Spider-Man (1967) Episode Fifty-One: Down to Earth

Down to Earth

First Aired: June 7th, 1970

Synopsis: A mysterious meteor has been seen flying towards Earth, which some people think might be created artificially by aliens due to two large antennae-like protrusions on in. J. Jonah Jameson wants photos of the meteor, and gets a tip about where the meteor is set to land - the North Pole. He sends out Peter Parker to photograph it, along with a reporter. The two fly a plane there which ends up crashing, and upon Peter coming to, he finds that the reporter has disappeared. Exiting the plane, he sees a primitive tribe with the meteor, and works out that they want to throw it into a volcano, which will cause the North Pole to explode because the meteor is radioactive.


Changing to Spider-Man, Peter goes out and tries to stop the tribe, and ends up fighting assorted fantastic creatures along the way. When he finally manages to make it to the volcano where the meteor's about to be thrown in, he uses his webbing to try and stop it from falling in, but unexpectedly, the meteor starts flying upwards. The rocky exterior crumbles apart and it turns out to contain a spaceship, which flies away. In the aftermath, Peter says to his fellow reporter that he didn't get any photos, to which she says she'll try and get him an interview with Spider-Man to make up for it, which gets Peter laughing.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Upon Peter waking up and finding the reporter missing, he comments, "She couldn't last long in this environment - who could?", which is an excellent point to make given we're talking about the Arctic. So naturally, he immediately changes into his thin Spider-Man costume, the hypocrite.

Review: Every time I start to type up a blog post, I open up a tab on IMDB so that I can look up the date the episode I'm writing about first aired. As such, I get little sneak-peeks at future episodes due to the layout of the site. For this episode, someone helpfully provided a synopsis, the entirety of which is, "Basically, this is Neptune's Nose Cone with the action taking place in the North Pole this time". Ever since I've seen it, I've wondered how accurate that is - is it really just the same episode recycled, or did they at least try and mix another episode into it, as they have with some of the other episodes?

In case my synopsis didn't make it obvious, yes, that statement is pretty damn accurate. Helpfully for me, it also means that I don't really need to write a review, because that really does sum up the episode. Normally I try and find something to talk about, even with the recycled episodes, but...why bother? The writers of this episode didn't.

(Side note: I did like that after a bit of foreshadowing at the start of the episode, the meteor really was of alien origin; it was a nice surprise. Completely pointless, but a surprise nevertheless).