“And people wonder why no one takes Britain seriously anymore.”Stalwart butler Alfred (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) receives a call from his “cousin” Freddie (Roy Dotrice), who’s found himself in a spot of bother across the pond. In his manservant’s absence, Batman realizes that Freddie is actually Frederick, an old British Secret Service chum from Alfred’s days with the spy agency. By the time Batman and Robin reach London (“There is only one,” Alfred cautions them drolly), they learn that the two retired secret agents have been kidnapped by familiar foe Red Claw (Kate Mulgrew), who hopes to use them to gain access to Britain’s nuclear arsenal.
Things were going so well. Having just come off a marginally better “Baby-Doll” than I remembered, I was willing to set aside my boredom with Red Claw and give her another chance. Yet she and Baby-Doll, unlikely virtually every other character created for Batman: The Animated Series, never migrated over to the comics because, simply put, they’re dull. The last time we saw Red Claw (and the first, for that matter), she was menacing Catwoman in a real headscratcher of a two-parter, where her motive was as muddy as the unnecessarily long two-parter she headlined. Here, she’s still the same nebulously defined terrorist with goals that seem horribly generic (extort money from London). I’ve said before that Batman works in just about every story imaginable; such continues to be the case here, but Red Claw doesn’t seem a likely match for Batman on any count. (Wonder Woman, though, maybe…)
This episode is all the more bizarre when we consider that it’s ostensibly the series finale (though not the last in production value), the last episode aired by Fox before the show rebranded as The New Batman Adventures, with an updated art style and paired with Superman as The New Batman/Superman Adventures. As such, all we can ask is, why? Why end the show with an episode that’s barely about Batman? Why end the show outside of Gotham City, with one of the only episodes not set there? Why for the love of all that’s holy do you end the show with Red Claw? (To this last point, there may actually be a good answer – the first episode to air was, you guessed it, “The Cat and the Claw.” Fearful symmetry, indeed.) Perhaps most importantly, how did this episode require the strengths of three writers?
“The Lion and the Unicorn” should have been a slam-dunk in the sense that it’s an episode focused entirely on Alfred, one of the richest and underused characters in the Bat-mythos. It’s incredibly easy to take Alfred for granted – the unfaltering support system, ever at the ready to aid his Master Bruce in his undying quest for justice. He’s the voice of reason, the conscience, the emotional weight of the whole story. He’s the father Bruce Wayne never had, or rather tends to forget he always already had. And he’s an unmitigated badass, equally at home on the stage, in a surgical room, or behind enemy lines. Instead of distilling all the best parts about Alfred into twenty minutes, though, “The Lion and the Unicorn” relegates him to the role of hostage, who crumbles under torture despite convincing his captors (somewhat cleverly, I grant you) that he hasn’t. He breaks a vase over a goon’s head, yes, and gets a great one-liner in the process (“A Louis Quinze: what a pity”), but that should have been the whole episode.
And for being an episode set in London, the writers don’t take anywhere near full advantage of the new setting. We have a pair of goons who sound like their dialogue coach was Dick Van Dyke as Bert the chimney sweep, and we have a room full of British spymasters devoid of any personality at all. Red Claw isn’t a good fit for London (is she supposed to be Russian? – to wit, “Red”), but Batman’s been to London before. The 1966 television show introduced loose analogue Londinium, which could have appeared here with its rogues Marmaduke Ffogg and Penelope Peasoup (okay, maybe not). The comics even have a British Batman & Robin (from 1950, dubbed Knight & Squire, because of course they are), who could have made Alfred feel right at home and who might have lent a superheroic air to this whole thing.
Instead, we get an episode that is very basic, very conventional, and very safe. It’s not unwatchable, but there’s nothing in it to invite a second look. Contrary to “Baby-Doll,” which had a few surprises in it that I had forgotten, “The Lion and the Unicorn” was exactly the episode I remembered, and I didn’t like it then, either.
Writers: Diane Duane, Peter Morwood, and Steve Perry
Director: Boyd Kirkland
Villain: Red Claw (Kate Mulgrew)
Next episode: “Showdown,” in which a certain scarred cowboy tangoes with an immortal terrorist.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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