The Alvino Ray Gun is my third favorite Bat-Trap, after the Siamese Human Knot and the Cat's Whiskers. Featured in the next to last episode, the Alvino Ray Gun fits the pattern that all the best Batgirl Bat-Traps were featured in the second half of the third season of Batman.
In fact, except for being thrown in The Riddler's Steam Room and getting conked on the head with a vase by King Tut's Queen Shirley, Batgirl suffered very little damage in the first seven episodes. Starting in episode #12, however, in every story save two, our heroine faced fantastic and monstrous traps and tortures. This may have been because:
Since the censors wouldn't let him call the device the Ronald Ray Gun, writer Stanley Ralph Ross named Dr. Cassandra's weapon after the 1940s band leader Alvino Rey. Cassandra Spellcraft got her first name, not from the mythic prophet of doom, but from a little girl who lived next door to Ross. Cabala may have gotten his name from the mystical movement in Judaism, sometimes spelled as Kabbalah. The word also can refer to any traditional, occult, secret matter, which ties into Cassandra's interest in alchemy.
Ross's idea of flattening the Terrific Trio may have originated with Edwin A. Abbott's Victorian science-fiction satire, Flatland. The story was written about a two-dimensional world with height and width, but no depth. First published in 1884, the book is still widely read today. Flatland was the basis for the Behold, Eck! episode of the original Outer Limits in 1964.
The staging of this trap must have been quite simple. All that had to be done was to have Yvonne, Adam and Burt shake and jiggle while throwing different colored lights on them. Then the camera cut away and cardboard cutouts, much like those that can be commercially purchased today of Michael Jordan, Xena and Seven of Nine, just to mention a few, were substituted for our heroes. Perhaps Ms. Craig, Mr. West and Mr. Ward got a rare afternoon off during the filming of this story!
Of course, one problem with using the cardboard cutouts is that they are obviously not two-dimensional! Although Batgirl, Batman and Robin are flattened, they still have depth, albeit greatly reduced. If time and the budget had allowed, the Trio's reduction to two dimensionality could have been more realistically portrayed by an effect similar to that used in the original Star Trek episode That Which Survives. When the computer generated simulation of Losira, played by Lee Meriwether, disappears, her image seems to go from three dimensions, to two dimensions, to one dimension (a straight line) to no dimensions (a point which vanishes.) Another problem is portraying three dimensionality in the first place on a two dimensional TV screen!
Putting aside such practical considerations for the moment, let us consider this trap as if it was really happening to Batgirl. The action takes place at Spiffany's Jewelry Salon on Gotham City's fashionable 15th Avenue. Dr. Cassandra and her daffy mate, Cabala, are about to steal the Mope Diamond. (Do I have to explain any of these references to anyone? I should, however, mention that the floorwalker, or sales manager, of Spiffany's used his real name, G. David Schine. He gained notoriety in the 1950s as the assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the blacklisting trials.)
Batman and Robin, and then Batgirl, arrive to stop the crime in progress. Rejecting her husband's suggestion that they use their camouflage pills, Dr. Cassandra pulls out her Alvino Ray Gun and says, "The Tiresome Trio are about to really rock!"
Batman replies smugly, "A gun? Aren't you a little above that sort of thing, Dr. Cassandra? Nooooo style."
Cassandra answers, "This is the kickiest weapon you ever dug, Batman. My own unpatented Alvino Ray Gun, and it's the last thing you're about to see!"
With that, "Docky Baby" activates her ray gun, which looks like a large flashlight with a grip and trigger. The front of the weapon is divided into four equal sections: blue, red, green and yellow.
Batgirl, Batman and Robin are bathed in alternating colors. The Trio is virtually unable to move. Their bodies pulsate and throb as their depth is reduced. With difficulty, all three manage to speak briefly, but except for the Boy Wonder's hands moving up and down a little and for Batgirl being able to steal a glance at her shrinking breasts, voluntary movement is impossible.
"What are you doing t...t...to our bodies?" Batman asks.
"Holy Helplessness!" adds Robin.
"I feel like I'm . . . getting . . . flat!" laments Batgirl.
"What a pity," observes Cabala.
Shortly thereafter, the heroes are apparently reduced to beings less than an inch thick. They are then slipped under Commissioner Gordon's door, where Gordon thinks it is some kind of joke until Chief O'Hara declares, "I feel their pulse!"
Six different doctors examine Batgirl, Robin and Batman and conclude that there is "no known medical way to restore them." The Commissioner says that all they can do is to "make them as comfortable as possible while they live out their sightless, soundless, selfless, well-flattened lives."
All well and good so far, but things quickly go downhill from here. Chief O'Hara suggests they call the voice that sometimes answers the Batphone. In and of itself, this is not too bad, but then it turns out that Alfred is able to build a Three-Dimensional Bat Restorer! Arrrghhh!
This trap suffers greatly from the Bat-junk syndrome that the writers depended on more and more to get our protagonists out of desperate situations. Are we to believe that Batman had designed such a machine just in case it was ever needed or that Alfred invented it by himself? I'll admit that it is easier (and more fun!) to devise Bat-Traps than to create escapes from them, but come on! Compare this rescue with the first season Mr. Freeze cliffhanger. If there had been time and money, and if anyone had still cared, why couldn't the doctor who saved Batman and Robin from Mr. Freeze's freezing process been used here. Sure, it still would have required some fantastic machine, but at least we wouldn't have to accept that Batman is prepared in advance for every eventuality!
Ah, well . . . on to the ratings!
Batgirl is a special case. For a female perspective on the Alvino Ray Gun, I consulted with the on-line superheroine, Wondervixen. Here is what she had to say:
"I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to flatten out into cardboard. THAT, I think, would be the main sensation the episode described, rather than what it would feel like to have my balloons popped.
"If I WERE hit with a weapon that flattened out my boobs, I think the first emotion I'd feel would be fear for what was happening. After deciding if I was being seriously harmed, I think I'd be pissed off that a weapon was used on me that nullified what I waited 14 years for nature to give me!"
The psychological torture could have been much worse. From what Commissioner Gordon said and from the reactions of the restored Trio, we can conclude that Batgirl, Robin and Batman had no conscious existence while in two dimensions. Think how terrible it would be to be trapped in a flattened body and to be aware of the passage of time. No sights, sounds or other sensations to occupy your mind, just being eternally alone with your thoughts! Brrrrr!
Can we call it a 7 as presented?
This raises an interesting point: Would Batgirl, Robin and Batman age while confined to two dimensions? Would their appearance change over time? Gordon says that they will "live out their . . . lives," but how does he or the doctors know? Had Cassandra discovered a version of immortality, or at least of suspended animation?
Since, however, we have established that Batgirl, Robin and Batman had no consciousness while flattened, considering a sadistic villain's point of view, there is not any suffering inflicted on the heroes once the Alvino Ray Gun had completed its work. Therefore, I give this only a 5.
Is it that, despite what was stated by Cassandra and what it said on the Bat Restorer, the Gun didn't really turn the Terrific Trio into two dimensional beings, just well-flattened three dimensional creatures? The depth of the processed "cutouts" and O'Hara's detection of a pulse supports this hypothesis. In that case, the three would face death by starvation or dehydration, although they would never know it. Their outward appearance might not ever change, but the people inside would die within days, leaving a hollow shell.
Not knowing which way to go, I end up at 5 here, too.
One final word: in "Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths," a comic book with a cover date of February, 1999, on a parallel Earth (Earth-D), an Asian-American Flash is attacked by an African-American Mirror Master with a mirror that . . .
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