Batman (the TV series)

[Slim]

1:27 The Curse of Tut

A giant sphinx appears in Gotham City Park, and begins to make sinister pronouncements to the general public. An ancient King of the Nile has risen, it explains. To claim Gotham City as its own.

Could this be the work of the arch-criminal known as King Tut? The Egyptologist academic who was struck on the head in a student riot, only to wake suffering from the delusion that he is the reincarnation of King Tutankhamun - and that Gotham is the ancient city of Thebes?

Why would he tip us off? O'Hara wants to know. Come on, the villains always do that. You should know that by now. And of course, it's a trap. But Batman and the Boy Wonder manage to avoid being stabbed by a long extending blade when they examine the Sphinx.

Well, Bruce Wayne gets involved. He's on the Board of Trustees at the Gotham museum, where an Egyptian antiquity exhibition is being unveiled. And he gets kidnapped! Strapped to a hospital trolley in the back of an ambulance being driven by one of Tut's men.

He manages to crash open the back doors, but ends up rolling down a steep hill to a 400 ft drop! A nice variation on the cliffhanger, there. Bruce in peril instead of Batman and Robin.

One odd thing - the Sphinx statue's public pronouncements in the park always begin "NOW HEAR THIS", which to me has more of a flavour of an announcement from the US Navy than a proclamation from ancient Egypt.

I really liked this one. The villain is genuinely deluded, which puts a different spin on it. Properly nuts. The ancient Egyptian sets are very elaborate. And Victor Buono plays Tut with a beautiful pompous comic touch. His weary disdain for the decidedly un-royal manners of his criminal minions is delightful. Actually he reminds me of Charles Winchester in M*A*S*H, and he has a bit of the same Boston accent.

Much less manic than The Joker or The Riddler. But a pleasingly eccentric performance. I'd been looking forward to seeing Tut again. I do remember watching the Tut episodes as a kid.

[Slim]

1:28 The Pharaoh's In a Rut

Bruce manages to free his arms as the trolley he's strapped to hurtles toward the cliff edge. Conveniently, there's a low railing he can grab a couple of metres from the precipice. Seems a bit of a cheap way to resolve a cliffhanger but hey.

Batman announces he's off to Alexandria in Egypt to do some research, but it's a ruse. Actually this seems very superfluous to the plot, but anyway - assuming Tut and his gang will try to kidnap Bruce Wayne again, the Caped Crusader sets a trap.

He employs a clever subterfuge by which he substitutes himself, in full costume, for Bruce at the kidnap. Unfortunately he gets knocked unconscious on the way to Tut's hideout. But a homing transmitter is involved naturally, so Robin follows him there.

Batman manages to overcome the villains, Robin joins him for the punch up (and a sword fight, once they've disarmed a couple of the goons). But Tut escapes in the Batmobile. You'd think it would have a steering lock or something.

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One thing that really fascinated me about this one - the Caped Crusader communicates with the Batmobile Relay Circuit at the Batcave, via radio. It's voice controlled. Now - I suppose that people did talk to computers and machines in the sci-fi of the time. Kirk often talks to computers in Star Trek. But to see something labelled explicitly as "voice control" in the '60s really seems striking.

So anyway, Tut ends up getting flung into the air by the ejector seat and lands with an almighty crash. Curiously, he regains consciousness in Commissioner Gordon's office, not a hospital.

And as he comes round.. he thinks he's had a bizarre dream.. he's back in the room, an Egyptology professor. He soon realises it wasn't a dream. Oh, whatever will the Dean say?

Well presumably he'll have a relapse, or another knock on the head. Because I'm sure there are a few more Tut stories to come.

Fun fact, just noticed this. At the site of the 300 foot drop which Bruce manages to evade, you can just make out the HOLLYWOOD sign on a hill in the distance.

[Slim]

1:29 The Bookworm Turns

Bruce and Dick watch the opening of a new bridge in Gotham City on TV. Suddenly, Dick (Robin of course) recognises an arch-villain in the crowd - Bookworm! Moments later, Commissioner Gordon is seen to have been shot by a sniper, and falls from the bridge to the river, far below.

Oddly, although most of the coverage on the TV at Wayne Manor is in colour, the man falling from the bridge is shown in black & white. Stock footage of course.

So Batman and Robin race to Gotham Police HQ, only to find that the Commissioner is still alive! Bookworm must have pulled off a stunt. But why? And why has a bomb, in the form of a book titled For Whom The Bell Tolls been planted in the Batmobile?

Well - it's a message from Bookworm of course, a clue. No arch-criminal in the Batman universe worth his or her salt would contemplate a serious crime without sending a clue first.

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Impressively, the Dynamic Duo become aware of the book bomb via the Batmobile's bomb detector. It's safely ejected remotely, although mysteriously the seat it's been placed on doesn't actually move. One second the bomb's there, the next it isnt. It explodes in mid-air, but the title is still legible.

I was sceptical that a book-themed villain would work, but actually it's a pretty good character, played by Roddy McDowall. A few years before his Planet of the Apes gig, but he was already a notable screen actor. Not as manic as The Riddler or The Joker, but he does bring a sinister intensity to the part. It's a decent idea as well; he's a frustrated novelist with no ideas of his own, so he commits crimes based on plots stolen from books.

He's also capable of extraordinary feats of speed reading. At one point he reads through a book about five inches thick in a minute. It's actually very obviously a phone book; the prop department must have assumed that you wouldn't notice that on a 1960s telly.

Anyway obviously the clue is intended to lead the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder to a trap. But it's Robin who ends up in a trap (and the cliffhanger). He gets tied upside down to the clapper of a huge clock tower bell, and it's one minute to midnight! It tolls for thee, Boy Wonder. Or does it? I'll find out tomorrow.

Oh yes just remembered, as the Dynamic Duo make their way up a wall using the Batrope, Jerry Lewis pops his head out of a window to say hello. A few celebrities had cameos in a similar manner, I recall. Pretty sure I remember seeing Sammy Davis Jr pop his head out once.

[Slim]

1:30 While Gotham City Burns

Batman has worked out - incredibly improbably, given the available information - that Robin has been tied to the clapper of Big Benjamin, at the Wayne Memorial Clock Tower. It's one of the show's running jokes that the Dynamic Duo are able to draw critically accurate conclusions from extremely ambiguous and minimal information. Reacher novels can be a bit like that to be fair, though in that case it's not supposed to be funny.

Anyway the solution to the Boy Wonder's plight is ingenious indeed. With seconds to go, Batman fires his Batrope grappling hook Batzooka at the tower's lightning rod. He fires another hook at the hands of the clock. Then he connects the ends of the two ropes to the positive terminal of the Batmobile's nuclear power source, to generate an electrical field to repel the clapper from the side of the bell. Leaving aside the very unlikely proposition that the ropes would be conductive, brilliant.

Bookworm steals a priceless book from Wayne Manor. I can't actually remember why, it seems a bit superfluous. Meanwhile a huge cook book appears somewhere in Gotham City, in the middle of the road. The Dynamic Duo go to investigate of course - Batman works out that the front cover is made of steel, and he opens it with a sort of portable magnet contraption.

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Of course once the two are inside, it turns out to be a trap. A rather elaborate one. It's fitted out like a kitchen, with stoves and soup pans. But they're to be steamed alive in there!

By the time Chief O'Hara and his men have managed to get the front cover open again, the two have gone. Escaped down a manhole. They catch up with Bookworm and his gang, there's a punch up, job done. How did the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder find them? Well, while in the steam trap / massive cook book, Batman managed to contact Alfred at the Batcave. He asked him to "flood the end of the voice actuated circuit of the anti-crime computer" and was able to listen in on the bookish fiend's plans in the Batmobile, which he's nicked.

Quite a recurring theme in recent episodes that the Batmobile gets stolen by the villain. The Penguin and King Tut have had a go in it as well.

Well, I liked that one. I'd love to think that we'll see Bookworm again, but I've just checked and we won't. There's a brief announcement at the end of the episode that it's The Riddler again next time. I think I'll start a spreadsheet to keep count of villain appearances, I think this will be the fourth Riddler story.

[Slim]

1:31 Death In Slow Motion

The Riddler returns for the penultimate two-parter of the first series. He turns up at a silent film festival at a cinema in Gotham City, in the guise of a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. He and his henchmen, dressed as Keystone Cops entertain the folks gathered there with a little comedy cameo.

I was so impressed by this - Frank Gorshin inhabits Chaplin beautifully. It's note-perfect. The umbrella mannerisms are spot on.

Anyway while he's there he robs the till and leaves a clue, in the form of a riddle of course. Yes, a trap. He lures the Dynamic Duo to a bakery (where he steals the payroll but escapes before they get there) and a library, where the crime-fighting pair fall victim to a giant book falling on their heads. Couldn't help wondering if this was a prop left over from the last story.

Finally he spikes the drinks (lemonade) at a temperance party with a villainous substance he's concocted to make the guests, including Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara, bad tempered. A hilarious KAPOW! OOOFF! style punch up breaks out among the well-to-do of Gotham City.

Robin gets kidnapped (knockout gas of course, pretty much every Batman episode has it) and as the episode closes, he's strapped to a conveyor belt and about to be introduced to a circular saw!

The Prince of Puzzles is particularly manic and twisted in this one. But why is he recording his nefarious activities on a movie camera? And will Robin get sawn in half?

[Slim]

1:32 The Riddler's False Notion

So: it's not Robin strapped to the conveyor belt, it's a dummy. Batman turns up at the lumber yard where the dummy Robin is about to meet its fate. He finds Riddler's sidecandy there, and takes her to Gotham Police station. Quite an interesting scene follows, in which he intimidates her a bit. But he decides to take her to the Batcave, and asks Commissioner Gordon to come with him - just to have a credible witness to attest that he doesn't apply any unduly sinister methods.

Robin's life may be at stake, after all.

He takes them there in the Batmobile, with the two passengers unconscious from a quick blast of Bat gas, to keep the location secret. Then the Caped Crusader subjects the villain cutie to a lie detector test, involving dissolving her breath into a flask containing a clear chemical substance, after asking her a couple of questions. It goes red, indicating that she's told the truth. But the only information he's gained from her are her fiendish boss' next riddles.

But that's enough for the Dark Knight Detective to work out where Robin is being held. And when he arrives there, he finds Robin, his hands tied behind his back, about to be thrown from a high ledge on a very tall building! He's too late to prevent the puzzling fiend from throwing the Boy Wonder to his fate, but the quick-thinking Caped Crusader throws down a batrope on the end of a Batarang, which Robin is able to capture in his teeth. Genius.

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Riddler and the gang escape in a helicopter. The Prince of Puzzles does a bit of skywriting from the helicopter with some sort of smoke-emitting hose, and some fairly lengthy and elaborate clues appear in the sky, in a matter of seconds. Impressive. They're intended to lead the two crime-fighters to a decoy location.

Riddler then turns up, in a cowboy outfit - in keeping with the movie theme - at the home of a wealthy silent film collector, and we finally see why he's been filming the Dynamic Duo in secret at the scenes of his crimes. He's made the first silent movie epic in four decades, featuring Batman and Robin in live action no less, and the collector has agreed to pay $100,000 for it. Of course as soon as the hapless collector opens his safe, the villainous puzzler attempts to rob his entire film collection, assuming that he'll pay handsomely to get it all back. But Batman and Robin turn up. They've worked out what The Riddler's up to.

Oddly, at the moment the Caped Crusader appears, The Riddler is pointing a gun at him. But he doesn't attempt to use it. Then there's quite a satisfying punch up and it's job done. We end on a heartwarming moment, in which Batman and Robin visit Aunt Harriet, ostensibly at Bruce's request, fulfilling her ambition to meet them one day. How she doesn't recognise her nephew Dick behind the mask, I can't imagine. Bit of a Superman / Clark Kent situation there.

Really a pretty good one, nice to see Frank Gorshin get to play the Chaplin character in the first part and the cowboy persona in the second. And he really chews the scenery as The Riddler in this one.

[Slim]

1:33 Fine Finny Fiends

Alfred is kidnapped by The Penguin and his loathsome criminal associates during a visit to a fish store. He's buying caviar for an annual multi-millionaire award dinner, organised by Bruce Wayne. Naturally Batman is on the case immediately, but before you know it, Alfred turns up safe and sound.

But he's been brainwashed by the waddling pirate of plunder - in a quite bizarre contraption resembling a personal sauna with Christmas lights. Alfred's purpose is to find out where the dinner is being held, so that The Penguin and his gang can rob the attendees.

Fortunately the Caped Crusader realises that his faithful servant has been compromised. He and Robin find a clue in the fish store. It leads them to The Penguin's waterfront hideout.

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There's then a bizarre punch-up that turns into a swordfight with umbrellas, and somehow the Dynamic Duo are overcome. I think that's a first. After being subdued with knockout gas, they're restrained and introduced to a vacuum chamber, where - thanks to a gigantic reverse bellows operated by The Penguin's disgusting henchmen, the air is slowly being pumped out!

Quite a high standard of villain's cutie again in this one. I was also pleased to see a bevy of swimsuit-clad beauties at the Multi-Millionaire's Dinner rehearsal.

This is the last two-part story of the first series, so I can announce that for this first set of 34 episodes, the Villain Appearances League Table is as follows:

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The table in the rightmost two columns is generated automatically from the data in the first two columns. Some of the second series stories are two-parters with multiple villains - rest assured the spreadsheet caters for that, so for example if the text "Joker, Penguin" is entered in a cell in the second column, the formula will separate them and count them separately. I love a spreadsheet, me. I will admit though that I got Meta AI to assist with this one.

[dom]

Sorry not Batman related but excel. Thanks to chat gpt and in turn thanks to you (for highlighting the possibility) I discovered the rank.eq function. It allows me to give a rank to my daily solar production figures without having to sort them so they remain in date order - thanks!

[Slim]

Sorry not Batman related but excel. Thanks to chat gpt and in turn thanks to you (for highlighting the possibility) I discovered the rank.eq function. It allows me to give a rank to my daily solar production figures without having to sort them so they remain in date order - thanks!

That's interesting, I haven't used that one. I think I'd probably use SORT(), but leave the source data intact separately (did that for the Wordle league table last time).  Might start a spreadsheet tips thread.

[Slim]

1:34 Batman Makes the Scenes

The Dynamic Duo avoid suffocating in the vacuum chamber thanks to Batman's emergency tank of bat-oxygen, secreted in his utility belt. It feels like a rubbish get-out to the cliffhanger.

Knowing that Alfred has been brainwashed, the Caped Crusader tells him the location of the multi-millionaires' charity dinner - a luxury ocean liner named SS Gotham Neptune.

Upon receiving the info from Alfred, The Penguin substitutes his own criminal cutie associate for the young lady who was supposed to be jumping out of the cake at the dinner. And when she does emerge from the cake, she gives everyone present - including Batman and Robin - a dose of knockout gas from the tip of one of The Penguin's umbrellas. I've never been to one of those parties where a girl appears out of a giant cake. I feel I've missed out.

The pompous, waddling fiend and his loathsome gang make off with the loot, but they find the Dynamic Duo waiting for them. They took anti-knockout-gas pills as a precaution, and were secretly conscious the whole time. There's a punch-up and it's back to the penitentiary for The Penguin and friends. Although why Gotham City's pre-eminent crime-fighting pair wouldn't just have the punch-up at the dinner rather than letting them run off with $12 million, I have no idea.

The Penguin's cake girl is wracked by remorse, and she gets to go to a followup millionaire party before going to prison.

In one scene Alfred is heard to sing Rule Brittania to himself while cleaning the windows at Wayne Manor. I liked that.

So that's a wrap for the first series. There's a brief announcement at the end that Catwoman is back "next week", which I don't understand because there was a delay of four months before the second series started, back in 1966.

[Slim]

2:01 Shoot a Crooked Arrow

Gotham City has a new arch-villain - The Archer. He's a sort of Robin Hood character who steals from the rich to give to the poor. Armed with a set of arrows with various imaginative payloads - explosives, knockout gas, flashbangs and even sneezing powder - he goes about robbing large sums of money from wealthy individuals and businesses, before throwing it around in the streets for the poor folk to pick up.

It's not long before the Dynamic Duo catch up with him, there's a punch-up and he and his gang are bang to rights. But he promises that he will no longer rob from the rich - "yea and verily I shall no longer rob thee", he says - and he's soon out on bail, and something of a local hero.

Naturally Batman and Robin are still keen to investigate, fearing that he might start robbing the poor instead and using the usual highly improbable logic, they track him down to an archery range.

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Well it turns out that Wayne Manor's faithful butler Alfred is a crack shot with a bow and arrow. In his youth he was known as the "William Tell of Liverpool", he says. He's dispatched to the range to keep The Archer distracted. Liverpool seemed to me to be a rather lazy choice of English city. Perhaps the prominence in popular culture of The Beatles at the time had something to do with it. Certainly, his rather patrician tones aren't a good match for the accent. But in any case, off he goes to keep The Archer busy while the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder nose around in the malfeasant marksman's underground hideout.

But they get caught in a trap, then tied to poles in a field. The episode ends with The Archer and his gang bearing down on them at high speed on horseback, with rather lethal-looking pointy lances.

I wondered if I'd notice a subtle change in the sets, costumes, direction, photography, cast or something else for the second series. No. I will say though that The Archer is a rubbish villain. Nothing charismatic or menacing about him. He's pretty much just a '60s B movie Robin Hood.

[dom]

Did Batman and/or Robin have any empathy for the Archer's goals or was he perceived to be as evil as all the other villains?

[Slim]

Did Batman and/or Robin have any empathy for the Archer's goals or was he perceived to be as evil as all the other villains?

They were deeply suspicious of his motives, and I suspect their suspicions will be seen to be well-founded in the next episode.

[Slim]

2:02 Walk the Straight and Narrow

The Dynamic Duo avoid being impaled on lances by activating the bat-springs in their footwear at the last second, propelling them about two metres into the air, but The Archer and his villainous henchmen escape them. Later, they hold up and steal an armoured vehicle containing $10 million in cash, intended to be presented to the poor of Gotham City. But when the vehicle is found, all the cash seems to be present and correct.

Batman has another pressing problem, however. He's been asked to attend a ceremony at which Bruce Wayne is also due to appear! His solution is to get Alfred to don the Batman costume, but keep a safe distance. "Puff up your chest and look virile", Robin tells the faithful manservant. Batman gives him a bat-speech-imitator, programmed with his own voice. Another example of technology that was pure fantasy in the '60s, but a reality now.

The ceremony is a rather odd event in which the poor of Gotham are presented with cash individually, to a round of applause from the attending public. We're told earlier in the episode that 100,000 needy Gotham residents are due to receive a payout, which would mean that the ceremony would take several months to complete, but in any case it's cut short when the money is found to be counterfeit. The Archer has kept good on his promise not to steal from the rich. He's stolen from the poor.

This makes very little sense to me, plot-wise. I can't see how The Archer and his cohorts gain anything from substituting counterfeit cash, unless it's to buy time to get away? Which would make sense, but it's not even hinted at.

Anyway Batman and the Boy Wonder work out from the available information that Allan A Dale, an employee of the Wayne Foundation, is working with the criminal gang. He's the only person who knew about the armoured vehicle with the cash. They further deduce that the villains have made off in a boat, on their way to Europe to deposit the cash in a Swiss bank account. To the Batboat!

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There's a hilarious punch-up / swordfight on the boat, and it's game over for the villains.

As the Dynamic Duo speed to the Batboat in the Batmobile, there's a lovely moment when we see a lady complaining to a police officer that they always get away with speeding and going through red lights. He replies: "Batman is a duly deputised officer of the law, ma'am. And if he is not pursuing a dangerous criminal, he drives more safely than any motorist I've ever seen. In his off hours, he lectures to driving classes all over Gotham City. No, ma'am. If ever you see Batman driving speedily, you can be sure that he is endangering his life to protect yours and mine".

That was actually a pretty good two-parter. An unusually substantial and clever plot. And although The Archer is a pretty bland villain, the Allan A Dale character makes up for it. He's a sort of artfully effete and acerbic cross between Peter Mandelson and Loyd Grossman.

Nice to see the Batboat as well. Presumably a leftover from the 1966 Batman feature film, which was made before this second series. Also, there's an explicit confirmation that the Bat poles do actually perform a costume change. A switch is pulled to prevent Bruce from changing into his Batman garb, when he descends into the Batcave.

[Slim]

2:03 Hot Off The Griddle

Three unusual crimes take place separately in Gotham City. A model catamaran is stolen from Gotham City Nautical Society. A catalogue is taken from a department store (actually I thought they gave them away). And a pair of mittens is stolen from the apartment of a gentleman named Andrew S Kitten.

It can only mean the return of the Princess of Plunder herself - Catwoman! She must be up to something.

Naturally the Dynamic Duo are on the case immediately. But what sort of bait do you set for a cat? A bird of course. Batman contacts a newspaper man of his acquaintance named Jack O'Shea, and asks him to plant a story about a rare species of canary being exhibited on the 12th floor of Gotham's natural history museum. Alas, said newspaper man is in cahoots with the Viscountess of Venality and he contacts her immediately on a special transmitter labelled "GOSSIP PHONE".

Amusingly Batman, standing in his superhero costume in the Batcave, tells Robin that O'Shea is "a bit too theatrical for me".

Batman and Robin lie in wait for Catwoman and her gang at the museum.There's a punch-up (of course), but the Feline Fiend shoots the two noble crime-fighters with drugged darts, before having them thrown out of the 12th floor window. Thank goodness Batman took the precaution of having a safety net placed a few floors below!

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Another clue leads the Dynamic Duo to a suspiciously cat-themed club called The Pink Sandbox. But when they take their seats, the booth they're sitting at flips round into the wall and deposits them in a sort of steel-walled cell. I was sure this idea was nicked from a Bond film - perhaps You Only Live Twice - but then I realised that the Bond film with an equivalent scene was Live and Let Die, made in 1974.

Catwoman, watching from a window in the high ceiling, tortures the two for a bit by turning on powerful heaters under the floor. She demonstrates their situation for the viewer by dropping two eggs onto the floor, from above. They're fried in no time. I assumed this was going to be the cliffhanger, but no - she has them rendered unconscious by knockout gas, then strapped to giant barbecues under huge magnifying glasses.

Delighted to see the lovely Julie Newmar back as Catwoman. She's still delightfully feline, but a bit more sinister and violent than last time. There's a nice moment when she gives one of her minions a well-aimed, sharp kick in the face for questioning her motives. Unfortunate that she wasn't available for the Batman feature film that was made between her first appearance and this one. She was replaced by Lee Meriwether. I must watch that again some time, haven't seen it since I was a kid.