"Target X"
Writers: Craig Kyle and Chris Yost
Director: Frank Paur
Original Air Date: September 13, 2003
Introducing: Omega Red, Gauntlet, and Madame Hydra
Synopsis/Review: Wolverine is at
some restaurant in the city, talking to Multiple, Iceman, and Berzerker
about some stuff going on in the X-Men Mansion. Apparently, they have their
first class with Jean and Scott as their instructors soon, and it’s REALLY
complicated- something about the physics of their powers, I think. Multiple
doesn’t even know what Physics IS. Logan tells them that they’ll be fine,
and leaves. He catches a scent of someone that he sees fleetingly in the
corner of his eye, and tracks him to an alley. He looks around, but he’s
not there. Suddenly, metal tentacles burst out of the wall behind him,
restrain him, and one of those electric thingies we saw X23 put on the
X-Men in an earlier episode is put on Logan’s head, knocking him out.
Later, Scott and Jean
get ready to teach their class- only to open up the door and see electricity
beams and Cannonball fly out of the classroom. The New Mutants are at it
again…
Logan wakes up in a
prison cell, restrained with chains. Kinda silly, if you ask me, since
he easily cuts them apart. He hears the cell door open, and cuts a hole
through the opposite wall to escape- only to find that he’s in a large
airplane, several hundred feet above the Earth. The cell door opens, and
two operatives fire on Logan, knocking him out of the helicopter. Logan
falls a looong way, banging himself up quite a bit during the process-
it certainly would have killed a normal human, that’s for sure. Anyways,
the helicopter comes down nearer to the ground, and two guys leap out-
Omega Red and Gauntlet, as we learn within the next few minutes. Omega
Red can fire these tentacle-thingies out of his hands like Dr. Octopus,
and Gauntlet has… a superhuman sense of smell, hearing, and a robotic optic-thingie
that can zoom in on stuff. They track down Logan and are about to kill
him when X23 jumps in, dispatching them both surprisingly easily. She helps
Logan up and they run away. After they’re gone, Gauntlet stops faking that
he’s knocked out and calls up someone on a communicator, telling them that
their intended target, X23, is in the field…
Later, with X23 and
Logan, they’ve managed to elude their pursuers in the wilderness so far.
X23 is mad at Logan for slowing her down, though- he got REALLY banged
up in the fall, like I said, and he’s still in the process of healing.
Logan’s still confused as to what’s going on, and X23 explains it to him
like he’s a complete moron not to have figured it out already. HYDRA was
behind this, and they used Logan for bait- she is who they really want.
She tells Logan that there’s no way she can escape this fate of continually
running away from them- if it’s not HYDRA who’s after her, it’s S.H.I.E.L.D.,
and she wants nothing to do with any of them. Logan and X23 hear the crackling
of leaves nearby- they're being followed. X23 finds a tracker on Logan's
foot, and tells him to get lost before he gets her caught. Logan refuses,
and he tells X23 that he thinks they’re heading into a trap, but she shrugs
it off, telling him that he’s wrong.
Meanwhile, Scott and
Jean are having a TON of trouble trying to keep the New Mutants attentive
in class. They’re too busy goofing off to listen to any instructions. It’s
eventually found out that “Iceman” there was actually just an ice replica
created by said Mutant, and he’s not even in the class! Always eager to
get away from Scott and Jean, the rest of the New Mutants leave in a hurry
to “go find Bobby”. Jean is rather frustrated by now, understandably, but
Scott has an idea…
Back with Logan and
X23, they come to a dead-end in the ravine. Yep, it’s a trap. X23 apologizes
as a buttload of HYDRA operatives, along with Omega Red and Gauntlet, surround
them. X23 launches herself at Gauntlet, but he fires a weird kind of cannon
at them that emits very loud, high-pitched sounds, and it knocks them both
out.
Later on, this huge,
alien-looking craft travels over the wilderness and lands in the middle
of an equally alien-looking high-tech hideout- which is one of HYDRA’s
headquarters. Logan is being restrained to a chair in some room in the
headquarters as Omega Red and a green-haired woman called “Madame Hydra”
walk into the room. Madame Hydra tells Logan- in a very stereotypical evil
Russian accent- that hahaha, they’ve captured X23 at last, and now they’ll
wipe her mind so that she’ll be rid of emotion, thus making her the perfect
fighting weapon once again. (A HYDRA doctor, meanwhile, who is rushing
X23 to an operating room, notices one of those electro-shocky-head devices
on her forehead and mutters to himself that he TOLD the operatives not
to put that on her, that it would interfere with the mind wipe…)
Madame Hydra leaves
Omega Red to have his “revenge” on Wolverine, even though Logan has no
idea who the heck this guy is or why he wants revenge on him. Omega Red
tells Logan that he won’t just stop with him- all of Logan’s Weapon X brethren,
Sabretooth, Wraith, and Maverick will fall as well, for leaving him to
suffer and die! Logan doesn’t understand what he’s talking about, and just
tells him to finish the job. Omega Red prepares to crush Logan, but Logan
manages to break free and knocks Omega Red out, and escapes from the room.
Meanwhile, the scientist
in charge of X23’s operation is calling up someone else, and tells him
that it was explicitly stated NOT to put one of those forehead devices
on X23! But… the doctor is told that no such device was put on X23, just
as her eyes open up…
Meanwhile, Madame Hydra
is told by Gauntlet that X23 has escaped, so she and her buddy get ready
to leave the small complex via the same ship they came in on.
Logan runs into X23
a few minutes later in the hallway, and X23 tells him to get out of here-
she WANTED to get captured, since HYDRA’s head leader is here and she wants
to kill her. Logan refuses to leave, but X23 just throws a bunch of explosives
around which divide into more explosives (rather handy, that). Omega Red
catches up to them and fights Logan again, and is beaten again. Logan manages
to outrun the explosions and get to the surface of the HYDRA base, and
he spots X23 grabbing on to the bottom of the ship as it takes off. He
grabs on too, but X23 tells him to go away, this is the way it HAS to be.
She shoves Logan off, and continues up the ship.
She finds her way inside
the core room of the ship, where Madame Hydra and Gauntlet are. Madame
Hydra tells her that she’ll give X23 whatever she wants, just don’t kill
her! X23 tells Madame Hydra that she’ll never be able to give her what
she really wants, and throws more of those dividing explosives around.
Boom goes the ship.
So, the HYDRA operatives
are rounded up outside the destroyed base by S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives. Omega
Red is led into the prison ship too, but he is grinning….
Nick Fury walks up to
Logan and asks where X23 is, and Logan tells him sadly that she didn’t
make it. Fury walks back to the helicopter along with Logan- but as Logan’s
about to enter, he sniffs a couple of times and smiles. Watching the copters
take off under the cover of some foliage is X23, who hops away.
Later, at the X-Mansion,
Jean and Scott have finally managed to get the New Mutants to stay in the
room for once. The New Mutants are complaining about how boring this class
is going to be, but Jean gets their attention by levitating them all in
the air, and tells them that she and Scott may not be much older than them,
but they’ve learned a lot since they came to the Xavier Insititute. Scott
shows off by bouncing one of his optic blasts around the room to slice
an apple in half, and all of sudden, all of the New Mutants want to learn
how to do that, too. Ah, how predictable they are…. End.
Last Words: This episode was probably aimed to be the start of a long story arc that unfortunately didn't come to fruition because of X-Men: Evolution's cancellation. I’m absolutely filled with questions- TOO many questions, in fact, and that was what I felt was the weak point of the episode. The dialogue, pacing, and action scenes were great, and the sub-plot where Jean and Scott try to get the New Mutants under control was golden, but unless you already know a lot about the older X-Men universes, this ep just leaves you with too many questions as to what’s going on. Perhaps if this was Part 1 of a 2-parter or something, I could understand. Plus, on top of that, I found Madame Hydra to be entirely too much of a “evil Russian female operative” stereotype in every way. Additionally, I thought HYDRA was a little TOO high tech- their stuff looked positively alien, and even for a top-secret government organization, I thought that was a bit out there. Overall, a riveting ep, but one that left too many questions unanswered.
Overall Rating: 8/10 Great