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Wait.
It's not what you think.
No?
I'm not going to stand by while you hurt more innocent people.
Kids love robots.
Kids love Batman.
So it only makes sense that WB would
try to make a Batman spinoff starring
a homicidal and existentially tormented robot.
The Zeta Project is, without a doubt,
the strangest show set in the DC Animated Universe.
And yet, it seems to be completely forgotten.
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The Zeta Project was a short-lived DC Animated
Universe spinoff show created by Bob Goodman.
It ran from January 27, 2001 to August 10, 2002.
Originally appearing in the Batman Beyond episodes titled,
"Zeta" and "Countdown," the spinoff show
follows a former assassin robot who develops a conscience
and goes in search of a deeper meaning.
I'm a US government infiltration unit
designed to replace and destroy targeted individuals.
Destroy?
But I don't want to destroy anymore.
While Batman Beyond has a staunch following
of die-hard fans, The Zeta Project
is remembered very differently.
The show had a much more comedic tone,
despite having a logline that seemed to support
deeper and more mature themes.
We follow Rosalie "Ro" Rowan and the titular robot nicknamed
for the show as "Zee"--
Zee.
Excuse me?
That should be your name, Zee.
Zeta's too weird.
--as they're perennially on the run from the government
and evil forces who want to control Zeta.
For context, at the time of Zeta's release,
the DCAU spearheaded by producers, Alan Burnett
and Bruce Timm was chugging along.
Batman, The Animated Series was a critical darling
and runaway rating's success.
Superman, The Animated Series had
redefined the enduring Big Blue Boy Scout for a generation.
And Batman Beyond was a surprise, if moderate, hit.
However, development executives and VPs
in charge of children's animation at Warner
were about to have a changing of the guard-- out with the old,
in with the new.
While they were still hungry for more of the winning material
that Timm and company were mining from DC Comics'
catalogs, the prevailing concern was
that the animated content that was being made for kids
was too mature.
It was pulling in more of the older
kids and the teenage crowd.
So when the studio asked for more ideas for DCAU spinoff
properties, Burnett and Goodman suggested a minor character
that had recently appeared in the critically well-received
episode of Batman Beyond, a robot named Zeta.
This wasn't a character that had previously existed
within the DC Comics' canon.
Goodman went in to pitch the idea to WB brass
and positioned the new potential spinoff as The Fugitive
with a robot.
I didn't kill my wife.
I don't care.
Each week, we would follow Zeta and Ro
as they fled from the authorities
and fell backwards into problems that needed to be solved.
All the while, Zeta would be going
in search of answers to his origins,
the intentions of his creator, and the meaning
of his existence.
At first glance, a show about a killer robot who's
starring as David Carradine in a futuristic animated version
of Kung Fu seems like a hard sell,
but it was quite the opposite.
Goodman sold the pitch in the room,
and they were quickly off to the races
with their new cyberpunk android epic.
Today, the show has almost been completely forgotten.
It's been relegated to the distant corners of hardcore
animation fans' memories.
Even its ties to the broader DCAU are dubious at best.
Terry McGinnis says Batman shows up in one episode.
And one of the NSA special agents in the show
is named West with red hair and is
voiced by the Flash actor, Michael Rosenbaum,
but that's about it.
A lot of this is due to the fact that The Zeta Project's
initial conception was much darker than the finished
product.
Goodman wasn't aware of the impending changes of the guard
during the pitching process.
He wanted to push the limits of what was possible on a kid's
daytime animated TV show.
He wanted Zeta to truly be grappling
with his internal killer tendencies.
He wanted Ro, the young girl companion of Zeta's to be
constantly in peril because of her proximity
to a literal assassin droid.
He wanted the show to deal with issues
of existential loneliness, grief,
and guilt. He wanted the show to basically be about,
what would happen if a gun woke up one
morning and realized it didn't want to hurt anyone anymore?
That thing wants to kill us.
It's just following its program.
That's what they said about you.
These early drafts of the show never saw the light of day
though.
Goodman pulled influence from Gene Roddenberry's
unrealized robot epic, the Quester Tapes,
which follows another robot looking for its creator,
and the 1970s Incredible Hulk TV show
to craft the narrative structures of Zeta.
However, most of these creative influences
were watered-down since The Zeta Project was not
produced by many of the stalwart creators who were involved
in the other DCAU shows.
There was generally a continuity of behind the scenes
personnel from show to show.
Many of the same directors, storyboard artists,
and revisionists worked on every sequential DCAU show.
However, due to a simultaneous convergence
of scheduling and kids WB execs wanting to shake things up,
almost none of the Batman Beyond, Superman, Static Shock,
or Batman crew worked on the visuals for Zeta,
and you can feel it.
Despite many of the writing crew making their way
from other shows to Zeta, the show
was given a mandate to age everything
down to squarely appeal to the highly lucrative six
to 11 demographic.
Many of the directors and storyboard artists for Zeta
came directly from Pinky and the Brain
and the Animaniacs with seasoned producer and director Liz
Holtzman leading the charge-- the only issue being
that the highly refined and defined Bruce Timm art
style that all the other shows had mastered
proved exceedingly difficult for the primary comedy artist
to master.
This gave the whole show a bit of a clunky feel.
The artwork didn't quite line up with the rest of the universe,
and the stories were simultaneously
a bit too immature--
Oh, no.
I'm so sorry.
Here, let me get that.
What are you doing?
I'm sorry.
I'm trying to help.
--and trying to punch above their weight class.
The show seemed like it was struggling
to find its rhythm for the majority of its two-season run.
The main differences between how Zeta and the rest of the DCAU
relate to each other are the fact
that Zeta is primarily a comedy show with a dramatic engine.
This was never an issue with the other shows though.
They always knew exactly what they were, an adventure
show, a gothic romance, a tights and fights superhero showdown.
They always had a clear and concise point of view
on the subject matter.
But Zeta seemed to be neither fish nor fowl.
It's a funny show for little kids
where the central character is a literal assassin
on the run from the cops.
The characters in Zeta also feel a bit undercooked.
The primary antagonists are a team of NSA agents, however,
they are attempted to be painted as shades of gray, not
jingoistic promilitary types.
But the attempted complexity here never quite clicks the way
that you can feel the show needed.
They were obviously working at a disadvantage with the Kids' WB
age bracket mandates.
Watching the episodes, you can feel
that there's a version of these stories that really has
deep moral questions to ask.
That interrogates the idea of policing, societal violence,
and the nature of sentience.
However, what you get is cheap jokes and slapstick comedy
more often than not.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I've got you.
Cut.
The shot's ruined.
What are you doing?
Ugh.
Even the characters of Ro and Zee are undercooked as well.
The show is more concerned with making
sure Ro is a plucky female role model attempting
to help her connect with an increasingly female demographic
than they are with making her a really
complex or nuanced character.
Additionally, the characterization of Zee
and Ro's relationship is one note.
He's existentially tormented and soft-spoken.
She's upbeat and kind of sarcastic.
But that's about it.
There's no real growth over the course of the show,
again, largely because it's aimed at little kids.
But that's exactly what's so strong about the rest
of the DCAU.
The characterizations are spot-on.
Even when they were just making cartoons for kids,
the animated incarnations of Batman and Superman
are just as iconic, if not more iconic,
as their live-action counterparts.
From the writing to the visualization
of the characters, they're effortlessly
cool and instantly recognizable.
Even the visual aesthetics of the world of the show
just feels less interesting than the other programs.
Think about the rain-drenched moody Neo
Gotham from Batman Beyond, or the dark Deco
from Batman The Animated Series, or even the optimistic retro
future of Superman.
And then look at this, daytime coffee shop
suburbia rendered in the least interesting style imaginable.
There's no sense of drama or tension
in the environment at all.
The scenic design doesn't have a voice in the way
that the other shows have.
Ultimately, Zeta Project was canceled after two seasons.
Unlike other DCAU characters like Batman Beyond or Static,
he's never been brought back or integrated into future timeline
narratives.
The show occupies a very strange place
in DCAU canon in that it's the last chronological show
within the DCAU.
The end of The Zeta Project is the end
of the DC Animated timeline, and yet, it's
rarely referenced or acknowledged
by the other properties in that shared universe.
And the fans act similarly there's
a slight fondness based purely on the show
being such an anomaly, however, it doesn't really
extend past that.
And maybe that's why Zeta Project is the Batman Beyond
spinoff no one remembers.
And that's all we have this week.
What do you think?
Will we ever get Zeta popping up on other DC
Animated properties?
Do you think we'll ever get a show set after zeta.
In the DCAU?
Let us know in the comments below.
And as always, please subscribe to the Nerdstalgic channel
in order to stay up to date with everything
happening with the Nerdstalgic logic channel.
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