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Batman: The Animated Series is an American animated television series that ran for 109 episodes from September 1992 to January 1999.

Premise

Characters

The main protagonist of Batman: The Animated Series is Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy), an eccentric billionaire who heads Wayne Enterprises. As a child, he witnessed a mugger kill his parents Thomas and Martha; thus, at night, he fights criminals as the vigilante Batman. Batman is assisted by his sidekicks Dick Grayson/Robin/Nightwing (Loren Lester), Tim Drake/Robin (Mathew Valencia), Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (Melissa Gilbert/Tara Strong), his butler Alfred Pennyworth (Clive Revill/Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), the doctor Leslie Thompkins (Diana Muldaur), and the police—particularly James Gordon (Bob Hastings), Harvey Bullock (Robert Costanzo), and Renee Montoya (Ingrid Oliu). Although the primary focus of the series was on Batman-related characters, other DC/Vertigo characters—such as Jonah Hex (Bill McKinney) and Zatanna (Julie Brown)—made appearances.

As the series progressed, Batman faced a plethora of villains and adversaries. Antagonists included the Joker (Mark Hamill), Two-Face (Richard Moll), Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing), Catwoman (Adrienne Barbeau), the Riddler (John Glover), the Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowall), Ra's al Ghul (David Warner), Talia al Ghul (Helen Slater), Man-Bat (Marc Singer), Penguin (Paul Williams, Scarecrow (Henry Polic II), Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid), Bane (Henry Silva), the Ventriloquist (George Dzundza), Hugo Strange (Ray Buktenica), and Tony Zucco (Thomas F. Wilson).

Setting

Main article: Gotham City

Batman: The Animated Series is set in Gotham City, a metropolis of ten million people within New York, United States. Gotham is plagued by crime and corruption, and Batman assists the police in their fight against it. Some locations in Gotham are the Batcave, Batman's base of operations; Arkham Asylum, a run-down psychiatric hospital where criminals deemed insane are held; the prisons Stonegate Penitentiary and Levitz Prison; and Park Row, where Batman's parents were killed.

History

Development

In 1989, Warner Bros. released Batman, which was a major critical and commercial success. At the same time, their animation division was pondering which of the characters they owned would attract the most viewers, having recently finished Tiny Toons Adventures. Grasping the opportunity, Warner Bros. Animation's vice president announced that the studio would be interested in developing a Batman series and asked that animators who were interested should pitch their ideas. In response, background artist Eric Radomski and animator Bruce Timm produced a two minute promotional reel. The animation was made from scratch; Radomski drew the backgrounds using black paper and colored pencils, while Timm designed the characters. Their promotional reel impressed the heads and was accepted as a program on Fox Broadcasting Corporation's children's programming block. With the pitch accepted, Radomski and Timm recruited Alan Burnett, who had years earlier unsuccessfully pitched a Batman series to Hanna-Barbera, and Tiny Toons writer Paul Dini as writers and producers.

Design

The showrunners laid out four ground rules in the series' production bible—first, Batman should work alone; second, Batman is not a police officer; third, Robin should be featured sparingly; and fourth, each episode should be approached with a dark tone and like a short film—for the writers to adhere to. Most of these rules, however, were frequently broken: after the first season, Robin appeared in every single episode at the demands of Fox executives, and the Bat-Signal—used by the police to contact Batman (violating the second rule)—made its first appearance in twenty-fifth episode, "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy". Batgirl was added to the series in its final season, to coincide with the release of Batman & Robin (1997), a film she featured in.

More links: http://observationdeck.kinja.com/dark-night-a-true-batman-story-is-a-deep-dive-into-dep-1782261601

• http://www.vulture.com/article/oral-history-batman-the-animated-series.html