Spider-Man (1981) Episode Twenty-One: Countdown to Doom

Countdown to Doom

First Aired: January 30th, 1982

Synopsis: A rocket launch is about to happen which will place Doctor Doom's laser cannon from Canon of Doom into space. Peter Parker is in attendance, and when a hose pumping liquid nitrogen into the rocket comes loose, he changes to Spider-Man and saves the day. Unbeknownst to him, Doctor Doom is watching the launch, and is secretly grateful to Spider-Man for allowing the launch to continue. Once the rocket is launched into space, Doom takes control of it remotely, and launches the laser from space at some volcanoes, causing them to erupt. The impact knocks Earth out of its orbit, and Doom blackmails the world into making him the absolute ruler since only he can save everyone from the new weather patterns caused by the new orbit.


At NASA, they realise that if they can make the volcanoes erupt again at the right time, the Earth will be knocked back into its correct orbit. Spider-Man, working with them, is able to get a lift to Latveria courtesy of the French ambassador, and makes his way to the Latverian Underground. They help him get into Doctor Doom's castle, where Spider-Man pulls a lever to activate the cannon, erupting the volanoes at the right time. Doom is enraged, but he doesn't have much chance to express his emotions, as the laser continues in its path along the earth and hits Doom, seemingly disintegrating him, which is fortunate, as the UN had just declared Doom the ruler of the world. In the aftermath, Spider-Man returns to New York and very slowly climbs up a wall.

Webbing Does Not Work That Way:

• As seen in the screenshot above, Spider-Man makes himself some sort of...container? out of webbing and uses it to travel down a Latverian river for a bit. I mean...I guess I can buy that it would survive any significant impacts, but I'm not so sure about how buoyant it is.

Review: Everything's been building up to this. This is the sixth Doctor Doom episode this series, and with the series only having a total of twenty-six episodes, that ends up being a little under a quarter of the entire thing. We've had subplots involving Doom sending things into space and infiltrating NASA thoughout them, as well as Doom trying to get the UN to declare him the ruler of the world more than once. We've had Johan and the Latverian Underground set up, risen, fallen, and become allies of Spider-Man. We've seen Boris reluctantly betray Doom, and be punished for it. All this, and it ultimate results in one hell of an anticlimax.

For all of that buildup, most of the elements barely matter at all. Yes, Doom's laser cannon was established in a previous episode, but if it had been introduced for the first time in this episode it would have hardly been hard for me to suspend my disbelief. The Latverian Underground have pretty much no impact to the episode, and most bizarrely of all, we get a brief scene where Boris blows up, revealing that he replaced himself with a robot at some point, which goes absolutely nowhere. And hey, while we're talking about subplots, whatever happened to the diamond that Doctor Doom had stolen?

Even in a vacuum, this episode feels pretty forgettable. So much time is spent establishing what Doom's up to and how it can be fixed that by the time Spider-Man's in his castle all we have time for is a quick lever pull. There's really not a lot here to justify the weight the episode wants to have, and while it's ultimately watchable, there's not much here that we haven't seen before. Still, I will say this: it was good to see some continuity in a series I wasn't expecting any from. While this one was a bit of a miss in terms of what it ultimately led up to, I'm hoping we get more arcs and subplots in the future.