Justice League – The Savage Time (Pt. 1, 2 & 3)

The Justice League returns from a mission in deep space to find a world that has drastically changed – for the worse. A ruthless, repressive dictator named Vandal Savage has seized control.

Episode #25 – The Savage Time, Part 2
Original Airdate -November 9th 2002 -First Season Finale

To restore life as they know it, the world’s greatest collection of superheroes must travel back in time and team up with Sgt. Rock and his military squadron, the Blackhawks. Together, they must re-fight a world war in order to stop Savage from taking power.

Episode #26 – The Savage Time, Part 3
Original Airdate – November 9th 2002 -First Season Finale

The battle to restore order becomes more and more personal as the high stakes of re-fighting a world war begin to take it’s toll.

Media by Bird Boy
Review by Bird Boy

Voices:
Kevin Conroy as Batman
Maria Canals as Hawkgirl
Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman
Phil LaMarr as Green Lantern
Carl Lumbly as J’onn J’onzz
George Newbern as Superman
Michael Rosenbaum as Flash
Phil Morris as Vandal Savage
Patrick Duffy as Steve Trevor
Grant Albrect as General Hoffman
Robert Picardo as Blackhawk
Fred Dryer as Sergeant Rock
Ted Levine as Bulldozer
Dave Thomas as Ernst

I’m sure we’ve all, at some point, wanted to change something in a
Justice League episode. Change the dialogue there, change the animation here, change the music, change the scene, etc. But this time around, I think the JL team has really captured the "spirit" of the team, showing that they can work together without a lagging plot. This episode just rocked. Period.

Plot/Story: By means of a back-to-the-past hole/warp thing,
Vandal Savage has sent his past self information on World War II. This causes the Allies to lose the war, thus putting Vandal Savage in charge.

Coming home from a mission "halfway across the galaxy," as he puts it,
Green Lantern is towing the entire League with his ring. He then quips that he’ll need to do some serious re-charging on his ring. After they reach the watch-tower, Batman (waiting for them inside the Tower) begins to open up the hatch, when a bright beam of light comes over the other side of earth, which causes everything to shake. After tumbling around in the Javelin 7, the light disappears – as does the Watchtower.

Landing on earth, they realize it’s Metropolis – almost. Posters of
Vandal Savage are plastered all around the city, the Daily Planet has a different building-top, and the police aren’t the same. After a brief fight, they see Batman, in a different uniform, but Batman none the less. They follow him down into his under-ground hide out, dodging police fire along the way.

After Batman fills them on in the details, they realize that somebody’s been tampering with time – the flash of light being the cause. They decide to home in on the space, and they find a hole back into the past, which is how Vandal was able to change the war’s outcome. The League decides they must do the same, and take a trip back into the past, leaving Batman and his League of Rogues behind.

Dialogue/Voices: There’s some really great dialogue in this episode. Whether it ranges from the brief bit Batman has, or the wise-cracks by Flash, you can really tell the writers took their time writing this out. Definitely some of the best in the series, and in the end you got hints of a Hawkgirl/Green Lantern relationship coming on ("What kept you?", "I had to fix my hair"), to some of Superman’s surprising dialogue while he was ripping through the German airplanes.

The voice actors did another great job on this one, especially some of the stuff that came out of Flash, Green Lantern and Vandal. Great stuff.

Animation: Oh boy, the animation in this episode was great! I can’t get over it. The aerial scenes with the airplanes, the dog fights, the smoke, the explosions, the fights, the extremely-detailed WWII weapons made this ep all the more enjoyable.

Music: Great score on this one – the music fits the mood at every point. The composers did a really, really good job on this episode.

Overall: First off, I want to say this to those who think
Superman is being portrayed as being weak, compared to his STAS counterpart: he isn’t weak in this episode. He was especially more STAS-like in Part 2, when his heat vision was used to slice through countless planes, and one he even twirled around and tossed into another. A huge improvement over the "weakling" Superman we saw in previous episodes.

After all the action (the dog fights are my favorite part of the episode), and the hug between Batman and Superman (Bat’s reaction is priceless-"Am I… missing something?"), this was definitely my favorite episode-arc of Season 1. This is shaping up to be a great series.