The episode begins on a ship, where two mutants, a young girl and a... more severe mutant, talk about their predicament. She says that they shouldn't have come, but he says that they are going to Genosha to escape the persecution. She apparently has some kind of detection powers, as she senses something approaching.
Cut to the bridge for exposition. The first mate tells the captain that some of the mutants are sick. The two exposit how ship captains often pad out their cargo by adding on mutants, making a tidy profit off of taking mutants to Genosha. We then see a large, black shape rise up out of the ocean.
Cut to wreckage of the ship, as a convenient nametag drifts by.
Cue the title sequence.
Cut to Logan in the danger room, running a program that he has to override the computer just to let him run. While blindfolded. Various dangerous stuff happens, until at the last, Logan turns around to slice something off-screen. Then he halts the program and we see that he's impaled Kitty. Even though he very clearly smelled her presence before he attacked. Even better, Logan specifically asked to see Kitty, then decided to go get some blind training done. And then he's surprised that she interrupted him and decided to claw her for it.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyway, he says that they've found Nightcrawler. Well, it only took 6 episodes for him to show up again. He tells Kitty to help Beast search for him. So she leaves, telling the computer to continue the program. Which leads to Logan being smacked with something.
Ah, wacky fun.
Cut to a dock. A woman with a fish-like child approaches a ship captain. The man is gruff with her, but accepts her payment and allows them aboard. As the two walk around the ship, we hear "whoosh" sounds. Eventually, we see Nightcrawler, in a hood and coat. As he sees the captain rudely turn a mutant away for not having money, Kurt flashes back to...
Somewhere. Kurt appears and is being accosted by a random group of townspeople. He keeps teleporting away, but never thinks of teleporting to an inaccessible place like a rooftop.
Cut to later, after the ship left port. The woman from earlier asks one of the crew members about getting food, but he says that their money only covered passage.
Cut to the kitchen, where some needless exposition happens between crewmembers. We learn that the Ellis, the ship from the teaser, was attacked and "stripped," the crew set adrift, but they were eventually rescued. Right, because we can't have people dying in a cartoon. When they turn around to call the crew to chow, we see that Nightcrawler has taken their food away.
We cut to some of the crew sleeping; I guess they didn't much care about the stolen food. Nightcrawler appears and takes their pillows and blankets. OK Kurt, this is dickish at this point; you could have taken their spare pillows and blankets. Cut to the crew telling the captain all of this, and he decides to take it up with the mutants.
Cut to the woman, who's son has gone on deck. She calls him back down, but on his way down, he spots Nightcrawler between some containers. He thanks Kurt for the blankets and then recognizes him as Nightcrawler. The boy introduces himself as "Squidboy," which makes no sense as he has neither tentacles nor any other feature associated with squid.
Anyway, he says that his powers suck, but Kurt says that he once felt the same way about his powers. Kurt points out that while his powers are situational, they could be essential when, for example, on a ship.
Cut to the crew rounding up the mutants. What, reprisals for theft? Who'da thought? The captain explains that theft is not taken lightly, and then pulls the blanket off of Squidboy. Then he asks some girl if she knows who stole the stuff. She doesn't know, so he throws her overboard, though there is conspicuously no splash sound-effect. Then he grabs Squidboy.
Nightcrawler appears, depositing the girl from before and attacks. He takes out some of the crew, then grabs the captain and teleports him to the top of a tower. He then extorts a promise to feed and care for the mutants, lest something unpleasant happen to him. Naturally, dangling fifty feet from the ground, he agrees.
But then the plot shows up, as the big black thing appears in the ocean. It's revealed to be a ship, with green webbing on it and... a woman chained to the front. Sure why not.
A portal appears behind them and a 6-armed woman wearing armor and medieval weaponry appears. She creates other portals to summon her cyborg minions. She tells them to get the good mutants; the other mutants are to die with the ship.
Well, that was getting interesting, so cut to the nowhere plot. Kitty has apparently found evidence of Kurt boarding the ship. Hank repeats the exposition about the shipping of mutants to Genosha, and then he talks about the pirate attacks, saying that while the crews survive, the mutants are never found. So Logan decides to head off and do something. Even though this has been going on for some time now, only because Kurt is involved does it warrant action.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyway, back to the real plot. The six-armed woman uses some brown spheres to scan the mutants. We then cut to a location with a pillar of monitors. Some... creature rolls up, and it apparently likes the cut of Kurt's jib. After "evaluating" the mother's powers, they decide to take her. When her son objects, the woman tells him to back off.
Then Kurt attacks. One of the cyborgs tries to shoot him, but that never works; Kurt just ports him into the ocean. Though the woman just pulls him back with a portal. She then causes the gun Kurt pilfered to self-destruct, which hurts Kurt so much it sends him into a flashback.
The mob has, against all odds, cornered Kurt and are about to kill him when they stop. Charles shut off their brains. Kurt isn't sure what to think, since nobody ever helps him, but Charles says that he'll be the first.
Cut back to the ship. Kurt, the mother, and some of the others are on the pirate ship. The less useful mutants were left on the ship to die. So Kurt teleports over to help. The 6-armed woman sees this, but does nothing to prevent it. Instead, she goes to the prow of the ship and tells "Ricochet" to fire. The woman tied to the front of the pirate ship charges up some gun that blows a hole in the ship. And then the pirates leave.
Kurt appears before the mutant children and asks them what they can do. They say that their powers suck, but Kurk says that they are all gifted. One girl says that she can talk to machines, literally, and they listen to her. That's a form of suck I'm not aware of. Another kid can fire an adhesive from his hands, but not at sufficient velocities to threaten Spiderman. Another girl can fly with butterfly wings. Flight is again a form of suck I'm not familiar with. And another guy can shatter things. OK, seriously, what about these powers is worthless? Except maybe for adhesive-hands, who is only useful because the plot says so.
So, Squidboy and adhesive-hands place some adhesive around the break in the hull, because his adhesive still works while wet, unlike most adhesives. Shatter-guy breaks a shipping container, so that Nightcrawler and Squidboy can affix it to the breech with the adhesive. Then Nightcrawler teleports the floodwaters out of the ship. Meanwhile, the technopath is able to get the machinery online and the propeller started. And the flying lady puts a flag with an X on it to the mast to signal distress. Thanks; we really needed that.
Anyway, the 6-armed lady notices that the ship is moving. Well, don't that beat all; maybe next time when you see an enemy escape, you'll make sure they're dead. Cut to some padding shots of the cyborgs running to the top of the ship. They aim their weapons and start shooting at Nightcrawler. After dodging for a while, he teleports on top of them and starts attacking. After taking out the regular cyborgs, he and the 6-armed lady square off, but then their ship rams the pirate ship.
So, the ship that is clearly technologically superior to anything humans can construct is still weak to being rammed by the steel prow of a human cargoship.
Anyway, the alien sees this and laughs. Because his side is losing. Back on the ship, Kurt takes out the cyborgs permanently by breaking red targets on their chest. Sure why not. Then the 6-armed lady attacks Kurt from a portal. Kurt draws a sword and fights back. When Kurt asks what this is all about, she says that she's giving them a chance to prove themselves in her master's games. Then she lets us know that they are aliens by saying that it is a great honor for those from this world.
Meanwhile Squidboy dives overboard and gets onto the alien ship. Apparently, his mother can shoot beams from her hands, but that's not enough for the door. So Squidboy appears and opens the door from the outside.
Back to Kurt. When he and 6-arm lock swords again, she pulls a dagger from a portal and tries to stab him, but he blocks it with his tail. Now he's triple-wielding. So she just pulls out one BFS and attacks. This knocks Kurt down, but he teleports behind her and takes her out. Kurt tells her to not look for mutants for her games anymore, and the prisoners escape.
Except for Squidboy; 6-arm teleports him to her and takes him hostage, telling Kurt to drop his weapons. Which he does. Then he teleports forward, taking Squidboy and two of her arms. Cybernetic ones, of course. After dropping Squidboy off, he then starts teleporting around her, taking her other two cybernetic arms off. Then he threatens her with loosing real ones. So she portals herself and the crew away.
As the pirate ship sinks, the X-Men arrive. Well you guys were helpful. They want to take him home, but Kurt decides to stay with these mutants. But they're being watched by one of the brown orbs.
Cut back to wherever that alien thing was. 6-arm is there, saying that she failed him. But he decides that he wants to catch all of the X-Men now.
Remarks
This is a decent introductory episode for Kurt. We establish his general personality as a defender of mutants, the history that led to it, and so forth. He works reasonably well as a mentor figure for younger mutants, though it is a bit simplistic. And the episode has pretty good action.
It does represent some inefficient storytelling in various respects. Kurt is our focus character, so all of the bit players around Kurt are one-dimensional if that. And while some of them get some mentoring from Kurt, it's not very important beyond this episode since they are at best cameos later. It wouldn't have been a bad idea to see these mutants sometime later as important parts of a story centered on Genosha. Within itself, it works as an episode. But it doesn't contribute nearly as much as it could have if these mutants could have been worked into the greater story.
That being said... aliens. Why aliens?
X-Men, as a series, has three basic plots that the series itself is designed to tell and tell well. There's Xavier vs. Magneto: mutants who want to live alongside humans against mutants who want to dominate/exterminate them. There's Mutants vs. Humans: mutants being persecuted by humanity and trying to stand up for their rights as people. And theres Megalomaniacal Power-Mad Mutant: some mutant is highly badass and decides to take over or burn the world.
As long as X-Men is working one of these three general plot outlines, it all works quite well. Each kind of plot tends to flow into another. Human crackdowns fuel those mutants that want to conquer humanity; they give them more troops and make their cause more sympathetic. Attacks by power-mad mutants tend to inflame anti-mutant sentiment among humans, as it shows the dangers of some mutants.
The moment aliens get involved, it all goes to hell. And yes, I'm aware that Phoenix is essentially an alien entity, but the Dark Phoenix Saga is not really about aliens. It's about their friend Jean becoming the Megalomaniacal Power-Mad Mutant and how the X-Men deal with that. An alien force kicks off the plot, and Jean commits a crime against aliens. But it's not really about them; you could tell the same story with Jean wiping out a human city or something. And most X-Men sources outside of the comics indeed use a more terrestrial origin for Phoenix.
What does bringing aliens into this series do for it? It doesn't enhance the overall plot of the show. It certainly doesn't factor into either the current plotline or the planned plotline for season 2. So why do it? It serves no purpose and only degrades the point of the show.
It's not a question of verisimilitude; I'm not saying that aliens=bad. I'm simply saying that it's a distraction from what this story is supposed to be about. Imagine if these pirates were just humans who stole some tech and decided to raid ships headed for Genosha. They hate mutants, but don't want to harm humans. So they put the human crew in life rafts, but blow up the mutants on the ships. Even better, maybe they didn't steal tech; maybe they're a secret division of humans sent by <insert conspiracy here> to kill some mutants covertly.
That plays into the overall plot of the show. It's part and parcel of what season 1 is about: Mutants vs. Humans. Yes this episode has some of that. But then half-way through, aliens show up and make all of that irrelevant. It's simply an unwanted element that does nothing for the show.
Including such elements represents a failed attempt at proper adaptation.
Comments
