Plot summary: Walt Disney Grant Walker breaks Mr. Freeze out of prison in the hopes of living forever through cryo-tech and presiding over a new world order.
Each Saturday and Sunday Matt Waters recaps an episode of the legendary Batman: The Animated Series, building an overall ranking along the way. Plus best performances, the ever-popular Villain Watch and more!
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Notes
Episode Title: ‘Deep Freeze’
Original Air Date: November 26th, 1994
Directed: Kevin Altieri (22)
Written: Paul Dini (24) & Bruce W. Timm (3)
Grant Walker is clearly based on Walt Disney, being a theme park mogul who wants to be cryogenically frozen to live forever (allegedly, please don’t sue me.) Plus Walker’s use of the term “visioneer” seems a play on ‘imaginer.’
Speaking of Walker, he shows up a few times in the tie-in comics which you can read all about later in this column.
Karl Rossum once again has little robot versions of Bat-Mite, Krypto the Superdog, Mr Mxyzptlk and Streaky the Supercat.
Recap
A strange robot walks out of the sea and casually smashes through the walls of the prison housing Mr. Freeze, shrugging off gunfire from guards before snatching the villain by force and bailing.
Noting the use of a robot, Batman takes Robin to see Karl Rossum (and his group of “friends”), who states he built a smaller version of the culprit for Grant Walker once upon a time…
Talk of the devil, the robot escorts Victor Fries to Oceana, Walker’s underwater utopian vision of the future. [Insert Bioshock references here]. Walker presents Fries with an exact replica of his cryo-suit and cold gun, which is promptly used to destroy the robot.
Walker expresses his envy that Fries is functionally immortal thanks to his accident, begging Victor to try and repeat the process. Fries calls him a madman as he is trapped in a living nightmare, but changes his tune when Walker reveals Nora and claims he can help cure her.
Batman & Robin approach by boat while discussing how men like Walker like to get their way, regardless of the law. Like, for instance, ripping off a whole bunch of generational folk tales and then having copyright law changed so you can legally own them forever.
Infiltrating Oceana, they look on as the theme park’s employees are indoctrinated by Walker, who reveals his plan to make a better world by freezing it while “the good” shelter with him. Yeeeeesh.
More robots discover and capture the trespassing Dynamic Duo and escort them to Walker so they can witness his transformation. It works flawlessly, and the crazy coot stomps off to get ready for ‘Project Deep Freeze’.
Batman eventually manages to reason with Victor by playing the Nora card, and he frees the pair. The unlikely trio unleash the fury on Walker’s robots and disable Deep Freeze by overloading the power core.
Fries refuses to leave, resigning himself to death by Nora’s side. Batman pleads with him not to, so he freezes Robin, forcing Bruce to get his sidekick to safety and leave him behind. Damn.
Back at the Batcave, Bruce and a recovering Dick contemplate Fries’ fate as we witness him drifting the ocean alive and well inside an iceberg with Nora.
Best Performance
Michael Ansara sounds a little different here. I’m not sure if they didn’t revisit his work from ‘Heart of Ice’ to help him match it, or they deliberately changed it up. Outside of the suit he displays a little more mania (despite allegedly experiencing no emotion), and inside it, the vocal effects are toned down a little, making Fries easier to hear. Unfortunately that again means he’s far more emotional, even before he learns of Nora’s involvement in the fiasco.
All of that being said, just because it’s different and arguably strays from their own brief, it’s still the most compelling acting performance in the episode by a comfortable distance. His sense of existentialism is both palpable and crushing.
Daniel O’Helihy gets close at times as Grant Walker, but there’s just a hint of ‘older actor sounding lost reading dialogue that makes no sense to him’, which is fair given he was almost 80 years old at the time.
I can’t decide how I feel about William Sanderson, who has appeared a few times as Karl Rossum now. At times he’s distinct and has sense of charm. At others, he sounds wooden. Hey, maybe he’s meant to, given his obsession with robots! It’s like poetry, it rhymes.
Ranking
‘Heart of Ice’, this is not. It’s a case of the whole being a little less than the sum of its parts for me. Victor Fries’ characterisation remains really strong, the underwater city locale is dope, and it’s a relatable old school villain plot.
But my biggest gripe is that we’re set up for an equally matched Fries vs Walker… only Freeze’s cold gun completely debilitates him in one shot. One could hypothesise the new gun is stronger, Walker’s suit is weaker or that it was never intended for the suit to be able to withstand the gun in the first place, but to me it’s a little sloppy. I could have gone for the two superhumans wailing on each other for a couple of minutes, with Fries only winning because of his superior intellect. Instead, Walker is dispatched in seconds and left an afterthought in an episode he dominates up to that point.
I’m not sure what you’d trim to allow for a more protracted final fight, but my instinct would be to lose Karl Rossum, even if he makes for a cute continuity nod. Or slightly shorten the prison break at the start. Or both.
- The Laughing Fish
- Mask of the Phantasm
- Almost Got ‘im
- Heart of Ice
- Harlequinade
- The Trial
- Riddler’s Reform
- Shadow of the Bat Part I
- I Am the Night
- Robin’s Reckoning Part I
- Baby-Doll
- The Man Who Killed Batman
- Perchance to Dream
- Two-Face Part I
- Bane
- A Bullet For Bullock
- Joker’s Favor
- Read My Lips
- Feat of Clay Part II
- Catwalk
- The Demon’s Quest Part II
- Harley and Ivy
- Robin’s Reckoning Part II
- House & Garden
- Beware the Gray Ghost
- Second Chance
- Mad as a Hatter
- Heart of Steel Part II
- Appointment In Crime Alley
- Two-Face Part II
- Pretty Poison
- Deep Freeze (NEW ENTRY)
- Harley’s Holiday
- Lock-Up
- Shadow of the Bat Part II
- Feat of Clay Part I
- His Silicon Soul
- Off Balance
- Vendetta
- Birds of a Feather
- Heart of Steel Part I
- On Leather Wings
- See No Evil
- The Clock King
- It’s Never Too Late
- Make ‘Em Laugh
- Joker’s Wild
- Eternal Youth
- The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy
- The Cat and the Claw Part I
- Zatanna
- Day of the Samurai
- Avatar
- The Demon’s Quest Part I
- The Mechanic
- The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
- Terror in the Sky
- P.O.V.
- Christmas with the Joker
- Fear of Victory
- Be a Clown
- The Worry Men
- What is Reality?
- Fire From Olympus
- Night of the Ninja
- Mudslide
- The Cat and the Claw Part II
- Nothing to Fear
- The Lion and the Unicorn
- Prophecy of Doom
- Tyger, Tyger
- Blind as a Bat
- If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
- Dreams In Darkness
- The Last Laugh
- Cat Scratch Fever
- Moon of the Wolf
- Paging the Crime Doctor
- Time Out of Joint
- Sideshow
- The Under-Dwellers
- The Forgotten
- Showdown
- The Terrible Trio
- I’ve Got Batman in My Basement
Villain Watch
Mr. Freeze (Michael Ansara) (second appearance)
His animation isn’t as impressive, but I won’t hold that against them given the company who handled him in ‘Heart of Ice’ went bankrupt in their efforts to make him look so dope. Ansara’s voice work isn’t quite as effective either, despite being the best performance in the episode.
If you’re super into Fries as a nihilist, simultaneously dead to emotion and devoted beyond reason to his wife, then there’s still plenty to enjoy here. This appearance shifts him more towards the category of villain who has no real beef with Batman, and can be talked into temporary alliances, but is by no means a good guy, which is always fun and incredibly useful as a long-term continuity tool.
I previously moved Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy ahead of him, and while I won’t drop him any lower, I don’t think this second outing is strong enough for him to reclaim his former ranking.
Grant Walker (Daniel O’Herlihy) (first appearance)
More crazy old rich white dudes as comic book villains, IMO. And bonus points for the Walt Disney pastiche.
In all seriousness, he’s too shallow to place too high, but I do dig his Bioshock vibes and given the need to devote some screen time to Mr. Freeze, he’s pretty okay. As mentioned at the beginning, he’ll be back in a tie-in comic, which I read before watching this episode, meaning I didn’t remember him at all.
- The Joker
- Harley Quinn
- Poison Ivy
- Mr. Freeze
- Two-Face
- The Ventriloquist
- Catwoman
- The Riddler
- The Phantasm
- Baby-Doll
- Bane
- Mad Hatter
- Penguin
- HARDAC (and Randa Duane)
- Clayface
- Ra’s al Ghul
- Lock-Up
- Lloyd Ventrix
- Killer Croc
- Rupert Thorne
- Count Vertigo
- Clock King
- Nivens
- Josiah Wormwood
- Scarecrow
- Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
- Talia al Ghul
- Sid the Squid
- Queen Thoth Khepera
- Maxie Zeus
- Jimmy ‘Jazzman’ Peake
- Tony Zucco
- Man-Bat
- Hugo Strange
- Red Claw
- Arnold Stromwell
- Mad Bomber
- Tygrus
- Rhino, Mugsy and Ratso
- Kyodai Ken
- Condiment King/Pack Rat/Mighty Mom
- Grant Walker (NEW ENTRY)
- Gil Mason
- Nostromos (and Lucas!)
- Cameron Kaiser
- Dr. Dorian (and Garth)
- Mad Dog
- Ubu
- Professor Milo
- Romulus
- Arkady Duvall
- Sewer King
- Boss Biggis
- Montague Kane
- The Terrible Trio
Plugs
Eager for more long-form coverage of Batman? Why not check out my podcast with Mike Thomas, The Tape Crusaders, which reviewed every Batman movie and delved a tiny bit into the animated series.
My other recap column, Marvel Mondays, just finished coverage of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. To fill the time before Loki begins, I’ll be going back to WandaVision, with two episodes per week. Injustice corrected!
