Episode #18 - The Beast Of Bayville
Original Airdate October 27th, 2001

Hank McCoy struggles to control the mutation growing inside him. Hoping to rid himself of it permantly, he creates a serum, with dire consequences. Can The X-Men stop the mindless blue brute?

Credits
Written By: William Forrest Cluverius
Directed By: Gary Graham
Music Composed By: William Anderson
Guest Starring: Michael Kopsa as Beast/Dr. Henry 'Hank' McCoy, Nicole Oliver as Risty Wilde and Dale Wilson as Principal Edward Kelly

Review: This episode sees the transformation of Hank McCoy into the blue furred Beast we all know and love. We’d had a vastly improved string of episodes at this point into the series, but my expectations of this episode were a little higher than usual, as Beast is one of my favourite X-Men and I really wanted to see him done justice here.

I thought they did a pretty bang up job. The reasons for turning himself into the creature were well thought out, and his introduction back into the Institute was pretty cool to see, and the fight between The X-Men and the mindless Beast was excellent. All in all, The Beast stuff is all commendable work, but the episode is far from perfect, as Spyke is the spotlighted teen of the episode, and he’s at the peak of his annoyance here, he was almost as annoying here as he was in Spykecam. His ridiculous “teach” dialogue was simply cringe worthy. I’ve never had too much of a problem with Evan, but God, I was hoping Beast would rip him apart in this episode.

I loved the fight with Beast in this episode. I thought the Wolverine/Beast part was the best, but there was some great staging in there, almost bordering on downright creepy. I especially liked the stuff in the warehouse. Unfortunatly, the ending of the fight didn’t really live up to the stuff before it, Xavier came and it pretty much just stopped. It was slightly perplexing, but nothing too damaging to the episode.

Great stuff, overall. Shame that Spyke soiled it a little.