Day 323: The Mutants Episode 6

The major theme of The Mutants is race. It's a story that quite clearly looks at the way in which racism occurs and what is done because of this fact. The racism is between that of the humans and the Solonians, the Solonians being maltreated because they are less civilised than the humans, but also because they are different. These differences are something that the humans fear, and so they torture and attack the Solonians, segregating them from the rest of their civilised society and keeping them at arm's length.

The racism is generally perpetuated by the Marshall, who keeps everything in check with his climate of fear and anger against everything that comes in his wake. He is a man with a narrow-minded view of the universe. A universe fit for humanity and not much else. The important thing, however, is that there are two sets of people with repect to his orders. Those that obey them without question and those that consider the consequences of the actions and realise what is being done, that this must not perpetuate. The former of these two is a regrettable fact of life. There will always exist people who do not question their way of life and these people deserve to be educated to receive opinions about what they do and believe to get a fuller understanding of life in the universe. The latter of the two represents the hope that we have. That people will rise up against their superiors and realise that sometimes what is being passed on to you may not be right and that sometimes it is best to let go of inhibitions of fear and to see what is out there in the universe.

It's worth noting as well that this sentiment of race is something that is clearly shown in the production as well. People of colour populate the background of this story in a way that we've never really seen before, showing that diversity can exist and also allowing for the humans to be shown as hypocites, given that they show diversity in their crew and yet they can't show diversity with respect to the Solonians. We must therefore realise that issues such as race will always continue and we will need to work hard in order to help overcome this problem.