Baby Doll
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| Bruce Timm Paul Dini |
Mary Louise Dahl, aka Baby Doll, is a fictional villain in the Batman universe, invented exclusively for the original animated series. Alison LaPlaca initially provided Baby Doll's voice. In her second appearance, Baby Doll's voice was supplied by Saturday Night Live alumna Laraine Newman. She has only appeared in two episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.
Baby Doll is a former sitcom who like Gary Colema, suffers from a disorder that stops her growing at childhod, in her case, it is systemic hypoplasia. Dahl stops aging at approximately the age of six, as a result, she has the mental and emotional capacity of an adult, but the body of a child, this along with her own mental disorder causes her to comit crimes disguised as her sitcom character, Baby Doll.
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[edit] Appearances
[edit] DC animated universe biography
At one point, Dahl was a successful actress on a family sitcom, That's Our Baby, in which the catchline "I didn't mean to", made her famous, but after she cancell the show, her stardom starts fading. Dahl tried legitimate acting, but critics shunned her. The fact that no one takes her seriously, along with her condition as an adult, drives her criminally insane.
Twenty years later, in Baby Doll, an episode of The Adventures of Batman & Robin, the second season of the Batman: The Animated Series, she kidnaps all of her former co-stars at That's Our Baby. Initially, as Batman and Robin start investigating, Mary Dahl is viewed as a possible target, but they learn about her and realise that the woman may be more villainous than she looks. The actors are taken to the abandoned set where That's Our Baby was filmed in an insane attempt to recapture the happiness she had when she was on the show. Robin disguises himself as the only actor left to kidnap in order to locate Dahl. Batman frees the actors from Baby Doll and chases her to a carnival. There, they enter a house of mirrors where Baby is confronted with a distorted reflection of herself that, in her mind, resembles what she would look like if she had a normal body. She then breaks down, giving a pained, rambling apology speech using her real adult like voice (in contrast to the childish, high pitched voice she uses as the Baby Doll persona) which ends with, "...I didn't mean to" Interestingly enough, she makes this observation to herself in the voice of an adult woman, and hugs Batman's leg who puts his hand over her head.
She is apprehended, set free on probation and starts a regular life managing a small hotel.
In The New Batman Adventures season, Baby Doll shows up in Love Is a Croc, in which she develops a crush on Killer Croc (DCAU) after watching him get apprehended on TV and decides to free him from Arkham Asylum. They start living together at Croc's lair in the sewer system of Gotham, and start a wave of robberies. Only Killer Croc isn't actually in love with her at all, and after Baby Doll secretly catches him going out with two atractive street looking women, well-aware that it would kill her and thousands of Gotham City people as well, she betrays Croc setting a nuclear plant they are stealing from to explode. Croc, the city and herself were saved by Batman and Batgirl.
[edit] Personality
Mary Dahl uses two personalities to express herself, the one that expresses her adulthood and maturity using her woman voice, and the one with the high pitched child-like voice of the character every body expects her to be, Baby Doll, overly happy, chipper and inocent. She uses the mature voice in her vulnerability moments of when she wants to be taken seriously and the Baby Doll voice while comitting crimes and endangering people.
Doll's case is somewhat similar in some aspects to the psychopathic has-been child star, Baby Jane Hudson, from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. Also, her life story, including her disease, which resembles Gary Coleman, another ill-fated child actor. In the fictional character's case, her rare, incurable condition precludes her from ever having a normal life as an adult no matter how valiantly she tries to earn one. The casual contempt Robin shows at Dahl's major attempt to be a serious actress by playing Lady Macbeth speaks to the kind of cruelty she seems to have found impossible to bear. The memorable surrealistic showdown with Batman at the end of her first episode, however, seems to suggest she merely wants a fantasy world, where she can be happy.
After her release, Baby Doll's evil nature is shown when she, working as a hotel receptionist, vents out on a drunk man in a hotel mocking her for her condition despite his wife's attempts to stop him, and she slams a book in his face, showing the frustration she feels in a less insane way.
[edit] Powers and Abilities
Like many of Batman's enemies (as well as Batman himself), Doll has no superhuman abilitites. She makes up for this with her high intellect which makes her adept in crime. Unlike most rogues, however, Doll's insanity is a hinderance to her genius; she never makes her hide-outs hard to find and never even seems to factor Batman into her plans, which is probably due to her poor hold on reality.
Her child look comes in handy to fool people when necesary. Matching her appearance, her main weapons are a series of dangerous devices designed to look like toys. In addition to her doll gun, she has been known to use bouncing balls with smoke-screens in them, a baby's bottle with knock-out gas, and explosive jacks.
[edit] Design
[edit] Trivia
- For some unknown reason, Dahl's goons in the episode "Baby Doll" resemble Gilligan and the Skipper from Gilligan's Island. This is at no point explained in the episode, but may be poking fun at the fact that the villain was formerly the star of a TV sitcom.
- Although Baby Doll is based off of Baby Jane, her appearance and stunted growth are taken off of an Infinity Inc. villain named "Baby Boom", a woman whose body stopped aging at childhood due to genetic experimentation on her as a fetus. They both dress alike and even have the same hair.
- Doll is one of the few rogues made exclusively for the show who, unlike Harley Quinn and Lock-Up, has not, to date, moved on to the comics.
- She has also never been seen taken away after defeat; the show never specifically states where she was imprisioned. Being insane, it seems likely she was taken to Arkham (though her "rehabilitation" was obviously poorly conducted; she's as bitter and vindictive as ever in "Love is a Croc").
- The reason behind the fall of her sitcom - the introduction of a cute kid cousin who stole the audience's attention - parodies the T.V. phenomenon known as "Cousin Oliver Syndrome", in which a cute kid is introduced to a show to boost sagging ratings. The fact that That's Our Baby was starting what would become its last season when "Cousin Spunky" was introduced parodies the belief that "Cousin Oliver Syndrome" is a sign of a showjumping the shark.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The World's Finest, a site with a complete guide to the DC animated universe. It's the source of a great deal of the related images in Pop-Cult Guides.
- DCAUResource.com, a very well documented site when it comes to DC fictional biographies.
- The Animated Batman, an Unofficial Guide, a site with a complete guide to Bruce Timm's Batman. It's the source of a great deal of the related images in Pop-Cult Guides.
