June 11: The Mutants Episodes Five & Six

What to do in the event of a hull breach in space: 1) roll around on the ground in an effort to look like you're in danger of being sucked out; 2) wait for the pressure between Skybase and space to equalize (!) but make sure you do it before the air runs out (!!); 3) once that pressure has equalized, calmly walk out, congratulating each other on surviving.  (Let's try and be charitable to the Bristol Boys and assume that Skybase Control has simply thrown a forcefield around the breach, and Cotton just doesn't understand what's going on.  But even so...)

Sondergaard tries to reason with the mutated Solonians. (The
Mutants Episode Five) ©BBC

Back on Skybase for episode five (well, once the Doctor makes it back from the surface, dodging Professor Jaeger's rockets -- which are represented by really quite astonishingly poor explosions, without even a whistle to suggest they're coming from the sky), with the Marshal temporarily regaining the upper hand.  Jaeger's effort has gone horribly wrong and is slowly turning the surface of Solos into an uninhabitable desert, but the Marshal forces the Doctor to help fix the mess that's been made, by threatening Jo's life.  And... that's about it.  The Doctor succeeds in repairing Jaeger's mistake, and Stubbs, Cotton, Jo, and Ky temporarily escape before being recaptured (though not before Stubbs is killed, apparently by a laser blast to the butt) and stuck in a room which Cotton suddenly realizes will be flooded with radiation when the approaching Earth shuttle Hyperion (with an Investigator on board) needs to be refueled: "We'll all be done for!" Cotton exclaims.  (And look!  We've made it almost six episodes without mentioning Rick James (not that one)'s mesmerizing performance.  Not for necessarily the right reasons, mind, but nevertheless it's hard to look away any time he delivers a line.)

Fortunately, Jo, Ky, and Cotton escape before the room is flooded with deadly radiation by escaping into Hyperion's fuel probe (um, ok) and getting out via that.  But the main bit of entertainment in episode six is the Investigator's inquiry into the Marshal's actions (as reported to him over radio by Jo during their escape last episode).  When the Marshal appears to have the upper hand, everything bad is conveniently omitted from anyone's testimony (including the Doctor's, who believes the Marshal is still holding Jo captive) -- and, amazingly, the Investigator seems perfectly content with this story, not needing any corroboration one way or the other.  Everything's fine, nothing to see here, even though a high-ranking Earth official was assassinated on Skybase a couple days ago.  It's only when Jo and company burst into the Marshal's office that the Doctor changes his tune, accusing the Marshal and Jaeger of "the most brutal and callous series of crimes against a defenceless people it's ever been my misfortune to encounter."  But there's no real evidence, not even when Sondergaard shows up, and when a Mutt also arrives on board it freaks the Investigator out enough to give the Marshal all his power back, which means that Jo and friends head back into the refueling chamber until the Doctor makes Solos's atmosphere breathable for humans -- at which point the Marshal is going to force the Investigator and the crew of the Hyperion to become the first settlers on Solos.  Paul Whitsun-Jones, it should be noted, does a great job of portraying the Marshal as someone's who's become dangerously mad, and he makes it clear that this bizarre plan makes sense to the Marshal.

Ky evolves into the Solonians' ultimate form. (The Mutants
Episode Six) ©BBC

But fortunately for everyone, Sondergaard gives Ky that crystal they found in the cave, and that and the radiation trigger the mutation in him, only he moves rapidly from Mutt to an angelic form, who finds the Marshal and vaporizes him before moving on to help initiate the change in the rest of his people.  Solos is saved.

The Mutants has a rather low reputation in fandom, but to be honest it's hard to see why.  Sure, there are a few obvious targets (the opening shot, the sometimes severe yellow-fringing on almost all the CSO, anything involving Rick James), but there's also enough that's right going on (the design (and realization) of the Mutants, the basic storyline about an extra-long year, all the location footage standing in for Solos, Tristram Cary's score -- which sounds like The Sea Devils done properly) that it makes it easier to forgive some of these flaws.  It's an improvement over Bob Baker & Dave Martin's last script (The Claws of Axos, if you've lost track) and it's streets ahead of something like Colony in Space, and indeed in terms of ideas and entertainment it holds its own against that Pertwee "classic", The Dæmons.  It is a little loosely structured, and some might find the switching between Skybase and Solos a bit tedious (even if structurally it makes sense and keeps things more interesting than if they'd done, say, three episodes on Skybase followed by three episodes on Solos), but honestly, there's plenty to enjoy about The Mutants -- even if there's not necessarily much to love.<sup>69







69</sup> And yes, this is the story mentioned in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses -- even if it's clear Rushdie (or, to be charitable, his character Saladin) didn't watch enough to actually understand the point of this story.