Mutant X (TV series)

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Mutant X

Cast of Mutant X in its third season, from left to right: Brennan (Victor Webster), Lexa (Karen Cliche), Jesse (Forbes March) and Shalimar (Victoria Pratt)
Genre Science Fiction
Creator(s) Avi Arad (Marvel C.E.O)
Starring Forbes March
John Shea
Lauren Lee Smith
Victoria Pratt
Victor Webster
Tom McCamus
Karen Cliche
Country of origin Flag of Canada Canada[1]
Flag of United States United States
No. of episodes 66 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time 44 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel syndicated
Original run October 6, 2001 – May 17, 2004

Mutant X (created by Marvel Studios, a division of Marvel Comics) is a television series that first aired October 6, 2001. The show chronicles the adventures of Mutant X, a team of four human mutants possessing extraordinary powers as a result of genetic engineering. Like hundreds of other unsuspecting subjects, these four new mutants were altered in secret experiments conducted in a covert government project. There are those who want to control these new mutants for their own purposes. Only Mutant X stands in their way. The mission of Mutant X is to seek out their fellow New Mutants, help them come to terms with their abilities and protect them from those who want only to exploit their mutant powers.

The series was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mutant X is unrelated to the Mutant X comic book series.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Contents

[edit] Mutant X team

Adam is the strategist, tactician and moral center of Mutant X. It was his experiments that inadvertently created the hundreds of New Mutants. It is now his responsibility to save these innocent victims of society. It can be argued that he may be the smartest man alive, but he is not a mutant. It is revealed in the series finale that Adam is a clone of the founder of the Dominion.
Shalimar possesses both human and feline DNA, giving her the strength, speed and cunning of a jungle cat. She is a panther-like Feral who has the most common feral weakness, a fear of fire. She overcame that fear when a mutant was trapped. Her Feral abilities were enhanced during a 'secondary mutation' within her genes during the show's first season, giving her supernaturally strong senses.
Jesse has the ability to alter his body's density, enabling him to pass through walls or to become as completely solid as stone. He is limited to about a minute as an intangible state (or else risk not being able to reintegrate) and can only stay supersolid for as long as he can hold his breath. As a result of his secondary mutation, his powers were augmented so that he could also make any object he touched intangible or as supersolid as he was, allowing others to pass through the object or be as invulnerable as he was. Though he initially was seen fighting in supersolid state, he eventually seemed to be less mobile in that form, perhaps due to the fact he increased his mass hugely. Jesse is the only known New Mutant to have surpassed his "expiration date".
Brennan is a Electrical Elemental who can generate extraordinary amounts of electricity and control it's direction and flow. His energy blasts are usually referred to as 'Tesla Coils'. His primary weakness is water. His secondary mutation allowed him to charge up his electrical powers into powerful energy jets from his palms, which if fired downward, could launch him high into the air.
Emma is a Telempath, a psionic mutant. She is able to read the emotions and feelings of others, alter them and broadcast her own emotions. Her secondary mutation gave her psionic blasts that she could fire from her forehead at her opponents, knocking them unconscious, erasing memories or even killing them upon impact. Her powers expanded in range and scale as Season 2 progressed, allowing her to broadcast emotions to a much wider range, though she couldn't isolate targets when doing this. She could also shoot psionic starbursts and psionic shockwaves. Emma died in the explosion at Naxcon (Nick Fox's company).
Lexa was the first member of the original Mutant X but was unknown until Emma's death and Adam's disappearance. Has also worked for Eckhart at Genomex and the GSA and then for the Dominion before rejoining Mutant X. Lexa is a Chromatic and can bend light around her to become invisible, project flashes of light to momentarily blind others and focus light into laser beams which she can shoot from her fingers. After Emma died during the start of the show's third season, Lexa joins the team and sets herself up as the new leader. She did this at the behest of a mysterious organization which was secretly manipulating everything within the lives of the Mutant X team for their own reasons. Although many times disgusted over their orders for her, Lexa was forced to comply, as she believed they held vital information to the whereabouts of her long-lost twin brother. Eventually, Lexa had to kill her brother after his powers went out of control.

[edit] Genomex

Genomex, formerly known as the Breedlove Foundation, is a biotech company dedicated to genetic research. Their employees include some of the top scientific minds in the world and it was these people who created New Mutants. The victims of their experiments fall under four categories: Elemental, Feral, Molecular and Psionic. Genomex understood perfectly what their experiments would do but their subjects were kept in the dark, though the late Paul Breedlove did try to warn them.

[edit] GSA

When New Mutants began appearing in the news, Mason Eckhart, head of security set up the Genetic Security Agency (GSA). Their mission was to recapture new mutants for further genetic testing. Under Eckhart's command, their ranks included human agents and a minority of new mutants. His second in command changed weekly, most ending up in stasis pods as instant demotion after a failure. He is killed in a confrontation with Mutant X in the opening of the final season over the presumed deaths of Adam and Emma.

[edit] Patient Zero

While most New Mutants' abilities fall under one category, Gabriel Ashlocke, (a.k.a Patient Zero), the first and most powerful of new mutants has the combined abilities of all four classes: Elemental, Feral, Molecular and Psionic. As a child, Ashlocke killed his parents with his mutant powers. He was the first New Mutant that Adam worked on and the subdermal governors and stasis pods used by the GSA were developed by Adam because of him. With help from the Strand, Gabriel is released from stasis, defeats Eckhart, and replaces him as the series' main antagonist for Mutant X's second season. While Eckhart's goal was to destroy mutants, Ashlocke wishes to empower them to conquer the world. Ironically, having the same mutant genes within him, his glory proves to be his downfall as the sheer amount of power that he wields literally tears him apart at a molecular level, despite his best efforts to stop the process from happening.

[edit] Mutant X background

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The man who came to be known as Dr. Paul Alexander Breedlove, genetics guru, was born Kurt von Schuler in Salzburg, Austria, July 4, 1931. The youngest of three children, his father manufactured harpsichords, a family business for over a century. Scientists of the rising Third Reich recruited Kurt, a child prodigy at eight years of age, to study in Berlin.

As a teenager, Kurt was exposed to the soulless experiments conducted on those imprisoned in concentration camps. Kurt was allowed to participate in many of his own experiments as well. A high-ranking German geneticist known only as "the Purist" mentored him in these efforts. The corrupt genius believed heredity traits could be artificially altered and guided Kurt through the bloodiest and most torture-based of his human experiments. When the Allies crushed the Axis Powers in the mid 1940's, Kurt was still young enough not to be held responsible for any atrocities he had a hand in. Now sixteen, he was returned to Austria to live with his surviving older sister, the rest of his family having perished protesting Hitler's regime.

For the next few years, it appeared that Kurt had been reformed to a quiet life of building harpsichords in the von Schuler tradition under his sister's strict influence. It was then that the Purist re-entered his life in the guise of biology researcher/missionary, Alexander Breedlove.

The aging Nazi was still working for submerged factions of the Axis forces and needed an apprentice. Either brainwashed or simply waiting for the call, Kurt responded. A devastating fire conveniently destroyed the von Schuler workshop and home, killing his sister. From that point on, a handsome, studious nephew called Paul always accompanied the elderly Dr. Breedlove on his worldwide travels.

The next decade was a blur of activity for the Breedloves. Their privately funded missionary work took them all through Asia, Manchuria, dark Africa and South America. The old biologist and his ward were seen at various times giving care and extensive research to radiation victims in Japan, starving Aborigine tribes in Australia and troops of UN soldiers stationed as far away as Iceland. The exact purpose and agenda of this work has never been revealed, but the genetic knowledge gathered by the two men is presumed to have been far ahead of discoveries that were later made by Crick and Watson.

What is known is that in the 1950s, a secret agency of the US government brought down the Neo-Nazi regime that the Breedloves worked for. Now operating out of a laboratory in northern Canada, the elderly Dr. Breedlove was handed over to these agents with the help of Paul who had turned over to their side. As a result, the young Dr. Breedlove was allowed to immigrate with full status and immunity to the USA forming a relationship with government factions that still exist with his corporation to this day.

Dr. Breedlove eked out a humbled existence teaching in ivy-covered universities when he met Eleanor Singer, an attractive pediatric specialist from a prominent "old money" family. They married in 1961 and co-founded the Breedlove clinic in upstate New York, focusing on the prevention of birth defects. While appearing to be a benevolent enterprise, it was in fact the beginning of The Breedlove Foundation. Sponsored and protected by a handful of venture capitalists, influential politicians and visionary government scientists, Dr. Breedlove was allowed to apply the twisted genetics research he had accumulated over the last quarter of a century once again on human subjects. It is estimated that between 1964 and 1982 nearly 2,500 expectant mothers were "marked" with Breedlove techniques. In branch clinics that dealt with infertility and difficult pregnancies, an additional 13,000 parents of both sexes received some type of treatment during the same period. There were also unusually close ties to the Singer Society for Animal Care. The exterior results of the Breedlove Foundation were healthy babies, happy parents and praised advances in obstetrics. The true products, however, were a breed of mutants: genetically altered human children.

Breedlove was manipulating the DNA in the test subjects for an all new race of humans being sponsored by world governments for the military applications for these New Mutants. Now many of those children have grown up, and it has become increasingly difficult for the rest of the world to ignore the mutants in their midst. Genomex, under the direction of Mason Eckhart, one of the original scientists, seeks to exploit its creations; others seek to protect them. A mutant underground has sprung up, and one of the most prominent cells in that organization is Mutant X, a team of powerful mutants led by Adam Kane, formerly another one of the Genomex scientists who participated in the experiments which has altered our world forever.

Adam was once a Genomex scientist, until he grew disquieted with their questionable ethics, after his genetic research inadvertently helped create the new wave of mutant humans. With the assistance of a lover and colleague, he left Genomex and dropped out of sight. He helped to form the mutant underground, and set up Mutant X, a team of powerful mutants who could fight, if necessary, to maintain mutant freedoms. However, it took Adam 20 years for his conscience to be activated, and even after leaving Genomex, he continued his experimentation on mutants as he admitted in the final season. Adam sometimes portrays himself as one of several scientists directing the program, but in fact he was Breedlove's chosen successor.

[edit] New Mutant classifications

New Mutants are categorized into four different groups (Ferals, Elementals, Moleculars and Psionics) depending on their abilities.

  • Ferals are New Mutants who possess a combination of animal and human DNA, allowing them to use the abilities of the animal DNA within them. Different types of Ferals include Feline, (who possess cat, tiger, lion, puma, leopard or cheetah DNA); Ursines, (who possess bear DNA); Canines (who possess dog, wolf or coyote DNA); Reptuses, (who posses reptilian DNA) ; Porcines, (who possess pig, boar or hog DNA); Cervines, (who possess deer DNA); Amphibians, (who possess frog or toad DNA); Psicis, (who possess fish DNA) and Insectums, (who possess insect DNA), although the last type is rare.
  • Elementals are New Mutants with the ability to channel, project and control different types of energies through their bodies. Different types of Elementals include Electricals, (who can absorb and channel electrical energy): Thermals, (who can absorb and control fire or cold); Sonics, (who can control sound waves); Chemicals, (who can project chemical substances, such as acids, from their bodies); Botanicals, (who control and manipulate plants); and the extremely rare Geologicals, (who control the ground).
  • Moleculars are New Mutants who manipulate their body structure and molecular density in various ways. Some Molecluars possess more than one ability Different abilities that Moleculars poses includes Intangibility, (the ability to pass through solid objects); Impervious, (the ability to increase their mass so they’re vulnerable to projectile weapons); Invisibility, (the ability to project an aura that renders them invisible); Propulsive, (the ability to move at high speeds); Gravitative, (the ability to manipulate gravity); Chromatics, (the ability to change color, light and shades like a chameleon); Stasis-suspension, (the ability to slow down time); Replication, (the ability duplicate solid objects); Elasticity, (the ability to change their shape or size) and Regeneration; (the ability to heal and repair tissue and limbs).
  • Psionics are New Mutants who have heightened mental abilities. Different types of Psionics include Telepaths; (who can read other peoples thoughts); Telekinetics, (who can move solid objects with their minds), Telempaths, (who can feel the emotions of others); Telecybers, (who can mentally connect with machines and control them); Precognatives, (who are able to receive visions of the future); and Illusionists, (who can create and project illusions to other people).

[edit] Lawsuits

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In 2001, 20th Century Fox (the producer of the X-Men series of films) sued Marvel (the originator of the characters in Mutant X and the X-Men), Tribute Entertainment (the distributor of Mutant X) and Fireworks Entertainment (the producer and International distributor of Mutant X) for breach of their licensing agreement and false advertisement. Fox stated it had exclusive rights from Marvel to develop the X-Men property, and anything similar was an infringement. Fox claimed that Mutant X was too similar to X-Men, and that Mutant X was being advertised as an "X-Men replacement". Fox asked that Mutant X production be stopped.

Marvel within weeks countersued Fox, saying that the two were dissimilar and asking the courts to allow Mutant X production to go forward. Production was allowed, as long as X-Men material was not used in the promotion of Mutant X. Apparently the title "Mutant X" itself was deemed too close to "X-Men" to be effectively leveraged.

With this environment, there was virtually no development of Mutant X merchandising.

In 2003, Fox and Marvel resolved their differences in confidential settlements of their suits, while Fox continued to pursue their cases against Tribune and Fireworks (apparently focusing on the false advertisement issues of using X-Men as a "springboard" to launch Mutant X).

Tribune then sued Marvel (for $100,000,000) for fraud and breach of contract stating that Marvel encouraged Tribune to connect Mutant X to the X-Men, misrepresenting what they were getting in their license, and causing millions in losses due to the need to alter storylines and characters to ensure distance between Mutant X and X-Men (which Tribune asserts led to the failure of the Mutant X series) as well as fighting Fox's litigation.

Litigation between Tribune and Marvel (and perhaps still between Fox and Tribune) appears to be continuing its way through the courts as of December 2006.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Locations

  • Skywalk escalator between Rogers Centre and Toronto's Union Station

[edit] Episodes

see List of Mutant X episodes

[edit] External links

Marvel Comics live action TV series and movies
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