Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Reviews

Dr. Octopus: Armed And Dangerous
Review by Stu, Media by Kolbar

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Episode #6 - Dr. Octopus: Armed And Dangerous
Original Airdate: February 18th, 1995

Mysterio, a master of illusion and special effects, masquerades as Spider-Man while committing crimes to convince J. Jonah Jameson and the public that Spidey's gone bad. Finally, with the help of Police Detective Terry Lee, Spider-Man locates the illusionist in an old studio and struggles through a deadly special effects maze to capture the villain and clear his own name.

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Review: TMS are masters when it comes to animating Spider-Man, and his villains. It's all good here, especially the scene where Spider-Man dodges and flips out of the way of Doc Ock's tentacles! It was all animated so quickly, and just beautiful. Arguably some of the show's finest animation is found in this episode, and TMS used Doc Ock's arms to thier full extent. The best fight scenes this show ever did are the ones in this episode.

It did a good job introducing Doc Ock for the newer audience, and showed the full extent of his powers, and unlike a lot of his previous incarnations, he was actually motivated to due something with his new-found power. Octavious being Peter's teacher was a unique touch, developed from this series, not adapted from a comic. It developed him that little bit more, in his original appearances, Octopus was a mad scientist, that's not the case here, in this cartoon, he was a very passionate one. A lot of Octavious character came from Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (Alfred from Batman: The Animated Series) who just nailed him, bang on. No 80's high pitched squeaky voice here.

It was also nice to see Peter Parker do something other than screw up, after he realized there wasn't a lot Spider-Man could do to beat Octavious, he used his head to find out where he was located, and, how to defeat him in the end. Peter was often the subject of some bizarre writing in this show, but he was just as effective out of costume here as he was in costume.

The plot itself greatly added to my enjoyment of the episode. On top of some great animation and fights, the story and characters shined in this episode. Especially Spider-Man's scenes with Robbie and Anastasia Hardy. Although often overlooked, this episode is easily one of the show's best.

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