Batman: The Animated Series - "Prophecy of Doom"

“Peace to all, brothers and sisters. The negative plane is aligned with the positive, bringing forth astral harmony!”

Concerned that the self-proclaimed prophet Nostromos (Michael Des Barres) is bilking his wealthy friends, Bruce Wayne endeavors to infiltrate “The Brotherhood” to learn the truth. Batman discovers the criminal past of Nostromos while the prophet’s final prediction grows ever nearer...

Nostromos joins the pantheon of forgettable villains created for Batman: The Animated Series (right alongside Red Claw and The Sewer King), which is perhaps remarkable for the show that gave us Harley Quinn, Roxy Rocket, and The Condiment King while also reinventing rogues like Mr. Freeze. We’ll never see Nostromos again, which is probably for the best. It’s ironic, though, that a show which revolves around a singular hero so often rises and falls on the strengths of his antagonists.

The underwhelming nature of Nostromos sheds light on the bigger problem with “Prophecy of Doom” on the whole, and that’s that it isn’t incompetent by any means; it’s just largely uninspiring, and it feels like there could have been a lot more done with it. For one, Nostromos doesn’t behave like a Batman-level villain until the very end, which boasts a Batman ’66-style death trap which unfortunately doesn’t feel quite earned by this episode. Furthermore, Nostromos’s greatest crime seems to be bilking rich idiots out of their fortunes, to which I say, serves ’em right! There’s nothing in the episode to suggest Nostromos isn’t a con artist, and had his villainy come as a surprise – if, for example, the magician Zatanna had been around to lend at least a semblance of credence to the inclusion of magic in Batman’s world – “Prophecy of Doom” might not have been a flop, and Nostromos might have been worth revisiting at some point.

As it stands, the best parts of the episode have nothing to do with the villain, a surprising statement given what scene-stealers the villains of Batman: The Animated Series often end up becoming. No, I’m not referring to Bruce Wayne’s one-and-done circle of socialite friends, who are so bland it’s amazing their surname isn’t literally Whitebread. There’s an engaging scene in the second act where Bruce Wayne escapes an elevator crash, giving chase as Batman to the saboteur; it’s set up with a nice bit of dreadful foreshadowing from a cheery security guard and Bruce’s dawning realization that something is afoot, and it gives Batman one of his two standout sequences.

It’s that planetarium death trap, though, that never congeals with the rest of the episode, and it seems a tad overblown for Nostromos, who spends most of the episode pouting and prognosticating while his partner-in-crime does most of the heavy lifting (but who’s otherwise so forgettable that I can’t recall his name). There’s also a distracting visual similarity between Nostromos – an original creation exclusive to this episode – and the pre-established Justice League villain Felix Faust, which gestures toward a less forgettable version of this episode. Ultimately, then, “Prophecy of Doom” refuses to embrace the mystical potential of its plot, incongruous as it might be in the established world of BtAS, but consequently it never manages to be the kind of threat that merits a Batman-level response. That, I suppose, is a task to which next week’s episode is much better suited.

Original Air Date: October 6, 1992

Writers: Dennis Marks and Sean Catherine Derek

Director: Frank Paur

Villain: Nostromos (Michael Des Barres)

Next episode: “Feat of Clay,” in which things get a bit muddy.

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