Wealthy, outspoken scientist Dr. Miles Hawkins is shot in the spine by a
police sniper during a riot while trying to rescue a child, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and using a
wheelchair. After losing a lawsuit against the police department and discovering evidence of a vast conspiracy against the black community, he angrily undergoes a change in political philosophy and uses his company's resources to invent a formfitting combination
powered exoskeleton and bulletproof black
body armor that not only enables him to walk while wearing it but in the process also endows him with superhuman strength, speed and agility, plus the ability to fire nonlethal
paralysis darts from his wrists. Using a vast array of technology, including a secret underwater lab called the
Seapod deep beneath his secluded seaside mansion and a
flying car/
submarine called the
Chrysalis to travel around the city at night, he secretly assumes the persona of the metal-masked
vigilante known as the "M.A.N.T.I.S." ("Mechanically Augmented Neuro Transmitter Interception System", changed to "Mechanically Augmented NeuroTransmitter Interactive System" for the series) to find justice for himself and others. The pilot featured strong roles for a variety of
African-American actors, including
Gina Torres as dedicated
pathologist Dr. Amy Ellis,
Bobby Hosea as ambitious reporter Yuri Barnes,
Wendy Raquel Robinson and
Christopher M. Brown as African students of Hawkins who act as his secret support staff in his fight against crime, and
Steve James as handsome
inner city youth club manager Antoine Pike. The series that followed recast all the characters, save for the hero, to include British scientist and exoskeleton co-inventor John Stonebrake (
Roger Rees) and smart-mouthed, streetwise young
bicycle courier Taylor Savage/Savidge (
Christopher Gartin), with police detective Lt. Leora Maxwell (
Galyn Görg) being the only other person of color as a regular on the show, and the plot was completely rebooted and simplified from that of the pilot. Initially, the series depicted the M.A.N.T.I.S. operating as an often-reluctant vigilante who only got involved in criminal situations when there was some sort of personal connection to him and his friends. While the costumed crimefighter was still pursued by police, the aforementioned conspiracy was now reduced down to the Machiavellian machinations of one man, evil industrialist and Miles' former business partner Solomon Box (
Brion James in the first appearance,
Andrew J. Robinson in later appearances). Box is often assisted by the corrupt
chief of police Grant (Blu Mankuma) However, poor ratings led to an extensive retooling of the concept. Midway through the show's run, minor recurring characters like Miles' clichéd sassy black housekeeper Lynette (
Lorena Gale) were dropped, and more fantasy adventure elements were incorporated into the premise, including
parallel universes like the one where a group of eyeless
men in black are from,
time travel, super-villains, and monsters. In one particular episode, the M.A.N.T.I.S. is accidentally thrown 32 years into the future, where he finds that his own technology has been exploited to create a
supercomputer called the City Eye (voiced by
Malachi Throne) which has enslaved the Port Columbia population. He destroys it and sets the human population free before returning to his own time. In the series' finale, a trapped Miles and Leora are tragically killed battling an invisible dinosaur as they sacrifice their lives to detonate the fuel cell in their car to kill it. John seals off the records and technology that had created the M.A.N.T.I.S., thus averting an apocalyptic future. ==Cast==