Mutant X – Season 2 (Discs 1 & 2)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C Episodes: C-
What
happens if you take the X-Men, cut
down the cast, cut down the budget, send the show to TV and make everyone
almost the same? You get the unfortunate
syndicated series Mutant X, which
just by the name seems to be an X-Men
knock-off. Marvel Comics has their name
on the box, but this is not as Marvel-affiliated as that would indicate.
Leaving
that as a separate essay, the first five shows of the second season are offered
here on 2 DVDs and they are as follows:
Past As Prologue
Power Play
Time Squared
Whose Woods Are These Are
The Future Revealed
I was
shocked at how consistently bad the teleplays were, how unimaginative they were
for works of a potentially more creative genre, and the digital work seems at
least five years behind the currently bad computer-generated work we keep
seeing. Group leader Adam Kane is played
by John Shea, who is so bored looking and petulant that it made Parker
Stevenson seem like a better choice. The
rest of the cast, including Victoria Pratt, one time soap opera star Victor
Webster, Forbes March and Lauren Lee Smith have no chemistry and make the
empty, tired set designs seem all the more empty. I do not know what the point of this series
was supposed to be, but it is not entertaining, looks cheaper than expected,
and is another example of where the Science Fiction genre has gone wrong. This is also a very lame entry into the
Superhero cycle, made al the worse by the much more interesting big budget
feature films we keep getting.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is often digitally degraded and even
footage form the outdoors does not look as naturalistic as it should. Images also often have an odd softness that
does not necessarily seem to be the problem of the actual transfer. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers Pro Logic
surrounds and is the highlight of the set.
An image gallery, ADV trailers for other DVDs, John Shea interview,
original TV promos and a couple of featurettes are the extras, but they do not
enhance the shows much.
The
saddest thing is that this show could have been interesting on its own, but
instead seems like the end of the line of a series of decades-long live-action
failures in bringing Marvel Comics alive in the live-action world. That all ended with the first Blade feature film in 1998. Mutant
X is hopefully the end of that tired legacy as Marvel’s big-screen
adaptations for the most part blaze the trail as some of the most interesting
commercial filmmaking of late.
- Nicho0las Sheffo
