/flips freakin tables
And this is what I get for making my timelines try to make sense.
So, given that I play Terry McGinnis, from Batman Beyond, I have sunk some serious time -- too much time many would say, and they'd probably be right -- into the whens and whys and wherefores of where it's been set, and how it got there, etc. I've given this crap some thought. And all I've been able to come up with is that the producers must have been high or something when they tried to do these episodes, because wtf, dc.
wtf
So Batman Beyond first aired in 1999, and from everything I remember and a few things I've seen, it was supposed to be set 40 years into the future. This would make the first scene, with Bruce in the future Batsuit, be set in 2019, and the '20 years later' bit when Terry kicks in be set in 2039. The problem is that those things that don't say that Beyond was supposed to be set 40 years into the future say that it was supposed to be set 50 years into the future, roughly, and clearly that's contradictory.
So, I ask myself after panicking for a while when I first found a timeline that set Beyond as taking place in roughly 2055 and then sat down and did the math for the date given in Epilogue, which timeline is right?
Well, as it turns out both are.
There's only two shows in dcau set in the future: Batman Beyond and its spinoff, The Zeta Project. Now, in the ZP episode Quality Time, a casefile mentions that "Unit Zeta went renegade August 5 2041". In the BB episode Zeta, that government guy says "six days ago [Zeta] went renegade", which sets at least the first bit of episode 20, season 2 of Beyond on August 11, 2041. Which... doesn't entirely match up with the rest of how the series seems to be timed I'll admit but it's a solid date.
It's backed up by what Tim says in RotJ; that what the Joker did to him had happened "almost 40 years" ago. Closest I can figure, Joker probably got Tim in 2004 or possibly early 2005, which manages to fit with JLU (which appears to have been planned to run concurrently with realtime) timeline rather neatly. Or it does for season 4, I have not yet finished season 5, but it is notable that in s4 Batman seems to be pulling away from all his close relationships and is almost never in the show. Given that this is almost certainly what happened after what happened to Tim - he pulls away and nearly vanishes for at least a year, even if he doesn't quit the league outright - it seems to scan.
So now there's two timelines, one that starts in 2039 and one that (apparently) starts in 2040. These dates were arrived at as follows: for 2039, Beyond was slated to be 40 years into the future from 1999. Simple enough. For 2040: each season, based on the events that take place, Terry's growth as a character, and a (really rough) measure of the in-show year/school year, seem to take place in roooughly a year, probably a little less. Terry is 16 when he gets the suit, is 17 for the majority of the show, and is probably 18 by the end of season 3, if not earlier into the season. So if we have the solid date of 2041 most of the way through season 2, season 1 would be set in 2040.
So. Two dates. Still, there's only a year of difference, it could be a difference of only a few months. That's no big problem, to-may-to to-mah-to.
HOWEVER, in the JLU episode Epilogue, which is pretty much the "let's fast forward in Beyond timeline and learn that Terry is actually Bruce's son!" episode, the events in the show were supposed to have taken place 65 years into the future. Dana says that she and Terry had been dating for 15 years in Epilogue, and they seem to have started dating shortly before he became Batman; when he was 15 at the youngest. So if we be generous and say they started in 2040, JUST before Terry became Batman according to the slightly later timetable, then add 15 for the years that Terry was Batman and then subtract 65 to get us the date that Justice League Unlimited was supposed to be set in, we get... 1990?
wat.
That makes even less sense, unless you want to say that B:tAS was set some time in the 1980s. Which it wasn't. Ah wait, I hear you say, but what if Justice League and JLU were set before B:tAS? -- or, at least, this is the next question I asked myself.
Hogwash.
There's not that many things that you can use to confirm in-show in JLU, I will admit, but there are a few. In Savage Time, that episode where NAZIS TAKE OVER THE WORLD there's a mini cameo from all growed up Dick, mullet and all. And okay so the cameo lasts for about half a second, but it is still recognizably Dick, and he is recognizably not about 5 years old. Vandal Savage taking over the world would not have had any effect whatsoever, at least that I can see, on Dick's birthday. You could make the argument that the flashbacks in Robin's Reckoning part 1 and 2 were flashbacks to days that featured Bruce's involvement in the League, and Savage!Dick just happened to like mullets, and so grew one in earlier, but he still looks older than shown in B:tAS.
Art style, perhaps.
Still, that's gettin to be a lot of 'perhaps's and it's not the entire argument. Dick isn't the only one to get a cameo, as far as I could tell, Tim also got one - albeit one that was even shorter. He only showed up for a few frames, but there is a small darkhaired child who appears to be the right age and right size with the right hair who is dressed in a tux, with Alfred at Bruce's party. Tim is the only one that I can think of who matches that description. But more than that, Static Shock has two crossover episodes (A League Of Their Own parts 1 and 2) with Justice League, and it is clearly JL, not JLU, as there's only the 7 founding members, Hawkgirl still has her mask, and they are still in the original watchtower because Bruce hasn't crashed it in the JL series finale yet.
Justice League is before JLU, not after, and it is obvious that SS is set at least partially in the year 2001 and after; Static makes direct references to the year ("That's so y2k," as a way of saying that something is last year/out of style/out of date). So JL crossovers with SS mean that JL/JLU are set in the 2000s, and logicing my way out by pretending that everything is set ridiculously early is even more ridiculous than it was before. Besides that, Static also has crossover episodes where Batman and Tim Drake-Robin show up, both before AND after the Justice League crossover episodes. Which means that B:tAS has resolutely happened at least far enough for Tim to be Robin.
Of course, even the Static crossovers can't seem to make up their minds.
Static shows up in an episode with Terry twice: in the SS crossover episode Future Shock, and in the JLU crossover episode(s) The Once and Future Thing, parts 1 and 2. In the first episode, Static gets sent "over 40 years" into the future. The episode aired in 2004, and one assumes that 2004 is the date that we're supposed to be counting from, HOWEVER, given that the kid doesn't appear to age/progress all that much, you could be generous and say that it was supposed to be set in 2001/2002, as 2001 is the base limit for how far back you can go, based on the "That's so y2k" line. The problem here is that "over 40 years" still means that the year is 2041 at the minimum, and even that only works if you consider Bruce to mean "40 years and a few months", which doesn't make sense. This episode could be set in 2045 or even later, which would supposedly make it several years post-RotJ, which just doesn't make sense. Terry of Future Shock is still incredibly green, and is very much a punk kid with a temper problem. This points to him being from early- to mid-season 1. But, once again, there are a few more clues than just Terry's attitude problem and how green he is. For one, he very clearly has not met Static yet, or even dug through Bruce's files on the Batcomputer to see old pictures of him. He has apparently not worked with the Justice League, of which Static is presumably a member (the fanboying homg JUSTICE LEAGUE is far more subtle than in The Call, but is still sorta there), and is particularly twitchy when it comes to intruders in the Batcave. It's not unreasonable, as the first intruder in his time (after, of course, his visit to steal the suit) was Inque, who tentacle raped and almost killed him in Black Out. But the fact that he says outright that they don't HAVE visitors in the Batcave, like ever, seems to mean that A Touch Of Curaré hasn't happened yet either, because Babs marches right in and visits Bruce in the Batcave. Mostly it's just to yell at him, but! Visitor!
So now there's another timeline, where the show apparently begins in 2044 or so. Roughly.
Now, back to Epilogue's timeline.
If we forget trying to make things work and make some sort of sense and just pump the numbers, we get the majority of Epilogue set in 2070, and Beyond beginning around the year 2055. This actually pans (for once) with another timeline! In The Once and Future Thing, Bruce and Diana and John get sent roughly 50 years into the future. Since the episode was aired in 2005, that means the year would be 2055, and there is Terry as Batman!
Apparently OaFT!Terry joined the League as soon as he touched the batcostume, and had only been Batman for a few months. Which, at least, helps explain his 'those who fight then run away' attitude, which never sat all that well with me. So there's another timeline, because Terry does not look/sound/act/etc like he's 25 years old and it's apparently set to be just after he became Batman, like, his first year. Gotta love how Static's managed to change his character design radically and age quite a lot while Terry has managed to age like 2 months. And so I just...
Is that 4 separate timelines now, or 5? I think I've lost track.
Anyway. So the rest of DC doesn't make sense. So it doesn't have a timeline that you can even begin to untangle. So what. There's precious few stories to keep straight in dcau when you compare it to dcu, and unlike dcu, there's supposed to be something like a linear storyline here. The stupid things are supposed to fit together, hence all the crossovers -- though trying to fit when Tim got axed is still giving me fits, I'll admit.
I am, however, pathetically grateful that Zeta still came out onscreen and gave the date, because otherwise the closest thing I'd have would be that '65 years later' in JLU and that would mean that I'd gotten everything horribly, tragically wrong in playing Terry and I'd have been left to curl up into a miserable pathetic lump who couldn't even get that right. But I am right! I am! The one on screen date proves it! Of course, the other people are too. Dang it, dcau.
In mostly unrelated news I think I've decided what offends me the most about future!Terry's design is that hair. What were they thinking? Well that and why did they decide to give him lip injections but more than that, the hair, dude. The hair. Plus how stocky he looks. Just. It's like classic B:tAS design, where everyone just seemed thicker and squarer and stuff, and I don't like that design half so well as the revamped look.
Also the number of sex jokes that they get past the censors in these shows shall never fail to amaze nor amuse me.
So, given that I play Terry McGinnis, from Batman Beyond, I have sunk some serious time -- too much time many would say, and they'd probably be right -- into the whens and whys and wherefores of where it's been set, and how it got there, etc. I've given this crap some thought. And all I've been able to come up with is that the producers must have been high or something when they tried to do these episodes, because wtf, dc.
wtf
So Batman Beyond first aired in 1999, and from everything I remember and a few things I've seen, it was supposed to be set 40 years into the future. This would make the first scene, with Bruce in the future Batsuit, be set in 2019, and the '20 years later' bit when Terry kicks in be set in 2039. The problem is that those things that don't say that Beyond was supposed to be set 40 years into the future say that it was supposed to be set 50 years into the future, roughly, and clearly that's contradictory.
So, I ask myself after panicking for a while when I first found a timeline that set Beyond as taking place in roughly 2055 and then sat down and did the math for the date given in Epilogue, which timeline is right?
Well, as it turns out both are.
There's only two shows in dcau set in the future: Batman Beyond and its spinoff, The Zeta Project. Now, in the ZP episode Quality Time, a casefile mentions that "Unit Zeta went renegade August 5 2041". In the BB episode Zeta, that government guy says "six days ago [Zeta] went renegade", which sets at least the first bit of episode 20, season 2 of Beyond on August 11, 2041. Which... doesn't entirely match up with the rest of how the series seems to be timed I'll admit but it's a solid date.
It's backed up by what Tim says in RotJ; that what the Joker did to him had happened "almost 40 years" ago. Closest I can figure, Joker probably got Tim in 2004 or possibly early 2005, which manages to fit with JLU (which appears to have been planned to run concurrently with realtime) timeline rather neatly. Or it does for season 4, I have not yet finished season 5, but it is notable that in s4 Batman seems to be pulling away from all his close relationships and is almost never in the show. Given that this is almost certainly what happened after what happened to Tim - he pulls away and nearly vanishes for at least a year, even if he doesn't quit the league outright - it seems to scan.
So now there's two timelines, one that starts in 2039 and one that (apparently) starts in 2040. These dates were arrived at as follows: for 2039, Beyond was slated to be 40 years into the future from 1999. Simple enough. For 2040: each season, based on the events that take place, Terry's growth as a character, and a (really rough) measure of the in-show year/school year, seem to take place in roooughly a year, probably a little less. Terry is 16 when he gets the suit, is 17 for the majority of the show, and is probably 18 by the end of season 3, if not earlier into the season. So if we have the solid date of 2041 most of the way through season 2, season 1 would be set in 2040.
So. Two dates. Still, there's only a year of difference, it could be a difference of only a few months. That's no big problem, to-may-to to-mah-to.
HOWEVER, in the JLU episode Epilogue, which is pretty much the "let's fast forward in Beyond timeline and learn that Terry is actually Bruce's son!" episode, the events in the show were supposed to have taken place 65 years into the future. Dana says that she and Terry had been dating for 15 years in Epilogue, and they seem to have started dating shortly before he became Batman; when he was 15 at the youngest. So if we be generous and say they started in 2040, JUST before Terry became Batman according to the slightly later timetable, then add 15 for the years that Terry was Batman and then subtract 65 to get us the date that Justice League Unlimited was supposed to be set in, we get... 1990?
wat.
That makes even less sense, unless you want to say that B:tAS was set some time in the 1980s. Which it wasn't. Ah wait, I hear you say, but what if Justice League and JLU were set before B:tAS? -- or, at least, this is the next question I asked myself.
Hogwash.
There's not that many things that you can use to confirm in-show in JLU, I will admit, but there are a few. In Savage Time, that episode where NAZIS TAKE OVER THE WORLD there's a mini cameo from all growed up Dick, mullet and all. And okay so the cameo lasts for about half a second, but it is still recognizably Dick, and he is recognizably not about 5 years old. Vandal Savage taking over the world would not have had any effect whatsoever, at least that I can see, on Dick's birthday. You could make the argument that the flashbacks in Robin's Reckoning part 1 and 2 were flashbacks to days that featured Bruce's involvement in the League, and Savage!Dick just happened to like mullets, and so grew one in earlier, but he still looks older than shown in B:tAS.
Art style, perhaps.
Still, that's gettin to be a lot of 'perhaps's and it's not the entire argument. Dick isn't the only one to get a cameo, as far as I could tell, Tim also got one - albeit one that was even shorter. He only showed up for a few frames, but there is a small darkhaired child who appears to be the right age and right size with the right hair who is dressed in a tux, with Alfred at Bruce's party. Tim is the only one that I can think of who matches that description. But more than that, Static Shock has two crossover episodes (A League Of Their Own parts 1 and 2) with Justice League, and it is clearly JL, not JLU, as there's only the 7 founding members, Hawkgirl still has her mask, and they are still in the original watchtower because Bruce hasn't crashed it in the JL series finale yet.
Justice League is before JLU, not after, and it is obvious that SS is set at least partially in the year 2001 and after; Static makes direct references to the year ("That's so y2k," as a way of saying that something is last year/out of style/out of date). So JL crossovers with SS mean that JL/JLU are set in the 2000s, and logicing my way out by pretending that everything is set ridiculously early is even more ridiculous than it was before. Besides that, Static also has crossover episodes where Batman and Tim Drake-Robin show up, both before AND after the Justice League crossover episodes. Which means that B:tAS has resolutely happened at least far enough for Tim to be Robin.
Of course, even the Static crossovers can't seem to make up their minds.
Static shows up in an episode with Terry twice: in the SS crossover episode Future Shock, and in the JLU crossover episode(s) The Once and Future Thing, parts 1 and 2. In the first episode, Static gets sent "over 40 years" into the future. The episode aired in 2004, and one assumes that 2004 is the date that we're supposed to be counting from, HOWEVER, given that the kid doesn't appear to age/progress all that much, you could be generous and say that it was supposed to be set in 2001/2002, as 2001 is the base limit for how far back you can go, based on the "That's so y2k" line. The problem here is that "over 40 years" still means that the year is 2041 at the minimum, and even that only works if you consider Bruce to mean "40 years and a few months", which doesn't make sense. This episode could be set in 2045 or even later, which would supposedly make it several years post-RotJ, which just doesn't make sense. Terry of Future Shock is still incredibly green, and is very much a punk kid with a temper problem. This points to him being from early- to mid-season 1. But, once again, there are a few more clues than just Terry's attitude problem and how green he is. For one, he very clearly has not met Static yet, or even dug through Bruce's files on the Batcomputer to see old pictures of him. He has apparently not worked with the Justice League, of which Static is presumably a member (the fanboying homg JUSTICE LEAGUE is far more subtle than in The Call, but is still sorta there), and is particularly twitchy when it comes to intruders in the Batcave. It's not unreasonable, as the first intruder in his time (after, of course, his visit to steal the suit) was Inque, who tentacle raped and almost killed him in Black Out. But the fact that he says outright that they don't HAVE visitors in the Batcave, like ever, seems to mean that A Touch Of Curaré hasn't happened yet either, because Babs marches right in and visits Bruce in the Batcave. Mostly it's just to yell at him, but! Visitor!
So now there's another timeline, where the show apparently begins in 2044 or so. Roughly.
Now, back to Epilogue's timeline.
If we forget trying to make things work and make some sort of sense and just pump the numbers, we get the majority of Epilogue set in 2070, and Beyond beginning around the year 2055. This actually pans (for once) with another timeline! In The Once and Future Thing, Bruce and Diana and John get sent roughly 50 years into the future. Since the episode was aired in 2005, that means the year would be 2055, and there is Terry as Batman!
Apparently OaFT!Terry joined the League as soon as he touched the batcostume, and had only been Batman for a few months. Which, at least, helps explain his 'those who fight then run away' attitude, which never sat all that well with me. So there's another timeline, because Terry does not look/sound/act/etc like he's 25 years old and it's apparently set to be just after he became Batman, like, his first year. Gotta love how Static's managed to change his character design radically and age quite a lot while Terry has managed to age like 2 months. And so I just...
Is that 4 separate timelines now, or 5? I think I've lost track.
Anyway. So the rest of DC doesn't make sense. So it doesn't have a timeline that you can even begin to untangle. So what. There's precious few stories to keep straight in dcau when you compare it to dcu, and unlike dcu, there's supposed to be something like a linear storyline here. The stupid things are supposed to fit together, hence all the crossovers -- though trying to fit when Tim got axed is still giving me fits, I'll admit.
I am, however, pathetically grateful that Zeta still came out onscreen and gave the date, because otherwise the closest thing I'd have would be that '65 years later' in JLU and that would mean that I'd gotten everything horribly, tragically wrong in playing Terry and I'd have been left to curl up into a miserable pathetic lump who couldn't even get that right. But I am right! I am! The one on screen date proves it! Of course, the other people are too. Dang it, dcau.
In mostly unrelated news I think I've decided what offends me the most about future!Terry's design is that hair. What were they thinking? Well that and why did they decide to give him lip injections but more than that, the hair, dude. The hair. Plus how stocky he looks. Just. It's like classic B:tAS design, where everyone just seemed thicker and squarer and stuff, and I don't like that design half so well as the revamped look.
Also the number of sex jokes that they get past the censors in these shows shall never fail to amaze nor amuse me.