Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Reviews

The Rocket Racer
Review by Stu, Media by Kolbar

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Episode #32 - The Rocket Racer
Original Airdate: September 14th, 1996

A group of thieves called the Rocket Raiders are perpetrating robberies across Manhattan. Meanwhile, one of Peter's students, Robert, gets in trouble with the law when some thugs ransack his mother's store. Fed up with the lack of safety, Robert becomes a vigilante known as the Rocket Racer and sets off to take on the Rocket Raiders.

Credits:
Story By: John Semper
Written By: Doug Booth and Mark Hoffmeier
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi
Animation Services By: Toyko Movie Shinsha (TMS)
Guest Starring: Christopher Daniel Barnes as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, Jennifer Hale as Felicia Hardy. Billy Attmore as The Rocket Racer/Robert Farrell, Michael Des Barres as Jackson Weele and Mark Hamill as Jason Phillips

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Review: This is it, easily the worst episode of the entire series. No matter what you thought about the series' overall quality, the Rocket Racer has got to be one of the most bizarrely handled characters in the series. Then again, the episode's big foe is The Big Wheel, which was basically a man, rolling around in a huge wheel. What kind of stupid villain is that?

If you've read any of the previous reviews from this site, or visited the message board attached to it, you'll know I love this series, but even I can't stand to watch this episode. We never saw Beetle or Sandman but we see both Rocket Racer and Big Wheel in the same episode. Why were we subjected to this? And to rub salt into the wound why is this one of the few episodes to be treated on DVD? Did we do something wrong in a previous life?

It started out fine, with Spider-Man and Felicia, and quickly took a complete nosedive. For a series that had so many strong episodes and characters, I found it hard to believe this one was allowed to be made. With The Rocket Racer handled so poorly (granted, the comic book version had some iffy stories attached to him) and such a ridiculous bad guy, there's absolutely no redeeming qualities here. The low point of the series is right here, folks. No matter how uneven the quality got, it never got as low as this.



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