Date of airing: October 28, 1995 (FOX Kids)
story by: John Semper
teleplay by: Brynne Stephens, Lydia Marano
directed by: Bob Richardson
Talk about a guy with six arms. If this were a very weird porno movie,
Peter would be able to make six men or women happy at once. Oh, my mind, where
is it going sometimes? This was quite an entertaining episode, because I
just learned that vampires exist in the Spider-Man universe, which
means a character like Buffy Summers could show up for a hunt and create
some awesomeness in the process, or the vampires of the Marvel universe could show up in Sunnydale and create a bit of havoc for the Scoobies to clean up. I know of Blade, although I am not a
friend of the movies and I have never seen the TV show (maybe I should
do the latter, since it got some form of acclaim), and I would not have
been aware of Morbius before if I did not already have watched the Jared
Leto-led movie, and it turns out that he was pretty much a vampire who
did not need to suck on humans’ blood with his teeth, he just needed to
put his hands on his unsuspecting victim instead. I wondered why BUFFY
THE VAMPIRE SLAYER or ANGEL never had these kinds of vampire villains,
considering this show aired before Joss Whedon was ready to turn his
1992 movie into a TV franchise. It would have been a lot creepier that
way. A vampire or demon who could just touch its victims? Yeah, that would cause danger for Buffy Summers, the vampire slayer.
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| Felicia walks into danger. |
I was waiting for Morbius to turn into a villain though, considering
his attire since the season premiere has been very dark and very
mysterious, almost making him destined to become a troublemaker for the
wallcrawler. No one with this sexy early 1990s boyband hair and that coat
would be considered a normal human being, and no one who threw himself
at Felicia for some nightly action every once in a while would have a
good heart later. But his transformation into a monster seemed
intriguing, because it happened with Peter’s blood inside of him, making Peter the
origin of whatever people will be doing with his blood (create more
villains, maybe?). Basically, Peter was not only responsible for Morbius
turning into a plasma-sucking vampire of sorts, but Morbius also had
Peter’s DNA in his blood, which means he had remnants of the spider DNA.
Of course, the writers did not seem to care because Morbius turned into
the object that bit him, but it is still interesting to notice that he
changed due to the bat DNA that had parts of the spider DNA. So, is
Morbius not a vampire, but a spider-bat? Also, how was he able to fly?
But that I am asking myself with some superheroes, most notably Rogue in
the previous episode, and Wonder Woman in general. Just because you are
half a Goddess, it does not mean you can manipulate gravity for your own
sake.
Spider-Man’s angry phase midway through the episode, when he smashed Mariah Crawford’s lab, might have been a bit too much for me, but the writers explained it with the genetic changes he was going through. Nevertheless, it reminded me more of Peter and the Symbiote than Spider-Man going nuts due to the DNA slowly mutating him, which possibly is because the Venom storyline is more known in the Spider-Man lore than the attempt to turn him into a six-armed mutant. Spider-Man might have been desperate though, especially now that he was starting to feel pain, which is why he turned nuts in the first place, or maybe the mutation was doing something to his mind as well. I cannot imagine the latter, or otherwise, this would have been part of the story from the beginning of the season. And a desperate Spider-Man was too good an idea for it to be part of this show. I could imagine if the writers had two minutes more per episode, maybe the desperation would have been part of the story as well. Spider-Man’s aggressive behavior during his slow mutation would have been a much bigger focus.
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| A guy with six hands – sounds hot. |
Meanwhile, Felicia and Mary Jane were in this episode as well, and once more I questioned whether the writers even knew what to do with the characters, now that they had a serialized story to work with. For some reason, Peter was still interested in both women, although at this point he should have made a decision as to which of the two he would pursue a romantic endeavor with. That Felicia is still around was thanks to Morbius, although I even thought that Felicia and Morbius being in the dating business looked a little weird (probably just because of Morbius’s general 1980s/90s villain look). I am also a little sad that MJ has not become a full-fledged character in the series yet. For some reason, the writers were still interested in focusing on Felicia, and only give MJ screentime when it is about Peter’s love life. Maybe this was an attempt at a love triangle, and if so, the writers failed (thanks to the 19-or-so minutes they had per episode – not much to create a storyline with).
