| abstract | - The Menace of the White Dwarf is the twelfth episode of the first season of the Super Friends television series. The episode featured a truly evil villain named the Raven, who along with Noah Tall and Roy La Post, are the only villains to really fit that category in the show thus far, as most episodes up to this point have only featured misguided individuals as antagonists. Here, the Raven is portrayed as being an enemy of Superman, who apparently put the villain away at some point in the past. The character is a mad scientist. This episode is rich in educational material about astronomy and physics. We learn about white dwarf stars, gravity and also the way trials function in the legal system. This is also the first time in the series that the destruction of Krypton is depicted. This is the first of four times that this is shown. The second being in this season's The Planet-Splitter, the third being in Season 3's Secret Origins of the Superfriends and the fourth being in 1983's The Krypton Syndrome. A backstory relating to the destruction of Krypton is told in this story, stating that a chunk of Kryptonite which fell to Earth ended up on the farm of Paw Martingale. He ends up keeping it for good luck. Interestingly, although this is not the first episode to feature Kryptonite, it is the first time that Marvin White and Wendy Harris seem to be aware of it, which seems to indicate that this episode takes place chronologically before the other episodes with Kryptonite that aired prior to this episode. Although this isn't completely clear, because when the Junior Super Friends are introduced to the Kryptonite it is referred to as a sky stone. It's possible that they just weren't aware that the stone was actually Kryptonite, and therefore they were unaware that it would hurt Superman. But this isn't made clear, and seems less likely.
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