Another great hallmark of cyberpunk stories is suspicion and indictment of corporations. In these stories, it can be easy to make a corporation actively evil and monumentally huge. Oftentimes, though, it's not a matter of evil so much as disinterest and negligence. That disinterest and negligence can ruin lives by sheer happenstance rather than dastardly plotting. And in a sci-fi story like this, of course, it can have horrifying consequences.

Batman Beyond: Earth Movers

Terry and Dana are hanging out with their friend Jackie who lives in a nice house in an upscale suburb. She has giant, nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that would look opulent even now, and as she stares outside, Terry and Dana worry. Jackie says she thinks she's being watched by someone.

In short, we learn that Jackie's adoptive father, Bill, was once business partners with her father, Tony. Bill chose to illegally dump toxic waste in his desire to turn their company profitable, but it went wrong as it always does and Tony ended up buried in dirt and toxic waste. His body died, but his will and fury lived on in the irradiated dirt, a la the Swamp Thing.

Tony's consciousness spent almost two decades raging about the crime he thought was done to him when the person who did it had no idea he'd survived in any way. What's important here is that Bill is not guilty of murder, attempted or otherwise, but rather of fatal negligence. He put the company's bottom line of his friend's safety, and his friend suffered the consequences. Corporations are very rarely evil--they're just so focused on money that they don't care about anything else.

This is a level of nuance that we don't usually see in animated shows for young audiences. There's no villain here. With that said, though, it's still a kids' show and you can see it in a variety of ways. Batman's presence is more of a complication than anything. When Tony attacks Bill, Jackie, Terry, and Dana, Dana suddenly disappears and is never heard from again in this episode--Bill just mentions that Dana and Terry got away.

This episode also struggles with the final act. The justification for Batman showing up is at its thinnest here; Terry does a full Ninja Warrior course chasing the first mudman they spot, and then Batman appears within seconds of things getting hairy at the dump site. He might as well be wearing a shirt that says "don't tell anyone I'm Batman" at this point. With that said, that first sequence does nicely reinforce that Terry's inclination to protect the innocent and chase down criminals is still innate and not dependent on the suit.

Once everyone is underground and we see Tony, Terry stops him by bursting the radioactive waste canisters that had been fueling Tony...right onto Tony. But then Tony lets everyone leave and they're kind of just done and over with, as if the writers ran out of time to give the plot proper closure.

One part that does work, though, is the image of Tony's desiccated corpse embedded in the wall of the cave they end up in. It's one of the more ghastly things I can remember seeing in a kid's show aside from when Batman forced Clayface into a chaotic transformation loop during his story, and it works quite well.

The shortcomings of this episode are a huge reminder that this was, in fact, a show made with kids in mind. We're not meant to worry about the specifics, but rather to focus on the broader story, and that part does work quite well in terms of making its point about corporate negligence.

Fun Jug Media, LLC (operating Batman-News.com) has affiliate partnerships with various companies. These do not at any time have any influence on the editorial content of Batman News. Fun Jug Media LLC may earn a commission from these links.