“All this sneaking around isn’t exactly my style.”Superman (Tim Daly) busts up a classic Roxy Rocket heist in Metropolis when he discovers that Batman has gone missing. With crime up in Gotham, Superman offers his help to a reluctant Robin, impersonating Batman in the interim until the Dark Knight can be found. Suspecting mind control, Robin and a disguised Superman scour the city for the Mad Hatter but find Bane, who’s elated to have another chance to break the Batman.
Just in case I never get around to full reviews of Superman: The Animated Series, I should say up front that this is probably my favorite of the show’s 54 episodes – discounting, of course, the three-parter “World’s Finest,” strung together as The Batman/Superman Movie. No slight to Superman, who had plenty of good episodes of his own (“Livewire,” “Mxyzpixilated,” and “Apokolips... Now!” come to mind), but it should come as no surprise that this Bat-fan was tickled pink to see Metropolis and Gotham meet once again. And while some Batman/Superman crossovers get bogged down in the philosophical differences between the two superheroes, occasionally erring on the side of the impossibility of cooperation, “Knight Time” is unapologetic in reveling in the exuberant fun of mixing the two worlds together.
Batman’s absence is the narrative catalyst, forcing Superman to investigate, but the episode is particularly inspired in the moments when Superman disguises himself as Batman, mastering Kevin Conroy’s voice through “precise muscle control” but completely missing the boat on posture, demeanor, and his own invincibility. It’s a comedy of errors, but the joke wisely never targets either hero, acknowledging instead the inherent absurdity of the situation and the irreplaceability of Batman. The episode even sneaks in a clever meta-gag about the darker tone of The New Batman Adventures when Robin notes that a video from Bruce Wayne has to be a forgery because “he’s smiling.” It’s an interesting sideways glance at Gotham, where one man’s disappearance sends an entire city into chaos; the police are stymied by a dangerous uptick in violent crime, while every villain known to man collaborates on a dystopian plot to conquer the city.
Despite its pitch-perfect portrayal of its titanic protagonist, the strength of the Batman animated shows was always its deep bench of villains, and “Knight Time” really packs them in. Even aside from the trio of villains plotting to dominate Gotham – Bane, Mad Hatter, and the criminally underused Riddler – we get appearances from Roxy Rocket and the Penguin, both of whom get compelling face-time with Superman. Roxy is, as ever, flirtatious, but it’s Penguin who gets what might be the best scene of the episode, facing down a Batman who’s suddenly able to kick a table across a room (even if Bat-Superman needs a little nudging from Robin to amp up the aggression).
“Knight Time” remembers, of course, that it’s a Superman show, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome in Gotham simply because it’d be fun to do so. The reveal of the episode – that Bruce Wayne’s disappearance has been engineered by Brainiac, who needs his considerable resources to build a rocket – fits right in with how Superman: The Animated Series reimagined Brainiac. And it’s always a delight to hear Corey Burton, who was positively iconic in the role of a dispassionate computer willing to sacrifice an entire world to preserve its knowledge. Like its bat-eared predecessor, StAS had a tendency to knock it out of the park on voice casting (shout-out to casting director Andrea Romano); like Mark Hamill as The Joker, Clancy Brown is to this day getting work as Lex Luthor, while Gilbert Gottfried and Dana Delaney really captured something quintessential about Mr. Mxyzptlk and Lois Lane, respectively. But Corey Burton’s clipped precision as Brainiac is dollars-to-donuts in that legendary status, and he’s a rival befitting Tim Daly’s note-perfect boy scout Superman.
“Knight Time” is an interesting coda to these animated Batman reviews because it’s an episode that celebrates the best of Batman’s 109 episodes – its madcap characters, its funhouse mirror of a setting, and its flexible accommodation of nearly any conceivable plot. It’s both a return (of sorts) to Gotham and a fun frolic through a new setting for Superman. And it’s a fine example of the best kinds of episodes the DC Animated Universe could churn out, the kind of candy you eat every so often without getting bored of it. It feels mildly sacrilegious to say, but “Knight Time” is probably the episode of StAS I’ve watched the most; it’s in a league with the best of Batman.
Writer: Robert Goodman
Director: Curt Geda
Villains: Brainiac (Corey Burton), Bane (Henry Silva), Roxy Rocket (Charity James), The Penguin (Paul Williams), The Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowall), and The Riddler (John Glover)
Next episode: “The Demon Reborn,” in which Superman meets one of Batman’s exes.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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