Mutant X Episode Nitpicks (Season 2)
THE NITPICKER'S GUIDE TO MUTANT X
Nitpicking Sections: General ~ Season One ~ Season One cont'd. ~ Season Two ~ Season Two, cont'd. ~ Season Three ~ Season Three, cont'd.
SEASON TWO
by tptigger and firstmutant
Beta aid by belle-marie
Past as Prologue
This is the last Howard Chaykin episode of Mutant X, and the last appearance of Proxy Blue.
The introductory voice-over introduces Adam’s surname for the first time in the series.
Special guest star: Lisa Marcos, who plays Avaris, reappears as the lab technician we see over and over again at Broder Biochem in "Possibilities."
Emma’s non-telempathic power #13: Emma is able to see the illusions Gabriel’s putting into Shalimar’s mind, and can get rid of them with a psionic blast.
Emma's hippie mother was into magic as well as organic foods.
Jesse may have been quite the Karate Kid when he was growing up, but his baseball skills are kind of hit and miss.
In “A Breed Apart,” Adam warned the team to practice their new powers outside of Sanctuary so as not to destroy anything. Well, perhaps Emma got a little overzealous with her psionic blasts and destroyed the dojo, or maybe Brennan jet-propulsed himself through the waterfall...or maybe Adam just took a transformational class in interior design. In any case, Sanctuary’s interior has been drastically altered since the last episode: the dojo, waterfall, garden, and reflecting pool have been replaced with a small living room set, a big fake rock, a pulsating energy column, and a spiral staircase. The main computer has been divided into two workstations with two computers each, and the hangar bay and the Double Helix are also different.
Also, Emma’s hair is red now. Brennan still cheats, though, so some things never change.
The episode's title, "Past as Prologue," is the slightly altered version of Antonio's line from William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest: "We were all sea swallow'd, though some cast again, And by that destiny to perform an act Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come in yours and my discharge."
Proxy Blue is back (briefly), but with enlarged breasts and bared midriff. In fact, the entire episode seems to showcase scantily clad women, from Dr. Aziza practicing advanced genetic medicine in Gabriel's bed, to Valerie fighting Mutant X in a skirt that's barely there. Then, of course, there's Avaris cat-fighting Aziza in the vat of murky water before rising triumphant with clinging wet tee-shirt, which she must change out of immediately--while Gabriel watches. Oy.
Okay, I know she’s distracted with Gabriel in her head and everything, but you would think Shalimar would stop trying to lunge at Gabriel by now. He creates force-fields, after all. In a similar vein, later on, Gabriel repeatedly throws energy balls at Jesse, when he’s clearly massed. Didn’t work the first time, dude. It probably won’t work the third time either.
Gabriel says that he's been in the pod for twenty-five years. Presumably, he either acquired followers when he was ten years old who remained loyal for the next two and a half decades, or he recruited the members of The Strand telepathically from the pod.
Gabriel's magazine collages are straight out of a slasher film, lovely.
In the scene where Jesse leaves Emma stuck in the wall at Gabriel's house, shouldn't she have been cut in half when it re-materializes?
Also, when Jesse leaves Emma to gather Gabriel’s genetic sample, Jesse phases the wall before walking through it. Since Emma's not coming too, why doesn't he just phase himself? Perhaps after the error with Emma, he’s practicing his tactics.
Ever since the tennis ball incident in "Crime of the New Century," Brennan’s constantly playing with something in his hands whenever he talks. This irritating trend will continue into the third season.
For people who know how dangerous Gabriel is, Jesse and Brennan seem remarkably unconcerned about investigating his movements, preferring to continue their basketball game instead.
How can an electrical elemental be electrocuted? Shouldn’t that be impossible unless he’s wet?
Shalimar’s white top in this episode is identical to the one she wears in “Crossroads of the Soul,” except that one’s blue. Either these are two different shirts in a set, or someone accidentally left navy blue socks in the white load of laundry at Sanctuary one day. In “At Destiny’s End,” Shalimar will cut her losses and just dye the thing black.
How are Emma and Shalimar able to simply waltz into the ancient depths of the Egyptian pyramid without attracting any attention? And why are they the only people in the vicinity? Are the pyramids in the MXverse no longer a tourist attraction?
Remember that in the museum scene, some dude pulls the map & triangle piece out of the glass case by phasing it. It will become important in the next episode.
Why are Emma and Shalimar so frakking grossed out over the cobwebs? I mean, these girls face down GS agents, Links, and aliens with no complaints. Cobwebs?
Apparently furthering your psychopathic boyfriend's plans and therefore possibly saving his life isn't enough: you need to ask permission for everything. One wonders about the producers of this show at times.
Adam admits that his knowledge of the black arts isn’t up to par. Yet his professed lack of expertise doesn’t hinder him in the least when he announces (at first glance) that Avaris’s parchment contains extremely powerful magic.
Why does Adam, who seems to have an MD/PhD in genetics/molecular biology/whatever the buzzword in the seventies, know how to read hieroglyphics? Did he minor in super!ancient history just for grins? I'll grant you that PhDs in his time required a foreign language (and some still do), but usually they want you to learn something that the literature is published in. Not dead languages.
What on earth makes Adam think Gabriel's going to trust him, given their history? Let's review for a minute. Adam invented subdermal governors and stasis pods specifically to subdue Gabriel. Adam then locked him in a coma-like state for 25 years. When Gabriel finally escaped in “A Breed Apart,” Adam sent Mutant X after him. Adam then forces his way into Gabriel’s lair and shoots him with a device that--let’s face it--looks like a gun, saying "Trust me?" Really. Bad. Plan.
Adam just has to say something clever before he shot Ashlocke the cure? Who do you think you are, Lex Luthor? Oh, sorry. My mistake.
Gabriel’s standing at ground zero when Avaris goes supernova, but he walks into "Time Squared" without a scratch on him. As Jesse says, "I thought this guy was supposed to be sick?"
Adam tells Shalimar that he believes their growth spurts will reoccur in the future and implies that, though their DNA is more stable than Gabriel's, this will shorten their lifespan as it has his. They can't be that much more stable, though, because Jesse's expiry date comes up the very next year, two weeks before “The Assault.”
Someone should really explain to both Ashlocke and the writers that there's no such thing as genetic memory.
Why does Shalimar ask Adam for help in getting Ashlocke out of her head? I mean, Emma's the psionic for pity's sake!
Power Play
The Helix’s landing bay is made of polished marble this season.
This is the first solid mention of Adam’s government connections, and the first hint that Adam might have higher-ups to whom he answers.
The pixelated Beverly is some sort of contact of Adam's, maybe government. Perhaps (retcon?) Dominion? She will reappear with vital information in “Body and Soul” before her true identity is revealed in “Within These Walls” as Adam’s former lover, Christina.
Adam has installed a video link-up to Sanctuary in the ground cars, of which there are many more this season.
Two new uses for Brennan’s electricity: it can stop laser beams. It can also create an electrical field around Jesse while he’s phased that will prevent him from dissipating completely.
In these early days, Emma’s psionic blast is actually a physical force, not just a mental influence. The blast she throws at Gaumont’s soldier hits his midsection instead of his head, but he’s thrown backwards anyway.
Props to Shalimar and Emma in this episode for the first and last time anyone performs CPR correctly in Mutant X. Yes, that includes the doctors.
Scared!Emma from “Double Vision” makes a cameo here while Brennan’s trying to deactivate the bomb. She’ll return to harass Jesse in “Reawakening."
The EDD must have been broken at the same time as the dojo. Rather than running the usual diagnostic scan on Jesse, Adam places some glowing headphones on his head, conveniently eliminating the need for Forbes March to take off his top. Like James T. Kirk, Brennan finds that his shirts are always floating off. In contrast, Jesse only goes bare-chested in “Wasteland” and “Cirque des Merveilles,” even remaining mostly covered while Dr. Robinson performs his abdominal surgery in “In Between.”
Adam says that had Jesse been solid for even a few seconds while in contact with the nerve gas, he would have been paralyzed as the soldiers were. But Jesse did actually materialize for a few seconds while in contact with the nerve gas, so his continued survival must be due to those good ol’ new mutant antibodies (c.f. “Deadly Desire”). Either that, or the special effects crew didn't get the memo.
Why is Jesse sleeping with one leg bent like that? It looks awfully uncomfortable.
Was going stealth right before they land the Double Helix really all that stealthy? Also, how does hooking Jesse's dongle into the internet connection (T1 line) help Jesse to hack the network exactly?
Beverly says Colonel Gaumont disappeared five years prior in the Middle East, but Gaumant says he lost his men in Kyrgysztan. Since this Soviet Union state dissolved in the 1990s, perhaps he meant to say Kurdistan?
Why is Shalimar unaware of the laser defense shield guarding the premises? I mean, Brennan and Jesse watched Gaumont’s men steal the device, and Adam even took the time to warn them that it would be there.
Jesse promises Adam that he won’t take any risks...then phases three seconds after reaching the compound. Even before the nerve gas has left his system, Jesse will phase three times with no adverse effects whatsoever. It would seem that the nerve gas has a well-developed sense of dramatic timing.
Good thing that bomb is waterproof! The shower of water which incapacitates Brennan also sprays the bomb, but it doesn’t go off or short out.
It’s too bad that the team hasn’t established Emma as a backup means of long-range communication. Once the team realizes that their comlinks are turned off, it would have been nice if Emma could have simply tuned into Jesse’s thoughts in Sanctuary the way she did with Beau Longstreet in “Dark Star Rising,” and use those images to deactivate the bomb.
Emma RE: soldiers "I'll handle this." Someone's loving the active power thing.
OK, we're told that Gaumont disappeared "5 years ago", therefore, why does he know who Brennan is? I mean, he's been with the team a year. You'd think that however Gaumont got his most current information (he boasts about his security clearance when questioned), they would've known that he was around and kicking.
The display timer for the bomb clearly reads 1:20 before it's activated remotely, which is also laid out on the display before Brennan and Emma run for it. Yet Emma says, “We had three minutes left, [he] must've detonated it remotely.” Gee, ya think?
Also, when it comes to diffusing the bomb without Jesse to talk them through it, why does Brennan seem to think that telling Emma he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night would make her feel better?
In keeping with Mutant X tradition, Xeraxium is a pretty blue. Nothing blue in Mutant X is good.
Gaumont says that there's only one man in the world who can stop the meltdown, meaning Jesse. What about the guy in the last episode who phased the map and triangle thingy out of the display case? (I could see Gaumont not knowing better, but Adam, not so much.)
When Jesse pulls the cylinder from its housing he seems to have thrown caution to the wind--he hugs it close to thim. Unless that's some wicked awesome shielding that's not a good idea-- distance is key (not just Personal Protective Equipment) when handling radioactivity.
Large as the facility is, isn't it convenient that Jesse happens to be directly above his teammates when he phases through the floor?
Again, the effects team doesn't seem to be up to speed. Brennan's supposed to be creating a shield around Jesse, but it looks more like he's trying to shock his heart into working again or electrocute him or something.
When the bad guys are being vaporized, they get the radioisotope cylinder vaporized with them. What happened to the radioactivity?
And what ever happened to Gaumont’s hostages? Adam sent Shalimar and Emma to find them, but they were distracted by Brennan’s electrical mishap and never did go back to get them.
Time Squared
Adam began at Genomex in October 1978; Gabriel’s parents returned him 2 weeks later on October 13th. Adam tried to give him a conscience, but because he overlooked a weakness in chromosome 19, his treatments only caused further mutation, shortening Gabriel’s lifespan and making him more of a monster. Gabriel murdered his parents six months later, at the tender age of ten.
Gabriel has a hacking cough from when he smoked as a child. Besides having DNA of each mutant type, Gabriel also seems to have abilities from different subtypes of each mutant type. He demonstrates in this episode that in addition to the energy balls, he’s also an electrical elemental.
The first rainstorm in Mutant X occurs as Diana and Jesse are walking up to Sanctuary’s entrance.
Emma’s non-telempathic ability #14: As she enters young Adam’s Genomex lab, Emma sees impressions of what Gabriel did to Adam in the next room. Since Adam’s dead, these must either be coming from Gabriel’s mind, young Adam’s mind, or thin air.
As soon as Jesse sees Gabriel leave his house with a vial of blue liquid, he immediately knows Gabriel’s Up To No Good, since blue in Mutant X always signals something sinister. And besides, it's Gabriel.
The other cars on the highway are remarkably respectful of Gabriel and Jesse’s crazy driving. Even as they’re making high speed U-turns, everybody’s far too polite to honk or yell.
In the psych hospital, Gabriel flings an energy ball at Brennan. When it misses and hits the wooden door instead, the door suffers no adverse consequences whatsoever. They must make 'em pretty strong at the psychiatric institutions!
If Diana has to connect psionically with someone in order to send him or her back in time as she claims, how are Brennan and Shalimar able to simply jump in after Gabriel?
Brennan and Shalimar immediately leap into Diana’s vortex after Gabriel, even though neither has any idea of what it is, where they’ll end up, or how they'll get back. At least Jesse, running in seconds later, has enough sense to question Diana about where they went first.
Adam says that Gabriel's creators didn't know what kind of child he was when they gave him powers, implying that he was already a child when he became a new mutant. Yet in "A Breed Apart," Mason said that Gabriel's new mutant abilities were off the meter from the time he was born. Which is it?
As Shalimar begins tracking Gabriel’s scent the first time, it is definitely raining in the street behind Brennan. In the very next frame, the sun is shining again.
When Shalimar’s tracking Gabriel the second time, the hardware store behind her appears to be advertising white bread, while the confectionery is selling toilet paper. Go figure.
Signs that Shalimar’s been hanging around Brennan far too long: she swipes an employee's Genomex ID by pretending to bump into her, then hotwires a car. Well, Zack Lockhart did say that she didn’t wear a halo when he knew her...
Security at Genomex must be pretty lax. Adam’s lab is supposed to be a restricted area, but both Shalimar and Emma walk right in. His file cabinet, which contains sensitive patient files, isn’t even locked.
Since Shalimar didn’t get a chance to read Gabriel’s file before young Adam walked in on her, how does she know to ask him when Gabriel’s coming to Genomex?
Is it just me or was Shal the slightest bit squicked at young Adam hitting on her?
Site directed mutagenesis is an in vivo technique for changing single base pairs in DNA in vivo. Not sure how it gets into the human genome. And given what New Mutants are, they would require mastery of it to create one. *eye roll* Cure for Ashlocke? Unlikely.
If Jesse’s already suspicious of her, why does Diana get to walk right up to Sanctuary’s entrance without a visual cloak?
Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Adam to ask Diana to send him back to the hour before Gabriel leapt in, or even the day before? That would have given him enough time to warn his younger self about Gabriel’s plans.
Adam and Emma are in Sanctuary’s lab when they enter the vortex, but when they emerge in 1978, they are in the woods outside of Stormking mountain. Sanctuary is still inside the mountain, isn’t it? I mean, when Sanctuary starts to disappear after Adam’s death, Jesse and Diana find themselves trapped as the mountain grows in around them. Shouldn’t Adam and Emma have emerged in the middle of the mountain too?
Adam and Emma walk leisurely into the vortex, but come out tumbling on the other side as though they had leaped in as Shalimar and Brennan did.
Why does Sanctuary begin to disappear right after Adam's death? He had already built it years before he went into the vortex, so its existence should depend upon the continued life of his younger self, not his.
Adam warns his younger self to do the procedure and then put young!Gabriel into stasis. But young!Adam had only been working at Genomex for two weeks at that point, so the stasis pods hadn't even been invented yet.
The first time Gabriel murders Adam, young!Adam’s watching behind him. Yet when Diana takes Jesse back to replay the scene, young!Adam’s no longer there.
Gabriel’s using his powers shouldn’t be so shocking to young!Adam, since he already knows about mutants -- he's even seen what young!Gabriel is capable of. That’s the reason he was there at Genomex, working on the child in the first place.
Whose Woods These Are
Mutant X now owns a trailer! Emma’s hippie parents would approve.
Good Continuity (yeah, we were surprised too): Brennan reveals that he's not a nature boy, though Shalimar thrives in the outdoors. This point will come up again in “Wasteland.”
The episode's title, "Whose Woods These Are," is taken from the first line of Robert Frost's famous poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: "Whose woods these are I think I know."
As if to prove that Brennan’s attractiveness to the arachnid and insect families wasn’t limited to Lorna Templeton in “Deadly Desire,” every bug in the woods goes after Brennan, like moths to an electric light. And that's even after Shalimar peppermints him. Grady’s every bit as as hot and sweaty (and wounded to boot), but nothing bothers him in the least.
They might be taking that “Mutant X don’t carry guns” tenet a bit far here. Adam’s sent Brennan and Shalimar after a killer without even a stun gun to incapacitate Michael until he can be cured. As a result, the two are running about hunter-infested woods using their powers in broad daylight.
Speaking of which, when did Brennan become such an expert on tranquilizer guns?
Emma places the neural machine on Nathaniel’s head to monitor his vital signs as Adam did with Jesse in "Power Play." Looks like the EDD hasn't been fixed yet.
When Nathaniel stops breathing, Adam promptly forgets his medical training and begins frantically pushing on his chest while yelling, “Breathe!” (Honestly, I bet he's just balking at performing mouth to mouth on a mouth that looks like Nathaniel’s...but then why not pull out one of the oxygen masks from “Nothing to Fear”?)
Brennan and Shalimar may not keep adequate bug repellent in the trailer, but they seem to have needles and syringes. They “beam in” a sample of Shalimar’s blood to Adam at Sanctuary so that he can diagnose her. Since this isn’t Star Trek, I have no idea what that means.
Adam yells that Jesse should “fire up the Helix.” This is odd, considering that the Double Helix is perfectly capable of starting immediately in emergency situations, as in the next episode. This issue will come up again....actually, more often than you'd think.
Adam says that the reason they can’t reach Shalimar and Brennan’s comlinks is because of “satellite interference.” Interference from what? The trees? They’re in the middle of the woods, not a military installation.
The Future Revealed
Gabriel can project his voice through his followers and kill them with his brain (oh, yes, a Firefly ref., River fans).
By sheer coincidence, Emma’s parents used to go dancing at the very Meow Club that Gabriel decides to take over as a stronghold for The Links.
Sanctuary’s outer door is only 8 inches thick, but Jesse can’t phase through because of an electrical forcefield. There is, however, an area of the mountain where the original caves extend almost to the mountain’s wall. Since The Dominion presumably helped Adam build Sanctuary, their knowledge of this weakness might have served them well in "The Assault"...had they been paying any attention.
Jesse’s monitoring the action up in the Helix, yet he waits for Brennan's call to rescue Shalimar and Brennan. Wouldn’t the entire place erupting in fire be indicative of something not quite right?
This episode has the only other impervious molecular besides Jesse. There’s no indication that this one can also phase, though, and he seems kind of dumb. Instead of letting Brennan kick his ass with martial arts, why doesn’t he knock Brennan out with a single massed punch? As one of Gabriel’s people, nothing’s keeping him from being unsportsman-like.
Unless one of The Links can block the mutant abilities of others, it doesn’t make sense that a whole posse of them can sneak up on a feral with eyes in the back of her head and a psionic who can sense people from a half a mile away. Especially since Shalimar and Emma are already on the alert for a possible trap.
About to crash into Sanctuary, Brennan says Sanctuary’s defense shield is jamming the Helix’s controls so he can’t change the Helix’s course. Just a hint, guys, it would have been nice if Mutant X had remembered this little trick when the Dominion’s helicopters attacked Stormking Mountain in “The Assault.”
In “Past as Prologue,” Adam developed a treatment for Gabriel using DNA he got from a tissue Jesse found on the ground. But here, he tells Gabriel he can’t find a cure without a blood sample. Either he’s stalling for time, or he never really intended to cure Gabriel the first time around.
The microscope Adam’s using to look at Gabriel’s blood looks quite a bit like the one his younger self was using in “Time Squared.” Did he steal it from Genomex for sentimental reasons? Presumably there have technical advances in microscopes since 1978.
Brennan looks scandalized on learning that Adam’s made Sanctuary impermeable to them as well as everyone else. His surprise seems out of place here, given that Adam made a force-field capable of trapping them in the dojo in “Altered Ego.”
Gabriel was doing well until he committed Bad Guy Foul-Up #1, revealing the nefarious plot of doom too soon so that the heroes have an opportunity to foil it. Mason (who really should know better) will do the same in “Lest He Become”...leading to the obvious conclusion that time in a pod disables your ability to keep vitally important secrets to yourself.
Patricia explains that her barriers slow down electrons, but when Shalimar hits the barrier in frustration, her hand bounces back as though it were actually a physical shield.
There’s a good five minutes after Adam injects Gabriel where he’s lying unconscious on the biobed. Why are Brennan, Jesse, and Adam standing idly by waiting for him to wake up? That might be a good time to strengthen his sedative, give him a subdermal governor (Adam implied that there were some in Sanctuary in “Kilohertz”), or at the very least, get the heck out of Dodge!
Kim buys a mobile for her baby at the end of the episode, leaving viewers to wonder whether it's Gabriel’s child. Since Riley Morgan didn't include Kim as one of the four mutants whose DNA contributed to creating The Child later in "The Prophecy," either Kim's child was a different one, or she provided a surrogate womb for The Child's embryo. John Bishop mentions that The Child is supposed to be two years old in "The Prophecy" (though he looks much older).
No Man Left Behind
A Vietnam War fighter pilot, Brennan’s father was shot down and killed behind enemy lines in 1971 before ever meeting his son. This is one of the largest stretches for the Mutant X timeline, since Brennan, who is supposed to be in his late twenties, would actually be in his mid-thirties if he was born in 1972, unless season 2 occurred prior to 2002.
Even in the midst of a jungle war zone, the comlinks will work short-range, despite the Helix’s communications being down. Remember this.
As evidenced by Shalimar’s astounded “Is that what it feels like when you phase?”, this is the first time Jesse actually phases other people (who happen to be inside the Helix). Prior to this, Jesse phased the walls and allowed his teammates to walk through them.
This is also the only episode in which Emma demonstrates that she can broadcast emotions in a wide band, not just individually.
Adam brags that his intelligence network is better than the military’s. That may be true, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of information that one should be broadcasting publicly.
It's never explained what the phased vibrational generator actually does, though it sounds like a very dangerous device which generates vibrations of something that are in phase with...uh...something else.
General Sperling seems to know Adam pretty well. Which might explain how Colonel Aaron Gaumont knew so much about Mutant X in “Power Play”--the team doesn’t seem to be much of a secret among the military brass.
Daniel Morrison is wearing a U.S. flag on his uniform and identifies Brennan as an American, winning two points for those who say Mutant X takes place in the U.S. Of course, technically, Canada is in America. And it’s possible that Adam came from Canada to scold a United States general about the military misuse of his peaceful technology. Plus, neither Canada nor the United States has an “Office of Defense Testing.”
And no, Kovakistan isn’t a real country...that is, not outside of the internet game Nation States.
General Sperling receives an urgent communication that the plane he ordered to deliver a weapon of mass destruction was shot down in the middle of a deadly war zone. As the head of the Office of Defense Testing, his next move is to sit back in his chair and leisurely read his newspaper.
Adam sends Mutant X unarmed into a war to collect the PVG, only to become terribly anxious on noticing that their altitude is less than 1,000 feet. How did he expect them to pick up the weapon without landing? This still isn’t Star Trek, and Emma isn’t a telekinetic. Well...not that we know of, anyway. ;)
Emma says that she can sense anyone coming from half a mile away when she opens up fully, yet she’s demonstrated in earlier episodes that her range actually far exceeds a half a mile.
Martial arts master Brennan, who can singlehandedly take out 9 GS agents without using his powers, is knocked cold by one punch from Irina. Mason, you need to hire this girl!
Brennan electrocutes himself twice, seemingly forgetting both times that he is soaking wet. That near-death experience in “Power Play” really took a toll on his brain function.
When Emma senses approaching government troops, Jesse says he can put the Helix into stealth until they’ve passed. But a little later, he’ll tell Adam that “the stealth systems are still down.”
As Shalimar's in the jungle, crawling through a tangle of rusty barbed wire in her half-a-shirt, we can only hope she’s had her tetanus shot.
Crossroads of the Soul
Special guest star: Bree Williamson (Miranda Davis) will go on to play Forbes March's girlfriend Tess/Jessica on the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live."
Sanctuary's computer automatically logs all incoming and outgoing calls.
The first six digits of Sanctuary’s phone number are (754) 245. 745 is a Florida area code, though it's unlikely that Sanctuary's located in Florida (note the snow in "Inferno" and "Reality Check").
Perhaps made more cautious by his near-death experience in this episode, this is the last time Brennan uses his jet powers.
Emma states that she grew up in Seattle, though it isn't said whether this is with her real parents or her foster parents.
Adam's final line, "O brave new world" comes from Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest, where Miranda exclaims, "O brave new world That has such people in't!"
Miranda says that Brennan’s clothes "were damaged in the storm," showing that she knew there had been a storm the night before. The electronic bubble, therefore, can block the townspeople from seeing the sky (including airplanes, as Brennan notes), but doesn't shield the town from the elements.
Why would the electronic bubble prevent Brennan’s abilities from working? The force-field may block out the outside world, but the town has working lights, proving that other electrical things inside of it still function.
The people of New Hope have supposedly been out of contact with the real world for over a hundred years, but aside from Miranda's not understanding Brennan's "your town is seriously whacked," their speech has evolved much as it has in the world around them. Besides, Miranda's got a Canadian accent.
Leaving his views in "Whose Woods These Are" on 'satellite interference' by the wayside, Adam says the storm wouldn’t explain why Brennan’s comlink didn’t work.
The Double Helix, which nearly crashed while reversing Ashley Elliot's electrical current in "Lit Fuse," suffers no negative effects while carrying "a billion volts" in an iodide-induced lightning storm. Adam must have made some serious adjustments.
Brennan encourages Miranda to call him when she’s ready to leave New Hope. With Brennan and Jesse giving out their phone number to every pretty girl they see, is it any wonder that everyone knows how to reach Sanctuary’s private line?
We never do find out what happened to that missing shipment of medical supplies that Shalimar, Jesse, and Emma were trying to find in the first place.
Sign from Above
Blessed be, it’s a Jesse episode! Or it was for five minutes until Emma admonished him for grieving over his lost girlfriend. From then on, the focus shifted into a rescue-Shalimar/Emma-love story.
This is the first mention of what happened to the new mutants in stasis after Genomex's demise: Bergman says that the government found bodies of new mutants after the “Genomex debacle.”
Adam explains Jesse's inability to find Kyle in the database by saying that there were a lot of secret experiments done at Genomex that he didn’t know about.
Amanda’s the first new mutant we see who is not in the underground, but living out a normal life in the real world.
For someone whose sole mission is to help new mutants, Adam looks terribly annoyed when J.K. (just kidding!) Bergman asks him to identify the three who were killed.
When Brennan and Jesse hit a brick wall while chasing after the aliens carrying Shalimar, where did the aliens go? Was their mother ship waiting to beam them up, or can they teleport?
None of that lame sugar-coating for Adam, he tells Jesse straight out that his girlfriend’s spinal fluid was sucked dry. A little tact, man!
The ectomorphic restraints around Shalimar are blue. Blue is never good in Mutant X.
Kyle says there were others in the warehouse with him, yet he knows right away that Mutant X have come looking for “the girl, the feral.” Is he referring to Shalimar, or to Amanda?
Also, Kyle told them that the aliens were on their way to Mercy General Hospital for “another run.” So how do Brennan and Jesse end up in the basement at Bellvue Hospital?
It seems a bit pointless to have Sanctuary's computer set off an alarm when it senses unauthorized database access if the system doesn't prevent the intruder from changing the passcodes at the same time.
Jesse, apparently forgetting that he’s a molecular, joins Brennan in ineffectively tugging on Shalimar’s neck brace. Why doesn’t he just phase the neck brace so that the poor girl can get out?
And later, when they’re all trapped, if Jesse can’t phase the ectomorphic restraints, why not just phase himself so that he falls through the bed, rather than massing and breaking the bed, which sets off the alarms?
When Emma’s boyfriend dies in “At Destiny’s End,” everyone flocks around her to share her grief. When Brennan has to leave Connor and Becky in “The Grift,” they’re all there to cheer him up. When Shalimar has to kill Nikki in self-defense in "Understudy," it’s a group hug moment. But when Jesse’s girlfriend dies, no one seems to care about Jesse’s feelings but Shalimar. That’s kind of depressing.
Emma informs Kyle that they monitor political events and some happenings that only make sense to Adam. I guess this is TPTB's attempt to explain away some of the odd assignments Mutant X seem to be taking this season: investigating mysterious park deaths in "Whose Woods These Are" before they discover the killer is a feral, investigating Billy Larkin’s fires in "Inferno" before they are certain that they were mutant-induced, getting the PVG in Kovakistan rather than leaving it to the military in "No Man Left Behind," protecting Senator Morrison’s daughter in "One Step Closer" and Vic Morelli for his testimony in "Once Around".... These missions wouldn't have fallen under the purview of Mutant X as we knew it last season, where their focus was primarily on mutants. With the demise of both Genomex and Proxy Blue, Mutant X has to decide what to get involved in for themselves--read "at Adam's discretion."
Nitpicking Sections: General ~ Season One ~ Season One cont'd. ~ Season Two ~ Season Two, cont'd. ~ Season Three ~ Season Three, cont'd.
SEASON TWO
by tptigger and firstmutant
Beta aid by belle-marie
Past as Prologue
This is the last Howard Chaykin episode of Mutant X, and the last appearance of Proxy Blue.
The introductory voice-over introduces Adam’s surname for the first time in the series.
Special guest star: Lisa Marcos, who plays Avaris, reappears as the lab technician we see over and over again at Broder Biochem in "Possibilities."
Emma’s non-telempathic power #13: Emma is able to see the illusions Gabriel’s putting into Shalimar’s mind, and can get rid of them with a psionic blast.
Emma's hippie mother was into magic as well as organic foods.
Jesse may have been quite the Karate Kid when he was growing up, but his baseball skills are kind of hit and miss.
In “A Breed Apart,” Adam warned the team to practice their new powers outside of Sanctuary so as not to destroy anything. Well, perhaps Emma got a little overzealous with her psionic blasts and destroyed the dojo, or maybe Brennan jet-propulsed himself through the waterfall...or maybe Adam just took a transformational class in interior design. In any case, Sanctuary’s interior has been drastically altered since the last episode: the dojo, waterfall, garden, and reflecting pool have been replaced with a small living room set, a big fake rock, a pulsating energy column, and a spiral staircase. The main computer has been divided into two workstations with two computers each, and the hangar bay and the Double Helix are also different.
Also, Emma’s hair is red now. Brennan still cheats, though, so some things never change.
The episode's title, "Past as Prologue," is the slightly altered version of Antonio's line from William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest: "We were all sea swallow'd, though some cast again, And by that destiny to perform an act Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come in yours and my discharge."
Proxy Blue is back (briefly), but with enlarged breasts and bared midriff. In fact, the entire episode seems to showcase scantily clad women, from Dr. Aziza practicing advanced genetic medicine in Gabriel's bed, to Valerie fighting Mutant X in a skirt that's barely there. Then, of course, there's Avaris cat-fighting Aziza in the vat of murky water before rising triumphant with clinging wet tee-shirt, which she must change out of immediately--while Gabriel watches. Oy.
Okay, I know she’s distracted with Gabriel in her head and everything, but you would think Shalimar would stop trying to lunge at Gabriel by now. He creates force-fields, after all. In a similar vein, later on, Gabriel repeatedly throws energy balls at Jesse, when he’s clearly massed. Didn’t work the first time, dude. It probably won’t work the third time either.
Gabriel says that he's been in the pod for twenty-five years. Presumably, he either acquired followers when he was ten years old who remained loyal for the next two and a half decades, or he recruited the members of The Strand telepathically from the pod.
Gabriel's magazine collages are straight out of a slasher film, lovely.
In the scene where Jesse leaves Emma stuck in the wall at Gabriel's house, shouldn't she have been cut in half when it re-materializes?
Also, when Jesse leaves Emma to gather Gabriel’s genetic sample, Jesse phases the wall before walking through it. Since Emma's not coming too, why doesn't he just phase himself? Perhaps after the error with Emma, he’s practicing his tactics.
Ever since the tennis ball incident in "Crime of the New Century," Brennan’s constantly playing with something in his hands whenever he talks. This irritating trend will continue into the third season.
For people who know how dangerous Gabriel is, Jesse and Brennan seem remarkably unconcerned about investigating his movements, preferring to continue their basketball game instead.
How can an electrical elemental be electrocuted? Shouldn’t that be impossible unless he’s wet?
Shalimar’s white top in this episode is identical to the one she wears in “Crossroads of the Soul,” except that one’s blue. Either these are two different shirts in a set, or someone accidentally left navy blue socks in the white load of laundry at Sanctuary one day. In “At Destiny’s End,” Shalimar will cut her losses and just dye the thing black.
How are Emma and Shalimar able to simply waltz into the ancient depths of the Egyptian pyramid without attracting any attention? And why are they the only people in the vicinity? Are the pyramids in the MXverse no longer a tourist attraction?
Remember that in the museum scene, some dude pulls the map & triangle piece out of the glass case by phasing it. It will become important in the next episode.
Why are Emma and Shalimar so frakking grossed out over the cobwebs? I mean, these girls face down GS agents, Links, and aliens with no complaints. Cobwebs?
Apparently furthering your psychopathic boyfriend's plans and therefore possibly saving his life isn't enough: you need to ask permission for everything. One wonders about the producers of this show at times.
Adam admits that his knowledge of the black arts isn’t up to par. Yet his professed lack of expertise doesn’t hinder him in the least when he announces (at first glance) that Avaris’s parchment contains extremely powerful magic.
Why does Adam, who seems to have an MD/PhD in genetics/molecular biology/whatever the buzzword in the seventies, know how to read hieroglyphics? Did he minor in super!ancient history just for grins? I'll grant you that PhDs in his time required a foreign language (and some still do), but usually they want you to learn something that the literature is published in. Not dead languages.
What on earth makes Adam think Gabriel's going to trust him, given their history? Let's review for a minute. Adam invented subdermal governors and stasis pods specifically to subdue Gabriel. Adam then locked him in a coma-like state for 25 years. When Gabriel finally escaped in “A Breed Apart,” Adam sent Mutant X after him. Adam then forces his way into Gabriel’s lair and shoots him with a device that--let’s face it--looks like a gun, saying "Trust me?" Really. Bad. Plan.
Adam just has to say something clever before he shot Ashlocke the cure? Who do you think you are, Lex Luthor? Oh, sorry. My mistake.
Gabriel’s standing at ground zero when Avaris goes supernova, but he walks into "Time Squared" without a scratch on him. As Jesse says, "I thought this guy was supposed to be sick?"
Adam tells Shalimar that he believes their growth spurts will reoccur in the future and implies that, though their DNA is more stable than Gabriel's, this will shorten their lifespan as it has his. They can't be that much more stable, though, because Jesse's expiry date comes up the very next year, two weeks before “The Assault.”
Someone should really explain to both Ashlocke and the writers that there's no such thing as genetic memory.
Why does Shalimar ask Adam for help in getting Ashlocke out of her head? I mean, Emma's the psionic for pity's sake!
Power Play
The Helix’s landing bay is made of polished marble this season.
This is the first solid mention of Adam’s government connections, and the first hint that Adam might have higher-ups to whom he answers.
The pixelated Beverly is some sort of contact of Adam's, maybe government. Perhaps (retcon?) Dominion? She will reappear with vital information in “Body and Soul” before her true identity is revealed in “Within These Walls” as Adam’s former lover, Christina.
Adam has installed a video link-up to Sanctuary in the ground cars, of which there are many more this season.
Two new uses for Brennan’s electricity: it can stop laser beams. It can also create an electrical field around Jesse while he’s phased that will prevent him from dissipating completely.
In these early days, Emma’s psionic blast is actually a physical force, not just a mental influence. The blast she throws at Gaumont’s soldier hits his midsection instead of his head, but he’s thrown backwards anyway.
Props to Shalimar and Emma in this episode for the first and last time anyone performs CPR correctly in Mutant X. Yes, that includes the doctors.
Scared!Emma from “Double Vision” makes a cameo here while Brennan’s trying to deactivate the bomb. She’ll return to harass Jesse in “Reawakening."
The EDD must have been broken at the same time as the dojo. Rather than running the usual diagnostic scan on Jesse, Adam places some glowing headphones on his head, conveniently eliminating the need for Forbes March to take off his top. Like James T. Kirk, Brennan finds that his shirts are always floating off. In contrast, Jesse only goes bare-chested in “Wasteland” and “Cirque des Merveilles,” even remaining mostly covered while Dr. Robinson performs his abdominal surgery in “In Between.”
Adam says that had Jesse been solid for even a few seconds while in contact with the nerve gas, he would have been paralyzed as the soldiers were. But Jesse did actually materialize for a few seconds while in contact with the nerve gas, so his continued survival must be due to those good ol’ new mutant antibodies (c.f. “Deadly Desire”). Either that, or the special effects crew didn't get the memo.
Why is Jesse sleeping with one leg bent like that? It looks awfully uncomfortable.
Was going stealth right before they land the Double Helix really all that stealthy? Also, how does hooking Jesse's dongle into the internet connection (T1 line) help Jesse to hack the network exactly?
Beverly says Colonel Gaumont disappeared five years prior in the Middle East, but Gaumant says he lost his men in Kyrgysztan. Since this Soviet Union state dissolved in the 1990s, perhaps he meant to say Kurdistan?
Why is Shalimar unaware of the laser defense shield guarding the premises? I mean, Brennan and Jesse watched Gaumont’s men steal the device, and Adam even took the time to warn them that it would be there.
Jesse promises Adam that he won’t take any risks...then phases three seconds after reaching the compound. Even before the nerve gas has left his system, Jesse will phase three times with no adverse effects whatsoever. It would seem that the nerve gas has a well-developed sense of dramatic timing.
Good thing that bomb is waterproof! The shower of water which incapacitates Brennan also sprays the bomb, but it doesn’t go off or short out.
It’s too bad that the team hasn’t established Emma as a backup means of long-range communication. Once the team realizes that their comlinks are turned off, it would have been nice if Emma could have simply tuned into Jesse’s thoughts in Sanctuary the way she did with Beau Longstreet in “Dark Star Rising,” and use those images to deactivate the bomb.
Emma RE: soldiers "I'll handle this." Someone's loving the active power thing.
OK, we're told that Gaumont disappeared "5 years ago", therefore, why does he know who Brennan is? I mean, he's been with the team a year. You'd think that however Gaumont got his most current information (he boasts about his security clearance when questioned), they would've known that he was around and kicking.
The display timer for the bomb clearly reads 1:20 before it's activated remotely, which is also laid out on the display before Brennan and Emma run for it. Yet Emma says, “We had three minutes left, [he] must've detonated it remotely.” Gee, ya think?
Also, when it comes to diffusing the bomb without Jesse to talk them through it, why does Brennan seem to think that telling Emma he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night would make her feel better?
In keeping with Mutant X tradition, Xeraxium is a pretty blue. Nothing blue in Mutant X is good.
Gaumont says that there's only one man in the world who can stop the meltdown, meaning Jesse. What about the guy in the last episode who phased the map and triangle thingy out of the display case? (I could see Gaumont not knowing better, but Adam, not so much.)
When Jesse pulls the cylinder from its housing he seems to have thrown caution to the wind--he hugs it close to thim. Unless that's some wicked awesome shielding that's not a good idea-- distance is key (not just Personal Protective Equipment) when handling radioactivity.
Large as the facility is, isn't it convenient that Jesse happens to be directly above his teammates when he phases through the floor?
Again, the effects team doesn't seem to be up to speed. Brennan's supposed to be creating a shield around Jesse, but it looks more like he's trying to shock his heart into working again or electrocute him or something.
When the bad guys are being vaporized, they get the radioisotope cylinder vaporized with them. What happened to the radioactivity?
And what ever happened to Gaumont’s hostages? Adam sent Shalimar and Emma to find them, but they were distracted by Brennan’s electrical mishap and never did go back to get them.
Time Squared
Adam began at Genomex in October 1978; Gabriel’s parents returned him 2 weeks later on October 13th. Adam tried to give him a conscience, but because he overlooked a weakness in chromosome 19, his treatments only caused further mutation, shortening Gabriel’s lifespan and making him more of a monster. Gabriel murdered his parents six months later, at the tender age of ten.
Gabriel has a hacking cough from when he smoked as a child. Besides having DNA of each mutant type, Gabriel also seems to have abilities from different subtypes of each mutant type. He demonstrates in this episode that in addition to the energy balls, he’s also an electrical elemental.
The first rainstorm in Mutant X occurs as Diana and Jesse are walking up to Sanctuary’s entrance.
Emma’s non-telempathic ability #14: As she enters young Adam’s Genomex lab, Emma sees impressions of what Gabriel did to Adam in the next room. Since Adam’s dead, these must either be coming from Gabriel’s mind, young Adam’s mind, or thin air.
As soon as Jesse sees Gabriel leave his house with a vial of blue liquid, he immediately knows Gabriel’s Up To No Good, since blue in Mutant X always signals something sinister. And besides, it's Gabriel.
The other cars on the highway are remarkably respectful of Gabriel and Jesse’s crazy driving. Even as they’re making high speed U-turns, everybody’s far too polite to honk or yell.
In the psych hospital, Gabriel flings an energy ball at Brennan. When it misses and hits the wooden door instead, the door suffers no adverse consequences whatsoever. They must make 'em pretty strong at the psychiatric institutions!
If Diana has to connect psionically with someone in order to send him or her back in time as she claims, how are Brennan and Shalimar able to simply jump in after Gabriel?
Brennan and Shalimar immediately leap into Diana’s vortex after Gabriel, even though neither has any idea of what it is, where they’ll end up, or how they'll get back. At least Jesse, running in seconds later, has enough sense to question Diana about where they went first.
Adam says that Gabriel's creators didn't know what kind of child he was when they gave him powers, implying that he was already a child when he became a new mutant. Yet in "A Breed Apart," Mason said that Gabriel's new mutant abilities were off the meter from the time he was born. Which is it?
As Shalimar begins tracking Gabriel’s scent the first time, it is definitely raining in the street behind Brennan. In the very next frame, the sun is shining again.
When Shalimar’s tracking Gabriel the second time, the hardware store behind her appears to be advertising white bread, while the confectionery is selling toilet paper. Go figure.
Signs that Shalimar’s been hanging around Brennan far too long: she swipes an employee's Genomex ID by pretending to bump into her, then hotwires a car. Well, Zack Lockhart did say that she didn’t wear a halo when he knew her...
Security at Genomex must be pretty lax. Adam’s lab is supposed to be a restricted area, but both Shalimar and Emma walk right in. His file cabinet, which contains sensitive patient files, isn’t even locked.
Since Shalimar didn’t get a chance to read Gabriel’s file before young Adam walked in on her, how does she know to ask him when Gabriel’s coming to Genomex?
Is it just me or was Shal the slightest bit squicked at young Adam hitting on her?
Site directed mutagenesis is an in vivo technique for changing single base pairs in DNA in vivo. Not sure how it gets into the human genome. And given what New Mutants are, they would require mastery of it to create one. *eye roll* Cure for Ashlocke? Unlikely.
If Jesse’s already suspicious of her, why does Diana get to walk right up to Sanctuary’s entrance without a visual cloak?
Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Adam to ask Diana to send him back to the hour before Gabriel leapt in, or even the day before? That would have given him enough time to warn his younger self about Gabriel’s plans.
Adam and Emma are in Sanctuary’s lab when they enter the vortex, but when they emerge in 1978, they are in the woods outside of Stormking mountain. Sanctuary is still inside the mountain, isn’t it? I mean, when Sanctuary starts to disappear after Adam’s death, Jesse and Diana find themselves trapped as the mountain grows in around them. Shouldn’t Adam and Emma have emerged in the middle of the mountain too?
Adam and Emma walk leisurely into the vortex, but come out tumbling on the other side as though they had leaped in as Shalimar and Brennan did.
Why does Sanctuary begin to disappear right after Adam's death? He had already built it years before he went into the vortex, so its existence should depend upon the continued life of his younger self, not his.
Adam warns his younger self to do the procedure and then put young!Gabriel into stasis. But young!Adam had only been working at Genomex for two weeks at that point, so the stasis pods hadn't even been invented yet.
The first time Gabriel murders Adam, young!Adam’s watching behind him. Yet when Diana takes Jesse back to replay the scene, young!Adam’s no longer there.
Gabriel’s using his powers shouldn’t be so shocking to young!Adam, since he already knows about mutants -- he's even seen what young!Gabriel is capable of. That’s the reason he was there at Genomex, working on the child in the first place.
Whose Woods These Are
Mutant X now owns a trailer! Emma’s hippie parents would approve.
Good Continuity (yeah, we were surprised too): Brennan reveals that he's not a nature boy, though Shalimar thrives in the outdoors. This point will come up again in “Wasteland.”
The episode's title, "Whose Woods These Are," is taken from the first line of Robert Frost's famous poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: "Whose woods these are I think I know."
As if to prove that Brennan’s attractiveness to the arachnid and insect families wasn’t limited to Lorna Templeton in “Deadly Desire,” every bug in the woods goes after Brennan, like moths to an electric light. And that's even after Shalimar peppermints him. Grady’s every bit as as hot and sweaty (and wounded to boot), but nothing bothers him in the least.
They might be taking that “Mutant X don’t carry guns” tenet a bit far here. Adam’s sent Brennan and Shalimar after a killer without even a stun gun to incapacitate Michael until he can be cured. As a result, the two are running about hunter-infested woods using their powers in broad daylight.
Speaking of which, when did Brennan become such an expert on tranquilizer guns?
Emma places the neural machine on Nathaniel’s head to monitor his vital signs as Adam did with Jesse in "Power Play." Looks like the EDD hasn't been fixed yet.
When Nathaniel stops breathing, Adam promptly forgets his medical training and begins frantically pushing on his chest while yelling, “Breathe!” (Honestly, I bet he's just balking at performing mouth to mouth on a mouth that looks like Nathaniel’s...but then why not pull out one of the oxygen masks from “Nothing to Fear”?)
Brennan and Shalimar may not keep adequate bug repellent in the trailer, but they seem to have needles and syringes. They “beam in” a sample of Shalimar’s blood to Adam at Sanctuary so that he can diagnose her. Since this isn’t Star Trek, I have no idea what that means.
Adam yells that Jesse should “fire up the Helix.” This is odd, considering that the Double Helix is perfectly capable of starting immediately in emergency situations, as in the next episode. This issue will come up again....actually, more often than you'd think.
Adam says that the reason they can’t reach Shalimar and Brennan’s comlinks is because of “satellite interference.” Interference from what? The trees? They’re in the middle of the woods, not a military installation.
The Future Revealed
Gabriel can project his voice through his followers and kill them with his brain (oh, yes, a Firefly ref., River fans).
By sheer coincidence, Emma’s parents used to go dancing at the very Meow Club that Gabriel decides to take over as a stronghold for The Links.
Sanctuary’s outer door is only 8 inches thick, but Jesse can’t phase through because of an electrical forcefield. There is, however, an area of the mountain where the original caves extend almost to the mountain’s wall. Since The Dominion presumably helped Adam build Sanctuary, their knowledge of this weakness might have served them well in "The Assault"...had they been paying any attention.
Jesse’s monitoring the action up in the Helix, yet he waits for Brennan's call to rescue Shalimar and Brennan. Wouldn’t the entire place erupting in fire be indicative of something not quite right?
This episode has the only other impervious molecular besides Jesse. There’s no indication that this one can also phase, though, and he seems kind of dumb. Instead of letting Brennan kick his ass with martial arts, why doesn’t he knock Brennan out with a single massed punch? As one of Gabriel’s people, nothing’s keeping him from being unsportsman-like.
Unless one of The Links can block the mutant abilities of others, it doesn’t make sense that a whole posse of them can sneak up on a feral with eyes in the back of her head and a psionic who can sense people from a half a mile away. Especially since Shalimar and Emma are already on the alert for a possible trap.
About to crash into Sanctuary, Brennan says Sanctuary’s defense shield is jamming the Helix’s controls so he can’t change the Helix’s course. Just a hint, guys, it would have been nice if Mutant X had remembered this little trick when the Dominion’s helicopters attacked Stormking Mountain in “The Assault.”
In “Past as Prologue,” Adam developed a treatment for Gabriel using DNA he got from a tissue Jesse found on the ground. But here, he tells Gabriel he can’t find a cure without a blood sample. Either he’s stalling for time, or he never really intended to cure Gabriel the first time around.
The microscope Adam’s using to look at Gabriel’s blood looks quite a bit like the one his younger self was using in “Time Squared.” Did he steal it from Genomex for sentimental reasons? Presumably there have technical advances in microscopes since 1978.
Brennan looks scandalized on learning that Adam’s made Sanctuary impermeable to them as well as everyone else. His surprise seems out of place here, given that Adam made a force-field capable of trapping them in the dojo in “Altered Ego.”
Gabriel was doing well until he committed Bad Guy Foul-Up #1, revealing the nefarious plot of doom too soon so that the heroes have an opportunity to foil it. Mason (who really should know better) will do the same in “Lest He Become”...leading to the obvious conclusion that time in a pod disables your ability to keep vitally important secrets to yourself.
Patricia explains that her barriers slow down electrons, but when Shalimar hits the barrier in frustration, her hand bounces back as though it were actually a physical shield.
There’s a good five minutes after Adam injects Gabriel where he’s lying unconscious on the biobed. Why are Brennan, Jesse, and Adam standing idly by waiting for him to wake up? That might be a good time to strengthen his sedative, give him a subdermal governor (Adam implied that there were some in Sanctuary in “Kilohertz”), or at the very least, get the heck out of Dodge!
Kim buys a mobile for her baby at the end of the episode, leaving viewers to wonder whether it's Gabriel’s child. Since Riley Morgan didn't include Kim as one of the four mutants whose DNA contributed to creating The Child later in "The Prophecy," either Kim's child was a different one, or she provided a surrogate womb for The Child's embryo. John Bishop mentions that The Child is supposed to be two years old in "The Prophecy" (though he looks much older).
No Man Left Behind
A Vietnam War fighter pilot, Brennan’s father was shot down and killed behind enemy lines in 1971 before ever meeting his son. This is one of the largest stretches for the Mutant X timeline, since Brennan, who is supposed to be in his late twenties, would actually be in his mid-thirties if he was born in 1972, unless season 2 occurred prior to 2002.
Even in the midst of a jungle war zone, the comlinks will work short-range, despite the Helix’s communications being down. Remember this.
As evidenced by Shalimar’s astounded “Is that what it feels like when you phase?”, this is the first time Jesse actually phases other people (who happen to be inside the Helix). Prior to this, Jesse phased the walls and allowed his teammates to walk through them.
This is also the only episode in which Emma demonstrates that she can broadcast emotions in a wide band, not just individually.
Adam brags that his intelligence network is better than the military’s. That may be true, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of information that one should be broadcasting publicly.
It's never explained what the phased vibrational generator actually does, though it sounds like a very dangerous device which generates vibrations of something that are in phase with...uh...something else.
General Sperling seems to know Adam pretty well. Which might explain how Colonel Aaron Gaumont knew so much about Mutant X in “Power Play”--the team doesn’t seem to be much of a secret among the military brass.
Daniel Morrison is wearing a U.S. flag on his uniform and identifies Brennan as an American, winning two points for those who say Mutant X takes place in the U.S. Of course, technically, Canada is in America. And it’s possible that Adam came from Canada to scold a United States general about the military misuse of his peaceful technology. Plus, neither Canada nor the United States has an “Office of Defense Testing.”
And no, Kovakistan isn’t a real country...that is, not outside of the internet game Nation States.
General Sperling receives an urgent communication that the plane he ordered to deliver a weapon of mass destruction was shot down in the middle of a deadly war zone. As the head of the Office of Defense Testing, his next move is to sit back in his chair and leisurely read his newspaper.
Adam sends Mutant X unarmed into a war to collect the PVG, only to become terribly anxious on noticing that their altitude is less than 1,000 feet. How did he expect them to pick up the weapon without landing? This still isn’t Star Trek, and Emma isn’t a telekinetic. Well...not that we know of, anyway. ;)
Emma says that she can sense anyone coming from half a mile away when she opens up fully, yet she’s demonstrated in earlier episodes that her range actually far exceeds a half a mile.
Martial arts master Brennan, who can singlehandedly take out 9 GS agents without using his powers, is knocked cold by one punch from Irina. Mason, you need to hire this girl!
Brennan electrocutes himself twice, seemingly forgetting both times that he is soaking wet. That near-death experience in “Power Play” really took a toll on his brain function.
When Emma senses approaching government troops, Jesse says he can put the Helix into stealth until they’ve passed. But a little later, he’ll tell Adam that “the stealth systems are still down.”
As Shalimar's in the jungle, crawling through a tangle of rusty barbed wire in her half-a-shirt, we can only hope she’s had her tetanus shot.
Crossroads of the Soul
Special guest star: Bree Williamson (Miranda Davis) will go on to play Forbes March's girlfriend Tess/Jessica on the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live."
Sanctuary's computer automatically logs all incoming and outgoing calls.
The first six digits of Sanctuary’s phone number are (754) 245. 745 is a Florida area code, though it's unlikely that Sanctuary's located in Florida (note the snow in "Inferno" and "Reality Check").
Perhaps made more cautious by his near-death experience in this episode, this is the last time Brennan uses his jet powers.
Emma states that she grew up in Seattle, though it isn't said whether this is with her real parents or her foster parents.
Adam's final line, "O brave new world" comes from Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest, where Miranda exclaims, "O brave new world That has such people in't!"
Miranda says that Brennan’s clothes "were damaged in the storm," showing that she knew there had been a storm the night before. The electronic bubble, therefore, can block the townspeople from seeing the sky (including airplanes, as Brennan notes), but doesn't shield the town from the elements.
Why would the electronic bubble prevent Brennan’s abilities from working? The force-field may block out the outside world, but the town has working lights, proving that other electrical things inside of it still function.
The people of New Hope have supposedly been out of contact with the real world for over a hundred years, but aside from Miranda's not understanding Brennan's "your town is seriously whacked," their speech has evolved much as it has in the world around them. Besides, Miranda's got a Canadian accent.
Leaving his views in "Whose Woods These Are" on 'satellite interference' by the wayside, Adam says the storm wouldn’t explain why Brennan’s comlink didn’t work.
The Double Helix, which nearly crashed while reversing Ashley Elliot's electrical current in "Lit Fuse," suffers no negative effects while carrying "a billion volts" in an iodide-induced lightning storm. Adam must have made some serious adjustments.
Brennan encourages Miranda to call him when she’s ready to leave New Hope. With Brennan and Jesse giving out their phone number to every pretty girl they see, is it any wonder that everyone knows how to reach Sanctuary’s private line?
We never do find out what happened to that missing shipment of medical supplies that Shalimar, Jesse, and Emma were trying to find in the first place.
Sign from Above
Blessed be, it’s a Jesse episode! Or it was for five minutes until Emma admonished him for grieving over his lost girlfriend. From then on, the focus shifted into a rescue-Shalimar/Emma-love story.
This is the first mention of what happened to the new mutants in stasis after Genomex's demise: Bergman says that the government found bodies of new mutants after the “Genomex debacle.”
Adam explains Jesse's inability to find Kyle in the database by saying that there were a lot of secret experiments done at Genomex that he didn’t know about.
Amanda’s the first new mutant we see who is not in the underground, but living out a normal life in the real world.
For someone whose sole mission is to help new mutants, Adam looks terribly annoyed when J.K. (just kidding!) Bergman asks him to identify the three who were killed.
When Brennan and Jesse hit a brick wall while chasing after the aliens carrying Shalimar, where did the aliens go? Was their mother ship waiting to beam them up, or can they teleport?
None of that lame sugar-coating for Adam, he tells Jesse straight out that his girlfriend’s spinal fluid was sucked dry. A little tact, man!
The ectomorphic restraints around Shalimar are blue. Blue is never good in Mutant X.
Kyle says there were others in the warehouse with him, yet he knows right away that Mutant X have come looking for “the girl, the feral.” Is he referring to Shalimar, or to Amanda?
Also, Kyle told them that the aliens were on their way to Mercy General Hospital for “another run.” So how do Brennan and Jesse end up in the basement at Bellvue Hospital?
It seems a bit pointless to have Sanctuary's computer set off an alarm when it senses unauthorized database access if the system doesn't prevent the intruder from changing the passcodes at the same time.
Jesse, apparently forgetting that he’s a molecular, joins Brennan in ineffectively tugging on Shalimar’s neck brace. Why doesn’t he just phase the neck brace so that the poor girl can get out?
And later, when they’re all trapped, if Jesse can’t phase the ectomorphic restraints, why not just phase himself so that he falls through the bed, rather than massing and breaking the bed, which sets off the alarms?
When Emma’s boyfriend dies in “At Destiny’s End,” everyone flocks around her to share her grief. When Brennan has to leave Connor and Becky in “The Grift,” they’re all there to cheer him up. When Shalimar has to kill Nikki in self-defense in "Understudy," it’s a group hug moment. But when Jesse’s girlfriend dies, no one seems to care about Jesse’s feelings but Shalimar. That’s kind of depressing.
Emma informs Kyle that they monitor political events and some happenings that only make sense to Adam. I guess this is TPTB's attempt to explain away some of the odd assignments Mutant X seem to be taking this season: investigating mysterious park deaths in "Whose Woods These Are" before they discover the killer is a feral, investigating Billy Larkin’s fires in "Inferno" before they are certain that they were mutant-induced, getting the PVG in Kovakistan rather than leaving it to the military in "No Man Left Behind," protecting Senator Morrison’s daughter in "One Step Closer" and Vic Morelli for his testimony in "Once Around".... These missions wouldn't have fallen under the purview of Mutant X as we knew it last season, where their focus was primarily on mutants. With the demise of both Genomex and Proxy Blue, Mutant X has to decide what to get involved in for themselves--read "at Adam's discretion."