Batman: The Animated Series - "Time Out of Joint"

“If it’s any comfort, my revenge will encompass more than just you. I intend to pass a most timely sentence on the entire judicial system.”

In retrospect, it should have been obvious, but Batman and Robin are shocked when Temple Fugate – the Clock King (Alan Rachins) – steals an antique timepiece at auction by using a device that allows him to slip between seconds and freeze time. The Dynamic Duo rightly assumes that Fugate is about to continue his quest for vengeance against Mayor Hamilton Hill (Lloyd Bochner), but stopping a man who can stop time is an entirely different sort of challenge.

This episode tickles a lot of my fancies, beginning with the title’s reference to my favorite Shakespeare play (though it’s a real shame we never hear Alan Rachins deliver that line in this episode). Moreover, the episode challenges our conception of what a Batman story can do while simultaneously proving the elasticity of the character in his ability to accommodate something like this episode’s far-out science-fiction concept of altering the passage of time. You’re probably sick of hearing me say that Batman stories can go anywhere in a way that other characters can’t oblige, but this episode proves just how effective Batman’s detective skills can be when faced with an adversary whose modus operandi defies the very laws of physics. Simply put, Batman has to imagine himself into another universe in order to stop the Clock King.

And hello to the Clock King, the maestro of minutes, the sultan of seconds, and – I will go so far as to assert – the most underrated villain in the rightly well-regarded canon of BtAS episodes. At only two episodes, the Clock King leaves me screaming for more, more, more – more of his unique elitist snobbery, more of his pinpoint precision, more of his clever crimes, and more of that astoundingly elegant costume design. In this episode, he trades in his brown suit for a sleek black one, though he retains his clockface spectacles and minute-hand cane. He also clings to his single-minded desire for revenge on Mayor Hill, a drive that puts all of Gotham in danger through that particularly comic book form of metonymy (e.g., you have wounded me, ergo the city you lead must suffer). I had previously described Rachins’s performance as “an arrogant nasal clip of a voice, a perfectly irritated how-dare-you quality that can’t believe Batman would interfere with his perfect plans,” and I haven’t come up with a better descriptor. Now that we’ve met The Riddler (we hadn’t by the time of Fugate’s debut in “The Clock King”), it’ll forever be a tremendous sorrow that this show didn’t pair them up for the ultimate battle of wits.

Though I recalled liking this episode, it presented a few surprises. I was pleasantly surprised to see this episode riff on “See No Evil,” an episode which I had assumed no one else remembered. “So we don’t have another invisible man running loose,” Batman muses, a nod to another episode which strained the limits of believability but which was nevertheless ably carried by Batman. (Both “Time Out of Joint” and “See No Evil” were, incidentally, directed by BtAS mainstay Dan Riba.) I was also delighted to hear Roscoe Lee Browne in a small role as Dr. Wakati, the unwitting inventor of Fugate’s chrono-device. Browne has a long and illustrious pedigree as an actor, but this reviewer will always remember him as the definitive Wilson Fisk on the mid-90s Spider-Man cartoon, which shared a curious number of its alumni with Batman: The Animated Series (including, most bizarrely, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as Doctor Octopus).

The Clock King’s pair of appearances stands as a great example of fine episodes that you wouldn’t expect of this show but which display the level of craft, thoughtfulness, and entertainment that made this series so much more than a kid’s cartoon. Back to back, “The Clock King” and “Time Out of Joint” are a case study in how to introduce and develop a villain in two distinct single episodes, a fine golden moment for a supremely underrated villain.

Original Air Date: October 8, 1994

Writers: Alan Burnett and Steve Perry

Director: Dan Riba

Villain: The Clock King (Alan Rachins)

Next episode: “Catwalk,” in which two unlikely villains have a team-up I can’t believe I didn’t remember.

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