Justice League's 'Only A Dream' - A Review

[JME2]

Key
BTAS = Batman: The Animated Series
STAS = Superman: The Animated Series

Synopsis: When members of the Justice League are trapped in a nightmarish dream world controlled by the evil Dr. Destiny, they are forced to confront their own darkest fears.

Introduction
Yes, I know this episode aired last week, but I was at the Ashland Shakespeare festival, so it had to wait until this weekend. Okay, here we go:

Dr. Destiny

Loved his design - trust me, it's a heck of a lot better than his current comics design. Also, there's little reason to wonder why Dr. Destiny resembles Skeletor; Series-producer Bruce Timm did work on the original Masters of the Universe series after all. And having William Atherton (Best known as Walter' Dickless' Peck from Ghostbusters) voice him was a real treat.

As for his origin, like everyone else I was curious as to just why he hated the league until we got the arrest report in Part 2. Now, some might object, but I liked it a great deal for 2 reasons. The first is because of continuity - although it's never offical stated, it can be assumed that the search iniated by the JL that uncovered the gun-smuggling was a result of exposing Luthor's criminal dealings back in the first season's Injustice For All
Cameos

It was great to see foes not just from the first season (Grundy, Copperhead, Joker, Luthor, etc.), but also from BTAS (Firefly - yes, finally! Aha! Another Batman villain. That makes two, or three if you count Deadshot from The Enemy Below , that have made it onto the series) and STAS (Luminus and Volcana - which I thought was slightly odd given that at the end of Where There's Smoke that she was walking the path of angels, but that's just my opinion.


The Nightmares

Well done, great balance of creepy music and chilling animation. It was great to get inside their heads and see their various fears: GL's fear of losing his identity, Flash's of being trapped in time, and J

And then of course, there's Superman. Oh boy, this was great for several reasons. First, we got to see cameos from the STAS supporting cast, especially Lois and Jimmy (Death to Jimm and a rather obvious nod to Superman's Pal, which is normally considered the worst episode of STAS) as well the return of the main Daily Planet office, Smallville and the Kryptonian craft.

Second, it acknowledges the events of the STAS series finale Legacy, which as we all know was ignored during the first season. It shows that Supes is still afraid of losing control of his powers and having them result in harm.

And yes, although we saw it for 111 episodes, it would have been great to see Bats react to Destiny's dream-probe, though his line 'My Brain's not a nice place to be' was great.

The Materioptikon

My one real complaint with this episode. Showing it as a machine was a bit of downside for the comics fans, mainly because in the comics, the Materioptikon is a ruby made of pure dreams that serves as the source of Dr. Destiny's powers. Now, I'm complaining about it because in the early issues of DC's The Sandman , it was revealed that The Materioptikon was stolen from the Sandman when he was imprisoned early in the 20th century. His quest to obtain this ruby brought him into conflict with the villain, who was using it to drive everyone on Earth mad. The machine-origin more or less eliminates a chance of bringing the Sandman onto the series - unless...

Nah. I'll save it for another time. Well, that's all for this week. Stay tuned for next week's review.

-JME2-[/u]