Spider-Man (1967) Episode Fifty: Specialists and Slaves

Specialists and Slaves

First Aired: May 31st, 1970

Synopsis: The villain from Swing City, now calling himself the Radiation Specialist, manages to take over a nuclear power plant. Knowing that Spider-Man might stop him, he uses a remote-controlled car to lure Spider-Man out of Manhattan with a recording which makes it seem that a hostage is inside. Once the Specialist has done so, he covers the city with radiation, which apparently makes it so that weak-willed minds can be controlled by him, and which somehow makes Manhattan float into the sky. Spider-Man reaches the car, but finds out how he's been tricked, and swings underneath Manhattan before returning to the city by crawling through a sewer pipe.

As Spider-Man approaches the plant the Specialist is in, the Specialist is somehow able to crumble the wall Spider-Man is clinging to, so that Spider-Man falls to the ground and is knocked out. Spider-Man is taken to the prison infirmary by an un-brainwashed George Stacey, but some thugs, also unaffected by the radiation, take him hostage. Spider-Man takes them out and then goes to the Specialist's power plant. Although the radiation has started to affect Spider-Man, he's able nevertheless to stop the Specialist with a kick and some webs, and also to pull a lever in time which slows the fall of Manhattan, so that no one is harmed when it lands.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Spider-Man is swinging underneath Manhattan, the Specialist tries to stop him by (somehow) causing an earthquake. At least, that's what he claims it is, but seeing as how Manhattan's in the air and earthquakes are caused by tectonic plates scraping together...what the actual heck was happening?
• Upon Spider-Man getting into Manhattan, the floating city, we get a few montages of him swinging through the city, past the buildings, the, uh, docks, bridges, and water...let's not think about it too much.

Review: I'm not going to claim that this is the worst episode of the show, but that being said, who the heck was asking for the Radiation Specialist (or Master Technician, or whatever his name is) to come back? Was he just chosen because someone worked out that scenes from To Cage a Spider could be fitted into the plot easily enough? There were many better options you had, writers!

So, what's different this time around? The obvious is the scenes from To Cage a Spider, but as enjoyable as that episode was, they're crammed in so awkwardly that it's hard to feel that they're not padding. Thanks to the magic of recycling animation, George Stacey shifts appearance several times in the episode (maybe he too is secretly the Chameleon?), to the point that I first thought that Stacey was affected by the Specialist's radiation and that a random guy was trying to help Spider-Man. Credit where it's due, though - the thugs are mentioned as having escaped when their cell door was damaged in the earthquake the Specialist created, which I didn't expect to be referenced again.

Once we get to the actual confrontation between Spider-Man and the Specialist, it's just as awkward as I remember the first one being. There's flashing lights, there's random spinning, there's the city just starting to fall through the sky...what the actual heck is supposed to be happening here? I think that this episode manages to surpass the original - re-reading my review of Swing City, it looks like the Specialist's plan was even more ridiculous there - but only just, and not to the extent that there's anything resembling good entertainment here.