Mutant X 1.1

Comic books will be hitting the big screen over the next 12 months at an increasingly furious rate. If the surprising success of X-Men wasn’t enough, it must have been the obscene box office takings of Spider-Man that opened the eyes of international film critics and made the general public realise that comic books, super heroes and big bad villains are back in flavour.

With Dare-Devil, The Hulk, Superman, Batman, X-Men 2, and Spider-Man 2 being only a few of the comic book conversions currently in production for the big screen it was almost inevitable that Marvel would pull something special out for the increasingly more lucrative small screen. Instead of wasting something that could make millions at the movies, Marvel turned their little known Mutant X comic into nothing short of an X-Men rip-off for television. This also happened to be the opinion of 20th Century Fox, who now control the movie rights to Marvel’s X-Men series. Such a blatant lack of originality resulted in law suit being filed by Fox, and as such many of the fundamental premises of the show had to be changed or flat out removed. What remained was nothing but the empty shell of a potentially revolutionary piece of television.

In Mutant X we find a modern world where mutants are popping out of nowhere. Unlike the X-Men, these mutants are the creation of genetic engineering by hapless human scientists. One of these scientists (Adam – most likely recognised as Lex Luthor from TV’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) rebels and makes it his life's aim to save these new superhero freaks. He’s quickly joined by a weaselly looking guy who we can call ‘Concrete Man’. His mutant ability is to change into a rock hard substance that bullets just bounce off - something that would obviously come in handy when fighting against Genomex, the evil genetic laboratory. Another regular is ‘Tiger Woman’, who obviously comes with all the feline powers one would desire in a mutant. ‘Electro-Boy’ and ‘Psychic Girl’ are the two new recruits, and I think their powers pretty much speak for themselves.

It’s terribly hard to take this show seriously. The characters are annoying, the storylines are thin, and there is nothing here we couldn’t see during the more animated 7:30am Saturday cartoons. I’ve read that the series ends up picking up steam by the end, but the two episodes available on this disc are all quite dull considering the potential. Yes that’s right kids, we have to buy the entire season only two episodes at a time!

The Shock of the New - Basically the story of how Emma DeLauro (aka Psychic Girl) joins the rebel faction of Mutant X-ers. It's a poorly directed introduction to the characters and the premise of the show, I recommend fast forwarding until 30 seconds before the end credits roll where a walking off into the sunset scene clearly highlights how corny this show really is!

I Scream the Body Electric - The second episode gives us a chance to be properly introduced to Brennan (aka Electro-Boy). His powers are weak and unreliable, but after learning a lesson on humanity Adam teaches young Electro-Boy how to control his powerful energy slinging abilities.

The video detail is reasonably good, although that’s what we should expect considering the show is fairly recent. The detail is quite high and grain is kept low, colours are well rendered and look as realistic as this show can be. The episodes are presented in a full frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and as such is not widescreen enhanced.

However, edge enhancement is a problem with this transfer, causing quite a reasonable distraction during several scenes. Excluding this fault the general transfer itself is quite decent. Film artefacts are extremely minimal, and there is no aliasing or other such related problems. Most of the hassles with the video detail are probably the result of a poor production budget rather than the DVD transfer itself.

The audio soundtrack is, however, a little more disappointing. Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, the soundtrack never excels despite several opportunities to do so. The dialogue is not exceptionally clear (perhaps I should be blaming the actors for that and not the transfer), the surrounds are barely touched, and the subwoofer lies completely dormant.

On the plus side though, there is nothing inherently wrong with the soundtrack. There are no pops or clicks, the audio is in synch, and generally the dialogue is quite clear. Perhaps due to its television origin they didn’t want to push the audio envelope, which is a shame considering its vast potential. Overall it's quite acceptable, but far from superb.

The extras include three trailers for the show. One of them is an overall promo, one is a preview for episode 1 and the other for episode 2. There is absolutely nothing here to get excited about.

Mutant X began with a rather cold start and slowly picked up as the series progressed. Unfortunately all this disc has to offer is the first two episodes, and at an RRP of $29.95 for only two episodes one would want to be a pretty big fan of the show before rushing out with plans to collect the entire series.