why no dana or comissioner g

[DerekPowers]

or any other of the supporting characters. is it just me or does batman beyond not treat its supporting
cast w/ too much respect. like they dont play as big a role as they did in btas. i would have loved to
see more dana or even an ep developing her character more, like something with her family. and barbara
is hardly in it either and her character hasnt go much development since a touch of curare. and that goes
for nelson, chelsea, blade, mary and matt. all the secondary characters werent developed as nicely
as in btas. what do you all think? I think the show would have been better (not that its not already
awesome) if the secondary characters were developed more. peace.

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by DerekPowers
is it just me or does batman beyond not treat its supporting cast w/ too much respect. like they dont play as big a role as they did in btas.

I suspect the secondary characters appeared at least as often, and were at least as important, in BB as in BTAS. But we already knew much more about the characters in BTAS -- so it feels like they had more development because that development was already there.

Perhaps Timm & Co. should have taken more care to develop those secondary characters in BB. But I don't think Max, for one, improved on closer inspection, and after seeing her in action in "Rats!" I'm not sure Dana would have either.

[James]

I think what would have been nice would have been less stand alone character episodes (rats) and more character interaction. For a 20 min show, they don't have much time I know, but a little more character involvement with Dana, Gordon etc would have been appreciated. IMO, there was very little character resolutions per episode (except with bloody Max!).

Yeah, there's your answer, Max is the reason why the character's suffered. She ended up being Terry's interaction for all of them.

Talk to Bruce? Naw, Talk to Max. Social event with Dana? Naw, put Terry with Max. Ask Gordon a question? Why bother? The viewers haven't had their daily quota of 15 minutes of Max per 20 minute episode.........

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by SJJ
Max is the reason why the character's suffered. She ended up being Terry's interaction for all of them.

Talk to Bruce? Naw, Talk to Max. Social event with Dana? Naw, put Terry with Max

A very good point.

I think it's one of the unfortunate side effects of making Terry a teen-ager. Think of it this way: Because Wayne was an adult (and because of his social position) the world he moved in as Batman was the same as the world he moved in as Bruce Wayne, and he could interact with the secondary characters in a variety of ways: in "Birds of a Feather", for example, Veronica Vreeland was both a social acquaintance and someone to save.

But McGinnis is in high school, and only occasionally (as in "Rats!" or "Revenant" or "The Winning Edge") do the world of Terry and the world of Batman merge. Max dominates because she is the only character other than Terry who moves in both worlds.

[James Harvey]

They missed out there. I think they should've made Dana in on the secret. We could've gotten some great stories if the fights were sometimes more personnel. Hell, that could've saved Rats from being as mediocre as is, if Dana knew Terry's ID. Terry would be wracked with guilt, and would fight to the bitter end. Max is...Max is just a bad character. Thrown in there to "relate" to us and get that female demographic.

[James]

But McGinnis is in high school, and only occasionally (as in "Rats!" or "Revenant" or "The Winning Edge") do the world of Terry and the world of Batman merge. Max dominates because she is the only character other than Terry who moves in both worlds.

I don't mind Terry's worlds colliding, providing it's not always with Max (unless those 2 worlds are colliding on her head).

Although I did find his world colliding a little to often. Does every rampaging lunatic go to Terry's school?

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by SJJ
I don't mind Terry's worlds colliding, providing it's not always with Max (unless those 2 worlds are colliding on her head).

Although I did find his world colliding a little to often. Does every rampaging lunatic go to Terry's school?

I don't mind them colliding either. My point was that with Wayne the two worlds merged seamlessly into each other, while BB has to work hard to combine the two. Unfortunately, it creates just the effect you allude to: Hamilton High seems to especially attract trouble-makers.

I suppose that is the only aspect in which "Static Shock" is superior. The origins of the hero and villains there make it natural that they should meet in and around school.

[DerekPowers]

those are great points maxie. i never thought of it like that. my main problem with terry's worlds
merging, aka the high school eps, is they are so badly written (rats, the last resort, reverent). I think
"Spellbound" and "Dead Man's Hand" and even "Golem" (golem to a lesser degree) are great episodes
where batman and terry's worlds crossover and they are well written. Maybe it seems like the secondary
characters werent developed too much because the eps were they are focuses are (atleast for me)
classified as lesser episodes because of the bad stories and stuff. but had they kept the quality of
the hs eps on par with the first season's hs eps, then that would have been great. peace.

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by DerekPowers
my main problem with terry's worlds merging, aka the high school eps, is they are so badly written

I agree about the quality of the high school eps being generally very low.

BTW, cool avatar! :)

[Failure]

I think the biggest reason y they didnt develop the 2ndary characters well was because they had too much work to do trying to develop Terry. in fact, i think a lot of people's complaints of BB lie in that they didnt think Terry's character was delved into deeply enough. So, if people think the main character wasnt developed enough, it'd be logical the 2ndary characters wouldnt be developed well either. It's too bad though, I would've loved to see the writers go into more depth with characters like Dana, etc.

[Nightwing]

Originally posted by DerekPowers
or any other of the supporting characters. is it just me or does batman beyond not treat its supporting
cast w/ too much respect.

True. But I think it, unfotunately, makes sense. Why would supporting characters get respect and development when many main characters didn't get the same, when they obviously should have.

The list of characters that didn't get their true "Batman-treatment" as far as development and such is too long.

[optimal321]

Something i just thought of explaining why they never added too much secondary character development was because they were probably hard to put in there. I mean, we don't really need a commissioner, since Bruce stays at the batcomputer all day and can just look up info on the web. The only reason we got so much Babs was probably because she was Batgirl.

As for Dana, it was probably hard to give Terry a decent social life. The writers never really had that problem w/ Bruce. He never really kept a steady girlfriend. The main women in his life were mostly villians.