1994 Spider-Man episode #28-“Doctor Strange” Review

After learning that Mary Jane has randomly joined an evil cult, Spider-Man wages war on the mystical forces of evil with the Sorcerer Supreme himself, Dr. Strange!

Credits
Story By: John Semper and Mark Hoffmeier
Written By: Mark Hoffmeier
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi
Animation Services By: Toyko Movie Shinsha (TMS)

THE PLOT: After searching for the missing Mary Jane, Spider-Man learns that she’s been brainwashed by a cult run by the evil Baron Mordo. Tired of getting beaten up every time he goes up against them, he decides that third time’s a charm with Dr. Strange and his companion Wong.

LONG STORY SHORT: The trio manage to defeat Mordo and Dormmamu, but as Spidey and MJ swing away, Dr. Strange sense another, more powerful mystical presence…

MY THOUGHTS: Uhh…what the heck was this? Seriously, as a season opener this was one wacky-as-can-be episode. I’m still reeling from it. The entire idea of Mary Jane being in a crazy cult that could lead to the total destruction of the world is too ludicrous to take seriously, mainly because it doesn’t belong in a Spider-Man cartoon. It’s more along the lines of a plot from the 1967 show where they would play around with aliens and the like. This was trying to be a straight-forward episode continuing from the second season finale’s final moments, but…it turned out to be this??

I don’t know what to say about this. I guess I’ll start out by saying that I really enjoyed this episode when I was younger. This was one of those I had taped and watched on loop over and over again, but I can’t really remember exactly why. Well okay, there are some good bits in here. For one thing, the animation was a marked improvement over the majority of the second season. It was surprisingly nice and crisp, though the models were a little suspect. There was some repeated cell shots here and there, particularly towards the latter half of the third act, but for the most part it was pleasing to the eye.

This is also somewhat of an epic episode. I mean it’s a done-in-one, but the stakes are relatively high, and the relationship with Peter and MJ is much stronger after everything that went down last season. For instance, the scene at the beginning with Aunt Anna and Harry chewing Peter out was particularly nice considering that much of the awkwardness in MJ’s choosing Peter as a confidant was brought to the fore. This plays into the plot more and more this season, so to see it start of right at the top here was very cool. It’s a great subplot, and unlike the main plot, felt like a Spider-Man story. What’s interesting to note about this series is that it apes the relationship drama of the comics, but it doesn’t completely copy it. Different aspects make up the tension and it establishes its own distinct continuity while still being very much Spider-Man. It’s a lot of fun to watch, even though you want to sock Anna Watson in the face. First of all she asks “Mary Jane’s disappeared? Dissapeared where?!” If they knew that, would there be a problem? Secondly, she blames Peter despite that fact that she should blame Harry for not looking after his girlfriend. I know the easy way out answer is that she’s hysterical, and really she is, but the story wants to put undue guilt onto Peter. True, Peter is a guy who blames himself for the Dinosaurs being extinct, but it would add to the viewer’s investment if we could buy his guilt instead of it being falsely put upon him.

Scenes like that are this episode’s few positives. The rest is made up of just really stupid crap. it starts off with the image of ninjas flying, with Mary Jane as the leader. Oh, and they have laser vision. Like Gwen Stacy wielding a gun in Maximum Clonage Omega, it’s too stupid for me to get past. Now, seeing as how this is a Doctor Strange episode, practically intended to be a back-door pilot, obviously there will be things that just go out of Spidey’s relm of normality. But there has to be better ways to do it. The images of Mary Jane acting like a supervillain were absolutely ridiculous, and I was repeatedly taken out of the show.

In fact, that’s the main reason this episode fails ultimately. It’s too steeped in Doctor Strange lore for it to sucessfully be pulled off as a Spider-Man episode. It literally is a back-door pilot, but even as that it’s inefficient. For one thing, Dr. Strange is a really difficult character to just throw in an episode. They tried to condense his backstory and explain it without too much time being taken up, and they did get away with the gist of it without dragging down too much. At the same time, how does his origin get explained? “It is time you learned the full story, Wong…” He doesn’t tell Spider-Man this, he tells Wong, his sidekick. Someone who should have already known about it for years. It’s like the Galactic Guardians episode “The Fear” where Robin had no clue what signifigance Crime Alley had towards Batman, you can’t possibly expect either the characters or the viewers to be that stupid. I said that the brevity of Strange’s explanation was quick enough to work on-screen, but the way it had to be explained really illuminates the thought process behind this episode, which can’t have gone beyond the brainwave of “Doctor Strange for twenty minutes”. For the record, I like Dr. Strange for what he is. I’ve never really followed his comics but the idea of the character started to appeal to me as I got older, especially after seeing the Dr. Strange DTV movie that came out a few years back which I personally liked. He’s also the second main Marvel character that Steve Ditko was heavily involved in the creation and development on after Spider-Man, so the two characters have intrinsic history. But some things need to go beyond the idea for them to work. Every time Strange spat out an encantation, the episode would almost stop dead. And that was a huge downfall towards both the episode and the attempt to get an unfamiliar audience interested in the character. I recognized the encantations from the second ASM Annual where Strange appeared in (which is where Spidey’s last line in the episode derives from) so I kind of liked hearing them, but it was also obvious that no one new to Strange could care. There’s no tension being held when he says an encantation, and in this episode it’s doubly bad because thye solve everything. Which takes away most of the tension they were going for. Strange stresses how impossible the odds of surviving are to Spider-Man, who shrugs it off almost as fast as the audience does, and yet at no point in the episode does he not solve every possible obstacle with his abilites.

And that’s a real shame because I think Strange is cool, but this episode really didn’t go the distance to reaffirm my belief. And compare this episode to the other cameos in the past seasons. Nick Fury, Blade and the Punisher all had reasons to be involved in the plot because their goals got twisted up with Spider-Man’s world. They ran into him. Here, Peter and MJ ran into Strange and his world, making the back-door pilot concept all the more valid.

And even if that was the way the story had to go, the threat could have been made a tad more credible. For one reason, Baron Mordo annoyed the crap out of me. Actually, it’s more like he was very very creepy. The late great Tony Jay voiced him, (With the late great John Vernon, who voiced 60s Iron Man and B:TAS’ Rupert Thorne voicing Strange) and he couldn’t have been more unnerving, which I suppose is actually a good thing. But the way he talked to Mary Jane, consoling and comoforting her and the entranced way she talked to him was just wrong on all levels. I can’t really put it into appropriate words, but if you want to have trouble sleeping at night, watch the scenes with Mordo and MJ. I assure you, you will be freaked.

Of course it can’t be dismissed that we see the first (and only?) reference to Peter’s late parents in this episode. That’s one of the things that’s really great about this one, because it really does come unexpected. One would expect the mystery people/person to be Uncle Ben, but for it to be his parents was just an excellent surprise. What’s really cool is that they’re designed exactly like the Mark Bagely designs from the Micheline/JMD runs in the 90s. Obviously those runs were going on at the time of this show, but it’s just fun to notice really obvious nods to specific timelines concurrent with the comics. The parents scene is probably the best part of the episode, compared to Mary Jane’s father plot which one would think that after going through an emotionally trying experience like this would severely damage her psyche for a long time to come in the future. Hahaha, no…no…

In the end, I have to say I was entertained but the episode still wasn’t very good. This would have been harmless in the middle of the season, but after the cliffhanger from last season it leads into basically a filler episode. Oh sure, we get Madame Web at the very end, but we also get her in the next episode. And even then, is that really something to look forward to?

As for this one, I wanted it to be better than I found it really was. This was the first episode in a while that I was rather dissapointed after viewing for the first time in many years.

2.5/5 “MARY JAAANE!!”s

Best Quote Contender-

Doctor Strange: “Here we are again, Wong. About to leap into the unknown to fight the deadliest battle of our lives!”

Wong: “Exciting, is it not Doctor?”

Strange: “It is…”

Spidey: “No offense but, you guys are really weird..!”

All images taken from marvel.toonzone.net and drg4.wariocompany.com respectively.