Kid Flash: What about you, Green Arrow fixation?
Artemis: Who put me in this!?
Kid Flash: Well I’m not touching that with a ten-foot.. erm, so you know how to use that bow?

Robin: Let’s hog tie these creeps and compare notes.

September 4th – Miss Martian (Megan) awakens to find herself outdoors in the moon lit Bialya desert. She remembers who she is, but otherwise has no knowledge of why she is on Earth or why she is wearing a camouflaged costume. The desert silence is shattered when an angry Superboy crashes down beside her. She recognises the Superman symbol on his t-shirt, but they don’t recognise each other as team-mates. The feral Superboy rips off his t-shirt and lashes out at Megan. It takes all her telekinetic strength to push him back before he leaps off in a random direction. The scared and confused Megan is left alone again.

It is daylight when the other members of Young Justice awaken. Robin is also alone, but he spots a passing Bialyain Republican Army (BRA) patrol and confirms with his wrist mounted GPS that he is indeed in Bialya. He has no memory of the last six months other than Batman ordering him to maintain radio silence. Kid Flash and Artemis are together in a small hut when they awaken. She has no memory of becoming a superhero and is infuriated when she assumes the current scenario is part of her father’s tests. BRA tanks and troops begin shelling them so Kid Flash picks up Artemis and makes a strategic superspeed withdrawal.

Miss Martian meditates past her amnesia. She remembers baking cookies and offering them to Superboy moments before Batman called them to a briefing. Megan realises that she is part of a team and that the Superboy she met is somebody special to her. Meanwhile, Kid Flash’s powers are weakening due to exhaustion and he finally has to stop and put Artemis down. They are attacked by the feral Superboy. He throws Kid Flash aside, but Artemis is “saved” when their own pursuers switch their attention to Superboy.

Superboy starts tearing the BRA tanks apart allowing Kid Flash and Artemis escape while everybody is distracted. They are followed by Bialyan unmanned drones. Miss Martian, who had telepathically zeroed in on Superboy’s pain, destroys the drones and begins to explain what she knows. The BRA soldiers finally capture Superboy, but are unable to control him until a telepath called Psimon shuts down his mind. They then take the unconscious Superboy away, but are unaware that Aqualad lies unconscious nearby.

It is dark again when Robin traces a sensor pallet with his GPS marker attached. Hidden BRA soldiers try to jump him, but the odds are reversed when Kid Flash, Artemis, and Miss Martian show up. Miss Martian brings them into her mind. Together they can reconstruct their broken memories, but they will need to open their minds to each other to do so. Artemis is concerned, but is reassured by Kid Flash (they’ve been a lot closer and friendlier now that they don’t remember how much they hated each other). Nevertheless she insists “The last six months only and then only what you need.”

Images flash across the teens’ minds as they begin to remember Batman’s briefing. The Justice League’s Watchtower had registered an alien presence in the Bialyan desert and Young Justice had been sent to investigate. They had landed in Qurac and then hiked to the site of the alien readings. There they set up the sensor pallet that Robin had found. The actual site was hidden by a large tent erected by the BRA, but the sensor pallet was close enough to detect alien elements and traces of zeta-beam radiation.

The last thing they see is Aqualad – who they’d all forgotten – order the camouflaged Miss Martian to be careful as she approaches the tent. Robin quickly finds Aqualad, but he is dangerously dehydrated. Megan want to continue searching for Superboy – she points out that he didn’t exist six months ago so the amnesia had left him totally animatistic and feral – but, the others want her to evacuate Aqualad first. However, their debate it cut short when Miss Martian senses that Superboy is in pain and rushes off to find him. Her teams mate are left to drag Aqualad back to the Qurac border on a make shift sled.

Superboy is strapped to a frame in the tent as Bialyan scientists shock him with electricity. Next to him is a large metallic Sphere which is strapped to the floor. It seems to be alive and it responds to Superboy’s pain by spinning within its bonds. Psimon finds this “fascinating”. Miss Martian follows the beacon of Superboy’s pain and quickly finds the tent. She enters in camouflage and shuts down the electricity. However, Psimon senses that she is there and then telepathically commands her to “forget!”

It was Psimon who originally erased their memories after he hacked the telepathic link between Miss Martian and her team-mates. He enters her mind and tries to reestablish the amnesia, but Megan fights him. Superboy awakens and his animatistic rage causes the sphere to spin up furiously. It wrenches free from its moorings and smashes into Superboy’s frame. In the chaos Superboy bumps into Miss Martian’s camouflaged body and is pulled into her mindscape. She is ecstatic to see him and reaches into his mind. A stream of images from their adventures race pass them as Superboy’s memory rushes back. He smiles and then tells Megan to kick Psimon’s butt.

Superboy returns to the normal world and with the assistance of the Sphere fights off the BRA soldiers trying to storm the tent. Psimon and Megan’s battle intensifies as they throw attack and after attack at each other. A telekinetic vortex begins to whirl around them in the tent as scientists, BRA soldiers, equipment, and sand is thrown around. Superboy takes Megan’s hand and adds his strength to her own. It is too much for Psimon and he is thrown into the telekinetic maelstrom and flung far away. Superboy cradles Megan in his arms as the friendly Sphere rolls up and beeps at them.

September 5th – Robin, Artemis, and Kid Flash have Aqualad hooked up to an IV in the bioship by the time that Megan contacts them to tell them that she’s got Superboy. Wally is disappointed that he didn’t get a souvenir, but Megan tells him that they’ve got that covered (the pet Sphere is still following them). Psimon reports the loss of the Sphere and Superboy to the Light, but a female member tells him that the only thing that mattered was the successful test of their new partner’s delivery system. They are betting that the new teleport gate and their unseen partner will deliver tech that will put even the Superboy “to shame”.

• This episode takes place on September 4th going into September 5th. The footage shown to Psimon by the Light is time-stamped September 3rd.
• Bialya is rogue nation. It is ruled by the Queen Bee. It is neighboured by Qurac. Qurac and Bialya are on EEST.
• The Justice League has a United Nations charter – Bailya was not a signatory.
• When Miss Martian is missing six months she recognises the Superman symbol. She often dreamt of coming to Earth, but had only known about it from TV.
• Artemis’s father has been testing her.
• Kid Flash keeps emergency ratios in his costume.

Psimon

Psimon first appeared in New Teen Titans #3 (Jan 1981) as a telepathic member of the Fearsome Five – a group of superpower youths that fought the Teen Titans. Psimon was a physicist called Simon Jones whose experiments put him in contract with the nightmarish Trigon (Raven’s father in Teen Titans). Trigon transformed Jones into a powerful telepath and had him usurp control of the Fearsome Five from its leader Doctor Light. He’s died several times, but keeps coming back.

Psimon is the third member of the Five that we’ve seen in this show as Shimmer and Mammoth from “Drop-Zone” are also members. That leaves Gizmo and Doctor Light to appear. If they use a credible version of Doctor Light (he wavers between deadly and laughing stock) then he could always be a member of the Light, it’d fit his name if nothing else.

The character is voiced by Alan Tudyk who usually voiced Green Arrow. Marv Wolfman and George Perez get a created by credit for Psimon.

The Queen Bee and Bailya

Bailya was mentioned by the Batman at the end of “Downtime” as a place where the Watchtower (the League’s satellite headquarters) had detected unusual energy readings. The fictional country Bailya first appeared in early issues of Justice League International as a Arab/Middle Eastern country controlled by a flamboyant dictator Rumann Harjavti. His antics turn deadly when he is assassinated and replaced by the entirely more professional Queen Bee.

The Queen was a persistent enemy of the Justice League and Captain Atom until she was assassinated by Harjavti’s brother. The Queen Bee’s speciality was mind control – not the telepathic kind, but the old-fashioned torture and mental conditioning type. She programmed the Blue Beetle to kill the League’s civilian director and he almost succeeded until he was stopped by the Batman and unprogrammed by Nabu (the Lord of Order behind Doctor Fate).

The female member of the Light (L-4) who speaks at the end of this episode is voiced by Marina Sirtis –  Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Demona from the Gargoyles (Greg Weisman’s Disney cartoon franchise). She is actually the first member of the mysterious Light to be identified as Toxic Pop had interviewed Sirtis at the 2010 Motor City Comic Con and she told them:

I’m doing a voice on Young Justice. Which is a Superboy cartoon and I’m playing the Queen Bee. She’s not actually a bee. She’s one of the villains [...] I’m recurring on that show.

A picture of the Queen Bee is shown to Young Justice by Batman in one of the hazy memory flashbacks.

The location of Bailya is explicitly shown. There is a map that is shown several times, but it seems to be of no place obviously identifiable. It could be the Southern end of the Caspian Sea or the Eastern Mediterranean. The Eastern European Summer Time time stamp would  favour somewhere on the Turkish-Syrian region of the Mediterranean. Its neighbour Qurac is mentioned is passing. If Bailya is a Libya analogue then Qurac is a more like an Iran/Iraq analogue.

The Unseen Partner

They very last scene of this episode has the Light showing Psimon some footage of the Sphere appearing through a teleport gate. Its appearance is very familiar.

Contrast this screen shot from Superman: The Animated Series “Tools of the Trade”:

with this one from this episode:

The comparison is chilling as the Superman screen shot shows a Boom Tube – the teleport gate way used by Darkseid and the New Gods. Supplying humans with technology was also how Darkseid first appeared in Superman: The Animated Series. The similarity may be a deliberate red-herring, but it could be a very ominous development for Young Justice. Alternatively Psimon’s appearance could hint at Trigon’s presence somewhere.

The Memories

In the flashes we see of Superboy’s memories there are two moments that I don’t recognise. The first is an odd white humanoid. It’s part of the Cadmus images so it could be a genomorph we didn’t see or it could be a martian’s true form. The other part is more obvious and is Megan dressed as a cheerleader, but she had human Caucasian skin colouring. These could be her memories and not Superboy’s memories. The scene where they almost kiss is from last episode.

The Sphere

When I first saw it I thought the Sphere might be something called the IF – a random superweapon from JLA #5. That story was about a android telepath called Tomorrow Woman slowly break her programming, but the Apokolips connection at the end made me realise that there is a more direct connection. It’s the Super Cycle. One of the first Young Justice comic books showed them liberate a New Genesis Super Cycle, a living motorcycle/atv that seemed to adopt them.

References

• A torn Superman emblem could be a reference to the iconic image from the “Death of Superman” storyline.
• Predator invisibility: In the comic books Martian can turn properly invisible, but here Megan’s power is described as camouflage and is shown to be much more like the light-bending ability of the hunters from the Predator movie franchise. It makes her hard to detect, but not truly invisible.

Misc.

• Robin loses six months of his memories and asks “What happened to March?” Meaning that he last remembers the month when the episode was actually broadcast.
• We’ve seen Kid Flash eating a lot during this series. This is a pick-up from the late 1980s Wally West comics where his superspeed was powered by his metabolism and not by the extra-dimensional Speed Force that powers the true Flashes. Therefore continued use of his superspeed would eventually leave him dangerously exhausted.
• Miss Martian destroys two Bailyan jets, if you look closely you can see that they’re of a design similar to real world unmanned drones.
• Kid Flash’s diet: Miss Martian’s cookies (not burnt, she’s getting better).
• Arrows: Explosive, snare.
• Zeta-Beam Radiation is a signature of teleportation technology. The Justice League use zeta-beam teleportation portals to get between their homes and the headquarters.
• At one point Miss Martian creates a telepathic shield in the shape of Superboy’s emblem – she is subconsciously invoking Superboy as her defender.

Highlights

Artemis’s reaction to finding out that she’s suddenly become a teen superheroine in a skin-tight costume.

Oddities

The Team Rocket Moment: As Psimon is flung away by the telepathic maelstrom I reminded by the “blasting off again” of Team Rocket in nearly every Pokemon episode.

First Impressions

In terms of annotations this episode was quite light for me – almost the polar opposite of last episode’s Atlantean setting. Not quite a bottle show, but there is only one significant new character (Psimon) and the voices are all provided by recurring voice artists. Admittedly Sirtis is new as L4/Queen Bee, but she has already acknowledged that she’s going to be recurring (see above). Khary Payton also gets a rest after last episode’s heavily lifting.

One of my comments about Superboy’s characterisation in “Schooled” was that he was a “regular little hulk bouncing around the countryside with all his anger and rage”. Well that comment applies far more strongly here. The feral and super strong Superboy attacks soldiers and tanks will all the gusto of Bruce Banner’s alter ego. “Schooled” and this episode were both written by “Nicole Dubuc” so maybe that isn’t surprising. I’m not really familiar with the team of writers that Weisman and Vietti brought with them to WB, but Dubuc’s name is quickly becoming synonyms in my mind with sharp and witty dialogue. I’ll definitely look forward to more episodes written by her.

The amnesia element reminded of the Star Trek The Next Generation episode “Conundrum” where the crew of the Enterprise lose their memories and have to rebuild their relationships. “Bereft” was far more paired back and was a sharper exploration of these characters. It stripped back the inter-personal conflicts and allowed us to see the potential relationships beneath. The most obvious was Megan and Superboy, but I also found the Kid Flash and Artemis pairing fun. I’m in two minds if I want them to jump the shark on that one or not. I enjoy the banter between then, but I wouldn’t mind seeing an end to Wally’s cringworthy flirting with poor Megan.

The Verdict