By Kim Filchak

It is often said that the story of Batman is one of the richest in the DC universe because Batman has the best villains. It is not just that the villains are interesting and complex characters in their own right, it’s the sheer number of them. Most superheroes can only lay claim to a handful of truly memorable villains and then the rest are pretty forgettable but with Batman the city of Gotham seems to be infested with them, the very streets of the city seem to be thick with fascinating and iconic villains who fall in a range from sympathetic quests for revenge/justice like Mr. Freeze, to pragmatic businessmen/criminal operators like the The Penguin who only wants to get paid, all the way to the brilliance melded with dog barking insanity incarnate in human form called the Joker.

So it is great news that FOX’s upcoming new series Gotham is planing on mining that wealth for all it is worth. Entrainment Weekly online recently spoke with show runner Bruno Heller about his influences (Frank Miller”s “The Dark Knight Returns” and Allen Moore’s “The Killing Joke”, both excellent choices) and about his plans for the many future residents of Blackgate Prison and Arkham Asylum as well as their relationship with one of the men who puts them there.

“The first thing was starting with Jim Gordon, who is the most human and real and normal person in the DC pantheon. What would the city of Gotham look like to a young rookie cop coming into this world? And that’s where we calibrated. This is a world that’s going to become that familiar world of Batman, but it’s not there yet. It’s an embryo. A lot of the work was reverse engineering the story to look at what these characters were like when they younger. Penguin, for instance, is not a powerful gang leader, he’s a gofer for a gangster. It’s about giving the world room to grow, but at the same time giving the fun and pleasure and drama of that heightened world. One of the great things about the Batman world is [the characters] have no super powers. Nobody flies or leaps over buildings. You start with psychology and that’s where we build from.”

He went on to elaborate about the iconic rouges gallery in his toy box:

“Which Batman characters are you likely to introduce this season?
Obviously, the Penguin, Riddler, young Catwoman, Alfred. Possibly Harvey Dent. Poison Ivy. Um … and then there will be others, but I hate to — I’m so used to doing a police procedural, so I’m used to telling, “Next week he’s going to go there.” With this, it’s very much storytelling. So I would be remiss to tell you who will show up when. I will say we’re not going to skimp on giving people the characters they want and expect from Gotham. But when and how they’re going to show up is half the fun. Penguin is one of those guys that, as soon as you see him, you go, “Oh, that’s the Penguin.” It would be hard to disguise him as somebody else.

So you might stealth introduce somebody who later becomes somebody else.
Exactly. Because we’re starting way before these villains even themselves knew they were villains. Some of them started out as good guys. So there will be a lot of that.”

And speaking of everyone’s favorite Clown Prince of Crime:

“You mentioned The Killing Joke. So you’ll bring in The Joker?
He’s the crown jewel of the Batman villains. He will be brought in with great care and a lot of thought.

Some feel Heath Ledger’s performance was so iconic it would be a mistake to try to do that character again so soon.
I’ve written scenes for Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony and Cleopatra. So while that is a serious and valid note, you can’t get into doing this without going there. That was a wonderful performance and — apart from everything else — wonderful make-up. And we should try to live up to that. It will be a different character. It’s certainly going to be more Heath Ledger than Cesar Romero. But like I say, all of these people are real people with feelings and emotions and history and parents. I just build from that.”

The more I hear about Gotham the more excited I get for this show. There is not doubt that Gotham will debut with monster numbers, it is holding those ratings that is always the challenge and with it being a FOX show they will need to hold those numbers. Even shows that had great initial ratings and amazing pedigrees get cancelled on FOX if they can’t continue to pull in a large enough audience to justify their expense, as witness by the glorious rise and tragic cancellation of last years Almost Human. It is done dead solider among many and I would hate to see the same fate befall Gotham because my heart can only stand to be broken so many times. Part of the reason for this is from FOX’s executives who are notorious for meddling in the order in which episodes run, though it seems that they have learned their lesson and are committed to the serialized format.

“How serialized will Gotham be vs. how procedural?
Serialized.

Good again! We always hear, “Oh, the show will have stand-alone episodes but with serialized elements,” trying to make a program into two different things in an attempt to keep everybody happy. 
There’s a procedural framework for it, but the world of Gotham is too big and operatic and complex to do it any other way but serialized.

And Fox didn’t push back on that?
No. Fox was very much on the same page. The stories have to be as large and compelling as the city it’s set in. That’s not to say that you couldn’t do a straight-up police procedural. But, for instance, because we are following the villains as well as the police, you’re already breaking out of that procedural mold.”

So there you go, Bruno Heller has a plan, an amazing rouges gallery to play with, and apparently enough support from FOX that Gotham is going to be allowed to run in all it’s serialized glory. If you are interested in even more details about the up coming show I highly recommend dude faces interview at EW.com, it is filled with many things that give me great hope for this series.