Spider-Man (1981) Episode Seventeen: Canon of Doom

Canon of Doom

First Aired: January 2nd, 1982

Synopsis: In Latveria, Doctor Doom's assistant Boris opposes the way Doom treats his citizens, but Doom doesn't listen. He detonates some explosions around the world, which leads to a fault line being created under New York. Shortly afterwards, Doom heads to New York, where he is staying with J. Jonah Jameson. Peter Parker, meanwhile, wants to send his sick Aunt May to Florida to stay with a cousin and get better, but can't afford to. He reads in the newspaper about the new fault line, but it's mostly a theory at this point and scoffed at by scientists. When Peter hears from Betty Brant and his best friend Robbie Robertson that Jonah is currently hosting Doom, he heads over there almost immediately, certain that Doom is up to something. He's correct, as Doom is using a laser cannon to bore into the earth below Jonah's estate, right into the new fault. Peter tries to stop the laser as Spider-Man, but before he can it triggers an earthquake, and Spider-Man falls into a fissure in the ground.


Doom reveals his plan - in thirty minutes, the laser will have bored through the entirety of the fault, sinking New York into the city...unless the president meets his demands. Meanwhile, back in Latveria, Boris frees a prisoner Doom told him to keep an eye on. He disagrees with the prisoner that Doom is a tyrant, and gives Doom's backstory, which matches the comics one fairly well. Boris gives the prisoner an address in New York of some friends and urges him to go there. Back in New York, Spider-Man gets out of the fissure and manages to redirect Doom's laser cannon to destroy its control panel, which somehow destroys the cannon itself, as well as a significant portion of Jonah's mansion. Doom escapes offscreen. In the aftermath, Peter goes into a bedroom of his house to give food to, of all people, Jonah, who is staying with him while his mansion is being rebuilt.

Subplots: In the aftermath of everything, some scientists examining the scene say that they'll take the laser cannon to a NASA space station.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Boris objects to Doom's treatment of his citizens, Doom's response is to press a button on his throne, which has the function of...turning the throne around so that Doom's back is facing Boris. Amazing.
• While Doom and Spider-Man are fighting around the laser cannon, Doom shoots a laser at Spider-Man which misses, and causes Jonah to cry out, "Doctor...that was my rose garden." Which is funnier: the implication that Jonah carefully keeps roses in his spare time, or that he thinks that Doom will care?
• During the portion of the episode showing Doctor Doom's origin, we see a brown-haired individual telling Doom that his calculations are off. It's possible that this is supposed to be Reed Richards, but he's not identified by name, and he looks just different enough that it might well not be. Were there rights issues preventing the Fantastic Four from showing up or being mentioned?
• I mean...say what you will about Doctor Doom, but the laser cannon is solar-powered. That's pretty great.

Review: There's a whole lot to love about this episode. The little subplots from the previous Doom episodes are starting to pay off, and while it's possible that the final Doctor Doom episode of this series will simply have it lead up to another attempt to take over the world, I'm enjoying the continuity. The humour here is spot-on, and everyone's acting in-character pretty well. There's just one problem...this is an episode of the Doctor Doom show, not a Spider-Man one.

While I love that we've kept all of the essential bits from Doom's origin in the comics, the telling of it unfortunately drags down the pacing of the episode, and given how many episodes Doom's already appeared in, it feels like it's come a little too late. (Couldn't we have shaved a few minutes off the damn Goron episode and replaced them with this?) The end result is that Spider-Man spends about half the episode trapped in a fissure offscreen, while the story focuses on Doom and his actions. It almost works, but it's ultimately at the point where Spider-Man probably just shouldn't have appeared in the episode at all, so that we could really focus on Doom.

Still, as mentioned above, there is still a lot to like in this episode. The gag at the end setting up Peter to be bringing Aunt May food, only for it to be Jonah he's serving, is brilliant, and while I doubt we'll get episodes with Jonah staying in the Parker household, I hope I'm proven wrong, because that's comedy gold. I'm also curious as to what'll happen with the laser cannon in the future, and I'm looking forwards to seeing what happens when the Latverian man reaches New York. A recommendation, but a slightly reluctant one.