I finally picked up the final volume of Batman: The Animated Series the other day (volume 4) and started thinking about where I would go next. If you’re not familiar with the Bruce Timm universe (also refered to as the DC animated universe, or the DCAU), you may not realize just how many shows he’s responsible for, and that he and his staff are so good at establishing and recognizing their own continuity that every series is considered to be in the same canon; all of these shows have crossovers into the others. There are 14 years of continuity, starting with Batman: TAS in 1992 and ending with Justice League Unlimited in 2006.

Being the big sucker I am for complex, long-spanning continuity (Star Trek, Buffy/Angel, etc.) I eventually want to pick up every DVD box set in the DCAU. In case you didn’t know just how much of this canon existed or didn’t even realize it went beyond Batman: TAS, I thought I’d post a list of every show and available DVD box set, to give you a sense of just how much you’ll have to spend and how much shelf space you’ll need to clear if you want to embark on the same journey as I am. Bruce Timm revolutionized animation and story telling in the medium, and though Batman: TAS remains the best show in the canon (in my opinion) the others are certainly worth watching as well.

Batman: The Animated Series

There are four volumes. The fourth is actually a second Batman “series” (originally broadcast in “The New Batman/Superman Adventures”) that takes place in the same continuity and with the same voice actors, but the visual style is updated and it’s set two years later in order to focus on Batman’s partners, so Dick Grayson is now Nightwing and Tim Drake is the new Robin; Batgirl is also a series regular, when she only occasionally appeared previously, and not until the third volume.

Superman: The Animated Series

The Superman animated series came after the original run of Batman. The final season includes some crossover episodes with Batman, including the three-part “Batman/Superman World’s Finest” episode, also available as a DVD movie.

Batman Beyond

Here’s an idea that I immediately bocked at when I first heard about it back in the 90s, but it turned out to be in the same vein as Batman: TAS. Yeah, it’s futuristic and a new guy in the Batman suit, but Bruce Wayne, though an old man, is still calling the shots, and it’s as much about him as it is about Terry. If you watched Batman: TAS but didn’t give Beyond a chance, I advise you to take a chance on it.

Justice League

This is the next logical step after the Batman and Superman shows. Batman and Superman finally in a regular series together, with Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawk Girl, and Martian Manhunter. It’s a different dynamic with an ensemble cast and a wider array of villains but it definately holds true to its roots.

Justice League Unlimited

Similar to “The New Batman Adventures,” this is the same show with a new title. The theme for the final two seasons is basically to see how many of DC’s superheroes could be brought into a single show. There are tons and tons of guest characters, a lot of previously-unseen heroes getting their own episodes. I’ve seen very few of these, but some have complained that so many characters bogged stories down a bit. However, I’ve also heard that the end of the final season has a pretty extensive plot arc to wrap up the series. This is the final show made for the DCAU.

There are two lesser-known shows that are also part of the DCAU, made around the time of the Batman revamp episodes and then Batman Beyond. Static Shock was an original character that Bruce Timm gave his own series. I have never seen it, but I do know that while it was originally a stand-alone show, later epiodes have crossovers with other heroes and villains from the DCAU. It lasted for four seasons but so far only one volume has been released. The other is The Zeta Project, a series about a sentient robot and a spin-off of Batman Beyond (another show I’ve never seen). It ran for two seasons and has yet to be released on DVD.

Movies 

There have also been a number of stand-alone, animated movies in the Bruce Timm universe. The first, and most popular, was the excellent Batman: Mask of the Phantasm from 1993. The most noted next to it is Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

Gotham Girls

There is also a three-season series of web shorts made in flash animation starring the ladies of Gotham called Gotham Girls, which ended in 2002. They can still be viewed online, and were also included as an extra on the Birds of Prey boxset just this year. I’ve watched these– they’re mostly comedic shorts and I found them to be a little too silly, but the third season is a big arc and more serious, so it’s worth watching.

Since 2006, Bruce Timm has been producing direct-to-video DVDs for DC, mostly based on graphic novels. These are all completely contained continuities and not part of the DCAU. So far, they’ve been very good and worth watching (with the exception of the most recent Batman Gotham Knight, which I’ve reviewed here). The other two are Superman: Doomsday and Justice League New Frontier.

This is obviously a lot of television to try and buy, but if you’re adventureous, most of it’s out there now. All of these available boxsets can be found on Amazon.com, Suncoast, Hastings, and your local Target or Wal-Mart stores may still carry at least some of the Justice League Unlimited sets, since they were the most recenly released. I’ve been buying mine for between $20 and $30 apiece. If you just want to see some of these episodes, they’re all available for rent on Netflix. Good hunting!

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

If you’ve read my Three Timeline Theory, you know I spend a lot of time watching and pondering Star Trek. Probably too much. Not only do I run a weekly club, write a lot of trivia, and pride myself on knowing canon well enough to come up with crazy ways to make contiuity mistakes work, but I also know a thing or two about production itself, and I even have a little theory about that.

 Besides the fact that they’re all set in the 24th century, have overlapping timelines, share some of the same characters and a whole lot of writing staff and production crew, the other major thing Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager all have in common is that they ran for seven seasons. Both the original series and Enterprise were cut short. There are a number of reasons for this but there’s one very interesting one that isn’t talked about too often. All three of those shows came dangerously close to cancellation due to being in ratings hell. And they were all saved by a bold step by the producers.

TNG became the ratings powerhouse it was the rest of its run because of the popularity it gained during the summer after The Best of Both Worlds Part 1. The hype surrounding the cliffhanger about Picard becoming a Borg, no one knowing whether he would live, die, or whether Patrick Stewart would return created a lot of new viewers– the ratings for the reruns that summer were higher than they had ever been for a new episode, and it transformed into a phenomenon. DS9 wasn’t doing so hot either until Worf was added to the cast. Same thing with Voyager, until Seven of Nine came along.

Every Trekky knows the famous ways in which these shows were saved, but I wonder how many have realized the bizarre coincidence they share. Every one of these events occured during season cliffhangers between the third and fourth seasons! All three of these shows almost didn’t make it past their fourth year, and if these stories and new characters hadn’t been added, they may have been cancelled during that season or wrapped by the end of it.

What makes this especially intriguing to me is what happened to Enterprise. In 2005, the fifth Trek installment was cut short with only four seasons. And four seems to be the magic number. It almost wasn’t even renewed for a fourth, put in that same dangerous situation of the shows before it. It was pushed from its Wednesday night slot at 8:00 back to TV’s pit of prime time despair, Fridays at 9:00. But I’m not sure it’s just that time slot that killed it. There’s every possibility that it would have met the same fate even if it had stayed on Wednesdays, considering that even the bold 26-episode Xindi arc of season 3 hadn’t managed to boost ratings very much. And somewhat like The Best of Both Worlds, it had a surprising cliffhanger, in which Archer seems to be dead, only to be discovered in an alternate history where aliens are helping the Nazis to win WWII.

But these days, somewhat thanks to The Best of Both Worlds, epic cliffhangers are common place and not enough to jolt any series back to life. So the question is, would a Worf or a Seven of Nine saved Enterprise? It’s hard to imagine what character could have been added that would change the show’s fate, considering the problem many Trekkies loyal to the Berman/Braga shows had with it in the first place was its premise. There’s no way to do a prequel to Star Trek without ruining the continuity that came before it, and that’s exactly what Enterprise did. Though it was a highly entertaining show and had a lot of episode worthy of the Star Trek legacy, its continuity issues were too numerous for a lot of Trekkies to ignore. So the only way Enterprise could have survived would be to bring in a very large fanbase of people who didn’t have to be Trekkies to be Enterprise fans, and apparently it didn’t do a good enough job of that.

Season 4 did have a brave new direction, led by its new showrunner Manny Coto, who was on the writing staff during season 3 and wrote many of its best episodes. But unlike the previous season, Enterprise stopped trying to create its own mythos and started concentrating again on the classic mythos of the Trek universe. Coto’s mission seemed to be cleaning up the mess made by the first two seasons and making the show fit better with the rest of canon, especially where it concerned Klingons and Vulcans. And it was a great idea… if there were very many Trekkies still watching the show. Because what it couldn’t do is keep bringing in that new fanbase– now it was actually trying to be Star Trek, while its earlier seaons had tried to somewhat distance themselves from the rest of canon.

Perhaps it was too late to get that old Trek fanbase to join by the fourth season. The ones who didn’t like it in the first place had three years to become very annoyed that there wasn’t another Trek show on the air that went forward instead of backwards. I doubt if they would trust any show set in the 22nd century and with a ship named Enterprise, no matter the story direction.

But the most interesting part of all of this is that, if the show had made it to a fifth season, another regular cast member was planned to be added: Shran, the Andorian. Shran was played by Jeffrey Combs, who has had a long history with Star Trek and has played numerous characters, especially in DS9. His Shran character was very popular with fans, and appeared in about half a dozen episodes. The idea that he might have become part of the regular cast, serving about Archer’s ship, reminds me a lot of what happened on DS9 and Voyager.

And it makes one wonder, if the staff had this revelation at the end of season 3, if Shran had become a regular in the fourth season, just like Worf and Seven of Nine… would it have been enough to save the show? I really don’t know. Shran was popular with fans already familiar with the show, but Worf and the Borg brought in fans from outside of DS9 and Voyager. I don’t know if Jeffrey Combs himself would have been enough to do that. But maybe, just because it was that fated fourth season that saved the other post-TOS shows, it might have helped.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan