The Secret World of Alex Mack is an American science fiction television series that aired on Nickelodeon from October 8, 1994, to January 15, 1998. The series was co-created by Ken Lipman and Thomas W. Lynch and was produced by Lynch Entertainment, Hallmark Entertainment and Nickelodeon Productions. The Secret World of Alex Mack was accompanied by a tie-in series of 34 paperback books, as well as a variety of merchandise.

Plot

Alexandra "Alex" Mack is an ordinary teenage girl living in the industrial town of Paradise Valley with her parents, George and Barbara, and her precocious older sister, Annie. The town largely revolves around Paradise Valley Chemical, a factory that employs most of the adult residents but has a notoriously shady history and staff.

While walking home after her first day of junior high, Alex is nearly hit by a truck from Paradise Valley Chemical, and during the incident, she is accidentally drenched in GC-161, an experimental chemical developed by the factory. She soon discovers it has given her strange powers, including telekinesis, the ability to generate electricity from her fingertips, and the ability to morph into a mobile puddle of liquid. Though Alex finds her powers exciting, they are unpredictable—sometimes her skin glows bright yellow when she's nervous. She confides only in Annie and her best friend Ray, choosing to keep her powers a secret from everyone else, including her parents, in order to protect herself from the chemical factory's ruthless CEO, Danielle Atron.

Series overview

The series evolves from seasons 1–4 from innocent hijinks to darker connotations; seasons 1–2 mostly deal with cheerful misadventures and comedic encounters with incompetent Paradise Valley Chemical staff Vince and Dave. Seasons 3–4 take on a more serious and dark development, in which it is revealed that Danielle Atron had been developing GC-161 as far back as the 1970s and that she may have had fellow scientists and researchers systematically assassinated to cover up GC-161's mutagenic effects on people.

Subplots of the series included Barbara Mack going back to college as a mature student; Alex and her friends being targeted by a school bully; Alex's crush, Scott, turning out to be a fairweather friend; and Louis Driscoll befriending Alex and Ray after moving to Paradise Valley as a new student. Vince, meanwhile, is fired in season 3 and replaced by an asocial Vienna-born scientist named Lars Frederickson. Vince frequently reappears as a guest character, obsessed with getting his job back. While Alex was initially bullied by an older student named Jessica in season 1, Jessica's actress, Jessica Alba, left for other projects, and the character was replaced with Kelly, a preppy but mean-spirited cheerleader, and later Jo (the aforementioned school bully who goes after Alex and Ray).

In season 4, Alex develops a serious relationship with Hunter, a new boy in town. She initially believes he is infatuated with Danielle Atron after discovering what appears to be a love shrine to the woman in his bedroom, but Hunter is revealed to be investigating Danielle's potential involvement in the death of his scientist father by drowning. Alex shares her first kiss with Hunter.

Characters

Main

  • Alexandra "Alex" Mack<!--Full name from http://web.archive.org/web/19980712205048/http://nick.com:80/_framesets/tv_shows_frame.cfm?show_id=2&category_id=5&content_id=1&href_type=1--> (played by Larisa Oleynik) – Alex is an average teenage girl in Paradise Valley. While walking home from school, she is nearly hit by a truck carrying GC-161 and is doused with it, thus giving her extraordinary powers. Among them are telekinesis, the ability to generate electricity from her fingertips, and the ability to liquefy and travel from place to place in the form of a puddle of liquid. She briefly manifests superhuman strength due to her body having an unusual reaction to a new curry recipe her mother had just tried. However, this was only valid in one episode, as her mother never used the recipe again.
  • Raymond "Ray" Alvarado (played by Darris Love) – Alex's best friend and next door neighbor, and the only one besides Annie to know about Alex's powers.
  • Anne "Annie" Mack (played by Meredith Bishop) – Alex's older sister, and a scientific genius in her own right. Next to Ray, she is the only one who originally knows about Alex's powers. Lynch's father, a nuclear physicist, worked with radioactive material in the family's garage and the chemical spilled out of its container. Lynch said, "Today, they would've shut the whole block down. It cracked me up—the idea that that stuff was right there. What if I ate it? What would happen to me?" The house, used for exterior shots, is located in the Westford Place neighborhood of Valencia.

Near the end of the series' run, Lynch presented star Larisa Oleynik with a package deal that included a fifth season of the show and a feature film, but Oleynik turned the deal down. Initially a live convention interview, the reunion featured numerous cast and crew members from the original TV series, revelations about their lives post-series, and discussions of a possible reboot or sequel. It was revealed that many of the cast members had gone on to various endeavors, with moderate success: Larisa Oleynik (Alex) had gone on to earn mainstream adult roles in shows such as 10 Things I Hate About You, while other cast members had largely left acting. Alexis Fields (Nicole) had gone on to a career in interior design, John Marzilli (Vince) had adopted a son who attended the cast reunion, and Darris Love (Ray) became involved in acting and music.

Home media

A single VHS volume containing two episodes titled "In the Nick of Time" was released by Sony Wonder in the United States in 1996.

The show's first season (consisting of 13 episodes on two discs) was released by Genius Entertainment on DVD format on October 2, 2007. The set is noteworthy for giving Jessica Alba top billing on the package, most likely in an effort to sell more copies, even though she actually only appears in a supporting role, and only in a few episodes. This was then released in Region 2 on April 2, 2012, and in Region 4 on June 6, 2012.

The first and second seasons are available through Amazon.com's Instant Video section, through iTunes and on Paramount+.

Mill Creek Entertainment released the complete series on DVD for the very first time on August 1, 2017.

DVD boxed set controversy

The UK release of the series' DVD boxed set received a rating of '15' from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), a rating considered restrictive, particularly since the series was initially aimed at preteens. It was eventually revealed by the BBFC that the '15' rating was applied to the boxed set because of a season 1 episode called "Annie Bails" where Alex is seen climbing into a clothesdryer. According to the BBFC, "The presentation of this behaviour is comic and no negative consequences are shown which would warn young viewers of the potential dangers of hiding in such appliances. While fatal incidents of children trapped in washing machines or fridges are rare, there remains sufficient cause for serious concern. The distributor indicated that they would be happy to accept a higher certificate rather than cutting the episode. The TV series is rather dated and would not have much appeal to a young audience when compared to current children's TV programmes. In addition, as the work was being targeted at an adult 'nostalgia' market, children would not be the natural audience."

Book series

A book series aimed at young readers was released along with the series. The first and last books of the series are novelizations of the first and last episodes, respectively. The rest of the series consists of completely original stories, tied into the main series through the mentioning of various plot points from the TV episodes. There were 34 books in total, all released as mass-market paperbacks from Simon & Schuster. Authors Diana G. Gallagher and Cathy East Dubowski were the predominant authors of the series, although other authors were recruited in-between to write certain titles.

The following titles were included in the series (in order, published between the years 1995 to 1998; note that the exclamation point at the end of each title was a stylized and intentional punctuation):

  1. Alex, You're Glowing! by Diana G. Gallagher
  2. Bet You Can't! by Diana G. Gallagher
  3. Bad News Babysitting! by Ken Lipman
  4. Witch Hunt! by Diana G. Gallagher
  5. Mistaken Identity! by Diana G. Gallagher
  6. Cleanup Catastrophe! by Cathy East Dubowski
  7. Take A Hike! by Cathy East Dubowski
  8. Go For the Gold! by Diana G. Gallagher
  9. Poison In Paradise! by Diana G. Gallagher
  10. Zappy Holidays! by Diana G. Gallagher
  11. Junkyard Jitters! by Patricia Barnes-Svarney
  12. Frozen Stiff! by Diana G. Gallagher
  13. I Spy! by John Peel
  14. High Flyer! by Patricia Barnes-Svarney
  15. Milady Alex! by Diana G. Gallagher
  16. Father-Daughter Disaster! by Clayton Emery
  17. Bonjour, Alex! by Cathy East Dubowski
  18. Hocus Pocus! by "Joseph Locke" (pseudonym of Ray Garton)
  19. Close Encounters! by David Cody Weiss
  20. Halloween Invaders! by John Vornholdt
  21. Truth Trap! by Cathy East Dubowski
  22. New Years' Revolution! by Diana G. Gallagher
  23. Lost in Vegas! by John Peel
  24. Computer Crunch! by Patricia Barnes-Svarney
  25. In Hot Pursuit! by Mel Odom
  26. Canine Caper! by Diana G. Gallagher
  27. Civil War in Paradise! by Bonnie D. Stone
  28. Pool Party Panic! by V.E. Mitchell
  29. Sink Or Swim! by Cathy East Dubowski
  30. Gold Rush Fever! by Diana G. Gallagher
  31. New York Nightmare! by Erica Pass
  32. Haunted House Hijinks! by John Vornholdt
  33. Lights, Camera, Action! by Ray Garton
  34. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained! by Diana G. Gallagher
  • Zappy Holidays!, New Years' Revolution! and Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained! were marketed as "Super Editions", having more pages than the shorter remaining books in the series. Zappy Holidays!, in addition, came with an inserted page of pop-out cardstock holiday ornaments, themed on The Secret World of Alex Mack, which the book's buyers could detach and hang on their Christmas trees at home. All 34 books have been out of print since the 1990s, although second-hand copies continue to circulate.

References

  • Official website