Spider-Man (1981) Episode Eight: The Doctor Prescribes Doom

The Doctor Prescribes Doom

First Aired: October 31st, 1981

Synopsis: Doctor Doom has a new plan to take over the world - he's created robot duplicates of the members of the United Nations and will use them to vote himself in as the ruler. When it's announced that he'll be coming to New York, J. Jonah Jameson insists that he and Peter Parker go along to the UN to see him. Whilst Peter sneaks off to take photos as Spider-Man, Jonah is, unbeknownst to Peter, also replaced with a robot. To Peter's shock, Doom is voted in as ruler of the world by the UN. Peter is perplexed by this, even more so the following day when the Jonah robot acts uncharacteristically kind to him, but manages to work out what's happened when a lecturer of his at uni mentions robots.


As Spider-Man, Peter warns Robbie Robertson, his best friend, about the robots, but Doom's goons burst in. In the process Robbie Robertson, Peter's best friend, is knocked out the window and dies, but what Spider-Man doesn't see is that Robbie was also a robot. After escaping Doom's thugs and also a helicopter Doom is piloting, Peter stays up all night researching robots. Doom, meanwhile, commands one of his robots to steal a diamond from a museum. The next day Spider-Man retrieves a small remote from his professor, and after rescuing the replaced people from a Latverian boat which is conveniently mentioned in the newspaper, goes to the UN. He activates the device and all of the robots blow up, including Doom, who himself was a robot. It turns out the real Doom was watching  from a plane the whole time - but he has now sworn revenge on Spider-Man, and apparently has plans involving the stolen diamond.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• As alluded to in the synopsis, Peter in this continuity apparently considers Robbie Robertson to be his best friend, and brings the fact up pretty much whenever he's mentioned. Robbie's a good mentor to Peter in the comics and a good man, but calling him his best friend feels like a bit of a stretch.
• Also as mentioned above, Robbie - Peter's best friend - is knocked out a window of the Daily Bugle when Peter tells him about Doom's robots. What I didn't mention is that he's knocked out the window because Spider-Man kicked him out there. From the way it's animated it's possible that he was trying to get him out of the line of fire and misjudged, but either way it's absolutely hilarious.
• When Doctor Doom is elected world leader, the first thing he declares is that television and newspapers are banned. In spite of this, Spider-Man reads a newspaper to find out about the Latverian boat containing the replaced people. I guess it takes a while for laws to actually be enacted.

Review: This episode starts out slowly, with a few sequences that don't feel important to the plot before we actually get into it. Once we do get into it, it feels like it's a bit of a rehash of Dr. Doom, Master of the World - Doom has a plan to get the UN to elect him ruler of the world, and Spider-Man has to find out what's going on. So with all of that in mind...why does this episode kick so much ass?

To my surprise, this episode is one of those ones which doesn't bother to explain anything, instead going for a balls-to-the-wall frenetic pacing which results in a great episode. Doctor Doom replaces everyone (and Jonah, for some reason) with robots! He shoots at Betty Brant with a laser when she speaks out against him at the UN in response to him banning newspapers! Peter works out everything when his lecturer mentions robots off-handedly, and then when he goes to tell Robbie (his best friend), he ends up kicking him out the window! Now Doctor Doom's helicopter is shooting giant darts! Now Spider-Man's investigating the Latverian boat that must contain the replaced people, because a newspaper off-handedly mentioned that it exists. It's all absolutely amazing.

For bonus points, I was pleasantly surprised to see Doctor Doom have the stolen diamond at the end of the episode, implying that it'll show up in a future episode. Are we setting up the  first bit of hard (well, "hard") continuity in one of the cartoon shows? I'm pretty intrigued to see where we go with this.