Plot
The episode opens with Batman pursuing a group of criminals into a warehouse. After overcoming several of them, he is blinded by a flash of light and a dark shape descends upon him, knocking him unconscious. He then awakens in bed as Bruce Wayne, with no memory of the outcome of the battle or how he came to be home.
It quickly becomes clear that something is very wrong: there is no Batcave beneath Wayne Manor, and Alfred professes to have no knowledge of Bruce's alter ego or of Robin. Furthermore, Bruce's parents are still alive and he is engaged to Selina Kyle. Though Bruce remembers his adventures as Batman, he can find no evidence that they were anything more than a dream, and he soon begins to doubt his own sanity.
Bruce initially attempts to relax into his new life; at least on the surface, it appears to be everything he has ever wanted. He is disquieted by the discovery that Batman does still exist, however, and appears to be even more powerful and impressive than he ever was. Further evidence that something is very wrong comes when Bruce attempts to read first a newspaper and then a book from his personal library, discovering that the text is a garbled and unreadable mess.
Determined to discover an explanation for what is going on, Bruce purchases a torch and grappling hook. He is confronted by some police who attempt to take him into custody, citing his "strange behavior", but Bruce flees them and escapes to Gotham Cemetery. Once there, he climbs a belltower and finds himself face to face with Batman in the middle of a raging storm. Bruce demands to know what is happening and states that he wants his old life back. The two struggle and, as they fight, Bruce explains that he has realized that this is nothing more than a dream world; he is unable to read because reading is a function of the right-hand side of the brain, and dreams are entirely left-sided. Eventually Bruce is successful in unmasking the imposter Batman, who reveals himself as the Mad Hatter. After receiving confirmation from the Mad Hatter that his secret identity has not been compromised, as it is only a dream version of the villain that he is speaking to and the real one cannot see into the dream world, he leaps from the belltower to his apparent death.
Batman then awakens in the warehouse from the beginning of the episode, with the Mad Hatter's dream machine still attached to his head. He escapes and overpowers the villain, demanding an explanation. The Hatter breaks down, saying that Batman has ruined his life (in the episode "Mad as a Hatter") and that he would give him everything that he wanted, just to have him out of his life. Disgusted, Batman turns the Hatter over to the police and leaves, facing reality once again.
Read more about this topic: Perchance To Dream (Batman: The Animated Series)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)