Episode 26 - Doomsday
Original Airdate 24th February 1996

Dr. Doom once again steals the power cosmic from The Silver Surfer, making him all-powerful. With Galactus on the other side of the galaxy, do the Fantastic Four have any hope of defeating him?

Credits
Written By Cynde Clarke
Directed By Thomas McLaughling Jr.
Music By William Anderson and Anderson Scores
Guest Starring: Edward Albert as The Silver Surfer, Simon Templeman as Dr. Doom, Kathy Ireland as Crystal
Animation Services by PASI (Philippines)
Based on The Fantastic Four #57-60

Review: The finale of The Fantastic Four isn’t the type that wraps everything up in a neat little bow, but the episode does give some resemblance of a finale. At this point in time, it’s unsure as to whether or not the producers intended this to be the final episode or not, but one can’t diminish the entertainment of its conclusion.

The episode surprisingly resurrects an old plot from the first season’s finale, with Dr. Doom once again attempting to steal The Silver Surfer’s power cosmic, only this time around the episode was actually entertaining. Dr Doom was always a little strange on this show for me, personally, as I found neither his voice to fit his character and his design was pretty dire. Nothing drastically wrong with either, but Doom is Latverian and in my opinion needs something of an accent instead of simply sounding like an ignorant man of superior intellect. I think Tom Kane did the best job with the self proclaimed Master of the World. It has all the arrogance and intelligence that Dr. Doom needs, but doesn’t sound American.

The Silver Surfer’s return wasn’t unwelcome, and luckily, he had a dramatic shift in character from his beyond boring season one counterpart. Now sick of being confided to our miserable planet, The Surfer has become bitter, resenting mankind for its selfish ways. Visually, he looked a hell of a lot better than the eyesore referred to as his season one design, but still didn’t quite look right, mainly due to the needlessly thick black lines that covered his body. His voice, however, was a big improvement over his predecessor, Edward Albert (perhaps better known for his portrayal as Daredevil over in Spider-Man: The Animated Series) gave a great performance as the tortured hero.

There wasn’t too many issues that needed wrapping up, as Johnny found Crystal in the previous episode, Maximus the Mad had been brought to justice and the Inhumans were in no danger of suffocating inside the great refuge anymore. A wise decision to wrap up those storylines in a previous episode, no doubt, but it was great to see Dr. Doom again. Reed’s plan on how to defeat Doom with his newfound God-like abilities was also quite impressive, actually going back and referring to the first season episode instead of building some device which just reversed the process.

Overall, it ended the show on a high note. While it left it open for more potential stories and didn’t drastically alter anything or anyone, it still stands out as a very enjoyable episode of a show that unfortunately is plagued by a terrible first season. If more people had stuck with the show, we might’ve got more seasons, as there was simply so much more to show. Hopefully the success of the Fantastic Four movie will finally allow people to see these somewhat hidden gems of episodes. The show simply deserves better treatment than what it received.

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