With Martha, Mickey and Danny Pink as companions and coloured actors making a regular appearance in modern Who, it's easy to forget that seeing a black face in the show in its original run was rarer than you'd expect. This makes it all the more tragic when a rare part for a black actor in the 1970s is played so appallingly. In The Mutants, Rick James is amazingly, astonishingly, jaw-droppingly bad. It's not so much that he can't act his way out of a paper bag but that such paper bag would suffocate and kill him if any acting at all was required in order to escape. As it is, The Mutants is odd enough, with bug creatures that turn into butterfly men and some of the funkiest, fuzzy around the edges bluescreen you'll ever see. James plays Cotton who, along with Christopher Coll as Stubbs, is one of the guards working for the evil Marshal on Solos. As the tale was a thinly veiled critique on colonialism and Apartheid, James' casting can be seen as an additional link to the theme. Alas, James cannot act and is so wooden you worry that someone will walk passed him and apply a coat of Ronseal by mistake. Coll tries his best to carry his acting partner for the production but fails over and over. You imagine Coll needed a stint at the bar as soon as filming finished for the day.
Writer of The Blog of Delights, a review site covering film, TV, cult TV, books and audio. Fan of Dr Who, Bond, X-Men and Marvel. Also the writer of e-book 'Fictional Legends: Doctor Who - the TV Adventures' for Collca.
