Perchance to Dream (Batman: The Animated Series)

Perchance To Dream is the thirtieth episode of the Warner Bros. animated television series The Animated Series. First aired on October 19, 1992. Story by Laren Bright, Michael Reaves. Teleplay by Joe R. Lansdale. Directed by Boyd Kirkland.

Plot summary

Bruce Wayne wakes up to find that his dearest wish has come true: his parents are not dead, and he is not and has never been Batman. Not only that, he has been recently engaged to Selina Kyle. At first he is ecstatic, but a number of clues force him to the conclusion that somehow this is all an elaborate charade. His quest to find the truth eventually pits Bruce against Batman in a surreal battle atop a church tower. Only then does he realize that he is trapped in a dream world created entirely by the Mad Hatter's mind control. In order to wake up for real, he commits suicide by jumping off the church tower. He then returns to the real world and takes the Mad Hatter down. As Gordon wonders what the device that made the dream world is, Batman walks away with the famous line from The Maltese Falcon: "The stuff that dreams are made of."

Themes

The dream experience is an example of a brain in a vat where a person's brain is connected to a machine to create a virtual reality so well as to be indistinguishable from reality itself. This is combined with the genre of utopian and dystopian fiction, a world of designed perfection in this episode. In this regard, this episodes is comparable to films such as The Truman...
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