Mutant X overview

[toomuchfandom.livejournal.com]

I am Adam Kane
I was a pioneer at genetic research
manipulating DNA to save human lives
but in many, their genes unexpectantly mutated
they developed super-human abilities
Together with the four most powerful
I fight to protect the world
that doesn't even know we exist.

We are, Mutant X

What is Mutant X?
 
Mutant X is a science fiction series that ran from 2001 to 2004. It was cancelled because of the closing of Canadian production company Fireworks (Andromeda was part of Fireworks too, but it was sold to the SciFi Channel. Mutant X wasn’t sold).

There are three seasons of Mutant X, and season 1 was different from the others as it had a different production team. Not that the other two were ‘bad’ (apart from some episodes that is), but you did see the difference.

There’s a split in Mutant X fandom about those who prefer the first season and those who prefer the other two.

The series focuses on Mutant X, a team of humans possessing super human powers. These “New Mutants” are a result of genetic engineering. Realizing that events have spun out of control, the organisation that created them is now hunting them down. However, Mutant X wants to protect other New Mutants from their creators and let them find a place in society without being noticed because of their supernatural powers. Mutant X also runs “The Mutant Underground” which consists of various safe-houses around the country.

 
The most important places in Mutant X are:

* Sanctuary, in Storm King Mountain (USA), is the base of the Mutant X team. It’s filled with high tech equipment, computers, alarms, and holographic receivers and transmitters. It also has a Zen garden, dojo, and the team’s bedrooms. Somewhere in the mountain is the hangar for the team’s supersonic airplane, the Double Helix.
* Genomex, is the organisation that is responsible for the hundreds of New Mutants. In season one it was led by Mason Eckhart. It is also the base of the Genetic Security Agency (GSA). Genomex is feared because they have stasis pods for New Mutants.
* The Double Helix is a supersonic aircraft which is equipped with Stealth technology and takes the team wherever they want to go. It looks like a bug.
* The Mutant Underground where New Mutants get a new identity, shelter and work. For example, there was a safe house at an old underground train station, and at the back of a bookstore.

 
The characters. 



 


Adam Kane.
(played by John Shea)
 
Adam Kane is a genetic engineer/scientist/computer wonder/miracle worker and the team leader of Mutant X. He’s not a mutant, but also not completely human either (which we find out in season 3).

Adam used to work for Genomex as a scientist, and he initially created the first New Mutants. Realizing what he had done, he wanted to shut down the program but his co-workers wanted to continue with the process. This disagreement eventually made Adam leave Genomex.

Even though he denied it at first, Adam is involved in more ways than one with the creation of New Mutants. He always denied that he had created them in the first place, but he admitted that he had invented the technology to subdue New Mutants (Subdermal governors -> with a flick of a switch a New Mutant’s power can be switched on or off, and stasis pods -> only the bad bad bad New Mutants ended up in here, kept alive, but comatose).

Adam initially appears to be a man of morality. He’s honest, tactical and one of the smartest men alive. He is also a skilled martial artist. However, in season 2 we, the audience, find out that Adam has a hidden agenda. Adam fakes his own death and returns in season 3, only for the audience to find out that he isn’t who he says he is.



  
Jesse Kilmartin
(played by Forbes March)
 
Jesse is supposed to be in his early twenties when he joins Mutant X. He’s not bad looking, and he’s smart. Jesse is a Molecular kind of Mutant, meaning that he can alter the density of his body at will. He can either “mass-out” (impervious molecular) by slowing down the molecules in his body and become as solid as a rock, or “phase out” (intangible molecular) by speeding up the molecules in his body and walk or fall through solid objects.

Later in the series of Mutant X, when his abilities ‘evolved’, Jesse also became a gravitative molecular, meaning that he can alter the molecular density of any object imaginable as long as he touches it (For example, he “phased out” the Double Helix).

Jesse is playful, charming and comes across as naïve and vulnerable. However, we see him grow to a more mature and responsible person in Season 2, and in Season 3 he knows how to be bitter.

Jesse is very trust-worthy. He trusts almost everyone, and is hurt and upset when his trust is betrayed. When Jesse is upset, he tends to become even more withdrawn, and becomes snappy when he has to answer the person with whom he is upset.

Adam, Shalimar and Jesse are a kind of family, with Adam being the father, Shalimar being the daughter/sister and Jesse being the son/younger brother. Jesse is very protective of Adam and Shalimar, and has a hard time with ‘new additions’ to the family like Brennan Mulwray and Emma DeLauro.

Jesse believes in fairy tale endings. Everything is pretty, everything is good, and bad is just very bad. Unless Adam tells him that someone or something is bad, he believes it to be good. In season 3, he was the last one of the Mutant X team to give up hope on Adam. He believed that Adam must have had a pretty good reason for his disappearance. He was the last one to realise that Adam had used Mutant X for his own personal gain.
 
Jesse is claustrophobic, and his abilities come to the rescue when he’s locked up somewhere. His biggest fear is to be buried alive with no way out (like inside the force field around Sanctuary’s DoJo or the built in security system of Sanctuary).



 
Shalimar Fox
(played by Victoria Pratt)
 
Shalimar is a Feral Mutant. This means she has animal DNA entwined with her own. Her classification is Feline, and yes, Shalimar behaves like a cat. She moves fast, has excellent hearing, can jump really high and is afraid of fires. Shalimar is in her late twenties, and makes men’s heart miss a beat because of her beauty. Her father is Nicholas Fox, an industrialist who locked Shalimar up when she became uncontrollable once her abilities manifested. Before Shalimar joined Mutant X, she was a petty criminal and she was known to the police as a ‘runaway’ and ‘troublemaker’.
 
Shalimar is very protective of her ‘family’ Mutant X. If you touch one of them, Shalimar will be out to get you. She’s bored easily, mostly due to her feral nature. When she’s upset you had better stay out of her way because she will lash out at you. It could be verbally or physically, and it’s mostly up to Shalimar what she does with you. She’s playful, and a charmer and doesn’t like to dress up. She’s a very extroverted and outgoing person, unless you talk about her real family. Shalimar is unpredictable and territorial (which can make her really jealous as well). Even though she’s very protective of her ‘family’, Shalimar works best when she’s by herself.
 
She has a special relationship with ‘daddy’ Adam and ‘little brother’ Jesse.



 
Brennan Mulwray
(played by Victor Webster)
 
Brennan’s supposed to be in his late 20’s/early 30’s. Brennan is an Electrical Elemental Mutant (“Elemental” for short) which means he can generate electricity between his hands, shoot lightning bolts from his fingers (handy for hotwiring cars), and propel himself so he “jumps”. Since electricity and water are a bad mixture together (short circuit), his biggest weakness is water.
 
Brennan grew up on the streets and likes to be the Alpha male. In Adam’s absence, Brennan took over the leading position of the team, even though he didn’t really know what to do. This caused a lot of friction in his relationship with Jesse Kilmartin, who didn’t accept Brennan’s authority because “he joined last”. Brennan doesn’t care if he hurts people with his actions, verbally or physically, and it sometimes seems that he only cares for himself.
He’s a charmer, he’s good looking, tall, dark and handsome, and he really knows how to kick butt.
 
Even though he’s not a team player, he looks out for his team mates, because, as a trouble maker, he knows how to get out of trouble as well. Brennan is often at the front line of a fight, mostly because he’s a powerful Elemental. He’s not afraid to get hurt, because he’s sure he won’t get hurt. He's useful to others when it serves his purposes as well.  He is a thief, he can hijack a car, he can break into banks, pick pocket and run fast. 

 
 

Emma DeLauro
(played by Lauren Lee Smith) 
 
Emma is a Psionic Mutant in her early 20’s. To be exact, she’s a Telempath. This means she can feel people’s emotions, plant fake emotions in another person’s head, and knocks people out cold with her Psionic blast. She can even create the illusion that she’s someone else in her subjects’ head. For example, Emma has been Mason Eckhart and she has been Nicole Carter.
 
Emma lived with foster parents from the age of 10. At first, she was afraid to use her abilities, but then realised she could use them for her own personal gain, getting her jobs, and making people buy things they didn’t really need so she would earn commission.
 
Emma is a real party girl, likes to have fun, and her presence is always uplifting and positive.
She became one of Adam Kane’s protégé’s after Mutant X saved her when she was being chased by the GSA.
 
Emma can be a blessing and a curse, and both in a good and a bad sense. In season 1 she was learning how to use her abilities in a positive way, and in the second season she hid her extra new power from the rest of the team, including Adam Kane. Emma learned some secrets from Adam, and started to question him. Even Adam was scared of Emma at that time, probably because she knew the truth about him and about the real reasons Mutant X was created. Emma once has erased Jesse’s memory about him seeing Emma go “broadband” and knock out a lot of people who were closing in on the two.
 
Even though her dark side on Mutant X was fairly mild, and she was killed off before she got even more powerful, with a little thinking you can imagine the harm she could have done if she was still alive. 
 

Lexa Pierce
(played by Karen Cliche)
 
Lexa is supposedly in her late 20’s. She has the ability to control light, which means she can bend light to become invisible, project flashes of light to momentarily blind others, and focus light into laser beams which she can shoot from her fingers. Her Mutant classification is Molecular Chromatic.
 
She was one of the members of the first Mutant X team (Mutant X 1.0), but left after Adam couldn’t help her to get rid of the implant she had in her neck. She worked for the GSA and CIA, in order to find her fraternal twin Leo, who had escaped from Genomex. Before Adam disappeared, Lexa joined the Dominion, a secret shadowy society which aims to world wide manage technological advances, with a special interest for genetics.  After Adam disappeared she took over Mutant X which wasn’t an easy task as the team was still adjusting to the loss of Adam and taking up leadership. In the end, both Lexa and Brennan led the team. 
 

 

Mason Eckhart
(played by Tom McCamus)
 
Mason Eckhart may not look human, but he is. In 1991 there was an incident at Genomex (caused by Adam Kane, his friend back then), known as Incident X, that destroyed Mason’s immune system. Mason has to wear faux skin and is always stylishly clad in black pin stripe suits with black gloves.
 
Mason is head of the Genetic Security Agency (GSA), which aims to protect the world from the New Mutants Adam created and capture the New Mutants while doing so.
 
Mason knows exactly what to say when he needs to, and uses his mouth as a weapon instead of a gun. He comes across as cold, cruel and precise. He wasn’t always like that, he used to have a wife and 3 kids, but after Incident X he changed. Wouldn’t we all change after a trauma like that?
 
You can see Mason in two ways. The Bad Guy (if you’re pro-Mutant X and don’t understand his reasons to hunt New Mutants down) or the Good Guy.
 
Other characters:
 
* Gabriel Ashlocke. a.k.a “Patient Zero”. Ashlocke was the first New Mutant to be born. He’s special because while most New Mutants only have 2 kinds of mutancy at most, Ashlocke was born with all 4 mutant powers (Feral, Molecular, Elemental and Psionic) and was indeed the most powerful of them all. He killed his parents when he was younger, and with help from The Strand (underground mutant group that only wants power) he wants mutants to control the world. However, his many mutations are also a curse, as they are tearing him apart on a molecular level.
* Nicole Carter. Even though she was only in one episode, she made it count. Nicole is the security chief/president of Nexxogen, a rival company to Genomex, which makes her the female counterpart of Mason Eckhart, sans faux skin. Nicole was the only person who dared to stand up to Mason, and boss him around. She was unfortunately punished in the end because of Eckhart’s mistakes.
* Silva. Silva was a Psionic Telekenetic who was an enforcer for Nexxogen, and in the end helped Mason Eckhart trying to find a cure for his immunity deficiency.
 
 
Fandom.
 
Mutant X fandom is very small. Granted, there are a lot of websites around, but mostly they’re dead or comatose.
 
With so many main characters, you have to have:
femslash (Shalimar/Emma, Shalimar/Lexa)
slash (Jesse/Brennan, Brennan/Adam, Jesse/Adam, and not that I have come across it very much, every guy involved with Mason Eckhart)
HET (Jesse/Shalimar, Shalimar/Brennan, Brennan/Emma, Emma/Jesse, Jesse/Lexa, Lexa/Brennan, Lexa/Adam… etc).
 
Luckily, there are a lot of GEN stories too!
 
The brilliance of this fandom is that it’s diverse. There are great thinkers as fans, and "I only want to have hot guys and have fun" fans but it’s fantastic. These two combined you get Brenna, Mutant X as a cult and the Mason sockpuppet for instance.
 
There’s not a lot of information given in the series to use in fanfics, but the existence of faux websites in the time helped out. These websites were created by the creators and producers of Mutant X, with a lot of canon material.
One of the great thinkers of this fandom has constructed a timeline with help from these faux websites, which is really helpful with writing fics.
 
Websites  

Official website

Matters Masonesque. Everything you want to know about Mason Eckhart. Check out the forum, it’s cozy.
The Great Mutant X fansite directory. Every Mutant X website there is can be found here.
Mutant X Phoenix. With a forum.  Unfortunately, not a lot of activity.
Proxy Blue, a general Mutant X website with a lot of information
Genomex.net. Used to be a faux website created by Fireworks and the creators of Mutant X. It now has other management.
MXLOS A general Mutant X website. With a forum.
Mutant X-treme a general Mutant X website.

Livejournal 
 
childofgenomex A general Mutant X discussion community.
genomexorphans a community for all lost souls and outsiders.
mutant_x_rpg a community to roleplay
mutant_x_uk a community for UK fans
mutantx_fanart 
mutantx_fanfic  
 

thanks to lonelywalker for her beta