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Captive Hearts
Review by Stu, Media by James Harvey

Episode #5 - Captive Hearts
Original Airdate - January 30th, 1993

The X-Men must make thier way into the sewers to fight The Morlocks, a group of mutants too physically deformed to live in the outside world and rescue Cyclops.

Credits
Written By: Robert Skir, Martin Isenberg
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy
Animation Services By: AKOM
Guest Starring: Cal Dodd as Wolverine, Norm Spencer as Cyclops, Cedric Smith as Professor Charles Xavier, Iona Morris as Storm, Len Carlson as Senator Kelly, Chris Potter as Gambit, Lenore Zann as Rouge, and Catherine Disher as Jean Grey Court as Jubille,


Review: A really, really dull episode. There’s the odd glimpse of entertainment in here but most of it is simply lost in mediocrity. I’ll admit to never being a massive Storm fan, I find her better in a supporting character role, simply because the episodes with her as the lead usually suck. Badly. The X-Men movies suffer from the same problem; in that Storm is a pretty boring character.

The Morlocks also have to be some of the most tedious characters ever, especially Calisto and her wanting Cyclops to be her king. I’m glad we didn’t really see a lot of these characters, as I find them to be incredibly dull and lifeless. One of the more interesting things was Wolverine’s fear of scorpions and his taking off at the end of the episode, but generally, there’s not a lot going here that’s of great merit which is actually surprising, as I’ve enjoyed a lot of Skir’s and Isenberg’s work before, especially Batman: The Animated Series’ Lock Up.

One thing I did like was the death fake out with Cyclops, and Wolverine’s attacking him. I always thought that was a great little touch to the episode as was Gambit being affected by the Morlocks plague.

The lightsaber fight was pretty lame (I hear in the original comics, they used real knives and Storm stabbed her to win, FOX wouldn’t have dared tried that!)

Overall, this episode goes down as one of the X-Men’s worst.

Screenshots: