Space Medicine: Back to the Batcave

Since 1938 Batman has been adapted to the changing tastes of pop culture. In the thirties and forties he was a pulp detective/vigilante, in the eighties he was the reactionary answer to crime and urban blight, and in the late sixties he adapted to the tastes of that generation as well. In 1966 ABC began airing Batman two nights a week. Unfortunately, for complicated legal reasons, none of the series has been released in a home video format. Fortunately, some guy on YouTube called FanOfBats has a bunch of episodes online. Many people object to the series for not taking Batman seriously or just for being silly. Silly is a matter of taste. As for not taking Batman seriously, I suspect it's really a fairly recent phenomena for fans to take Batman seriously. It probably doesn't go much further back than the mid to late seventies. However, even if we are taking Batman seriously, it's a mistake to try and act like such a significant portion of Batman's cultural history just didn't happen. No matter what box one tries to fit Batman into he's bound to escape sooner or later, and then you find that you've been in his box all along.

Instead of selective amnesia, as if there's been some kind of traumatic Bat-molestation that can't, musn't, be remembered, I propose embracing the thing with all its campy deconstruction of the super hero story and off-putting attempt to be humorous, and seeing if there's actually anything we can learn from the thing.

Thus I present the full pilot episode Hi Diddle Riddle.

Act I