Birds of Prey

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Dinah Lance arrives in New Gotham in search of answers to the questions she doesn't yet know to ask. Through fortunate timing, and considerable luck, she finds her way to the watchtower and to the answers she desperately needs.

The Batman universe is very close to my heart, and has been since I was a little boy; one of my first crushes was Yvonne Craig's Batgirl, so when I heard about this series I was very excited to see Barbara Gordon in a prominent role. I do remember being aware of this series while it was (briefly) on the air, but for whatever reason I never managed to catch it. It's possible that was for the best.

Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul appears in this episode as a bit-player, and he is by far the best actor of the bunch, which, unfortunately, is not that much of a compliment. He certainly delivers a good performance for the scenes in which he appears, but he's gone far too soon.

Ian Abercrombie's portrayal of Alfred is pretty spot-on, clearly caring for the people in his life, and working diligently to keep them together. His need to take care of people is endearing and he seems to act as a good sounding board for the other characters. The episode might have had a different feeling had he had a larger presence in this universe, but that might have turned the show into Charlie's Angels.

On the other hand, Alfred delivers an opening voice over that is beyond trite and it just doesn't work for what this series is trying to be. I understand that he's primarily as expository character, but there had to have been a better way to handle it.

The music isn't inherently bad, but it's completely out of place in this show; the incidental music conveys a sense of drama that doesn't suit the scenes in which it's intended, and the use of vocal work is directed toward the wrong genre. Had this been a teen-drama, ridden with angst, then Michelle Branch would have been more than welcome, but she just confuses the situation here.

Ashley Scott's Helena seems incapable of displaying the appropriate emotion for any given situation, while Rachel Skarsten's Dinah flips back and forth between being horribly wooden and insanely manic. Mia Sara (Dr. Quinzel) can only deliver her lines while raising her brow and Shemar Moore (Detective Reese) appears to believe he's in some kind of parody. The actors only appear capable during monologues wherein they get to delve deeper into their own characters, but due to the nature of storytelling, they naturally are forced to then interact with the other actors again and everything falls apart.

The use of CGI is painfully obvious and the creative shots that director Brian Robbins attempts fall unfortunately flat as the camera occasionally spins out of control. The use of flashbacks is as awkward, but nowhere near as bad as the black-and-white hallucinations, which only serve to bore.

Laeta Kalogridis writes the initial meeting between the three female leads, and there is certainly a lot of potential in the script, but it remains completely wasted in the adaptation to the screen. The dialogue is mostly horrible, and the characters would be better off interacting with mirrors. Possibly the worst moment is during a flashback, when a group of people are standing around the body of Selina Kyle, who has been stabbed. Stabbed by a man who stands among them, a man who drops the knife in front of them, a man who takes his time getting away from the crime scene. Not a single person in that crowd makes a move to stop said man, to call the police, to attempt to help Selina as she bleeds out. It's a strange moment that could have been salvaged if the crowd had not existed there.

This is not an enjoyable adaptation of the source material, but it certainly has a lot of potential that it could live up to given the proper writing. There's a good chance that these actors could prove their abilities if given better dialogue and any sort of motivation, but it just doesn't come through in this opening script.

Birds of Prey is in the running to become the feature for Wednesdays. The series ran from 2002 to 2003 on The WB with a total of 13 episodes.