Blabbin 'Bout Batman: The Animated Series - His Silicon Soul

So an insignificant but strange thing that happened to me watching this episode: I watched this one without having ever seen either of the "Heart of Steel" episodes, so I had no foreknowledge of HARDAC/Cybertron/the characters introduced therein. When in this episode RoboBatman is searching the Bat Computer for other duplicants, the computer reads off the names of all the destroyed robots and to my surprise the first one was "Wayne, Brenda" (according to the subtitles provided on Vudu). As no further info on her is given in the episode, I just had to assume this was some cousin of Bruce I'd never heard of in BatCanon before and wondered what her deal was. Surprised again when her name didn't come up on the podcast at all, I had to investigate further and realized that was actually "Duane, Randa" from those "Heart of Steel" episodes, and that Brenda Wayne was just a weird mistake on the part of the subtitler (and thus tricked my eyes/ears as well). Anyways, just wanted to put this strange occurrence out there, and now I really want a backstory for the mysterious Brenda Wayne!

I echo what Joe said. I hadn’t seen the previous two parter before and thought that maybe Batman had been a robot for a span of episodes. Mind you, I was watching this as reruns in the mid 90s while also reading the SpiderMan Clone Saga which had actually done a reveal that we’d been with the clone SpiderMan all along (later retconned, of course). I figured this was a similar thing and was enthralled.

Matthew Mahoney

BTAS is definitely my all-time favorite TV show, animated or otherwise. But, oh man—I would be sooooo stoked for you guys to do an episode about Transformers! Hopefully it’s the 1986 movie, one of my absolute favorite things, ever!!

This and heart of steel 1 and 2 are the episodes I always think of when I think of this show. They are hands down my favorite and probably what made me the sci-fi nerd I am today. I remember watching this one as a kid, I was so traumatized by the 2 parter before this that I suspected EVERYONE the real Batman was talking to was a robot. I also really disliked Rossum because I think being 8 I wanted a person to blame for all of this. Anyway, this episode rules and only makes me hate it when people write boring shit about robots like "what if robots were an allegory for racism". I'm callin you out David Cage! You suck!

DrKarate

This one is one of my favorites and I've come back to this episode again and again over the years. My young mind was blown by the continuity and heavy subject matter in such a superficially silly setup. When I got older and finally saw Blade Runner it made even more sense. Later when listening to that Futurama commentary that same bit of trivia about R.U.R. unlocked another piece of the puzzle. Then today when looking up R.U.R. I saw that premiered in a city in the Czech Republic named Hradec Králové? Probably just a coincidence but that spelling is pretty close. In regards to merchandise for this particular episode, DC Direct did do a pretty kick-ass line of B:TAS figures a few years back and the Hardac Batman was one that made the cut. Regrettably, it goes for more than I'm willing to spend on a figure nowadays. More regrettably the only other "toys" are two Funko Pops of "Robot Batman". One with half torn face, the other with just the robot head. Speaking of the half-torn face thing, the character designers must really have liked the visual because it would return for the primary look of the DCAU version of Metallo in Superman.

As far as Home Alone 2 being a complete retread of the first, I watched them back to back days last year, and when you do it that way, every single repetition of joke and formula cones across as being completely on purpose metajokes about sequels, and is very funny. Beat for beat, scene for scene it reads more as hanging a lampshade on itself. Whether they did that on purpose who can say but it was a lot more enjoyable back to back then months or a year after having seen the first.

Paul

This episode confused the hell out of me as a kid. I missed the Heart of Steel two-parter, so I had no idea there was a renegade robot factory in this universe so when robot Batman's circuits are first exposed it blew my mind. I was left wondering if Batman had been a robot the whole time, and it honestly made me really uncomfortable for some reason (maybe I had Terminator 2 on the brain), but also captivated me. It was quite the ride for me and obviously the episode reveals what's going on, but it was a hell of a "eureka" moment when I did eventually see Heart of Steel. Even without all of that, this episode is great and I find it far more interesting than Heart of Steel because they do such a great job of humanizing the fake Batman. How can one not feel bad for it by the end of the episode? Just an all around fantastic episode.

Joe Hodgson

This is such an existentially frightening episode of a children show that I'm surprised in retrospect they allowed it to happen (though I guess it IS pretty late into the production order). While it's obviously a very direct sequel to Heart of Steel, it also feels spiritually like a sister episode to Mad Hatter's second appearance Perchance to Dream as well. They both involve, in a Twilight Zone esque way, waking up one day to the horrible realization that you've been living in some kind of disassociated fabrication, though THAT turns out to be the lie in the former episode, while it's the TRUTH that is so disturbing to (fake) Batman this time. In any case this is a great episode, and in particular during this rewatch I was amazed by the close up on the damaged robot Batman's chest when he meets Rossum because of how detailed and anime-like it was (which is of course due to the episode being animated by amazing anime people). - Yet somehow, I didn't even think about The Big O during this rewatch but that ALSO makes so much sense

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag