N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
It’s … The Mutants – or how I learned to recognise ‘unpeople, undoing unthings untogether’ from quite a long way away.
“We can’t afford an empire any more.”
Administrator,
The Mutants: Episode One
OK, so it may not turn into the episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus its opening suggests it might be, but there’s still plenty to hold the interest in The Mutants – whether it’s the commentary on colonialism and apartheid, the concept of 500-year seasons or the central idea of mutation as evolution.
True, there’s some hammy over- and, indeed, under-acting going on and The Discontinuity Guide may well have it right when it says Geoffrey Palmer is the best thing in it, but I nevertheless found myself warming to the story as it rambled on.
“Slag, ash, clinker. The fruits of technology …”
The Doctor,
The Mutants: Episode One
Of course, Episode Four‘s cliffhanger is ridiculous and there’s really no excuse for it – they knew how space “worked” in 1972 – but I still love it. Done right with 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s budget it could have been a bloody brilliant cliffhanger, although I must admit I don’t know how I’d have resolved it without killing every character in the scene. (Maybe some super-duper-fast, emergency safety seal kicking in?)
The location filming is good though, as is the spooky CSO work in the thaesium mine. Perhaps less impressive is the Skybase: the arrows on the Overlords/Solonions transportation device have always seemed to me to be a bit counter-intuitive in design.
But all that said, The Mutants was much better than I remember it.
"I like it that in the beginning you think the mutants are the bad guys, but actually the Overlords are."
"Like Colony in Space and The Curse of Peladon, it's partly about empires and colonies."
"I thought the Investigator would turn out to be the Master."
