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Synopsis
In the Double Helix, Brennan and Emma are surprised to see that most of the city’s electrical grid has gone down. The cause is Ashley Elliott, an elemental New Mutant who is experiencing cravings for extreme amounts of electrical energy. After absorbing the energy, she and her fiancé Eric are confronted by the bounty hunter Cross. Cross demands that Ashley come with him. Ashley refuses and escapes, but Cross takes Eric captive.
At the Sanctuary, Adam deduces that an elemental must be mutating, and narrows the field down to three possibilities. Emma and Shalimar examine the scene of the crime, and discover a woman’s footprints burnt into the grass. This means that Ashley must be the culprit. They also find a cigar, which they give to Adam to analyse. Adam matches the DNA to Cross, who might be working for the GSA. Jesse then discovers that Cross has a mailing address at a disused airfield.
Ashley receives a phone call from the imprisoned Eric, and rushes to find him at the airfield. However, she is ambushed by Cross, who locks her up. The GSA soon arrive to take Ashley to Eckhart, giving Cross half a million dollars. Cross is angry that this is only half the amount he was promised, and is shot by the GS Agent Henshaw. Henshaw takes Ashley outside, but they are attacked by Jesse and Shalimar, who rescue Ashley and take her to Sanctuary.
At Sanctuary, Adam confirms that Ashley is mutating, and warns Brennan to stay away from her. However, the two of them feel an irresistible attraction. Ashley gets a call on her voicemail from Eric, who says that Cross will kill him if she doesn’t hand herself over. Jesse establishes that Eric is lying and in league with Cross, but Ashley refuses to believe this. She tries to convince Brennan to help her, and when this fails she absorbs him as electrical energy and steals the Double Helix.
Ashley finds that Cross has killed Eric, and Cross once again takes her prisoner. He demands that Eckhart pay him $2 million for Ashley, and arranges to meet at the power grid. The Mutant X team monitor this phone call, and devise a plan. As Ashley powers up at the grid, they use the Double Helix as a lightning rod to siphon off Brennan from Ashley (or something like that). Brennan is saved, and Ashley escapes from Cross back to Sanctuary. Ashley apologises to Brennan, and Adam puts her into the Mutant Underground.
Themes in the Episode
Attraction to dangerous people.
Addiction (to electricity).
Plot Holes (Inconsistencies in the Mutant X Timeline)
Cross says that it is Eckhart’s intent to use Ashley to wipe out the power grids of enemies. Has Eckhart suddenly been recruited by the Pentagon? He doesn’t seem to have similar aims regarding any other mutants in the series. And, seeing as this seems to be a legitimate aim (presuming that the enemies are foreign countries waging war on the US), why doesn’t he just offer Ashley a job?
Creepy Moment of the Episode
Brennan and Ashley’s gormless staring at each other. Presumably it was designed to indicate their animal magnetism, but it came over as a better indicator of their combined lack of brain cells.
The Best Character Award
No character here is outstanding. Eckhart’s brief scenes with his henchman Henshaw (hee hee) are interesting, but very short. The guest stars are uniformly annoying.
Was it centric?
Although the plot would indicate that Brennan is the major character, he disappears halfway through. This is solidly a team-based episode, and features all members of the team equally.
Unexplained Events?
Adam seems to know an awful lot about mutating electrical elementals, indicating that this situation has occurred before. Except nothing is mentioned about these previous events.
Things We Noticed
~ Why does Eckhart need a bounty hunter? He has seemingly endless numbers of GS Agents to assign to these tasks.
~ Eckhart apparently pulled strings to get Cross out of jail. If this is the case, why would he then agree to pay Cross $1 million? Surely Eckhart doesn’t have spare millions, and Cross should be grateful enough at getting out of jail to help Eckhart out.
~ Brennan manages to call up a hologram of the city’s electrical system without saying or doing anything.
~ The city police force seem to be particularly hopeless in this episode, taking an age to get to the scene of the crime, and then letting Cross and Eric get away.
~ Proxy Blue has her own electrical generator.
~ Emma and Shalimar make the least convincing construction workers ever. Did no one ask who they were?
~ Jesse likes cigars? Brennan likes Walt Whitman? Did we just go into an alternate reality?
~ Jesse has action scenes shock!
~ Subdermal governors aren’t effective on mutating New Mutants
~ More power to the BrenShalUnThing – Shalimar says that Brennan is “like a brother”, and tells Jesse to remind her never to date an elemental.
~ Cross is shot by the GSA, but miraculously recovers for his next scene.
~ It appears that Brennan, and his clothes, are entirely composed of electrical energy.
First Appearance of
~ Jesse’s Voice Stress Analyser, which says that Eric is lying. Except that it measures stress rather than truth, and Eric was in a very stressful situation. Jesse says he compared it with Eric’s earlier phone call, but Eric was in a stressful situation then too.
~ The electrical company TranCell, who have a technical investigation unit.
Best Line:
Brennan: “You know the both of you make it sound like all I ever think about is sex. The truth is I only ever think about sex half the time.”
Jesse: “The other half of the time he’s thinking about poetry.”
Emma: “Which just makes him think more about sex.”
Brennan: “But you’re not supposed to klnow that.”
Mason: “It is imperative that you carry no electrical devices on your person when you make the arrest. Make certain you are not within a fifty yard radius of any power lines, power stations, transformers, or any electrical unit emitting over 500 volts… and you’ll be fine.”
Purist Reaction
A generally watchable episode, but with nothing much about it to necessitate a second viewing. The guest characters are less than intriguing, and Brennan’s sudden fascination with Walt Whitman is implausible. Given that the entire plot revolves around Eric and Ashley being captured, the fact that the viewer doesn’t care about them is a major flaw. It would have been better to put one of the team in danger. When this happens, and Brennan is absorbed, the dodgy science overwhelms any concern for him as a character.
Fortunately, this is a good example of an episode where Mutant X operates as a team, and to their strengths, rather than highlighting a particular member. In addition, the character of Henshaw as a not-entirely-hopeless GA Agent bodes well.
Character: Ashley Elliott
Played by: Moya O’Connell
Mutant ability: Elemental – absorbs electrical energy.
What happened to them: Her powers mutate, giving her an insatiable hunger for electricity. After being kidnapped and rescued, and absorbing Brennan, the team rescue her again and her mutation is repaired. She is put into the Mutant Underground.
Double Vision: Nope! This actor doesn’t appear again in the series.
Character: Eric
Played by: Mark Lutz
Mutant ability: None
What happened to them: Ashley’s duplicitous boyfriend. Shot and killed by the double-crossing (hee hee) bounty hunter Cross.
Double Vision: Nope! This actor doesn’t appear again in the series.
Character: Neil Cross
Played by: Gordon Currie
Mutant ability: None
What happened to them: Kidnaps Ashley twice. Gets double-crossed by the GSA twice. Zapped and presumably killed by Ashley. This guy just doesn’t learn.
Double Vision: Nope! This actor doesn’t appear again in the series.
Character: Henshaw
Played by: Reuben Thompson
Mutant ability: None
What happened to them: Carries out Eckhart’s orders to the letter. Presumably escapes the stasis pods to live another day.
Double Vision: Nope! This actor doesn’t appear again in the series.
Lonelywalker
Discussion of this episode
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