Jonathan Dobres

Season 4, Episode 2. Air date: September 14, 1996 (in season 5).

The worst thing an episode of X-Men: The Animated Series can be is boring, and people, they don’t get much more boring than this. The US military wants to salvage a derelict Soviet nuclear submarine, and to do it they thaw out Omega Red. In exchange, Red demands that Wolverine and Storm—the two people who put him on ice last time, never mind Colossus I guess—accompany him down into the sub. Once there, Red quickly gains control of the sub and its nuclear arsenal, and proceeds to hold the world hostage. It’s up to Rogue and Beast to disable the sub before Red can launch its missiles or the Air Force swoops in to blow up the whole thing.

The episode is littered with low quality animation and plot holes (again, this was slated for season 4 but aired during season 5; all of the season 5 episodes we’ve seen so far have been terrible). Chief among them: why would Storm have agreed to be Omega Red’s bargaining chip? Sure, Wolverine has an axe to grind and would want to keep an eye on the guy, and his healing powers mean that the sub can’t kill him. But this has got to be a nightmare scenario for Storm, plunging herself into an enclosed space that will trigger her claustrophobia and severely limit her powers, to say nothing of the whole place being extraordinarily poisonous to her.

There are no character beats to speak of. There’s a lot of generic growling and trash talk from Wolverine, but he’s completely useless. He gets knocked unconscious halfway through the episode, eliminating him from the story. There are a couple of nods to Storm’s claustrophobia, but nothing that meaingfully affects the events.

The action is no better, just a couple of very low stakes tussles between Wolverine, Storm, and Omega Red that don’t really go anywhere. Meanwhile, you’ve got Beast and Rogue hovering nearby in the Blackbird, alternately trying to disable the sub or knock its missiles out of the sky before they arm. Reading that sentence, you might imagine that this would be a great opportunity for Beast to show off his brilliance and hack the sub, or for Rogue to fly off and wrestle the missiles out of the air at great risk to herself. But nope, nothing like that happens! It’s just Beast and Rogue sitting in the Blackbird’s cockpit, either releasing depth charges at the sub or using lasers to try to shoot down the missiles (they missed two but luckily the Air Force got them, oh wow). Rogue does eventually dive down to the sub to rip it up and force an evacuation. This is played for drama—can she survive the water pressure? The writers forgot that we’ve seen Rogue survive in deep space.

In the end, Storm fireman-carries an unconscious Wolverine to an escape craft, which the Blackbird then airlifts out of the ocean. Omega Red tries to steer the sub to a new location, but thanks to the damage that Rogue did, it malfunctions and the whole thing falls into a deep sea trench. Recapping the events for Xavier, Beast says of Wolverine, “I’m sure he feels that he could have done more.” I’ll say, Hank.

Stray observations:

• The US military brass, giving Omega Red the hard sell about the current state of geopolitics: “[The Cold War] is over. We won.”

• Red pronounces the word “Colonel” as “Co-low-nell”.

• Wolverine, remarking on the sub’s still-functioning reactor: “They oughta use this tub in one of those battery ads with the rabbit.”

• Lenore Zann still gets the episode’s two best lines. As Red loads up another volley of nukes, she simply says, “That does it,” and dives into the ocean to personally rip apart the sub. When Beast asks what the hell is going on, she says, “I bent his boat.”

• On the toilet: Cyclops, Jean, Jubilee, and Gambit.

Season 4, Episode 1. Air date: May 6, 1995.

This episode is one of three that were pulled forward in Fox’s airing order to replace delayed season 3 episodes, but as originally produced, it was supposed to be the season 4 opener. It’s the show’s lightest season premiere by a mile, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially after the intense stories that dominated season 3. The plot here is simple. The Juggernaut loses his powers and the X-Men have to restore them, despite their very well-founded misgivings. Along the way, we get lots of character beats and see Xavier in a new light.

We last saw Juggernaut (aka Cain Marko) getting tossed into the ocean by Gladiator during “The Phoenix Saga”. What happened to him after that? He walked across the ocean floor for a while, as shown in the “Previously On…” Wait a minute, that’s new animation! The “Previously On…” has heretofore only ever reused clips we’ve already seen. I’m guessing they animated this sequence for the earlier story but had to cut it for time.

The undersea journey continues into the first scene of the episode, implying that Juggernaut has been slowly trudging back to New York for months, but hey, he’s the Juggernaut; a magic ruby makes him completely invulnerable, remember. Juggernaut punches a shark, emerges from the ocean, causes some mayhem in NYC, peels the top off of a cab, and drives it to the X-Mansion.

Courtesy of the news coverage of Juggernaut’s gleeful violence in the city, Xavier sees his half-brother coming and hastily tries to assemble his X-Men. He forgets that he is the world’s foremost telepath and instead tries to get in touch with everyone over their comm badges.

• Beast runs in immediately, as he’s the only team member also at the mansion.

• Rogue and Storm are out shopping for some new outfits, as they are known to do. Storm is wearing a green ensemble that, naturally, looks incredible on her. No bad looks for this lady.

• Wolverine and Cyclops are shown jumping into the Blackbird. They were at Muir Island, visiting Morph, who can be glimpsed waving goodbye (Awww! First appearance since “Reunion”).

• Jubilee is having fun in somebody’s pool and misses the call.

• Gambit is fixing a broken down school bus. He even uses his powers to jump start it. He will never mention this act of altruism to anyone, and if ever asked why he missed Xavier’s call, he’ll probably just scowl mysteriously, thinking of a carburetor.

• Jean’s absence is unexplained. Xavier doesn’t contact her. Possibly she’s at Muir Island recovering from the Dark Phoenix Saga (which might explain Cyclops’s presence there), but then again she looked fine in “Love in Vain”, which supposedly takes place before this episode.

Juggernaut busts in and shrugs off all of the mansion’s defenses. Xavier manages to corral him into the Danger Room, where he and Beast stall for time. Just when it looks like Juggernaut is about to break Xavier in half, he screams and loses his powers.

Intercut with all of the Juggernaut stuff are scenes of a hapless nerd, Eugene Torbett Widerspahn, exploring the ruins of a mysterious temple. Turns out it’s the Temple of Cyttorak, and Eugene has uncovered all the magical bits and bobs he needs to claim the powers of the Juggernaut for himself. Since the gem can only empower one person at a time, Cain Marko loses.

This is what makes the episode unusual: from here out, it doesn’t really have a villain. Eugene does a lot of accidental damage, mostly to his apartment and reputation, but he’s not out to hurt anyone. He just wants to score with chicks or whatever! Meanwhile, Cain, having been crushed by falling Danger Room debris when he lost his powers, is in a coma, and his only hope of recovery is to reclaim the powers of the Juggernaut. He’s still mean, but he’s not exactly a threat.

Xavier is insistent that they can’t let Cain Marko die, no matter how awful he is. It’s a noble sentiment that Cain is really, really going to test for the remainder of the episode. Through telepathic flashbacks, we see young Cain and Charles interacting as kids. Cain is only too happy to recount how his father (Charles’s stepfather) wanted to see Charles’s mother pass away and collect her fortune.¹ The stepfather is so nasty that it kind of seems like he might’ve had something to do with it, but the episode keeps the focus on how it affects Charles. On top of that, Cain is a bully and a bigot, at first calling Charles a “mutie”, and then later in life, getting everyone at school to do the same.²

He’s a real piece of work, this guy. Yes, his dad favored Charles and shipped Cain off to military school, but that hardly excuses the constant bullying and, later, multiple attempted murders. Xavier is forced to relive a lot of painful stuff—the illness and death of his mother, the confusing emergence of his powers, Cain’s relentless bullying, and tellingly, his failure to steer young Cain towards a better path. It’s too much, even for him. “I thought I was over all of this…but I was just a child. It hurts so much,” he says in dismay. Xavier is usually calm and collected to a fault, and yet here he’s more vulnerable than we’ve ever seen. For a moment it seems like he wants to let Cain die, but Storm brings him back around. The great Charles Xavier will not allow his past pain to bring him low, kids.

Meanwhile, Cyclops and Wolverine are on a mission to get the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak away from Eugene. It’s an easy one, as Eugene just wants to impress the girls at the club, not rule the world. He is, however, invincible and oblivious. He ignores Cyclops’s well-meaning advice (“Women like guys to be themselves. We could help you get back that way.”), which leads to a rare moment where Cyclops is cool and Wolverine isn’t:

Wolverine: Looks like we’ll have to do this…the hard way.

He lunges at Eugene, who knocks away his attack mid-dance without even noticing.

Cyclops: You don’t have to make it that hard.

A quick laser blast knocks Eugene off balance, the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak tumbling out of his pocket. End of “action” scene.

With the gem recovered from Eugene and Xavier recovered from his childhood trauma, he reconvenes with Cain in his mindscape, letting him know that he can say the magic incantation any time. When Cain asks what Xavier’s getting out of all this, he simply says, “The satisfaction of saving your life.” Cain speaks the incantation, becomes the Juggernaut once again, and throws the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak into space.³ Rather than try to kill the X-Men yet again, he begrudgingly walks out of the mansion without saying a word, as close to a “thank you” as you’ll ever get out of this guy.

Overall, a surprisingly solid, fun episode. The show’s take on Cain Marko is still pretty grating, and the quickly rendered portrayal of childhood trauma isn’t exactly nuanced, but seeing a more vulnerable side of Xavier was very effective. I also enjoyed the little character beats throughout (Gambit fixing a bus, Storm counseling Xavier, Wolverine being a bit of a dumbass, etc.). Not bad at all for a “light” season premiere.

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: Eugene leaps into the air to try to reach Wolverine and Cyclops in the Blackbird, but misses and crashes through the roof of a film studio. These people are definitely filming an episode of that other ’90s mega-hit, Power Rangers. The soundtrack even plays a few notes that sound suspiciously like its catchy theme tune, itself a subject of rad Powerglove covers.

Stray observations:

• I love the way the show filled out Juggernaut’s chaotic re-emergence in NYC. There’s a brief shot of two kids bothering each other in the back seat of a car (a nod to the sibling rivalry theme of the episode). When Juggernaut tears a cab in half, there’s a guy yakking into his carphone, saying, “Yeah, sell all the City Cab stuff.”

• “Heeeeere’s Juggy!” Again, Cain Marko’s penchant for grade-school puns and dated references is annoying.

• On the toilet: Jean. Like I said, she’s probably supposed to be recuperating at Muir Island. Her presence in “Love in Vain” might just be a continuity error.

A long time ago, a beloved college professor of mine opened his lecture with a joke:

Three scientists are working late in the lab one night, and they get into a debate: what’s the greatest invention of all time?

“The wheel,” says one. “It’s the basis of all other mechanical engineering.”

“The microchip,” says the second. “It enabled the Information Age and revolutionized life as we know it.”

“Antibiotics,” says the third. “Untold billions of lives saved.”

The three continue debating this for some time. A janitor happens by, and overhearing the chat, he pipes up with, “The thermos.”

“The thermos?” says the first scientist. “What’s so great about a thermos?”

“Well,” says the janitor, as if it were obvious, “a thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.”

“So?”

“So?” says the janitor, “How does it always know?”

My professor, a diehard Gibsonian psychologist, was teeing up a point about how we can explain much of human perception without ever invoking a cryptic interior process like “knowing”. A thermos doesn’t have to know or decide anything about its contents, it just obeys the laws of physics, as all things must.

All of this is, of course, my way of saying I want to talk a little bit about dithering, the process of making a small color palette look like a much bigger one. Let’s start with some pictures (click/tap any of the images in this post to go to a zoomable file).

It’s 1990. VGA and its decadent 256 colors are the cutting edge, but there are still plenty of computers being used in 16, 4, or even 2-color modes. To display anything like a photograph on your vintage Macintosh, with its 2-color display, you’ve got to borrow a trick from the pointillists. The image above shows the following:

1. My original grayscale photo of Washington Tower.

2. The simple thresholding approach: just figure out whether each gray value is closer to black or white, and go with that. It’s okay for certain drawings, but bad for anything with shades of gray, especially photos.

3. Bayer ordered dithering, common on PCs of the era.

4. Atkinson dithering, of the kind you might have seen on a Macintosh in 1984. It’s my personal favorite.

5. Floyd-Steinberg dithering, also often seen on PCs.

6. A drip effect I created by messing with the dithering kernel. More on this below.

The effect is striking, even today. It’s hard to believe that there aren’t any shades of gray in the dithered images, especially on a modern high DPI display, which is why I included detail insets of the tower’s central window. That dithering works so well is a testament to ingenuity; that dithering works at all is a testament to evolution. Dithering exploits the way human vision works in ways so fundamental that they’re easy to take for granted. For example, the visual system prioritizes the low frequency information (big objects) in a scene over the high frequency information (small details). We perceive the gist first, with the details coming in milliseconds later—we literally see the tower before the pixels.¹

As a kid, dithering always seemed like a magic trick to me. “How does it always know?” The computer can’t display shades of gray, so how does it know that the patch of gray sky needs to become so many dots of black or white? How does it work out the transitions? The question felt especially baffling for Bayer dithering, which really looked to my teenaged eyes like someone had meticulously layered a cross stitch pattern onto a photograph.

If you want a detailed explanation of how dithering algorithms work, here’s a great one (and another and another). I’m less interested in the math and more interested in the perception, but here’s a brief rundown.

Ordered dithering (top-right in the tower images above) looks like someone laid a pattern over the image because essentially, that’s exactly what’s happening. A small grid of numbers—the dithering kernel—is tiled across the original image to tweak its values up or down, and then the image’s modified values are matched to the available color palette. The image at left shows ordered dithering of a grayscale gradient with a 2×2 kernel, 4×4, and 8×8. The larger the kernel, the more dithering patterns are possible, though in practice the 8×8 is as far as you need to go. The darkest part of the gradient stays solid black, because none of the kernel’s modifications are enough to move them toward white. But as the original image gets lighter, the kernel tips more and more pixels toward white. Ordered dithering can be done in parallel, because each pixel of the image is modified independently by exactly one pixel of the kernel (though of course, parallel processing was a distant dream in the dithering era).

The three other images of the tower are examples of diffusion dithering, which is a very different approach. Diffusion algorithms move across the image one pixel at a time, left to right, up and down.² The current pixel is changed to its closest match in the available palette. Then the difference between the old and new colors—the quantization error—is distributed to the neighboring pixels according to the weights specified in the kernel. Once a pixel is matched to the palette, it is never touched again, but before that happens, an image pixel might get adjusted by the kernel multiple times. In ordered dithering, each pixel is modified independently, but in diffusion dithering the fate of every pixel depends, at least a little, on what happened to the pixels that came before it.

The Atkinson and Floyd-Steinberg dithering techniques are the same diffusion approach with different kernels. Both have carefully chosen values such that, given a field of 50% gray, they’ll produce a checkerboard of black and white. That’s a good test for a kernel, but by no means the only criterion, as the image below shows.

1. The original image in 256 shades of gray. The inset shows what the kernel does to a 50% gray image at double magnification. Since there’s no kernel here, it’s just a gray square. Thrilling.

2. Atkinson dithering. You might have noticed that Atkinson dithering creates a higher contrast image compared to the other algorithms. That’s because the Atkinson kernel only compensates for 75% of the quantization error, discarding the rest. Thus, bright areas tend to stay a little brighter, dark areas stay a little darker, and interestingly, the kernel’s effect on a 50% gray field produces a chunkier checkerboard than the other kernels.

3. Floyd-Steinberg dithering. Applying this kernel to the 50% gray image produces a perfect checkerboard of alternating black and white pixels. The weights in the kernel add up to 1, so changes in brightness are fully compensated, though the weights themselves seem kind of arbitrary.

4. A custom kernel that pushes the quantization error to the pixel immediately to the right. I’m compensating for all the quantization error, but my kernel is too simple, and the artifacts from it are obvious and ugly.

5. A custom kernel that pushes the error to the pixel immediately below. Same idea as #4, just in a different direction. Same ugliness, although arguably worse for this image in particular, as you really lose definition in the staircase. My simple kernel is imposing a little too much of its own structure on the image, and its strong vertical component cancels out the horizontals of the steps.

6. A custom kernel that distributes the quantization error evenly to three pixels surrounding the current one. It almost works. It even produces a checkerboard on the 50% gray image, just like Floyd-Steinberg. But it still doesn’t look great. The resulting image looks over-sharpened, and the sky has an odd stucco-like texture to it.

Human perception is a messy thing, cobbled together over millions of years of evolution, and evolution very rarely lines up with mathematical elegance. Just as it’s impossible to divide a music scale into numerically equal ratios that still sound good together, there’s no obvious recipe for a good dithering kernel. You just have to feel it out, along with some educated guesses. My custom “drip” kernel (bottom-right in the first image) takes badness to the extreme. I provide a kernel with a single negative weight, so rather than diffusing the error around the neighboring pixels, it passes the error to the pixel below the current one.

All this, and I haven’t even talked about color.

1. My original color photograph of Washington Tower. It uses 61,607 unique colors in the modern sRGB color gamut (out of 16.8 million possible colors), or what we used to call “True Color”.

2. An Atkinson dithered version in the default VGA 256-color palette. This image uses 166 unique colors, less than 1% of the original’s. Yet the only obvious differences are a bit of noise in the sky and some subtle color changes.

3. An Atkinson dithered version in the EGA 16-color palette, though this image uses only 14 of them. I feel like I’m looking at an image out of Encarta.

4. An Atkinson dithered version in the CGA cyan/magenta 4-color palette.

5. An Atkinson dithered version in the CGA red/green 4-color palette.

6. An Atkinson dithered version in the CGA cyan/red 4-color palette.

The cyan/red image looks incredible to me. Come on, tell me that’s not a work of art. It reminds me of the kinds of photos you get from infrared filters. Of course, the original CGA spec had a maximum resolution of 320×200 in 4-color mode, so it never would have been able to display an image this big, but we can dream.

These images also give us a sense of why VGA was such a big deal. Look at how close it is to the modern sRGB image, despite using just a fraction of the colors. VGA had a color gamut of 262,144 (64³) colors, but could only display 256 colors on the screen at a time. Its default palette was carefully chosen to represent the color spectrum at perceptually equal intervals, which of course does not mean the colors are spaced in a way that is numerically equal. You can’t just write a few nested loops to generate the period-accurate 256 colors, though LLMs will try to tell you otherwise. The only way to replicate the palette accurately is to create your own lookup table.

Looking at the insets of the CGA images, you’ll notice that the tower is made mostly of colored pixels, despite two of the three CGA palettes having access to black and white. It’s not what I expected, and certainly not what I would have done if I were dithering by hand, but it’s what the algorithm dictates. Weirdest of all, it works. Yet another example of how effective these algorithms are. The tower undeniably looks gray in contrast to the sky and the ground. And the red/green palette doesn’t even have a pure white to work with! The closest it has is a pure yellow. Rather than ruining the picture, it instead gives the whole image a yellowish cast. There are a couple of perceptual processes in play here. These are all examples of color constancy (we perceive colors stably despite changes in ambient illumination) and simultaneous color contrast (perception of colors is affected by what’s around them).

How effective are the dithering algorithms at stretching those meager palettes? Here’s what you’d get if you just swapped in the best-matching color without dithering:

Funniest of all to me is that in the VGA-256 version, the palette’s generous 16 shades of gray render the tower quite realistically against a flat, badly reproduced sky. It’s amazing how much a little dithering will get you.

I’d like to talk about one more important perceptual phenomenon, but to do that I’ll need a different image. Here, look at these pumpkins:

From left to right: original, VGA-256, and EGA-16. The insets zoom in on the light pink pumpkin near the bottom of the image. In the dithered versions, the brightest part of the pumpkin is actually just pure white. Yet without the zoom (and even with it, honestly) those white pixels still look kind of pink. This is an example of neon color spreading, the phenomenon in which bright colors seem to leak into the surrounding area. Yet another perceptual process that dithering exploits, or maybe just reveals.

Depending on the image and the palette, sometimes you get unexpected effects. For example, here are two versions of Washington Tower, both dithered with the same algorithm and the same 2-color palette of dark blue (#2200aa) and pure yellow (#ffff00). The center image is based on the original color image, while the image on the right is based on the grayscale image. The grayscale dither looks a lot like the black and white versions up top, not much more to say there. But this blue-yellow palette is a bad match to the original color version and forces the algorithm into creating some odd effects. Notice how much darker the sky is, because although dark blue is pretty far off from the sky’s actual light blue color, it’s still a closer match in color space than pure yellow. Dithering darkens the sky and keeps accumulating error until the algorithm hits the edge of the tower, where there’s a very slight fringe of brighter pixels thanks to camera and compression artifacts. By this point, so much quantization error has accumulated that the algorithm dumps it all into those fringe pixels, creating a striking edge highlight. Lastly, notice the orange tree on the right side of the frame. The color-based dither makes it look much brighter, partly due to simultaneous contrast (because it’s surrounded by darker pixels), and partly because the original orange leaves are a closer match to pure yellow than the grayscale version.

And of course, once you’ve dithered an image down to a few colors, palette swaps are easy.

I’ll bet you thought I wasn’t going to get any more mileage out of that “drip” kernel.

Programming these various algorithms (in P5) was a great learning exercise, and as a former vision scientist, I of course find it fascinating to see the ways in which artistic techniques intuitively exploit the facts of our perceptual processes. For more on that, check out this talk on the intersection of art and vision science by the great Marge Livingstone. The heyday of dithering may be behind us, but I think it’s overdue for a comeback. I’d go so far as to say it’s an unreasonably effective technique. Born of a need to stretch the limits of early graphics hardware, dithering manages to transcend its practical origins and becomes an art form all its own.

Season 3 is the Season of the Phoenix. The season’s generous allotment of 19 episodes covers just 10 distinct stories, many of which are either about the Phoenix or related to it. “The Phoenix Saga” and “The Dark Phoenix” by themselves occupy about half the season. The two-part season opener “Out of the Past” is a prelude to the first Saga, while “No Mutant Is an Island” is a direct reaction to its aftermath. Altogether, fully 12 of the season’s 19 episodes are tangled up in the Phoenix Sagas, or 13 if you include “Orphan’s End” (which I do).

I think the season is pretty good overall, especially its adaptation of “The Dark Phoenix”. I’m not as keen on “The Phoenix Saga”, but more on that below. It’s certainly an improvement over the meandering second season. We only wasted two episodes on the Savage Land this time! Of course, being so beholden to the Phoenix story arcs presents a few problems for the show. Those stories predate characters like Gambit and Jubilee, giving them little to do. Even Rogue, who can easily substitute for Colossus in the Phoenix stories, is just absent for a lot of the season. If you’re not interested in Jean and Cyclops, you’re out of luck for the year.

Although the Dark Phoenix presents an interesting antagonist for the show, the lack of a season-spanning Big Bad gives these episodes a different feeling compared to seasons 1 and 2. We’ve traded nefarious government contractors and all too believable anti-mutant hate groups for cosmic entities and glam rock galactic empires. That said, season 3 gets a lot right, especially as it leans into the high emotions that come with camp, romance, and tragedy.

Season 3’s storytelling ambitions were frequently in conflict with production problems and meddling from the network. The network wins from here out, so I’m not expecting great things from season 4. Then again, season 3 did things I didn’t expect, like keeping the Inner Circle’s misogyny mostly intact. So I guess we’ll see how things go!

How I’d Rewrite Season 3

I realize that it’s easy to play script doctor with thirty years of hindsight, and that no matter how good my ideas might be, I still don’t have a time machine. But I’ve been slowly reviewing this season for six months, and I can’t help but think about how it might have been better, so humor me.

To start off, just get rid of the first Phoenix Saga entirely. There’s no need for the show to tie itself in knots to adapt a stretch of comics that weren’t even conceived as a coherent story in the first place. Spare us most of the Shi’ar and all of the Starjammers. Instead, tweak “Out of the Past”. It proceeds mostly as it did before, except that the Phoenix is released from the prison ship along with the Spirit Drinker, or alternately, Jean explores the ship with Xavier and accidentally discovers the Phoenix. Either way, make Jean/Phoenix the one who ultimately defeats the Spirit Drinker, and only because of her strange new powers.

From there, the season could tackle whatever stories it wanted, but with Jean gradually becoming more and more powerful, just as happened in the comics over several years. You could even do—dare I say it—interludes that check in with Jean, either to show off some worrisome new Phoenix thing, or to slowly ramp up Jason Wyngarde’s psychic manipulations leading into “The Dark Phoenix”.

Treat “The Dark Phoenix” as the season finale it’s meant to be. If planetary genocide is still too hot for Saturday mornings, fine, keep the D’bari star system uninhabited, but get the Shi’ar in there—skip D’Ken and put Lilandra in charge from the start—and let Jean vaporize herself all the same. I think you’d still have to bring her back to life in the end, but do it as a separate episode rather than hastily resurrecting her a minute after she dies. With these changes, the show won’t be in a ridiculous position where the same character dies two tragic deaths in one season.

And while I’m at it, give Jubilee something to do. This is (nominally) a show for kids and she’s the only kid on it, give her a proper spotlight already. She clearly idolizes the other women on the team, especially Storm, and it’s a huge missed opportunity that the show hasn’t done anything with that, and probably never will.

Worst Episode

“Savage Land, Strange Heart”. The Savage Land is as boring as ever, and completely mishandles what could have been a great Storm story. It’s so focused on dinosaur stampedes and jungle mythos that it feels like Storm is barely there. The best thing I can say about this Savage Land story is that it’s the last one. While the season has a couple of other episodes that are arguably worse on their own merits, “Savage Land” aims highest and crashes hardest.

Dishonorable mentions go to “Longshot” and “Love in Vain”. “Longshot”’s nonsensical plot and obviously reused dialogue, along with the fact that it was written for season 3 but wouldn’t air until season 5, smack of an episode that was cobbled together to fill time and save money. “Love in Vain” is so bad that not even Lenore Zann can save it, though it does manage some unintentional comedy.

Best Episode

“Out of the Past”. It was a thrilling return to form after the lack laster end of season 2, and it’s also the best the show has ever or will ever look (until X-Men ‘97, anyway). It has the distinction of being one of season 3’s only original stories. “Out of the Past” features an unusual combination of characters—the Reavers, Lady Deathstrike, and the Spirit Drinker—that had never appeared together in the comics, making the episode a rather unique remix.

Honorable mention goes to “The Dark Phoenix”, which is narrowly behind “Out of the Past” in my book. The show commits to faithfully adapting the story from the comics, which comes through in ways large and small. Cyclops is formidable and interesting, the big fight in “The Inner Circle” is taken almost panel-for-panel from X-Men #134, and most of the Saga’s adult themes are intact, more or less.

I also have to give an honorable mention to “Obsession”, in which Apocalypse and Archangel ham it up so hard that you can’t help but have fun. Gambit also hits Apocalypse in the face with an entire fighter jet, one of the only cool things he gets to do all season.

Worst Hero

Professor Charles Xavier. It’s not that Xavier didn’t have good moments this season. In fact, he’s more active in season 3 than ever before. Temporarily restoring Jean’s sanity at great risk to himself comes to mind. And his example of grace under pressure in “Child of Light” really resonated with me.

But he screws up a lot this season. He sends his X-Men into space despite having no idea who his psychic visions are coming from or what they really mean, and when the “mission” goes awry, he has the nerve to call Cyclops a poor leader! A manifestation of his worst possible self terrorizes the team for half an episode, which begs a lot of questions about what kind of person Xavier really is. Oh, and don’t forget that he exploits his psychic connection with Lilandra to learn about the Shi’ar rite of trial by combat. Or that he tried to manipulate Lilandra with a romantic vision (how like Jason Wyngarde!) before she clocked what was happening and threw him into a chasm (metaphorically).

Lastly, a dishonorable mention for Corsair, who sucks (along with all the Starjammers). But his crimes pale in comparison to the Psychic of Westchester County.

Best Hero

Cyclops. Screw the haters, it’s Cyclops! Since “The Dark Phoenix” so closely follows the comics, the show’s version of Cyclops is suddenly as powerful as he’s supposed to be. More importantly, “The Dark Phoenix” simply can’t work without him. He’s one half of the romance, and without that, Phoenix is just another villain blasting the X-Men with energy bolts. I think Norm Spencer rose to the occasion and gave Cyclops an emotional range we’ve never seen before, which persists even into episodes like “Orphan’s End”.

Worst Villain

Garokk. Literally just a sentient clump of dirt insisting he should rule the world. Get out of here. The Colony are also pretty lame, but that’s mostly down to that episode’s generally poor writing. They could’ve been cool!

Best Villain

Dark Phoenix, obviously. No one else even comes close. She is, as we millennials used to say, epic. I’ve talked about the Phoenix a lot already, so I won’t belabor the point. I’ll also give an honorable mention to Apocalypse. The show needs more villains with the guts to say things like, “I am the rocks of the eternal shore. Crash against me and be broken!”

Most Improved

Again, I think it has to be Cyclops. Going from the show’s constant stick in the mud to Best Hero kind of says it all. Though I have to acknowledge his awful behavior in “Cold Comfort”, so who knows what he’ll be like next season.

Season 3, Episode 19. Air date: February 10, 1996

I would say that this episode is a weird note to end a season on, except it didn’t end the season. “Love in Vain” was produced for season 3 but wouldn’t air until late in season 4. It’s a bottle episode that focuses on Rogue (or tries to) and also introduces some aliens known as the Colony, who are definitely a kid-friendly version of the Brood. I have a guess as to why this episode falls here in the production order. The previous episode, “Orphan’s End,” ties up a thread from “The Phoenix Saga” by revealing to Cyclops that Corsair is his father. In the comics, the equivalent story has Corsair come to Earth because he’s seeking the X-Men’s help against the Brood. So “Orphan’s End” and “Love in Vain” share a connection via the comics that is not at all apparent on the show (Corsair doesn’t even appear).

Anyway, this is an episode where space lizards try to assimilate the X-Men. The Colony, like the Brood, are parasitic aliens who reproduce by transforming other lifeforms into more of themselves. Unlike the Brood, who are terrifying, the Colony are ridiculous. I mean look at the Colony Queen. Look at that cape. They should have leaned into it and had her communicate with clown honks. The only obvious connections the Colony shares with the Brood are their parasitic natures and their use of giant space whales—the Acanti—for interstellar travel.

The Colony are especially interested in Rogue for her amazing strength and vitality. The Queen briefly mentions that she’s chosen her “for the passing.” Nothing more comes of the comment, but it feels like there’s a first draft of this story that singled out Rogue to succeed the aging Colony Queen. The Queen eventually says she wants all the X-Men to join the Colony, but her focus has been on Rogue for years. She’s even gone through the trouble of recruiting Rogue’s first boyfriend, Cody, to try to lure her in. The Colony is immune to Rogue’s powers, so Cody can actually touch her. It’s a great sales pitch until Cody starts succumbing to the transformation and turns into a hideous lizard.

The action in this episode isn’t really worth remarking on. There are fights, mostly with Wolverine, who discovers the Acanti ship before anyone else. He gets infected with the Colony’s spores and starts transforming, but his healing powers fight it off. Later, he’ll put his hands on Rogue to force her to absorb his powers and save her from her own transformation. The X-Men continue to fight the space lizards until Professor Xavier telepathically awakens the Acanti, which had been enslaved by the Colony. And that’s basically it. Once the Acanti is awake, the Colony are driven mad by its keening. Rogue makes one last attempt to get Cody to stay behind, but at this point he’s fully transformed and he just hisses evilly at her, which is unintentionally hilarious.

It’s not a satisfying resolution. The episode is supposed to be about Rogue, but she doesn’t have much agency. At no point does she consider joining the Colony of her own free will, nor does she directly reject them. Wolverine basically stops her transformation for her. Rogue’s abilities don’t matter at all here. Ultimately it’s Xavier who solves the problem from miles away. By the way, did you know there’s at least one Marvel universe where Charles Xavier became an Acanti? It occurs to me that the X-Men didn’t even really defeat the Colony, per se. They’re still using the Acanti for space travel, even with it awakened. So what’s going on there? Is it flying around the galaxy, slowly digesting its former masters?

The episode compares very poorly with “The Cure,” which even amidst all its action still gave Rogue some weighty ideas about “normalcy” to ponder. Sure, the Colony would have given Rogue the ability to touch others, but they’re so overtly hideous and evil that it’s not much of a choice. Imagine a version of this story where the Colony are outwardly beautiful and tempting, but still rob their converts of their free will. It’s an idea that’s been done to death in sci-fi, but it would have been a hell of a choice for Rogue, who is so frequently caught between loneliness and self-determination.

Stray observations:

• In an early scene, Gambit enters Rogue’s room to flirt with her. He finds her reading a book that you can just barely see is titled Romance Novel.

• Even the great Lenore Zann struggles to sell this shallow, poorly written episode. Though when she spots Cody from a distance (having last seen him after accidentally putting him in a coma), her delivery of, “Oh my goodness, it’s really you…Do I want it to be you?” is much better than this episode deserves.

• After his first fight with the Colony, Wolverine drags himself to a payphone to alert the X-Men. Cal Dodd’s desperate screaming, as heard from Xavier’s end of the line, is hysterical. This is happening as Rogue asks for permission to take some time off with Cody. Beast’s extremely polite attempt to get everyone to address the man who sounds like he’s dying on the telephone is even funnier.

• On the toilet: Jubilee. The episode also shows Cyclops and Jean driving off for a trip (so that Rogue can be wistful about intimacy). So I suppose that counts as explaining their absence, though it’s strange that they wouldn’t rush back from a vacation to fight hostile aliens.

Season 3, Episode 18. Air date: February 25, 1995

I have to open this review with some incredible news. It took 44 episodes, but we finally have one in which Wolverine does not appear. I was starting to think it was never going to happen. In fact, most of the series regulars are absent. It’s just Cyclops and Storm, alongside—heavy sigh—Corsair and the Starjammers.¹

This is the one where Cyclops finally learns that Corsair is Christopher Summers, his long-lost dad. The story that surrounds it is a bad one. Corsair returns to Earth with a Shi’ar cop, Raknar, hot on his tail. Raknar claims that Corsair is wanted for the abduction of a young girl named Jandra, who is the only person who knows the location of the Lord Chamberlain’s treasury. Or maybe she witnessed a murder? Hence why she’s repeatedly referred to as “the witness”? It’s not clear. Anyway, the reveal is that Raknar is a crooked cop in the Chamberlain’s employ, and he was planning to murder Jandra to cover up…something?

So yes, Corsair was hoping to gain access to a fortune through Jandra, but he was also legitimately saving her life. Most of these story beats are told, not shown, making for a confusing episode. The Starjammers magically show up to ambush Storm, and later, Raknar, though since the episode made a big show of Corsair coming to Earth alone, I’m not sure how or when everyone got there. To top things off, characters spout some code phrases in an attempt to dress up a pathetically simple battle plan. The Starjammers are able to take down Raknar after Storm uses her powers to—brace yourselves—blow a tarp off of a deflector array.

Outside of that, we get a lot of Cyclops and Corsair processing the revelation that they’re family. Corsair explains that he and Cyclops’s mother were facing imminent abduction by Emperor D’Ken, leaving them no choice but to hurriedly push their two sons out of a plane. Cyclops is understandably very angry about being abandoned, and I have to give it to Norm Spencer here, who manages some decent acting amidst a truly ridiculous story. Cyclops and Corsair reconcile by the end of the episode, which I take issue with, as Corsair did absolutely nothing to win back his son’s trust. He even says that he just sort of assumed Scott and Alex were dead, and thus never bothered coming back to Earth to look for them. This seems like the total opposite of forgivable behavior, but I guess Cyclops is just that understanding of a guy.

Storm is extremely fun in this episode. She’s sporting a long ponytail, yet another fabulous look for a character who’s gotten more costume changes than anyone else (animation is expensive and it’s rare to see characters rotate through so many designs, especially for a ’90s cartoon). In this story, she’s Cyclops’s ultimate wingwoman, repeatedly conjuring gusts of wind and bolts of lightning to get the Summerses out of scrapes with the Shi’ar. The writers accidentally gave her super strength, too, as at one point she casually scoops up Cyclops and Corsair—two fully grown men—to get them to safety. She also fights (and then allies with) the Starjammers, with her abilities providing the decisive edge in the capture of Raknar (decisive, but nonsensical). Storm even drives a monorail! Did you know the X-Men have a private monorail? Did you know that Alison Sealy-Smith delivers an absolutely iconic line reading about the monorail? She’s spectacular. And not a god damn pterodactyl in sight.

Stray observations:

• As young Scott and Alex plunge toward the surface of Alaska with the plane’s only parachute, it catches fire. I get why Corsair assumed his sons were dead, but I’d still check.

• In addition to a silent flashback cameo of D’Ken, we also get the first appearance of the third and most troublesome Neramani sibling, Deathbird. Deathbird.

• Raknar’s navigator betrays him, showing Cyclops a set of ship’s logs that have been faked in advance to cover up Jandra’s planned murder. Why anyone would preemptively incriminate themselves like this, I really can’t say, but the Shi’ar have a weird culture.

• In the final scene, as Corsair and Cyclops are getting to know each other, he says, “So I hear you’re going to marry that redhead…” So I guess the show canonically considers Scott and Jean’s marriage invalid, because Morph was playing a fake priest? Do marriage licenses not exist on this version of Earth?

• Cyclops, wondering who could possibly be contacting them at Christ o’ Clock in the morning: “Well it can’t be an X-Man, they don’t get up this early.” I really enjoy the hint of a smile you can hear in Norm Spencer’s delivery. He’s no Lenore Zann, but he’s very good in this story.

• On the toilet: again, I almost can’t believe it, Wolverine! Along with every principle character except for Cyclops and Storm.