The achievement that made Doom timeless probably has less to do with graphics than it does with an innovative distribution and marketing model. The Doom demo was a blockbuster. It spread in a manner that we would probably call viral today.
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No, it’s definitely the graphics and gameplay. The distribution helped, but that wasn’t new - id and Apogee and others had been distributing demo “episodes” of their games going back to Commander Keen at least. Doom was a monumental technical achievement when it came out, and if you want some real perspective on that, check out the game that came out just a few weeks earlier and was considered “cutting edge” at the time: “Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold.”
As a point of interest, Blake Stone used the Wolfenstein engine with a bunch of modifications.