Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Spooktober: The Super Friends encounter a "Universe of Evil" (1979)

Remember the classic Star Trek episode, "Mirror, Mirror", which was later adapted into a comic book? Well, that was the inspiration, one could guess, for the World's Greatest Super Friends episode, "Universe of Evil". Convieniently, the Wonder Twins had gone on vacation at the start of this adventure. Their evil counterparts make a cameo appearance early, but are not heard from again.

Edit, 6/17/22: I've found an excerpt from the episode:



 Too bad this couldn't be a 2-part episode.

Rating: A.

6 comments:

magicdog said...

Like the vampire episode, this one gave me chills!

I think it was the drawings of the evil superfriends that was most scary. Not!Superman telling lies and Not!Aquaman with an eyepatch!

The story definitely would have benefitted from a longer formet.

hobbyfan said...

Yeah, and the dark Aquaman wasn't given much to do, was he? Kind of like his counterpart. In other words, business as usual.

Eric B said...

Yeah; I always did want to see then fulfil Superman's promise to the woman to return, and also, to throw in the negative counterparts to the Legion of Doom while they were at it. (They would be good and help the real Superfriends. Their looks and names would have to be changed from evil to good, and that would be interesting!).

The Wonder Twins were not on vacation, as they encountered the evil Superman, recall. (and how would that affect the presence of their evil counterparts in the other universe, anyway?) That's probably the Lex Luthor Strikes Back episode you're thinking of. (Yeah, they got them out of there for that one!)
The evil Gleek does appear in the episode we're discussing, however.

hobbyfan said...

Eric: You're wrong. It is clearly noted at the start that the Twins were away on this case. That would explain the lack of evil counterparts for them, though there is, as you note, an evil Gleek.

Come to think of it, the evil Gleek's cameo may have set up a couple of the later shorts.....

Xum Yukinori said...

Actually, the evil Zan and Jayna do appear among the shadowed figures watching the cracking dam on the Hall of Evil Trouble Alert.

hobbyfan said...

Hmmmmm, I must've totally missed that the first time when this first aired back in 1979, and blotted it out of my brain. Thank you, Xum, and to Eric B., I owe an apology.

BTW, I had to replace the video, due to AdzFlickz losing his YouTube account (and thus a lot of videos have to be replaced).