Spider-Man (1967) Episode Forty-Six: Up From Nowhere

Up From Nowhere

First Aired: May 3rd, 1970

Synopsis: In the waters outside New York, a mysterious transport appears. Inside, its green-skinned occupant, Dr. Atlantean, comments on how he'll attack New York soon for Atlantis. At university, a lecture Peter Parker is attending talks about Atlantis, and how although Atlantis was thought to have been destroyed, their technologies were likely more advanced than suspected and they may have survived to the present day. Shortly afterwards, Dr. Atlantean activates a device from his base which causes violent shaking in New York, leading to buildings cracking in half. While people panic, Dr. Atlantean demands that all authorities disband so that Atlantis can take over.

Rather than disbanding, the army fire missiles at Dr. Atlantean's base, to no effect. In retaliation Dr. Atlantean activates a device which covers New York in a giant dome and then sends it below the water. Spider-Man manages to escape from under it and get to Dr. Atlantean's base. Spider-Man tricks him into shooting a control panel, which causes the base to start sinking, before Spider-Man tricks him into shooting a different control panel which takes the dome off New York. Spider-Man then webs up Dr. Atlantean. In the aftermath, the mayor of New York thanks Spider-Man, and asks for his help in getting re-elected, both because there's a new election coming up soon, and because he's a dick.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Dr. Atlantean is viewing New York City at the start of the episode, he comments that it's "the capital of the world!" Um, no.
• On the one hand, a history professor giving a lecture about Atlantis is kind of bad teaching. On the other, Atlantis is clearly real in this universe, and he provides an insanely accurate picture of what Atlanteans might have looked like (it's literally just Dr. Atlantean), so maybe he's actually a genius?
• The idea of Atlantis being technologically advanced and far ahead of present-day Earth has probably been used elsewhere, but for me it immediately triggered memories of Ultimate Namor.
• At first I thought that scientist Peter Parker attending a history lecture was a bit of a goof, but then I remembered that back in The Evil Sorceror, he also attended a history lecture. Clearly, he's taking a history class as an elective!
• Upon Spider-Man entering Dr. Atlantean's base, the villain sneers, "Come into my parlour!" This is a reference to The Spider and the Fly, which makes no sense since it's a poem from the surface world.

Review: This episode starts out fairly well - while Dr. Atlantean could be any generic scientist, giving him ties to Atlantis gives him something of a theme to work with - and while its missteps feel more like technical ones than anything else, it's still hard to come out of this feeling anything more than an, "Eh".

While the lecture giving exposition about Atlantis works well enough, as does Dr. Atlantean in the background beginning his plotting, there's a noticeable portion a little before the middle of the episode where there's barely any Spider-Man at all. Once we get past that and New York starts sinking, things feel a little erratic - Spider-Man is outside Dr. Atlantean's base, then he's inside it. Things get incredibly vague from there - when Dr. Atlantean shoots one of his guns at Spidey, I could have sworn that Spidey was weakened from an electric shock and was hit by it, but apparently he's fine to just dodge out of the way.

I'm assuming that the vagueness of what's going on, as well as the many, many repeated shots of Spider-Man swinging around are due to budget issues, but that doesn't mean that I have to enjoy them. The setup and premise of the episode isn't that bad, so why am I so indifferent to it all? At this point I almost wish the show would just end already so we can move onto something with hopefully a bit higher quality.