Whose Woods These Are
Mutant X Episode Synopses
Whose Woods These Are: Episode #204. [ Transcript]
Tag: The Mutant X team heads into the wilderness to stop a beast that has been killing hikers.
Cast & Crew: Written by Darell Fetty; Directed by Jorge Montesi
Angela Besharah.... Stacy
Drew Coombs.... Matt
Noah Danby.... The Beast/Michael Ward
Brad Garrick.... Nathaniel Block
Scott Hylands.... Clay Preston
Jeff Wincott.... Grady Colt
Official Synopsis: Shalimar (Victoria Pratt) and Brennan (Victor Webster) head to the Wilderness Base Camp in the Great Smokies to investigate the mysterious death of four hikers. Elsewhere in the forest, two teenagers are suddenly attacked by the creature but luckily, their video camera records the attack. Back at the base, Shalimar’s feral eyes flash gold as she hears screams and howling in the distance. Later at Sanctuary, Emma (Lauren Lee Smith), Jesse (Forbes March) and Adam (John Shea) review the teenagers’ footage while Brennan and Shalimar watch it simultaneously on a monitor in a high-tech motor home. Adam and Shalimar are convinced that the creature must be a mutant. When Shalimar and Brennan run into a man named Clay Preston (Scott Hylands), who is armed with a loaded rifle that he’s planning to use to kill the beast, they pretend to be animal rights activists and warn Preston of the dangerous nature of his mission. As they move deeper into the forest, they meet Grady Colt (Jeff Wincott), who claims to be a cryptozoologist researching a new species of animal. Meanwhile at Sanctuary, Jesse and Emma uncover a police record that had been deleted. The report reveals that another victim, Nathaniel Block (Brad Garrick), had also been attacked, but survived and is being treated at Veterans Hospital. Back in the wilderness, Shalimar’s connection with the beast grows more intense as she and Brennan get closer to it. When Brennan heads down a trail to investigate, Shalimar suddenly finds herself face to face with the beast. She instinctively attacks the creature, but to no avail. Realizing that Shalimar is in trouble, both Brennan and Grady, who’s armed with a futuristic handgun, rush to her aid. They find her lying in the brush with a deep gash across her stomach. Just as Brennan hits the beast with a bolt of electricity, it turns and races off into the woods. Arriving at Veterans Hospital, Jesse and Emma phase through the wall and use telepathic suggestion to sneak past the guards. Entering a sterile room filled with computerized equipment, they find a sedated Nathaniel Block bolted to a chair with electrically charged shackles. Back in the woods, Brennan watches Grady put on a headset. Eavesdropping on his conversation, Brennan learns that Grady is actually a government agent. Brennan confronts Grady and a brutal fight ensues which sends the two men rolling down the mountainside. They come to a crash landing next to Preston’s dead and mangled body, but before they can react, the beast appears in front of them and attacks Grady before setting its sights on Brennan. When Grady insists that only his gun will stop the creature, Brennan grabs the weapon and is about to shoot when Shalimar appears. She stares into the eyes of the beast until it turns and runs. Back at the hospital, Jesse and Emma learn that Nathaniel is a feral who was acquired from Genomex for Project 318 -- a secret experiment that is an offshoot of the space program. His animal DNA was amplified in an attempt to turn him into an astronaut who would be able to withstand alien environments. When Nathaniel suddenly awakens and attacks Emma, she hits him with a psionic blast. After calming down, he begins to open up and talk about his mutant friend Michael, who became crazy from the same experiment. Guards suddenly burst in, but Jesse phases through the wall with Emma and Nathaniel in tow. Back in the woods, Shalimar convinces Grady to tell her and Brennan about Project 318 and mutant Michael Ward/the beast (Noah Danby). Grady explains that Michael came down with a virus during the experiment that is infectious only to ferals, and insinuates that Shalimar is now infected due to her wound. Moments later, Shalimar succumbs to an excruciating pain and falls to the ground. When Brennan turns to help her, Grady grabs his gun and takes off. Brennan contacts Adam, who begins working to find a cure for the virus, but Nathaniel quickly dies. Back in the woods, Shalimar races off to find Michael, with Brennan close behind. The two find Grady holding Michael at bay with his gun. Grady fires his weapon but Michael dodges the bullet, attacks Grady and kills him. Brennan drags a dazed Shalimar out of danger. When she revives, she’s unable to see but takes off after the beast once again using her feral senses. She slips inside Michael’s underground lair and confronts him. Wracked by fever, she struggles to appeal to Michael’s former humanity, but he lunges at her and chases her outside. Brennan appears and shoots the beast with a tesla coil just as the rest of the Mutant X team arrives. The beast suddenly grabs Adam by the neck and asks Shalimar to choose whose life to save. Shalimar hesitates, but finally grabs Grady’s gun and kills the beast. Back at Sanctuary, Shalimar is cured of the virus, but the Mutant X team knows there’s no telling what their mutations leave them open to in the future.
Quotes:
Shalimar: Once you start questioning where Adam gets his inside information, we’re talking some serious mystery.
Brennan: Well, in case you haven’t noticed, blind trust...not my favorite course of action.
Brennan: Adam, we’re not in the animal control business, all right? Yogi had a bad day. Case closed.
Adam: Well, Brennan, you’re gonna have a chance to prove your theory. You and Shalimar are gonna stay on the scene to investigate.
Brennan: I don’t do nature.
Shalimar: Well, if you’re too scared, I’m sure Jesse’d be willing to--
Brennan: Whoa, wait. Scared’s got nothing to do with it.
Adam: Good, then it’s settled. A couple of days out in the fresh air’ll do you good. If anything happens out there, you let us know. We’ll send you whatever backup you need.
Brennan: Forget the backup, I’d settle for a warm weekend at the downtown Four Seasons.
Shalimar: Well, you can take the boy out of the city, but...
Brennan: Ahem.
Clay Preston: It’ll be quite the bear rug for in front of the fireplace for whoever bags it.
Shalimar: Planning on shooting him?
Clay: Well, somebody has to. It’s a killer.
Shalimar: He’s probably just protecting his territory.
Clay: What are you, tree hugger?
Brennan: Animal rights activist. C’mon, Shal.
Clay: Yeah, well, I’m an activist too. For the parents of the kids that thing slaughtered.
Brennan: Why didn’t you let me blast him?
Shalimar: ‘Cause he’s not our killer.
Brennan: How do you know?
Shalimar: I asked him.
Shalimar: Let me see those bug bites.
Brennan: What are you gonna do, suck the poison out of them?
Shalimar: Gonna take me to dinner first? It’s peppermint. It’s a natural bug repellant.
Brennan: I wish you woulda told me that before I got bit.
Shalimar: You’d kill him if you had the chance.
Brennan: If that’s what I had to do, yeah.
Shalimar: There’s something wrong with him. He’s confused. And he’s in pain. And he’s a feral. Like me.
Brennan: No, he’s nothing like you.
Shalimar: Yeah, well, maybe he was. Maybe this is my future.
Brennan: Yeah, so what, you’re just suddenly gonna mutate into that?
Shalimar: No, not suddenly. Slowly. We’re all still mutating, you know. You know it could be true. Scares you.
Clay Preston: I know what I’m doing.
Shalimar: Yeah, you’re gonna blow it away, right? Pretty brave, hiding behind your heavy artillery.
Clay Preston: Out here, life is simple. There’s your predator and your prey. I promise you, I make it a habit to be the predator.
Shalimar: Predator? You’re nothing but a little man with a big gun. But there’s something in these woods that’s gonna teach you what a predator really is. Something that deserves the name.
Grady Colt: Why don’t you mind your own business and stay out of mine!
Brennan: Well, maybe my business is getting all over your business.
Brennan: Shal, he said wait for him!
Shalimar: Since when are you so interested in following the rules?
Shalimar: I know who you are. I know what they did to you. We want to help.
Michael: Kill me.
Shalimar: I can’t.
Shalimar: They turned him into a monster! He was one of us.
Adam: She’s responding to the anti-virus.
Brennan: So why aren’t I feeling relieved?
Emma: There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? I mean, you may have been able to save her this time, but, I mean, we’ll never know what our mutations will leave us open to, will we?
Adam: There’s no guarantees in life, Emma. Not for new mutants. Not for anybody.
Trivia & Nitpicks: This 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."
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.”
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 repellant 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.
Return to The Mutant X Warehouse
Whose Woods These Are: Episode #204. [ Transcript]
Tag: The Mutant X team heads into the wilderness to stop a beast that has been killing hikers.
Cast & Crew: Written by Darell Fetty; Directed by Jorge Montesi
Angela Besharah.... Stacy
Drew Coombs.... Matt
Noah Danby.... The Beast/Michael Ward
Brad Garrick.... Nathaniel Block
Scott Hylands.... Clay Preston
Jeff Wincott.... Grady Colt
Official Synopsis: Shalimar (Victoria Pratt) and Brennan (Victor Webster) head to the Wilderness Base Camp in the Great Smokies to investigate the mysterious death of four hikers. Elsewhere in the forest, two teenagers are suddenly attacked by the creature but luckily, their video camera records the attack. Back at the base, Shalimar’s feral eyes flash gold as she hears screams and howling in the distance. Later at Sanctuary, Emma (Lauren Lee Smith), Jesse (Forbes March) and Adam (John Shea) review the teenagers’ footage while Brennan and Shalimar watch it simultaneously on a monitor in a high-tech motor home. Adam and Shalimar are convinced that the creature must be a mutant. When Shalimar and Brennan run into a man named Clay Preston (Scott Hylands), who is armed with a loaded rifle that he’s planning to use to kill the beast, they pretend to be animal rights activists and warn Preston of the dangerous nature of his mission. As they move deeper into the forest, they meet Grady Colt (Jeff Wincott), who claims to be a cryptozoologist researching a new species of animal. Meanwhile at Sanctuary, Jesse and Emma uncover a police record that had been deleted. The report reveals that another victim, Nathaniel Block (Brad Garrick), had also been attacked, but survived and is being treated at Veterans Hospital. Back in the wilderness, Shalimar’s connection with the beast grows more intense as she and Brennan get closer to it. When Brennan heads down a trail to investigate, Shalimar suddenly finds herself face to face with the beast. She instinctively attacks the creature, but to no avail. Realizing that Shalimar is in trouble, both Brennan and Grady, who’s armed with a futuristic handgun, rush to her aid. They find her lying in the brush with a deep gash across her stomach. Just as Brennan hits the beast with a bolt of electricity, it turns and races off into the woods. Arriving at Veterans Hospital, Jesse and Emma phase through the wall and use telepathic suggestion to sneak past the guards. Entering a sterile room filled with computerized equipment, they find a sedated Nathaniel Block bolted to a chair with electrically charged shackles. Back in the woods, Brennan watches Grady put on a headset. Eavesdropping on his conversation, Brennan learns that Grady is actually a government agent. Brennan confronts Grady and a brutal fight ensues which sends the two men rolling down the mountainside. They come to a crash landing next to Preston’s dead and mangled body, but before they can react, the beast appears in front of them and attacks Grady before setting its sights on Brennan. When Grady insists that only his gun will stop the creature, Brennan grabs the weapon and is about to shoot when Shalimar appears. She stares into the eyes of the beast until it turns and runs. Back at the hospital, Jesse and Emma learn that Nathaniel is a feral who was acquired from Genomex for Project 318 -- a secret experiment that is an offshoot of the space program. His animal DNA was amplified in an attempt to turn him into an astronaut who would be able to withstand alien environments. When Nathaniel suddenly awakens and attacks Emma, she hits him with a psionic blast. After calming down, he begins to open up and talk about his mutant friend Michael, who became crazy from the same experiment. Guards suddenly burst in, but Jesse phases through the wall with Emma and Nathaniel in tow. Back in the woods, Shalimar convinces Grady to tell her and Brennan about Project 318 and mutant Michael Ward/the beast (Noah Danby). Grady explains that Michael came down with a virus during the experiment that is infectious only to ferals, and insinuates that Shalimar is now infected due to her wound. Moments later, Shalimar succumbs to an excruciating pain and falls to the ground. When Brennan turns to help her, Grady grabs his gun and takes off. Brennan contacts Adam, who begins working to find a cure for the virus, but Nathaniel quickly dies. Back in the woods, Shalimar races off to find Michael, with Brennan close behind. The two find Grady holding Michael at bay with his gun. Grady fires his weapon but Michael dodges the bullet, attacks Grady and kills him. Brennan drags a dazed Shalimar out of danger. When she revives, she’s unable to see but takes off after the beast once again using her feral senses. She slips inside Michael’s underground lair and confronts him. Wracked by fever, she struggles to appeal to Michael’s former humanity, but he lunges at her and chases her outside. Brennan appears and shoots the beast with a tesla coil just as the rest of the Mutant X team arrives. The beast suddenly grabs Adam by the neck and asks Shalimar to choose whose life to save. Shalimar hesitates, but finally grabs Grady’s gun and kills the beast. Back at Sanctuary, Shalimar is cured of the virus, but the Mutant X team knows there’s no telling what their mutations leave them open to in the future.
Quotes:
Shalimar: Once you start questioning where Adam gets his inside information, we’re talking some serious mystery.
Brennan: Well, in case you haven’t noticed, blind trust...not my favorite course of action.
Brennan: Adam, we’re not in the animal control business, all right? Yogi had a bad day. Case closed.
Adam: Well, Brennan, you’re gonna have a chance to prove your theory. You and Shalimar are gonna stay on the scene to investigate.
Brennan: I don’t do nature.
Shalimar: Well, if you’re too scared, I’m sure Jesse’d be willing to--
Brennan: Whoa, wait. Scared’s got nothing to do with it.
Adam: Good, then it’s settled. A couple of days out in the fresh air’ll do you good. If anything happens out there, you let us know. We’ll send you whatever backup you need.
Brennan: Forget the backup, I’d settle for a warm weekend at the downtown Four Seasons.
Shalimar: Well, you can take the boy out of the city, but...
Brennan: Ahem.
Clay Preston: It’ll be quite the bear rug for in front of the fireplace for whoever bags it.
Shalimar: Planning on shooting him?
Clay: Well, somebody has to. It’s a killer.
Shalimar: He’s probably just protecting his territory.
Clay: What are you, tree hugger?
Brennan: Animal rights activist. C’mon, Shal.
Clay: Yeah, well, I’m an activist too. For the parents of the kids that thing slaughtered.
Brennan: Why didn’t you let me blast him?
Shalimar: ‘Cause he’s not our killer.
Brennan: How do you know?
Shalimar: I asked him.
Shalimar: Let me see those bug bites.
Brennan: What are you gonna do, suck the poison out of them?
Shalimar: Gonna take me to dinner first? It’s peppermint. It’s a natural bug repellant.
Brennan: I wish you woulda told me that before I got bit.
Shalimar: You’d kill him if you had the chance.
Brennan: If that’s what I had to do, yeah.
Shalimar: There’s something wrong with him. He’s confused. And he’s in pain. And he’s a feral. Like me.
Brennan: No, he’s nothing like you.
Shalimar: Yeah, well, maybe he was. Maybe this is my future.
Brennan: Yeah, so what, you’re just suddenly gonna mutate into that?
Shalimar: No, not suddenly. Slowly. We’re all still mutating, you know. You know it could be true. Scares you.
Clay Preston: I know what I’m doing.
Shalimar: Yeah, you’re gonna blow it away, right? Pretty brave, hiding behind your heavy artillery.
Clay Preston: Out here, life is simple. There’s your predator and your prey. I promise you, I make it a habit to be the predator.
Shalimar: Predator? You’re nothing but a little man with a big gun. But there’s something in these woods that’s gonna teach you what a predator really is. Something that deserves the name.
Grady Colt: Why don’t you mind your own business and stay out of mine!
Brennan: Well, maybe my business is getting all over your business.
Brennan: Shal, he said wait for him!
Shalimar: Since when are you so interested in following the rules?
Shalimar: I know who you are. I know what they did to you. We want to help.
Michael: Kill me.
Shalimar: I can’t.
Shalimar: They turned him into a monster! He was one of us.
Adam: She’s responding to the anti-virus.
Brennan: So why aren’t I feeling relieved?
Emma: There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? I mean, you may have been able to save her this time, but, I mean, we’ll never know what our mutations will leave us open to, will we?
Adam: There’s no guarantees in life, Emma. Not for new mutants. Not for anybody.
Trivia & Nitpicks: This 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."
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.”
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 repellant 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.
Return to The Mutant X Warehouse