David McDermott

David McDermott is the writer of great action TV shows such as X:Men, Transformers, Ben 10, Power Rangers, and many more.

1. Right off the bat, one of the themes I’ve been exploring in my work is assimilative alien diseases and Apocalypse using the geomancy based ley line energy of sacred sites. And with two episodes; Phalanx Covenant and the Fifth Horseman you managed to cover all of these areas. What inspired these stories? Was it just the comics?

The Phalanx Covenant was definitely based heavily on the comics. That was one of the things that made the series so memorable, I think: The majority of the episodes were taken directly from the comic book storylines, cherry-picking the most interesting beats from the entire history of the X-Men.

I was a big New Mutants fan, and I'd always thought of the Technarchy and the Phalanx as being connected, although I'm not sure that was ever really spelled out in the books. We needed a self-contained origin for the animated version, and I thought bringing Warlock in gave the story a focus... and let me write one of my favorite characters!

Hidden Agendas was another matter. It was part of the final series order, so the intent was to break some new ground with the last episodes and goes places the books hadn't yet. There were aspects of the stories that came from various beats in the books, but as a whole, they were intended to be original tales for animation.

As for ley lines and sacred sites, I've always been fascinated by the paranormal, and by the "lost knowledge" often ascribed to "pagan" cultures. I like to base my writing on the real world as much as possible, whether it's scientific principles or metaphysical belief systems. It adds a certain resonance and "ring of truth" to things.

Ley lines and geomancy tend to come up a lot, I think because the concept of energy flowing through secret channels in the Earth appeals to us on a primal level. It makes sense to us. After all, water flows in channels, and in ocean currents. Our blood flows, carrying energy throughout the body. Electricity, too--although our understanding of that phenomenon came later (Unless the "Baghdad Battery" really IS a battery!)

Ley lines also provide motivation for a truly LARGE-SCALE evil plan, spanning multiple locations. It's a REALLY useful plot device, whenever magical or mysterious forces are in play.

To be clear, I'm pretty skeptical in real life, and I've probably gotten more skeptical as I've gotten older. The point isn't that I believe these things; it's that SOMEONE does, or did, at some point in the past. For fantastic fiction, that's a very solid jumping-off point.

2. What is Ben 10 really about?

I guess if you take in the whole franchise, from the original series through Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, it's really about growing up. Ben's transformations are a sort of metaphor for the "powers" that we gain as we grow older, and the manner in which we integrate those powers into our developing sense of self.

At first, Ben had limited power--ten different forms, with a strict time limit--but he had to learn to use those powers in a socially acceptable way, to help people rather than for personal gain. Although he and Gwen weren't under parental control, Grandpa Max was a constant presence, giving guidance and bailing him out if he got in over his head.

In Alien Force, Ben's powers are expanded, but he doesn't have adult supervision any more. He has to make a lot more choices and decisions for himself, and deal with the consequences of his actions. Gwen and Kevin sort of represent the two extremes Ben could choose to follow: A sort of carefree hedonism vs. an almost monastic adherence to proper behavior. Ben usually finds a middle path... annoying both of them.

In Ultimate Alien, Ben's powers increase again, and now, they're revealed to the world. He has to consider how his actions will affect people beyond his immediate circle, as well as how others perceive--or misperceive--those actions. The individual's relationship to society is explored, as well as the nature of fame and the attendant loss of privacy.

I'm not allowed to reveal much about the upcoming fourth series, but I CAN say that Ben will be given increased responsibilities within a more rigid social structure, and will find his own unique response. It's also going to be even funnier, with even bigger explosions. ;>)

3. In Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape the Professor character explains step by step methodology for creating a trauma based mind control victim. This could not have been done without due research into the phenomenon and the programming techniques. Canadian Doctor Ewan Cameron was furthering Mengele’s work on unwitting military personnel and C.I.A. agents (some of them also unaware of the experiments ) Not remembering this kind of detail in the comics when Hama was writing it, how did your team manage to come so close to a real phenomenon and why?
Recap of Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape below

We did a LOT of research for Weapon X, Lies and Videotape, but it was almost exclusively from the comics. I remember there was a fantastic article in Wizard at that time (Sorry, I don't have the issue) which listed every canonical moment in Wolverine's backstory up to that point, so we hunted down all those issues and pored over them, then boiled the whole thing down to 21 minutes of animation... which was a fairly complex task.

Any gaps in the book's explanation of events we filled in with psychological principles we had picked up over the years. My writing partner (Steven Melching) and I had both taken a few neuroscience classes in college. I think ALL writers are interested in psychology to some degree or other. After all, it's essential to understanding character motivation and interaction.

We took the events described in the comics and mixed in what we knew about interrogation techniques, programs like MK Ultra, the Stanford prison experiments, and movies like The Manchurian Candidate, and the result is what you see in the episode. I think an awful lot of it was actually there in the original comics, if you put it all together. Anything we did was just a logical outgrowth of that.

“The Project was a U.S. government operation developed to take volunteers and transform them into killers by programming their minds through visual and drug induced suggestion. Typhoid Mary and a man named Roberts are two of the known volunteers. The Project was created by a man named Trevor who has since been killed by Wolverine " -Wolverine Encyclopedia Volume 2

Weapon X
There seem to be some unignorable similarities between the accounts of "real super soldiers” and those in a particular region of the Marvel Comics Universe.

When data came forward about Canadian Doctor Ewan Cameron furthering the work of Mengele's, it became hard to not see a tie to the fictional Weapon X Program. The Weapon X Program was headed by a mysterious “Professor” who has quite an uncanny resemblance to Cameron. The other two individuals involved were Doctor Abraham Cornelius and NASA employee Carol Hines. As if that weren't enough, with all the replacing and creating memories and traumatic splits in the mind and what not; the symptoms and experiences of Wolverine and other test subjects in that program read exactly like Duncan Finaon's interviews. or Fritz Springmeir's Books. Who was reading whom in the 90s? And how did they know about the Canadian experiments? The story gets stranger when we see that GI Joe creator Larry Hama wrote many of the Weapon X issues in the 90s...

“Under the name Logan, Wolverine had already been working for the CIA alongside fellow agents like Victor Creed, the future Sabertooth. The CIA established Project X in order to convert men into "super soldiers" with unusual abilities. The project facilities were set up in Windsor, Canada, through a secret agreement with the Canadian government. "
-X-Men: The Ultimate Guide

Season 3 Episode 19 Weapon X, Lies and Videotape

Wolverine travels back to Canada to investigate his past. This is similar to the factual tale of Doctor Ewan Cameron and his furthering of Mengele's mind control sciences in Canada. In this episode the Canadian Professor seems to list the steps of his work as if they are simply chapters in a Fritz Springmeier book. The professor would later have his hand cut off by Wolverine who would track him down and find him hiding in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Pest Control Division. He was killed by Silver Fox in Ontario years after.

So Wolverine has dreams about Sabertooth emasculating him by threatening his woman (Silver Fox),

“After all we've been through”

This seems to be a reference to what Monarch researchers would consider bonding

Xavier tries to probe his mind and screams in agony
" Strange tortuous memories pouring out as if a damn had burst”

Then Wolverine has a super soldier freak out on his own friends.

“Hank, I found this, inside an envelope postmarked two weeks ago, there was no return address. I've seen this image in his mind; this must be a clue to his delusions. Perhaps it triggered him”

"Super Soldier" Duncan Finoan explains these same paranoid delusions and triggers that cause him to board himself up in his house with all the lights off and his guns out.

“You just went in a dream state again what did you see?”
-Beast
" Me Being trained to take people out” - Wolvie

“I assume you've been having headaches and nightmares, like Maverick and I, they did something to our minds when we worked here, something code named Project Talos”

“Take a closer look Logan; you remember these places don't you “Silver Fox

“Created Memories, but to what purpose?” - Beast

Wolverine has memories contradicting the movie sets of his memories he is standing in.

Sabertooth falls to the ground weeping remembering his dad abusing him for being different.

“Why does somebody want us to remember this, like its all bad”

According to the literature on mind control. It has been found most effective to traumatize (abuse) a person physically at ages three and five, later these people would be bonded with other children and giving moments of life that seemed perfect/supportive

As Wolverine approaches Silver Fox lovingly, she wards him off

“The cabin, was that a lie too?” - Wolverine

“Despite initial setbacks all subjects are responding to the trauma conditioning, we will be able to reintegrate them into society with no memory that we conditioned them. When they're covert services are needed they will attack their target and then remember nothing, the key is to reach the subconscious mind, the subjects must be repeatedly exposed to a simulation of extreme emotional trauma. While using psychoactive chemicals, we flood the subjects mind with false memories. Overwhelming them, breaking them down making them controllable. Seems to work best when based on actual life events. " -Doctor

“Aldo Ferro was a crime lord...who once owned half the land /biz in Cuba. During the Weapon X experiment, Ferro used his telepathic powers to implant false memories in Wolverine and other victims. Ferro linked the false memories to the pain receptors of his victims not only because it was more effective, but because he enjoyed inflicting pain on others. “-Wolverine Encyclopedia Vol.2

They show the four subjects back to back as if to hint at twinning.

It is made obvious that this set is a movie studio with different rooms to fabricate different childhood memories...

Talos is responsible for their reprogramming, an evil Borg looking archon type

"Talosians are humanoids who inhabit the planet Talos IV. Talosians have large crania and are telepathic. However, their advancements made them utterly unemotional, so they gathered a menagerie of more primitive species so they could observe emotional interaction. They were no longer capable of living on their planet's surface and needed to use other species to reproduce in sufficient numbers. The Talosians appear in the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", and capture Captain Pike. They reappear in "The Menagerie".

( BTW, as for Talos, I'm afraid he doesn't have anything to do with the Talosians. In the comics, the robot guarding the lab was called Shiva, after the Hindu deity. However, the networks generally frown on naming cartoon villains after actively-worshipped deities, so the name was changed to something more mythical: In Greek legend, Talos was a bronze giant who guarded Europa on the island Crete.-DM

…all that blabber from Wikipedia just means that the Talosians were the Watchers and here we have a Watcher that is trying to reprogram Monarch/Military mind control victims...very odd

Sabertooth uses the creative visualization against the shape shifting watcher and pretends he is fighting his father.

Maverick shape shifts as well.

"Don't you get it Logan, it was all made up”