M.A.N.T.I.S.

Every boy growing up goes through a phase where he dreams of being a super hero. We would borrow an old pillow case, draw a big letter ‘S’ on it and pretend to bend steel bar or fly, just like we’ve seen Superman do on television and in the comic books. Initially almost every hero with abilities far beyond those of mortal man was athletic white males. Sure there were a few women thrown into the mix like ‘Wonder Woman’ but mostly the ladies were relegated to the role of sidekicks with feminine characters including the likes of ‘Super girl’ or Batgirl’. Super crime fights of color or with what is commonly referred to as physical challenged was unheard of. over time Marvel Comics started to make head way in this regard with the wheel chair bound Professor ‘X’ or the blind ‘Daredevil’. Still TV lagged behind until Fox television gave a new kind of superhero a chance with ‘M.A.T.I.S.’ this series lasted only a single season but during its brief 24 episodes it attempted to merge two of the aforementioned demographics. The protagonist here was an African American man confined to a wheelchair as a paraplegic. The series has a bit of personal relevance to me because starting in its premier year of 1994 I was confined to a wheelchair myself. For a brief moment in time Fox gave kids a new face for their superheroes. It is a shame such a unique concept met with sufficient problems so that the show quickly joined the lamentable ‘Brilliant but Cancelled’ List but the series was pushed over the proverbial shark before it had an opportunity to establish itself properly. The DVD complete series set is a little difficult to find but it is worth it. for those so inclined Amazon has several third party vendors that sell the set. The one that was best for this set was MovieMars. They had reasonable prices and excellent shipping time. The complete series is also available on Hulu Plus for instant streaming. No matter how you get to watch it you will be very entertained. It is odd that the distributor, Image Entertainment took this out of production after less than a year so be sure to grab a copy as soon as you can.

There was a talented pair of ‘Sams’ at work creating this series; Sam Hamm and Sam Raimi. Hamm was already well versed in bring the pages of comic books to life proving the screenplays for the first two installments of the eighties ‘Batman’ franchise ‘Batman’ and ‘’Batman Returns’. Raimi is no stranger to epic heroes being responsible for the last ‘Spider-man’ franchise and bringing such noble adventures as ‘Hercules’ and ‘Xena’ to television screens all over the world. He also was the one behind the wonderfully dark and warped ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy of movies. One of the main reasons the life of this series was brutally cut short was the changes made by the studio executives deviating the premise and execution from the original concept as seen in the pilot. If they had left the ‘Sams’ alone letting them go with their original artistic vision then this series could have had a real shot at becoming a significant Science fiction series and kids would wear ‘M.A.T.I.S. costumes to the local Comic Cons.

There is such a significant discrepancy between the pilot and the series that the almost can be considered as separate entities. There are a few common plot points between the two but even fairly minor variations tended to provide a negative influence of the series. Dr. Miles Hawkins (Carl Lumbly) is a brilliant scientist and medical doctor specializing in Neurobiology. During a riot he is inadvertently shot and paralyzed while attempting to come to the aid of a child. He filed a civil suit against the city claiming the bullet came from a police officer’s gun. In the pilot he got a huge settlement but that became a loss in the series. In either case Hawkins is exceptionally rich, super intelligent and has a grudge against criminals; very much like Bruce Wayne. Of course he uses his resources to fit crime using tricked out technology. In this case it’s a Cadillac that can fly, darts that freeze people in their tracks and the titular exo-skeleton; (Mechanically Augmented Neuro Transmitter Interactive System). One unexplained change between pilot and series it the actual action of the darts. In the pilot they carried a neurotoxin from a rare African mantis that Hawkins refined into an ultra quick acting paralytic that lasts for several hours. In the series this is altered to providing an electric field that accomplishes the same result by disrupting the electrical impulses of the nerves. This alternate method did allow for a little visual effect of green sparks to indicate the hit. They also moved away from the original cast that featured a pair of African exchange students to a more run of the mill scientist partner, John Stonebrake (Roger Rees) and the overly impulsive young sidekick, Taylor Savage (Christopher Gartin) who is always getting into more trouble than he can handle. The cool Caddy was then turned into a more abstract hovercraft, Crysalid, used to travel from the secret underwater lair. It wasn’t all that bad when the studio made mantis into a vigilante hunted by the police but they ruined a potentially great series dooming it to cancelation by introducing alternate universe and invisible dinosaurs. At least the set contains the excellent pilot and acceptable early episodes although the rest is good for a laugh. If only studios trusted the talent they hired and let them make the creative decisions.