X-Men:TAS

THE DANGER ROOM: Use it Carefully

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According to Stan Lee, the Danger Room was created for the very first X-MEN comics issue by Jack Kirby (see Beast working out in it below), then given its official name in issue #2.  So it has been around from the start (and preceeds by a decade the similar “Holodeck” used in later Star Trek incarnations, actually first seen the ST cartoon!).  In X-MEN:TAS we used the Danger Room sparingly for a few reasons.  First, action in real crises is always preferable to “training problems.”  But more importantly, since the Danger Room can create spectacular but unreal dangers, it is tempting to trick the audience by creating big pretend fights or jeopardy (like in a character’s nightmare) which are then revealed to be “only projections” or dreams.  We did allow ourselves the luxury of intense Danger Room imagery once, to great effect.  That was in the episode (#14: “Till Death Due Us Part”) where Jean is about to marry Scott.  Broken-hearted Wolverine takes out his unhappiness by obliterating some Scott-like projections, some of which end up looking like Scott-Sentinels (second image below).  It provided a dramatic physical manifestation of Wolverine’s tortured inner struggle.  By choosing not to overuse the Danger Room throughout the series, the few times we did it proved effective.

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Eric - showrunner/developed for television - and Julia - episode writer - for X-Men: The Animated Series 1992-1997 - now with 2 books about the experience: 1) the definitive oral history titled Previously on X-Men & 2) X-Men The Art and Making of the Animated Series

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About Us

We’re Eric Lewald & Julia Lewald, two members of the creative force behind the animated X-Men series of the ’90s looking to celebrate and share our appreciation for it with the fan base that made this show the culture-changing mega-hit it is today.

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