The King - of Batman episodes.....

when not celebrating his new found love of The King, James is always keen to have a gander at one of the classy 1960's TV episodes of Batman.

he has some distinct favourites in this regard - Batman & Robin running, any version of Mr Freeze, The Joker, Bat-Girl ("Bat Man Girl" as James calls her), the Batmobile ("Bat Man Car"), the Batcopter ("Batman elicopta") and the Batladder ("Bat Man adder") being his top list. it is rather handy, then, that one episode covers a number of these; the action crammed 20 minutes that is The Joker's Flying Saucer....


plot? tricky, really. i suspect i will give the whole episode away here, so you have been warned. The Joker has enlisted some sort of mad scientist and some dude who is painted and wearing a great deal of green. the plan would be to scare the world into thinking that earth is under attack by flying around in a flying saucer (devised and fixed up by the mad scientist) and having an actual martian running around, mostly pulling books off the shelves at a library to scare people (the dude painted green).

Batman of course does not believe any of this, but also does not notice the green chap planting a bomb (green, of course) in the Batmobile, causing it and bits of the Batcave to blow up.

Best is the presence of Batgirl. She and Alfred are, for reasons never quite explained, messing about in some sort of Wayne Industries bio-chemical, thermo-nuclear centre, where The Joker goes to steal some oddly named chemicals.


skipping over exactly how they are, Batgirl and Alfred are captured and taken back to The Joker's hangout, get this, a disused rocket launch pad factory. rather than just killing them, The Joker decides to take Alfred into space, and send Batgirl off into the heavens, strapped to a rocket. Alas, foiled again Joker! The massive rocket that Batgirl is tied to needs to be set off by a lit fuse, and Batgirl's anti-fuse device on her bat-girl-belt puts it out at the last second. rather than just taking the bat-girl-belt off, or just shooting her or something, that wise man The Joker decides to take Batgirl on to the flying saucer with them as well. as you would.

Batman and Robin, meanwhile, recover from the wreck in the Batcave 8 hours after the (green) bomb went off, with Batman rather impressively picking up massive boulders to clear the Batmobile of debris to drive off to save the day. the fact that they speed off in the Batmobile is very interesting indeed, as they appear to arrive at the Batcopter upon the Batbike and Batsidecar.

Batman & Robin's efforts are somewhat in vain, however, as it appears the world is saved from whatever the hell it was that The Joker was going to do with the flying saucer by Alfred. how does Alfred save the day? an odd mixture of talking into his handkerchief and a tracking or homing device that he assures all he placed somewhere on the flying saucer.

OK, i have pretty much given the whole episode here, but if you get the chance, you just have to watch this one. it was one of the ones towards the end of the tv series, and boy does it show!!

James, however, loves it to bits. i mean really loves it. i hope he gets bored of it soon....

as for now, until the same bat time, on the same bat interwebnet channel page,

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!