Spider-Man (1967) Episode Forty-Nine: Revolt in the Fifth Dimension

Revolt in the Fifth Dimension

First Aired: It would have been May 24th, 1970, but...

Synopsis: Spider-Man is staring at stars, which transitions into space where a red, cyclopean monster is destroying planets for "daring to probe the secrets of Dimension Five!" Elsewhere, two blue-headed aliens lament the destruction and blame themselves for discovering Dimension Five, while mentioning that the villain is named Infinata. One of the aliens copies the entirety of their library onto what's essentially a spherical USB Drive, and then flies off into space to get it to safety. Infinata detects the space ship, and sends his minions out to stop it. While the alien is able to temporarily protect himself, his ship ends up crashing in New York.
Spider-Man goes to the ship, at first mistaking it for a shooting star, and is telepathically brought up to date by the alien, who turns out to be absolutely tiny relative to Spider-Man. Spider-Man plans on taking the digital library to the government, but while swinging there is mentally attacked by Infinata. Things get surreal as Spider-Man is attacked by flashing lights and confusing imagery, before ending up in Dimension Five. When Infinata sees that Spider-Man doesn't have the digital library on him, the ground Spider-Man's on turns to liquid and Spider-Man starts sinking into it, but to his surprise he finds that when he closes his eyes he's back in New York, falling through the air. He keeps them closed for long enough to escape Dimension Five, thus thwarting Infinata's plans.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• This episode was considered to be too scary for kids, and between planets being casually offed and the insanely surreal third act, I can sort of see where they're coming from. As a result, it wasn't aired - Sting of the Scorpion / Trick or Treachery was shown instead.

Review: Ever since I heard about this semi-legendary episode being considered too scary for kids of the day, I've been looking forwards to it. While as mentioned above, I do see where the executives were coming from, as an adult watching it, I've gotta say - it ultimately falls a bit on the underwhelming side of things.

Minus the opening sequence of Spider-Man stargazing, he doesn't show up until around halfway through the episode, and when he does show up it's hard to feel like he does a lot. The reasons for Infinata wanting the library are vague at best - he's constantly mentioning his secrets, but we have no clue what they are. Did he cheat on his wife? Is the soylent green he serves made of people? Did he kill Dumbledore? We'll never know. Aside from these story issues, the animation also draws out things long enough that this is another one of those episodes that feels like it's running at half speed - you could probably fit this plot nicely into about ten or so minutes if you cut out the unnecessary bits.

Still, with all of that being said, the sequence of Infinata attacking Spider-Man is insanely surreal in a way that surpasses what we've seen in the show before, and it does stand up pretty well on its own, my favourite bit being where Spider-Man briefly turns into a skeleton to represent Infinata scanning him for where the library might be. Spider-Man closing his eyes to escape the dimension feels a bit weird, but I wonder whether perhaps the writers were perhaps trying to make the whole thing a metaphor - off the top of my head, I can definitely make an argument for it being a stand-in for mental illness.

Overall, while the episode may not have met all of my expectations, that's probably more a result of me having high standards for this episode rather than any serious flaws - at least, none worse than most episodes of the show. Check it out if it sounds like your sort of thing; you could do a lot worse.