Before 2002, superhero efforts on TV usually centered on Marvel or DC’s marquee heroes. The Incredible Hulk starred the Hulk, Wonder Woman was about Wonder Woman, and Lois and Clark still revolved around Superman. Batman starred in his own series in the 60s, but after the success of the live-action Batman movies by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, Warner Bros. was very adamant about not having Batman on TV, pulling away from ticket sales. In 2002, The WB found a workaround by launching a series connected to the Bat-family, but without The Batman.
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Birds of Prey premiered on The WB on October 9th, 2002. The show would ostensibly adapt the DC comic of the same name, which paired Oracle, former Batgirl Barbara Gordon, with the Black Canary, Dinah Lance. Later in the run, The Huntress, Helena Bertinelli, would also be recruited into the team. With Gordon assuming the identity of Oracle, Starship Troopers‘ Dina Meyer, she would give the team members their mission and act as the Charlie for her Angels. The show would adapt Oracle fairly faithfully, but instead of the Bertinelli version of the character, the show adapted the Earth-2 version. Played by Ashley Scott, Helena Kyle was the meta-human daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. As for Black Canary, instead of the powerful screams she wields in the books, the WB’d version of Dinah Lance became Dinah Redmond, a teenager with psychic powers on the run, played by Rachel Skarsten. In this version of events, Batman has abandoned Gotham City after the Joker killed Catwoman. The big bad of the series is Dr. Harleen Quinzel, portrayed by Ferris Bueller’s Day Off‘s Mia Sara. Harley Quinn is manipulating bad guys out of Arkham Asylum to cause chaos in New Gotham and get revenge for the loss of her sweet Mr. J.
A Divine Oracle
The series’ biggest achievement was the adaptation of Barbara Gordon as Oracle. The original Batgirl was created at the request of producers of Batman ’66, so they could add a dynamic female character. The purple-clad superheroine would come full circle when Dina Meyer played a pitch-perfect former Batgirl in Oracle. The Birds of Prey canon incorporated The Killing Joke‘s storyline, leaving Gordon in a wheelchair after a gunshot from the Joker severed her spinal cord. Meyer gave the role its much-needed pathos, while trying to bring hope back to Gotham City. The series even incorporated Gordon’s clock tower base of operations. A highlight moment of the show is in the episode “Lady Shiva,” where Meyer fully suits up as Batgirl in a powered exoskeleton bat-uniform. Here’s that scene, just so you can see how great Dina Meyer looked as Batgirl:
Ashley Scott’s Huntress was perfectly at home on the WB, serving as the show’s resident leather-wearing brawler. The series never really delivered on the promise that this was Batman’s daughter. The metahuman Huntress could often feel like a knock-off of its contemporary, James Cameron’s Dark Angel, where Jessica Alba played a young woman genetically enhanced with feline DNA. Dinah’s story would get fleshed out in the episode “Sins of the Mother,” guest-starring RAD and Full House actress Lori Loughlin as Carolyn Lance, the Black Canary. Dinah learns the mother who abandoned her was one of Batman’s protégés. The hero tries to get back in the good graces of her daughter before it’s revealed she needs help taking down the gang that’s after her. Years later, instead of playing a hero, Loughlin would portray a criminal, just on the nightly news after being caught up in a college admissions bribery scandal.
The inclusion of Dr. Quinzel should have been the perfect foil for the Birds of Prey. Unfortunately, Mia Sara’s valiant effort just falls short. Instead of appearing crazy, Sara’s Quinzel comes off as trying to look crazy. And she wasn’t the first actress to give it a shot. In the original pilot, Harley Quinn was played by Twin Peaks’ Sherilyn Fenn. The actress exited the program due to the role being smaller than expected. Her performance didn’t quite hit the right Harley notes anyway, though it’s quite understandable where the casting director was coming from. Audrey Horne as Harley Quinn was a daydream that probably shouldn’t have been realized. Fenn was replaced before the pilot aired, with her scenes reshot using Mia Sara. Fans who want to see how Fenn approached the character won’t have a hard time finding the original pilot online.
A Bigger Legacy Than Episode Count
Birds of Prey only lasted for thirteen episodes, but the experiment still proved fruitful after the show’s cancellation. Smallville had begun airing the year before, and Birds of Prey proved that you could do costumed heroes on a TV budget and have them look good. The “no flights, no tights” rule was still in force, but after its sophomore season, the WB began introducing more elements from the bigger DC universe to Smallville. They also learned how to properly navigate the no Batman on TV rule by essentially turning The Arrow’s Oliver Queen into the CW’s Batman. Complete with an Oracle stand-in named Felicity Smoak, who would eventually go by the moniker Overwatch. The Arrowverse would also present multiple iterations of the Black Canary that hewed much closer to comics continuity than the Birds of Prey version. Skarsten would return to the world of DC heroes as Alice, the main villain of the Arrowverse’s Batwoman. BOP also proved you could take side characters and turn what were once solo stories into ensembles loaded with B-level heroes. The CW would even acknowledge its influence on the Arrowverse when it included Ashley Scott’s Huntress and Dina Meyer’s Oracle in the crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Below is the devastating scene where their Earth is wiped out:
The Birds of Prey would get another shot at stardom with a DCEU adaptation featuring Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn as the catalyst for bringing the team together. The Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) would be more or less faithful to Dinah Lance’s Black Canary, played by Jurnee Smollett, and Huntress, portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But the movie did not feature Barbara Gordon. Instead, the only Batgirl included was a very different version of Cassandra Cain than what’s on the page. The movie is a romp and works as a Harley Quinn vehicle, but it’s still not the Birds of Prey lineup comic series fans have consistently hoped for.
The WB’s Birds of Prey was a long shot for finding success, but its legacy continues to this day. Without the Dina Meyer-starring series, would audiences have ever seen Gotham or Legends of Tomorrow? Unlikely. The series taught the executives at Warner Bros. a valuable lesson: you can take Batman out of the show, but you still have to make the heroes larger than life. It’s impossible to argue that Birds of Prey is a lost masterpiece. When the show worked, it was awesome, but it only reached those highs in a few moments across its run. Like a lot of shows, it could have found its own rhythm if given more time. The team could have used a stronger dynamic and better villains in season 2, but Warner Bros. saved them for the expanded universes that were to come. This series will sadly always be a footnote in Bat history, but we still got the best on-screen Batgirl since Yvonne Craig suited up in 1967.
Who was your favorite side character that stepped into a leading role in the Arrowverse pantheon of heroes? Let us know in the comments.
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IMAGE COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES
