Spider-Man (1967) Episode Forty: The Winged Thing / Connor's Reptiles

The Winged Thing

First Aired: March 22nd, 1970

Synopsis: While Spider-Man's patrolling the city, he finds Vulture robbing someone. Spider-Man is beaten up, and Vulture comments that by doing so he'll get the whole city to respect him. The next day, Spider-Man decides to go somewhere that a lot of people are and wait for Vulture to find him. This leads to him and Vulture fighting at a construction site, ending with the construction site being badly damaged.

J. Jonah Jameson mentions that there's a miniature missile which can probably stop the Vulture, and sends Peter Parker to take photos of it during its tests. Unfortunately, Vulture knows about it, and he steals it. Furthermore, he knows about another device in a nearby helicopter which can control animals. Although Spider-Man tries to stop him from stealing the other device, he fails to do so. Later on, Vulture appears in New York with an army of birds he's controlling. Spider-Man fights him and is losing, but then the birds arbitrarily turn on the Vulture, and the story ends.

Review: The first season of this show opened with an original story with one of Spider-Man's deadliest foes, Doctor Octopus (and some aliens from Pluto, but we don't talk about them). The second season opened with the iconic origin of the world's greatest superhero, and was a pretty faithful adaptation overall. The third season...opens with an episode cobbled together with clips from other episodes.

In case my lack of other notes on the episode didn't make it clear, this episode is damn boring. Much like that horrible moleman episode, this episode is trying to tell an original story using clips from previous episodes, and so we end up with a bit of a disjointed mess which isn't quite sure what it wants to do. Credit where it's due though, at least they chose a decent villain for this one.

Although I'm annoyed by this story and the waste of time that it feels like, I'll say this: someone ordered a third season of that popular Spider-Man cartoon all the kids are talking about, and then either didn't realise that they didn't have a decent budget for it, or didn't deign to allocate a decent budget for it. I probably shouldn't think too hard about what the situation was like - I really have no idea; this is all speculation - but ultimately I feel sorry for the production crew here. And to their credit, you can see that they did try - it's obvious what episodes scenes were taken from, but at least they tried mixing up the plot and to tell a story that hadn't been done before. It could always be worse.

It could always be the second story of this episode.

Connors' Reptiles

Synopsis: Dissatisfied with Peter Parker's recent photography work, J. Jonah Jameson tells him to investigate Professor Connors in Florida, who claims to have created a serum which increases reptile intelligence. When Spider-Man arrives in Florida, he finds out that Connors is missing, and his wife tells him that he was kidnapped. The serum Connors created increased the intellect of a lizard, which then essentially turned into the Lizard, as Connors once had been. When Spider-Man is investigating Connors' lab, the new Lizard attacks Spider-Man, and escapes with what serum had been left over, which he plans to use to create more creatures like himself.

Spider-Man gets the serum which can reverse the one which created the new Lizard, and goes into the swamp to find him. After a brief scuffle in a lake, Spider-Man is told by Connors' wife that Connors kept all his samples in the old Spanish fort, as you do, Spider-Man heads to the old Spanish fort and fights the new Lizard once again, managing to get the reversing serum in his mouth. The serum is successful, and Connors, who had been captured by the new Lizard, is saved offscreen. All is well for everyone - except for Jonah, who had been planning on writing about how wrong Connors' theories were until Peter took photos.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Jonah refers to Professor Connors as the "famous reptile expert who claims he once took a serum which turned him into some kind of reptile". It takes a while for Connors' dual identity as the Lizard to become public knowledge in the comics.
• After Jonah gives Peter the assignment to go to Florida, he then tells Peter he can find his own way there, since he doesn't want to pay for it. Putting aside that you can't really do that without compensating someone, we then cut to Spider-Man lamenting how he'll get to Florida, followed by a web-swinging montage, and then he's there. So...I guess he swung all the way there.
• Professor Connors' wife, Martha, is referred to as Grace in the note he leaves. I dunno, maybe he married someone new.
• Professor Connors' serum may be great at increasing the intellect of reptiles, but he should probably make a version which works on himself first - in his note, he spells intelligence as intelegence. Also, he's dumb enough to muck around with this stuff again.

Review: With the Vulture story, we had about three or so episodes worth of footage to pick from when reconstructing them into a new one, giving plenty of variety for the scenes and allowing a bit more shaking up of those stories. Here, we have precisely one episode of Lizard footage, and needless to say, it's incredibly derivative as a result.

While the idea of one of Connors' experiments being the cause of the conflict isn't a bad idea - for me, it's pretty reminiscent of the Iguana - it brings nothing new to the table since it is, of course, just a poor excuse to reuse the Lizard's animation. Do we get any different lines from the new Lizard, showing that without a human intellect, this creature is more monstrous, more sadistic? No, of course we don't.

Ultimately, this is a pretty poor excuse for a story, being the first Lizard story but watered down until all of the interesting or fun parts of the original comic are completely gone. There's nothing here worth watching which you can't see, better, in the original story.