A Rejected Batman: The Animated Series Episode Would Have Brought A Beloved DC Hero To Gotham

For an animated show that represents one of the most uncompromising artistic visions ever produced for children's TV, "Batman: The Animated Series" sure had to jump through a lot of hoops for its network. Fox censorship meant there were nine things "Batman: The Animated Series" couldn't do, though the writers frequently found ways of circumventing the network's dictates, such as when "The New Batman Adventures" (as the show was later renamed) used Scarecrow to pull one over on the censors.

It's a testament to the talent of the writers, artists, and voice actors that they were able to make such a seminal piece of work in "B:TAS" despite being somewhat hindered in their mission to tell more mature stories. Often, however, the writers were extremely hampered in their efforts to craft particular storylines. After all, it wasn't just the censors to which the team were beholden. As with any show, they also had to take notes from the network, and quite often, that meant rearranging their initial plans to incorporate Fox's ideas about how to keep the series popular among kids.

The character of Robin is a good example. First appearing in the season 1 episode "Fear of Victory," Dick Grayson shows up quite abruptly in the series' continuity, before having his origin story told several episodes later in "Robin's Reckoning" Parts I and II — an example of Fox censorship actually leading to one of the best episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series," and an Emmy win for the show. Before the 65 episodes of season 1 had aired, Fox renewed the show for a second season of 20 episodes, but with one major caveat: The show had to feature more Robin.

Whether that seems like a good decision or not will depend on your personal feelings about the character. But it did directly lead to one particular storyline being scrapped, which would have featured a beloved DC hero.

When "Batman: The Animated Series" first began in 1992, it featured the titular hero embarking on his crime-fighting crusade solo. Many fans prefer Batman that way, and it seemed to be working for the series, which was immediately embraced by an entire generation of young fans who were clearly eager for the more adult storylines being offered by this alluringly dark series. But after Robin showed up, Fox decided that the show needed a lot more of Batman's young protégé, and mandated that Dick Grayson appear in every episode of season 2.

So, when "Batman: The Animated Series" returned for a second run of episodes in 1994, it did so under the new title "The Adventures of Batman & Robin." Airing just a year before Joel Schumacher's "Batman Forever," an overlooked Batman movie that's more groundbreaking than you might realize and which featured the cinematic debut of Chris O'Donnell's Dick Grayson/Robin, "The Adventures of Batman & Robin" wasn't quite as ill-advised as its network-mandated existence might suggest. Still, it did mean the writers were even more constrained in terms of which stories they could and couldn't tell.

Take the example of an episode that would have featured Black Canary. The female hero eventually showed up in another DC Animated Universe show, "Justice League Unlimited," but would have appeared much earlier had the writers gotten their way. 

In an interview with ComicBookResources, "B:TAS" writer and producer Paul Dini recalled how Fox rejected an episode that would have brought Black Canary together with Catwoman. Why? Because there wasn't enough Robin in the episode. "Yeah, the Black Canary/Catwoman episode was a casualty," said Dini. "They wanted more Robin in the series, and each time we wanted to drop him from a story, we had to fight for it." Dini went on to explain that the writers didn't have anything against Robin, but they did want "to stretch now and then" by featuring more solo Batman stories and episodes that focused on Commissioner Gordon or even villains. He continued, "After the experimentation of the first season, the network felt we might be leaving the boys behind, so we got the edict, add more Robin." It was that edict which forced the writers to drop their Black Canary ambitions.

"Batman: The Animated Series" had three of its own rules that it tried never to break, but otherwise the writers and artists were able to craft a uniquely original vision that remains one of the best on-screen depictions of Batman and Gotham City ever created. The show remains beloved partly for producing its own takes on established figures in the Batman mythos, and even creating entire characters that have since become enduringly popular elements of that mythos itself. But their creative energies were somewhat constrained by Fox and audience demands, and the never-realized Black Canary story is the perfect example.

In 1993, co-creator Bruce Timm spoke to animation magazine Animato! (via Agelets Are Sinister) and revealed that "B:TAS" writers had their own original take on Black Canary that would have seen her depicted as a private detective who worked alongside Batman to solve a particular case. Timm explained more in a later post on the Toonzone message boards, where he said, "As for that old never-produced Catwoman vs. Black Canary 'BTAS' story, it never got past the 'vaguely-talking-about-the-possibility' stage, nothing was ever even set down on paper."

Paul Dini would provide more insight into the lost episode in his book "Batman Animated," where he wrote:

"The Fox Network, on the assumption that kids won't watch a kid's show unless kids are in it, soon began insisting that Robin be featured prominently in every episode. When Fox changed the title from [B:TAS] to 'The Adventures of Batman and Robin,' they laid down the law — no story premise was to be considered unless it was either a Robin story or one in which the Boy Wonder played a key role....a potentially intriguing Catwoman/Black Canary team-up was interrupted in midpitch to the network by their demand, 'Where's Robin?' When the writers asked if they could omit Robin from just this one episode, Fox obliged by omitting the entire story."

Maybe the Black Canary installment could have been one of the best episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series," or maybe it would have been a dud. But the inflexible nature of Fox during season 2 of "Batman: The Animated Series" certainly doesn't seem to have made for the ideal creative environment.