Batman: The Animated Series

Why ruin a perfectly awsome character like Clock King with some weird technological device that is physically impossible to make? I'll give the episode credit because they brought back Clock King but it felt as if it were a completely different villain. Fuget likes to be precise and right on time. Like when he jumps off a bridge because he knows that there is a train coming 7 minutes late which he can land on (episode "The Clock King"). That seemed cool and made him seem as if he knew everything. Plus, nobody even cared that all the sudden, the thought to be dead Clock King was back. Nobody even questioned how he survived the Clock Tower Collapse. And finally, how did Robin know who Clock King was? He wasn't a sidekick yet when Clock King first came. Sure Batman probably would have told him about him and maybe shown him a picture but I doubt that he would recognize Tempel Fuget after seeing him in a quick glance unless he spends his whole day memorzing the faces of villains.

"Batman: The Animated Series" was always good at taking B and C-list villains and fleshing them out into compelling characters. Here, we have an encore performance from one of those lesser baddies, The Clock King. After a very strong first outing, he's back with a more sci-fi heavy episode, which is just too out there for "Batman."



I firmly believe Batman works best when he and his characters and stories are grounded in a (slightly) realistic world. Let Superman have the mad scientists and alien invasions. Keep Batman fighting mob bosses, street punks and costumed (albeit human) villains. The Clock King was a great one-shot, revenge-minded villain who had a very strong episode. I'm not opposed to reusing him, but to give him the power to stop, slow down or speed up time is just too much. It takes the show out of its reality and, as a result, the story suffers.



Plus, it's all over the place. Temple Fugit is first just a sneak thief, then he's back full force in his revenge scheme against the Mayor. And when Batman and Robin strap on time devices of their own, the whole thing just gets silly. It reminds me of a similar plot of an episode of "The Wild Wild West," but in that series, mad scientists and bizarre experiments were the norm, not the exception. I'll stick with "The Clock King" and chalk this one up to a misguided effort.