than you might think.

jimmy:  That must be it.

tomk:  It’s why they used to tell kids not to play in old refrigerators or stacks of new credit cards.

jimmy:  lol

tomk:  Still, Stalker looked pretty good for a guy who got hit by a train.

jimmy:  He got better.

tomk:  Except for his spine, sure.

jimmy:  Well, you do need one of those.

tomk:  Jellyfish do OK.

jimmy:  But they can’t save Batman so that they can kill him another day.

tomk:  Or not. This is Stalker’s last appearance.

jimmy:  Until he shows up to kill Batman in that new Batman Beyond animated film that isn’t getting made.

tomk:  Does that mean Stalker ends up one of the good guys?

jimmy:  “Good guy”?

tomk:  “Better than before guy”?

jimmy:  Mayhaps.

tomk:  But he has a code and only really wants Terry dead.

By his own hand…

jimmy:  That’s so Kraven.

See what I did there. That’s a funny joke.

tomk:  Yes. Funny. Ha. Ha.

jimmy:  lol

tomk:  Did you have any other bits of hilarity or pointed commentary to make? You know that was Townsend Coleman as False Face for example?

jimmy:  That was Townsend Coleman!?!?!?

Who’s Townsend Coleman?

tomk:  You might know him better shouting “Cowabunga!” or “Spoon!”

jimmy:  He was the Tick? And some kinda of adolescent deviant martial arts amphibian?

tomk:  He was indeed.

He’s a voice actor. He gets around. Voiced a talking dog for the most recent live action version of The Tick.

jimmy:  The Tick was so good. The animated version anyway.

tomk:  So you do know his voice.

jimmy:  Apparently so.

tomk:  Did you have anything else to add?

jimmy:  Not really. I think we’ve not talked about this episode enough. 🙂

tomk:  Well, bad guys had plague. Good guys stopped them.

Taser-Pipes aside, you seemed to like this one.

jimmy:  It was good. I know I complained because a lot of “silly” stuff happened, but I enjoyed it.

tomk:  It did do a good job of the old “team up with a foe” story.

jimmy:  It wouldn’t be honorable for Kraven to kill Spider-Man with someone’s help.

tomk:  Wasn’t he a founding member of the Sinister Six?

jimmy:  …maybe that’s why he killed himself.

tomk:  Did he come back to life?

jimmy:  I think so…I can’t keep track anymore.

tomk:  I thought it was his son or something. And his son looked exactly like him because that’s exactly how genetics works.

jimmy:  That happened…but I think the original is back now.

Because, comics.

tomk:  Well, that’s good to know…or not. Where’s Dr. Jokepus when we need him?

jimmy:  He’s the Superior Jokepus now.

tomk:  He’s not as cool as Chameleon-Face.

Or the Rhinguin.

jimmy:  Now you’re just getting silly.

tomk:  As silly as Sneaky Snake Guy’s thinking he can mass produce a plague to wipe out an entire American city?

jimmy:  Well, not that silly.

tomk:  What a goofball.

Say, wasn’t there a G.I. Joe named Stalker?

jimmy:  There was…

tomk:  Hmmm…more random connections…

You know, maybe if the Batman Beyond Stalker used a machine gun like G.I. Joe Stalker, he’d be better at taking down his prey.

jimmy:  Where’s the thrill of the hunt in that!?!

tomk:  You still gotta find ’em.

jimmy:  True.

tomk:  I dunno. I kinda like Stalker as some sort of ally.

jimmy:  I guess we’ll never know.

tomk:  No, I guess we won’t.

I blame society.

jimmy:  Society is the worst. Well, after Watson.

tomk:  I think Watson is part of society.

He’s such a pearl-clutching old woman.

jimmy:  Shall we move on?

tomk:  Sure. How about an episode about a cyborg street gang?

jimmy:  Cyborg eh? Street Gang eh? Maude eh?

tomk:  I think that’s a yes.

jimmy:  Let’s do it.

NEXT TIME:  Steps have been taken to ensure there won’t be any more lost chats, so be back soon when Tom and Jimmy move on to the episodes “April Moon,” “Sentries of the Lost Cosmos,” and “Payback”.

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