Mutant X 1.2

To be honest I was quite excited when I first heard about this show coming to the small screen. Being a comic book fan-boy from way back I thought Stan Lee and Avi Arad may have had what it takes to finally bring old-school comics back onto television in the live action format. Not since Adam West and Burt Ward donned the spandex suits back in the ’60s has a comic based television series lasted any longer than a couple of seasons at most. After the success of X-Men and Spider-Man on the big screen though, I thought maybe something new, exciting, and fresh could hit our idiot boxes and re-ignite some of that long lost ‘biff-bang-pow!’ action that’s been missing for sooo long now. Unfortunately it wasn't to be...

Mutant X had the potential, but it bombs out in almost every respect. The characters are flat, their abilities unoriginal, and their dialogue lacks absolutely any wit or charm. The bad guy, villain and arch nemesis is nothing but a pale old white guy with an horrendous skin complex. And if all that isn’t enough, the storylines are dead, dull and just plain ordinary. The action scenes are reasonably well filmed, but then again if I want to see people in stupid costumes kicking bad guys around for the fun of it then I’ll tune into Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What I expected from Mutant X was much more, is it too much to ask for fun, lovable characters trying to take down very bad looking villains week after week? I can’t believe that due to one X-Men movie there are no more original storylines available in the comic world that could be transferred onto television box sets. These are disgraceful times for Hollywood television.

As for the two episodes included on this disc...

Russian Roulette - Nasty Russians With Bad Accents have created a gun that can really annoy all mutants. Adam and the team must stop these Nasty Russians With Bad Accents before all the mutants become very annoyed...

Fool For Love - Catwoman meets Catman and the sparks fly, until wildcat lovin’ Catwoman starts to realise that Catman might not be all he makes out to be.

To nobody's surprise this release receives the same transfer as the first disc. Presented with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, the video is full screen and naturally not enhanced for widescreen sets. Edge enhancement is also a problem and lowers the general clarity of picture. Despite this, the detail is general quite clear, grain is extremely limited, and film artefacts are rarely seen.

The colours are all well rendered, and don’t suffer from any bleeding or noise. Aliasing pops up on a couple of occasions, but not to any major extent. Overall it's an acceptable, but middle of the range, transfer.

The soundtrack on this disc is another ho-hum affair. Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, the audio is pleasantly acceptable, but nowhere near the quality it could have been.

The surround channels and subwoofer have been completely forgotten about and all that’s left is a pretty flat sounding piece of audio. There are no clarity issues and the dialogue is almost always clear, but it is just a shame they didn’t try to push the standards a little further and actually beef up the soundtrack to make it something more exciting.

There are no extras to be found.

I’ve been told by a somewhat unreliable source that the second half of the first season of this show ends up being not half bad, and that the second season (yes, I too am surprised it wasn’t axed) is even better again. I haven’t seen this for myself, so all I can reliably tell you is that the two episodes available on this over-priced disc are utter dogs that should only ever be viewed as a testament to corny B-grade television. Perhaps I’m feeling jilted due to some pre-conceived concept that the show could actually take off, but I’m more inclined to believe my disgust is due to poor production values, shoddy actors and pathetic storylines. Investigate for yourself if you dare, but you’ve been warned!