Heart of Ice

One of the best episodes of one of my all time favorite shows, "Heart Of Ice", gave us one of the darkest and most emotional episodes in the series. If you're a fan of the villain Mr. Freeze, I highly recommend this episode. It gives us a great back story for him, and it turns a cold villain into a sympathetic character. It is simply fantastic.

Revenge is the key here, with a flashback to a Mr. Freeze origin story. The wealthy industrialist whose company he worked for interfered with an experiment, causing it to go disastrously wrong, killing a scientist's wife and forever altering him to need cold temperatures to survive. Mr. Freeze comes into being.

Now Mr. Freeze is out for revenge against his former boss, and he doesn't care who he hurts in his lust to provide a similar fatal fate to the industrialist that his wife suffered.

Who can blame him? If someone did that to MY wife, I'd be out to take MY revenge, too. Unfortunately, Batman can't let innocent lives be lost, or even that of the guilty taken. And so the battle of wits begins ...

It's not everyday that you find an episode that not only moves you, but sticks with you for years to come, and this is one of them. Mr. Freeze isn't your average insane Batman villain, he's a victim of circumstance, who wants to be left alone with his wife, and will wreck vengeance one anyone who took away his life. While you want Batman to stop him, at the same time, you can't help but feel for Mr. Freeze, a man twisted into what he is because of the corruption of business. It's a duel of justices, one wants poetic justice, the other wants to exact merciful justice, though at least Batman shows sympathy for Victor. The end will definitely have you thinking and maybe even shedding a tear as well...

'Heart of Ice' was one of my favorite TAS episodes in the early '90s because of the window dressing; Mark Hamill in a non-Joker villainous role, the cold theme (I was into ice as a kid), and Spectrum Studios animation - it's lavishly rendered. But as an adult, the story structure stands out, what with Hamill's soulless CEO Ferris Boyle balanced out with Mr. Freeze.

But Paul Dini really plays on the tragedy of Freeze as a villain and that's what makes this a series best. He's an extremely well realized character (proficiently so, given the time constraints) who opposes Batman only because some jerk corporate exec imperiled his wife and confined him to a cold suit. The thirst for revenge can consume any of us, even those without a sadistic bone in their body. Batman feels pity for Freeze and shows a certain level of empathy towards him (a little like his supportive relationship with Harvey Dent's struggles with Two-Face). The characterization really does deepen this show to an astonishing degree and 'Heart of Ice' is Exhibit A.

10/10

Heart of Ice is one of the best things to come out of Batman's legacy as a classic comic book character, and it's an episode from an animated television show. The episode starts off so beautifully, with a spinning 'woman dancing in a snow-globe', which is hinted at being someone important to: Mr. Freeze. This is the episode that got me straight into Batman: The Animated Series and I'd dare say that it's still one of my all-time favourite television episodes from any show ever. It starts off well, develops well and ends well. As a Batman fan, I say that Heart of Ice made phenomenal development on Mr. Freeze as a character (he never had a love interest before) and showed that villains can be as deep as the heroes they fight; as a television fan, the screenplay/teleplay (by Paul Dini) is one of the best ever written, and easily the best for an animated superhero show: nearly all the lines of dialogue are crucial to the story.

If you haven't seen any of Batman: The Animated Series yet... what the hell are you doing; go and get started with this episode, chop-chop!