Aladdin Central Messageboard

Edward Falcon · Sultan Joined: 14 Oct 2015 Posts: 305

So I went and subscribed to Disney+ and I found quite a few surprises I didn’t see coming, such as “Spider-Man & his Amazing Friends”, and every single episode of the 90’s X-Men cartoon! Well this is a promising start! Still a few missing though.

AladdinsGenie · Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 12:17 am Post subject:

what other shows are you looking forward to seeing or hope to see on the service?

Edward Falcon · Sultan Joined: 14 Oct 2015 Posts: 305

Robo4900 · Streetrat Joined: 29 Jul 2019 Posts: 28

Wow. Well, I knew they had all the '90s Marvel shows (which I'm psyched for, especially my personal favourite, Spider-Man; the DVDs for that show have been out of print and in high demand for years, particularly since they were ONLY available in the UK, so people everywhere else have been importing them), but I didn't know Spider-Friends was on there. Damn.

My only reservation is that Spider-Friends will probably, as always, be missing most of the Stan Lee narrations. I think we all treasure every moment Stan Lee ever gave us, and the incompetence that has lead most of his narration for the show to be unavailable is very disheartening (he did a narration for the beginning and ending of every single episode, and said a few words in the middle, and particularly around the ad breaks, in most episodes).
See here for a fanmade archive of nearly all of the narrations, from domestic home tapings of the original airings.

I think the problem is that modern transfers of the show come from the 16mm master film reels of the show, whereas most of Stan's narrations were recorded later, to the tape masters given to TV stations for airing. The first run of season 1 was actually missing these narrations, but all reruns until the modern re-transfer of the original film contained his narrations on season 1.
There are other mistakes made that stem from this; a few visual effects that were presumably added at the tape stage are missing too (such as one shot in one episode of Spidey's eyes glowing).

Maybe Disney will consider re-transferring the original film again, restoring it in HD, this time and doing the restoration properly such that they restore the original narrations. That, and the variant openings... (The visuals on the opening of the show originally varied between seasons, but the modern masters only use season 1's opening).