This is a serial that by all accounts, it has a lot of what I love about Doctor Who and this era in particular.  Yet, The Mutants is one of those serials with a lot of elements that just don’t click.  It’s a serial with a handful of supporting cast performances that just do not work, Rick James being generally the worst (his delivery is almost entirely stilted).  The cast generally feels almost entirely miscast: Paul Whitson-Jones as the Marshal is the one supporting cast member that I think works well, Garrick Hagen is trying but the material for his character Ky really does dry up in the back half of the serial, and both George Pravda and John Hollis are competing with each other for most ridiculous accent (Pravda wins).

Bob Baker and Dave Martin also genuinely struggle, perhaps the most, with the pacing of a six part serial.  The Mutants has enough material for six but the script struggles with getting from plot point to plot point.  Structuring the inciting incident of the Doctor having to deliver a message for the Time Lords always keeps him as an outsider even though he supports the people of Solos in overcoming their oppressive, apartheid overlords.  Doing active commentary on South Africa during apartheid is also bold and actually quite good for what it’s doing, it’s just keeping the Doctor in the story naturally that doesn’t work (pulling the trick from Colony in Space and The Curse of Peladon would have worked much better).  The costumes of the story are brilliant, especially the futuristic designs, same with the general sets and the Mutants themselves.  Christopher Barry as a director also excels at the psychedelic sequences and making the sets feel both futuristic and the location feel like an alien planet.  I’d like this a lot more if there were just some minor changes to the structure and keeping the Doctor not feel like an observer who could easily leave whenever he wanted to.