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Revisiting The X Files Episode 16 · Death by Multimedia

0:22
None. Good day to everyone and welcome
0:51
back for episode 16 of Revisiting The X-Files where
0:56
each episode I will be working my way through the 11 series, 2
1:00
movies and several books that make up The X-Files.
1:04
For those of you who have returned, thanks for your
1:07
company once again and if you're new to this then thanks for
1:10
dropping by to check out what is on offer.
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Hopefully you'll find something that you like.
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Before we start today's episode, I always like to recap on any
1:20
feedback I've received via the interweb, by messages or on
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social media platforms. And this week we have a message
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from Michael from Melbourne who was our fabulous guest who
1:32
offered up his top 10 episodes of The X-Files a few weeks ago.
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This comment was in response to my Season 2 rap episode.
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So that's a little while ago. And he says and I quote Humbug
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at 7 and Anasazi at 4. Have you gone mad, Bill?
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Anasazi #1 humbug #2 Nice recap and interesting thoughts that
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season 2 didn't quite stack up to what you remembered.
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My memory is that seasons four and five were peak X-Files.
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Will be interesting if that stacks up, ha ha.
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I love it when my opinion differs from someone else's and
2:12
when you are me that is generally all the time.
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Cheers to Michael for putting me straight.
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So thank you to all of those of you who have listened and if you
2:22
would like to add your thoughts to these, I will give you all
2:25
the contacts at the end of the episode.
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And we'll also put all the details in the show notes for
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the episode. So as we move further into
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season 3 today and let's discover if the next 5 episodes
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can live up to the brilliance of the 1st 5 episodes.
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So without any further ado, let's get stuck into today's
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episode of Revisiting The X-Files.
2:53
So let's start off Season 3 Episode 6 titled Too Shy, which
2:59
is stylized as the number 2 and SHY.
3:04
This was written by first timer Jeffrey Vleming and was directed
3:08
by the excellent David Nutter. And we're sticking with the
3:12
monster of the week scenario. And we have a variation on the
3:15
vampire monster here with Virgil in Canto.
3:19
What a great name that is, who is terrifically portrayed by
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Timothy Carhartt, who at that time and for me now as it
3:28
stands, was best named as playing the villain Ellis Dewald
3:31
in Beverly Hills Cop 3, in which he was also terrific.
3:36
So here he plays the charming, handsome villain.
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Though is that strictly true? As Mulder himself suggests
3:43
halfway through the episode, he is not killing these women for
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sexual pleasure or through an insane serial killer method, but
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more for the fact that he requires the body fat from them
3:55
to survive as was discovered by his skin that was found under
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one of the victim's fingernails, which Scully fan had no oils or
4:03
fatty acids in it. So was he evil or just a mutant
4:09
finding a way to survive in this big God damn world?
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Mulder and Scully are brought in to investigate a decomposed body
4:17
on a deserted pier. The victim who had finally
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decided to meet up with a guy from an online dating site.
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Ah the pre Tinder days. How good were they?
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Go on a date, sit in a car on a deserted pier and get the fat
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sucked out of you. Mulder knows straight away that
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it's a lonely hearts club because of other cases that he
4:39
has seen and assumes that whatever is causing this is
4:43
being done by the same guy. Excellent investigative skills.
4:48
Good thing he and Scully have been brought in now.
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One part of this episode doesn't really make a whole lot of
4:55
sense. Detective Cross, played by James
4:59
Handy, has a problem with a woman, Scully, working on the
5:03
case, and his comment to her is, I'm not being sexist here, I'm
5:08
just being honest. And he brings up his
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uncomfortableness with this a couple of times in the episode,
5:15
but it doesn't actually do anything for the story.
5:18
It doesn't lead to anything. By all means bring this up if it
5:23
actually has anything to do with the plot, apart from women being
5:26
murdered and it being dangerous, but it doesn't seem to lead
5:30
anywhere except for suggesting again that men don't think women
5:34
can do the job. I don't know, it just seemed
5:38
superfluous and unnecessary. Anyway, clues are being
5:43
discovered and Encanto is being crowded into a corner.
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His next target, Ellen, backs out of a rendezvous, so he has
5:51
to trawl the ladies of the Knights to get his midnight
5:54
feast. But he's caught in the middle of
5:56
his deed and he's unable to complete the transaction.
5:59
That sounds so terrible. Well worded, Bill.
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This gives Scully a better chance of an autopsy, at which
6:06
she finds the body's airwaves choked with the same substance
6:10
that dissolved that first body. She suggests it is a
6:15
concentrated digestive enzyme, a viscous hydrochloric acid.
6:21
And yes, I had to listen to that and write it down a couple of
6:23
times. It is here that Mulder suggests
6:27
his theory. Did you find anything?
6:29
Almost. Done with the list.
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That skin you found one of the prostitute's fingernails.
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I had the crime lab check the DNA results against the non
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offenders database and. Once it's here, they didn't find
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a match. No.
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If they did find something else, check the next page with a
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circle. The skin sample contains no oils
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or essential fatty acid molder. There are any number of factors
6:54
which could have caused that result.
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Where are you going with this? OK, it's not yet the finely
6:57
detailed insanity that you've come to expect from me.
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It's just the theory. But what if he's not doing this
7:02
out of a psychotic impulse, but rather out of some physical
7:05
hunger? Maybe he needs to replenish this
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chemical deficiency in order to survive.
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From a dry skin sample you're concluding what That he's some
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kind of a fat sucking vampire? I don't know how else to explain
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Lauren Mcafee's missing adipose, and I bet if you check the
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Aberdeen victims you'd find exactly the same thing.
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This killer secrets the digestive substance which
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renders the victims fat. Which he ingests before the rest
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of the body dissolves entirely. There are examples of this in
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nature, aren't there? Yeah, scorpions pre digest their
7:32
food outside of their body by regurgitating onto their prey.
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But I don't know too many scorpions who serve the
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Internet. But if I am right, then we're
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not just looking for serial murderer, We're looking for some
7:42
kind of genetically different human being, a creature who may
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be responsible for who knows how many missing persons cases
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throughout the United States. Encanto must be feeling the
7:51
walls closing in. He's being pursued romantically
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by his landlady, whose blind daughter is less than excited
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about. And Ellen is apologetic about
8:01
cancelling and she's back on. And the cops are also closing in
8:06
on him at the same time. Now Detective Cross turns up to
8:10
ask some questions, and for his reward, he gets an untimely and
8:14
gruesome death. His landlady lets herself into
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his room and starts snooping around and gets her comeuppance.
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As a result, no good deed remains unrewarded.
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But Mulder and Scully are notified by the daughter who
8:29
smelled her mother's perfume in the room when she came looking
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for her. See, that's why you wear perfume
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at their people. Seriously.
8:38
Sure the Encanto has feasted enough, but now he goes back to
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Ellen's house to make it a hat trick of victims.
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More good old fashioned police work on an old style computer
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with genuine floppy disk drive that offers exactly how old this
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series is. Sees our agents track him down
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at Ellen's, though she has already been attacked.
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Mulder takes off after him, but it's a decoy and Incanto instead
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attacks Scully to prove Detective Cross might be right,
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until Ellen, who is still alive, shoots him with Scully's gun and
9:17
everything works out for the best.
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The final scene sees Incanto in incarceration.
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Ha ha, nice use of the language there.
9:25
Bill looking the worse for wear because he hasn't been able to
9:28
feast on fatty tissue, but he is still very much alive.
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Which is a nice touch because now, like we have with a few
9:37
monsters of the week, we can wonder what might happen to him
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next now that he can't get what he needs.
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I still enjoy this episode. Sure it might just be a recycled
9:50
vampire story, but it does have its twist.
9:54
The same vampiric requirements though.
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As Encanto says at the end of the episode, I gave them what
10:01
they wanted and they gave me what I need.
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Timothy Carhartt was excellent in the role, the charming creepy
10:09
guy who wasn't what he seemed. Mulder and Scully's by play was
10:14
moderated here because Scully had the chance to be the lead
10:17
with her medical expertise, allowing Mulder to utilize the
10:21
medical and scientific knowledge she espoused to move towards his
10:25
eventual prognosis of the murderer.
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I think this is a solid 4 out of five episode.
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It's a bit icky, which helps with the horror aspects and the
10:36
solid investigative pieces along the way that show that the
10:40
fantastical is chased in a methodical way, which brings a
10:45
realistic side to the episode. You know, in a way where the
10:49
fantastical is real in the episode but not in real life.
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Yeah, you know what I mean. And thus we move into episode 7
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of season 3 and this is titled The Walk, which was written by
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another first timer in John Shaban and directed by Rob
11:12
Bowman. Shaban became a huge influence
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upon The X-Files from this point on as both a writer and a
11:19
producer. He wrote or Co wrote 24 episodes
11:24
over the next seven seasons and also eventually on the Lone
11:28
Gunman and other incredible series such as Breaking Bad and
11:33
Better Call Saul and many others.
11:36
So prepare for his name to become a semi regular on this
11:39
podcast. So we're here in for another
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Monster of the Week episode, and this one is another in the genre
11:47
that does pop up more than once in The X-Files, and that is
11:50
about the resultant problems that are suffered by those who
11:54
return from war and the struggles they face with what
11:57
they have gone through during those times.
12:01
Here on the walk, we come to meet eventually Leonard Trimble,
12:06
better known as Rapo. We only really get to meet him
12:09
after the story has begun to come together with Lieutenant
12:13
Colonel Stands trying to bump himself off because he's then
12:17
saying he won't let me, not knowing who he is.
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We discover through Scully's questioning of him that his
12:25
family all died in a suspicious fire and that he is being looked
12:29
over by a mysterious figure. When Scully and Mulder are asked
12:33
to terminate the interview, Scully goes hard arsed and
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starts pushing around her own authority, all as Mulder plays
12:40
the obedient sidekick in the background.
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These are a couple of really interesting scenes with Scully
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taking the lead and Molder dutifully behind her.
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We haven't really seen this before in The X-Files and it
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does showcase another side to this working partnership.
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So we have Stan's whose family's been wiped out mysteriously and
13:02
is not being allowed to kill himself by an unknown entity.
13:07
Then Captain Draper gets herself into an accident in the pool and
13:12
is drowned. When a senior officer, General
13:15
Callaghan, is questioned, he tells them that she has no
13:18
family. He also admits that he has seen
13:21
mysterious figures around and that he has received phone
13:24
calls. Unfortunately, he seems to have
13:28
brought this to their attention a little late because soon
13:32
enough his young son and his wife both meet unusual and
13:37
unexplainable deaths of their own.
13:40
Mulder though has a theory of course, and when the agents
13:44
finally meet Rapo, he offers to Scully that he thinks Rapo is
13:48
using astral projection to leave his body and perpetrate these
13:52
murders, as well as stopping any attempt by Stan to off himself.
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Scully, and this might surprise you, is dubious.
14:02
Who would have thought, even when Rapo's accomplice, who has
14:05
been gathering personal items of his victims that allows him to
14:09
centre on them and create these murders, is himself bumped off
14:13
in his holding cell with a sheet conveniently shoved down his
14:17
throat. What happened?
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Suffocation. The bed sheet was stuffed down
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his throat. Nobody been in the cell with
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him? He did it all by himself.
14:27
Not likely. Not likely.
14:28
Yeah, he had helps go and he wasn't lying because I think the
14:31
man that killed him was Leonard Trimble.
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Rapo, yeah, he can't even walk, let alone kill somebody.
14:36
See this, This is a dental X-ray plate.
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No, actually, the ones I've been walking around with, I already
14:43
had developed at the hospital. See, this is the one I was
14:45
carrying when we first met Stan's.
14:47
This one in the rehab room, in the pool, in the general's
14:49
office, and this one's the general's house.
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All of them exposed to some kind of radiation.
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From what? From Stan's, This phantom
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soldier. I came down here wondering if it
15:00
could be true, if what Lieutenant Colonel Stan's was
15:02
describing was a case of astral projection.
15:05
What you're saying is this man Rapo is leaving his body and
15:07
floating around town killing people?
15:09
Practitioners claim that during a self hypnotic trance, the
15:11
astral body can actually detach itself and float virtually
15:14
anywhere, sometimes invisible but sometimes appearing as an
15:17
apparition. They even claim that the astral
15:19
body has psychokinetic capabilities far greater than
15:21
the corporeal body. Malter, then, why would he need
15:25
Quentin freely? Well, maybe he needs a psychic
15:28
connection to a place, a thing or an object.
15:30
A letter. That's why Quentin called
15:32
himself the Mailman. It's insane.
15:34
Sometimes. The only sane response to an
15:36
insane world is insanity. You know anything about
15:38
backwards masking? Maybe messages recorded
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backwards in sounds? Yeah, or on the general's
15:44
answering machine. Check this out Marks.
15:46
On waiter, your time. Is coming killer.
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Your time is. Come rapper, of course, offers
16:00
that he cannot move because he is a quadruple amputee and
16:05
denies smilingly that he couldn't do the things that
16:09
Mulder accuses him of, yet admits his anger at the system
16:13
that has created his current life position.
16:17
When Stance tells Callahan that it is Rapo who is causing this
16:20
grief, he confronts him and though Rapo taunts him to kill
16:24
him, he decides against it at the last minute.
16:28
This then gives Rapo cause to again leave his body to chase
16:31
down Callahan. While Scully believes it is a
16:35
seizure that Rapo's going through, Mulder knows what is
16:39
happening and he follows Callahan.
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The real hero ends up being Stand who enters Rapo's room and
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while he is out astral planning he smothers him to death which
16:50
then dissipates his apparition and saves Callahan.
16:55
So for me this episode has a lot of good things attached to it.
16:58
The Scully and Mulder working relationship here has Scully
17:01
doing all the muscle work in the verbal confrontations while
17:05
Mulder quietly builds his case in his head for what is
17:08
occurring. I thought that worked really
17:10
well in this episode for the first time writer John Shaban,
17:15
who was still getting his head around the characters and how
17:18
they flow with the show. It was a good indication that he
17:22
knew where he wanted to take them down the track.
17:26
Ian Tracy was excellent as Rapo, and something I didn't know
17:30
before this week was that he played Huckleberry Finn in the
17:34
excellent Canadian USTV series from the early 1980s, which I
17:39
watched over a few times during my high my childhood on
17:43
Australian TV. And I always thought the two
17:46
kids that played Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were
17:49
excellent and I really enjoyed his performance, but just didn't
17:52
realize it was this guy who also played Rapo.
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So that was something that I learned this week.
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Still, as much as I enjoy watching this again, the nature
18:03
of the plot meant that Rapo was always doomed to failure, which
18:07
worked for the show, but maybe not so much for the episode
18:10
itself. But as a first time effort from
18:13
Shaban, I think it worked well and better scripts were to come.
18:18
It is still worth a watch though, and 3 1/2 out of five is
18:22
still a reasonable assessment of this episode's strengths and
18:26
weaknesses. Let's walk on to ha ha, see what
18:35
I did there. Episode 8 of Season 3 titled
18:39
Ubliet. In fact, I'm going to say that
18:41
that's how it's pronounced. But you know what?
18:43
I could be wrong and this was written by another first timer.
18:47
And as it turns out, his only contribution to The X-Files,
18:50
Charles Grant Craig and was directed by Kim Manners.
18:55
The start of the episode leaves us in no doubt as to what is
18:59
about to happen because at the school photo shoot old mate Karl
19:04
is dodgy from the outset, checking out the local talent
19:08
and what follows looks like a straight up case of kidnap.
19:13
And we also have an established place where he's going to keep
19:15
her down in the cellar of his house where his photography lab
19:19
is located. So kidnap, except for the girl
19:24
in town at the local store, Lucy, who has an episode while
19:29
saying over and over again, nobody is going to spoil us.
19:35
So having been called into the case, Molder notices the blood
19:38
on the carpet that came from the kidnapping of Amy and he
19:41
connects it to Lucy at the store who was abducted herself in her
19:46
past. In conversation with Scully, he
19:50
tells her that Lucy was repeating the line that the
19:52
kidnapper said to Amy as he took her and that her nose bled like
19:57
Amy's, and that 17 years earlier Lucy had been the victim of
20:01
kidnapping and being held against her will.
20:05
Scully replies. That's spooky.
20:08
To which Mulla replies and smiles.
20:11
That's my name, isn't it lovely? However, after the agents
20:15
interview her in hospital, it looks like they've reached the
20:19
dead end for Lucy. Things are only going to get
20:22
worse. Lucy's cold and she can't see,
20:26
and she's going through everything that Amy is.
20:30
Of course, Mulla does come to realize this and eventually the
20:34
two of them come to the conclusion that the kidnapper is
20:37
the same guy who took Lucy all those years ago, and though he
20:42
asks her for help, she's reluctant to go through all of
20:46
that pain again. Now here is where this episode
20:52
doesn't work for me, and it seems logical from the outside,
20:56
but I feel the writer here has just said Nah.
20:59
Don't worry about how unlikely it sounds, the viewers will just
21:02
roll with it. It's discovered that Lucy has
21:05
bled both blood types on her shirt when she had her bloody
21:09
nose at the store, hers and Amy's.
21:12
So immediately she becomes the number one suspect and the cops
21:16
go to arrest her. But the fact that the so-called
21:20
incontrovertible evidence that they quote and that they and
21:25
Scully refer to doesn't make sense when they were 20 miles
21:30
apart when the kidnap happened. Oh, but she's obviously working
21:34
with the kidnapper. Why?
21:37
It's plainly ridiculous and the facts are ditched here and just
21:42
everyone decides they mean nothing.
21:44
It was stupid and I cannot believe that Gillian Anderson
21:48
allowed her character to be this stupid.
21:53
When Mulder explains these facts to the cop and he's stalled
21:56
because they are unable to believe the fantastical events
21:59
going on, Scully refused to back him up that she after all they
22:05
had seen together. She refused to even contemplate
22:09
his theory. And for me, that is very average
22:13
writing for these two characters.
22:17
To drive her away with this you've.
22:19
Been driven away, Agent Mulder. I'm trying to find her. 1/2 A
22:21
dozen witnesses placed her across town at the exact time of
22:24
the kidnapping. I'm well aware of the facts.
22:26
Well, trust me on this. She's not working with Wade.
22:29
How did she get the blood on her?
22:33
She may have bled it. She bled Amy Jacob's blood.
22:38
Yes, it may explain why there was so little of it on the
22:40
carpet in Amy's bedroom. It's in Eubank mine freeze.
22:44
I don't have time for this nonsense, Agent Mulder.
22:47
We've got a young girl's life at stake.
22:48
I hate to say this Mulder, but I think he just ran out of
22:52
credibility. He's wrong.
22:55
Slowly. Protecting her beyond the point
22:58
of reason and. Protecting her because I think
23:00
she's connected to Amy Jacobs. She's not the way anybody else
23:02
thinks she. Is could you consider for one
23:04
minute that the person she's connected to is Carl Wade?
23:07
Carl Wade. Why would you be connected with
23:09
Carl Wade? For the same twisted reason that
23:11
abused children crave their parents love or hostages develop
23:14
sympathy for their captors. I mean, maybe Lucy developed
23:17
some kind of emotional dependency.
23:18
After five years in a dark pit, I'm sure she developed some kind
23:21
of connection with wage. It's not the kind that you're
23:23
suggesting. Well, it makes a lot more sense
23:25
in the notion that she's bleeding Amy Jacob's blood.
23:27
I don't know how to explain it, but I think that Wade's
23:30
abduction of Amy triggered some kind of physical response in
23:33
Lucy, some kind of empathic transference, moldy.
23:36
That's that's how I account for what Lucy's going through.
23:38
That's how I account for the identical words that
23:41
corresponded to Amy and the spontaneous wounds and blood as
23:43
well. Then why did she run?
23:46
If she's innocent, what was she running from?
23:48
Because she's afraid. You don't see what you're doing,
23:50
do you Molder? You are so close to this that
23:53
you just don't. See it?
23:54
What don't I see? The extreme rationalization
23:57
that's going on, your personal identification with the victim,
24:00
or in this case, the suspect, You're becoming some kind of an
24:03
empath yourself. Moldy.
24:04
You are so sympathetic to Lucy as a victim like your sister,
24:08
that you can't see her as a person who's capable of
24:10
committing this crime. You don't think I've thought of
24:12
that? I have, and not everything I do
24:14
and say in thing and feel goes back to my sister.
24:17
You of all people should realize that that sometimes motivations
24:19
for behaviour can be more complex and mysterious than
24:22
tracing them back to one single childhood experience.
24:25
Agent Mulder, we've got a man on the way in who spotted way.
24:31
So the high Ed is discovered through real police work once
24:35
again from Mulla after the tow truck driver that Carl had gone
24:40
a little bit Cray Cray with came forward and identified him.
24:44
And they discover that Lucy is caring alone in the cellar after
24:50
Amy had managed to escape. And the story without the
24:54
paranormal aspect isn't believable enough here either,
24:58
that Amy is able to escape so easily from this place when Carl
25:02
leaves in the car and no one else had been.
25:05
Well, certainly Lucy hadn't been able to.
25:09
Is it the lack of real tension in the episode that doesn't help
25:11
it? Or is it just the fact that the
25:13
writing seems to be really average?
25:17
Anyway, the other agents of course then go for the obvious
25:20
decoy, the car that's parked up the road.
25:22
And of course, they're in the completely the opposite
25:24
direction, and it's left to Mulder to go and find Carl, who
25:28
is attempting to drown Amy, and he shoots Karl dead, recovers
25:33
Amy and starts SU PR. Now again, Scully is a doctor.
25:40
For goodness sakes, she's a freaking doctor.
25:43
And it's Mulder who's doing the SU PR and not Scully.
25:46
And then Scully decides to play party pooper again and make him
25:50
stop helping Amy, saying that she's dead, she's too far gone
25:55
and so it's left to Lucy who is back up at the car to do it
25:59
herself, to save Amy, and she sacrifices herself to drown and
26:04
give Amy back her life. It really Scully is just a lame
26:10
duck in this episode and Mulder has to carry the burden
26:13
physically and emotionally. Even at the end of the episode,
26:17
when Scully reports that the autopsy showed Lucy had five
26:21
litres of water in her lungs even though she was nowhere near
26:24
the river, she isn't able to say sorry.
26:28
She's only able to say that Mulder helped with the
26:30
connection between Lucy and Amy, which eventually saved Amy.
26:36
So this is an interesting concept for an episode that is
26:40
terribly executed. It's no surprise this was this
26:44
guy's only writing credit on the show because it doesn't pass
26:47
muster. This is Scully from early season
26:51
1 where she was just there to debunk Mulder's work and had
26:56
experienced nothing. Not the Scully that was now a
27:00
major partner of The X-Files and had experienced so many
27:03
paranormal phenomena. Even the cops get a bad rap on
27:08
this episode. I mean surely they would not
27:10
have gone down the paths they did in reality.
27:14
The great thing about The X-Files is that it plays out as
27:17
reality with that unreality bump.
27:20
But in the great episodes, the normal people act in a normal
27:23
situation, not one to facilitate the way the writer wants the
27:27
story to go. Which is exactly what happened
27:30
in this episode. For me.
27:33
This is, well, it's 2 1/2 out of five, but it's purely for the
27:37
idea and for Mulder and for Lucy.
27:42
Everything else here leaks water badly.
27:51
And we're back into the alien mythology arc here on Episode 9
27:55
of Season 3, this episode titled NYSE.
27:59
And I think that's how you pronounce it.
28:01
And I apologize if I've got that wrong, too.
28:04
And this actually had three contributors to the writing in
28:06
Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz and Howard Gordon, and three pretty
28:11
good writers too, mind you, and was again directed by David
28:14
Nutter. And it was also the first of a
28:18
two-part episode. In the beginning offers up
28:21
immediately that we are heading back into the alien situation
28:26
with the quarantine railcar left unattached from the train.
28:29
And in the middle of the night, one man leaves and five more
28:32
men, all Japanese, come on board and start taking apart what
28:37
appears to be an alien, or perhaps an alien hybrid, before
28:43
being cut down by an arriving gun squad and the body being
28:46
retrieved and taken away. No great surprise there.
28:52
So the entire episode leaves us to question whether this is real
28:57
or whether it is a hoax, from the moment that Mulder and
29:00
Scully check out a purported video of the incident to when
29:04
they then go to the place that this DVD came from to find that
29:08
the guy who'd made the DVD is now dead.
29:11
And then they also find a guy who's ends up being a Japanese
29:16
diplomat escaping from the scene with a briefcase full of UFO
29:20
documents in Allentown. If you don't mind, Skinner has
29:24
arrived out of nowhere to enforce the release of said
29:27
diplomat, which seems unusual, and he's not happy again, which
29:34
just seems to be a recurring theme with Skinner in many
29:39
situations. Anyway, Muller and Scully head
29:42
off in different directions once they've examined what is in the
29:46
briefcase. Mulder heads back to Washington
29:49
where he meets up with our very good friends, the Lone Gunman,
29:53
who helped to talk through the satellite photos that Mulder
29:56
found in the briefcase and the ship that is involved in those
30:00
photos. Mulder of course goes to
30:02
investigate and while somehow being able to escape the squad
30:06
that had been sent onto the boat to find him, with the dodgiest
30:11
ever stunt double being used to show Mulder diving into the
30:14
water to escape. It was just so bad for such a
30:19
good show. He also finds a nearby
30:23
warehouse, and in it is a craft that's being fumigated by a
30:27
hazmat team, which Mulder of course then believes is an alien
30:31
ship that has been recovered by the boat that was in the harbour
30:36
after being confronted by Skinner at his home about the
30:40
missing briefcase. And then of course, Skinner then
30:42
tells him I'm out, you're on your own on this case, which
30:46
probably works out better for them anyway.
30:49
Mulder heads off to meet with Senator Matheson, the great
30:52
Senator Richard Matheson, who leads him to believe it is a
30:56
larger conspiracy involving alien hybrids with the Japanese
31:00
scientists involved in creating said hybrids.
31:05
Matheson's line of monsters baguetting monsters is what
31:08
leads Mulder to believe that the scientists killed in the video
31:12
that had been working on this project were the ones who were
31:16
creating these hybrids. Meanwhile, Scully is headed off
31:21
to track down a woman on the list taken from the briefcase,
31:25
who to their surprise and hers, all say that they recognize
31:29
Scully even though they have never met before, or so Scully
31:33
thinks. The group is called together and
31:36
they meet with Scully, who they then inform that they have all
31:40
been abducted previously and have had similar implants to
31:44
Scully which she discovered in the base of her neck, and that
31:48
as a result of the experiments that they have had on them, they
31:52
are all in differing stages of dying of cancer.
31:57
All of this, of course, is very confronting for Scully, but she
32:00
does seem to come around to a level of believing by the time
32:04
she is finished. But I've never met any of you.
32:08
I I've never seen any of you before in my life.
32:10
You may not remember. You've only had one experience.
32:15
Most of us here have been taken many times.
32:19
Taken. Taken where?
32:24
The bright white place. You remember it, don't you?
32:33
I don't know. There are men there performing
32:36
tests. What men?
32:44
They don't reveal themselves. They take our memories away, but
32:47
somehow they start to seep back. Some may have come back to you,
32:50
but they didn't make sense. Do you know about regression?
32:56
Hypnosis? Yes.
32:59
Have you ever considered it? I'm sorry.
33:03
I don't think I'm ready to discuss this.
33:05
You're afraid to remember, aren't you?
33:10
That's OK. We were all afraid at first.
33:19
From this, Scully then believes she recognizes one of the
33:22
scientists, Doctor Ishimaru, in a photograph from who someone
33:27
who had operated on her during her abduction.
33:32
As you would expect, the remainder of the episode plays
33:35
out a little bit. As per X-Files law, Scully
33:39
doesn't believe that they're alien hybrids, even though
33:41
Mulder tracks down the train and sees one alive and being
33:45
transported into the carriage. He tries to board the train with
33:49
the carriage but of course misses it, leaving the station
33:52
by about a minute and he decides to chase it down anyway.
33:56
And then from out of nowhere, guess who decides to make an
34:00
appearance everyone's favorite. I'm an informant, but only for
34:04
myself X he approaches oh he approaches Scully.
34:10
Let's get that right, Bill and demands that she stop Mulder
34:13
boarding the train. Her line of why should I trust
34:17
you you you've lied to us before is pretty apartment, which in
34:22
the long run doesn't help anyway because Scully calls Mulder
34:26
tells him not to board the train and he jumps on anyway and end
34:31
of episode. Hey, So what do we end up with
34:36
here? There's a great one line here
34:38
again, starting with at the episode episode when Scully has
34:41
called into Mulder's office at the beginning of the episode
34:44
when he's watching the alien autopsy and she looks at the TV
34:48
screen and says what are you watching?
34:50
This isn't your usual material. I love it.
34:54
I love it when she gives it to Mulder over his porn addiction.
34:57
And we also have the appearance of the Executioner as such, who
35:01
is known in the show only as the Red Haired Man.
35:05
Red Haired Man, excuse my English, menacingly played by
35:09
Stephen Mccatty, who has appeared in Everything Honestly,
35:14
if you recognize him, but perhaps most notably considering
35:17
that early episode that I've already spoken about today, he
35:21
also appeared in Beverly Hills Cop Three, Your Beauty, Great
35:26
X-Files, and Beverly Hills Cop 3 crossover.
35:29
Fantastic stuff. Interestingly though, given
35:33
Mulder had a double in that awfully shot jumping from the
35:36
boat scene, which, and it was, he's dreadful.
35:39
If you remember it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
35:42
David Duchovny actually performed the stunt of jumping
35:44
from the bridge onto the top of the train here at the end of the
35:47
episode, which is amazing really.
35:49
And the fact they allowed him to do it.
35:52
So the meeting of the Mutual UFO Network and Scully confronting
35:57
what she went through in Season 2 with other women who claim to
36:00
have gone through the same thing, and the threat of the
36:04
onset of a future cancer diagnosis is perhaps and
36:08
probably is, the most important part of this episode when it
36:12
comes to the Canon of the show overall.
36:17
Beyond that, though, the episode doesn't reach the heights that
36:20
it could have. Scully's arc worked well.
36:24
Molders was a little bit less exciting and probably even less
36:29
believable in many places. The cliffhanger was fine, but we
36:33
already knew what to expect, didn't we?
36:35
So for me, this only gets to the height of a three out of five
36:39
episode for me, but there was the hope that the following
36:42
week's episode would be better and more gripping.
36:52
Which brings us to the last of our shows for this episode,
36:55
Season 3 Episode 10 called 731, written by Frank Spotnitz and
37:01
directed by Rob Bowman. And it starts off where we go to
37:06
a shack somewhere, we don't really know where.
37:08
It hasn't been really advertised as particularly where it is.
37:12
And we see all of these alien hybrids being rounded up and
37:17
taken in the army trucks to a really deserted place.
37:22
And there seems to be a big hole in the ground.
37:24
And they're all asked to stand up along this hole.
37:27
Now, I wonder what could possibly happen here.
37:30
And then lots of men with guns shoot them dead, and they all
37:33
fall into the hole. And there you go.
37:35
That's how we're left. But one of them has been
37:38
undiscovered. And he has actually witnessed
37:40
this as well, and we've witnessed it with him.
37:43
So we know that something's going on.
37:46
Now, of course, let's go with the end of the last episode into
37:50
this episode. Of course, Mulder, he's on the
37:52
train. But of course, as he jumped onto
37:54
the train, he lost his phone. What a surprise.
37:57
And once again, this man who is chasing truth and is chasing
38:02
proof has gone on a mission without a camera.
38:08
Come on, man. How many years have you been
38:10
doing this? Why do you not always have, not
38:14
always have a camera in your pocket everywhere you go?
38:18
It's bloody ridiculous. So we've got the two stories
38:22
going again here. We've got Scully doing her
38:24
thing. Mulder is on a train.
38:26
Scully, of course, is trying to find out what it is that's on
38:30
this implant that she has taken from the base of her neck.
38:33
And she's going to see Agent Pendril, who makes his first
38:36
appearance for what will be several appearances over the
38:39
next couple of series. And he tells her that basically
38:44
it is a highly advanced technology that can replicate
38:47
the brain's memory functions and enables someone to know a
38:51
person's every thoughts, which, of course, scares the crap out
38:56
of Scully. Pendril also knows where they've
38:59
been bought and where they're from.
39:00
And so, of course, he tells Scully.
39:03
And Scully says to him, well done.
39:05
Keep up the good work, Agent Pendril.
39:07
And as she's leaving, Pendril says, yeah, keep it up yourself.
39:12
And then she walks out and and then Pendril, in a way that I am
39:16
so familiar with over my life, looks up, rolls his eyes and
39:20
says, keep it up yourself. What a Dick.
39:25
And I completely understand where he's coming from.
39:28
Well done, Pendril. Nice line.
39:30
So Scully goes, and she actually finds this collective of people
39:35
who have been researched on and it's at the Hansen Disease
39:38
Research Facility. And of course they're suggesting
39:41
that it's hemorrhagic fever that is being researched on.
39:45
But of course, that's not the full story.
39:48
Of course, she then is there and guess who turns up?
39:52
But it's the first elder, and we haven't seen him away from the
39:57
Syndicate at any point in time until this point of time.
40:00
And he's turned up and he's speaking to Scully alone.
40:03
They've wiped out everybody else who was there, and it's just
40:07
him. And Scully and everything.
40:10
He's just telling you the truth. So much like the well manicured
40:14
man did in an earlier episode with Scully, the first elder is
40:17
now being straight up front with her to give her information that
40:22
she needs. Yeah, Mr. Mulder, I have someone
40:28
here who'd like to speak with you.
40:32
Mulder, it's me. Scully, where are you?
40:36
I'm in West Virginia. Who dialed this number?
40:39
Mulder, we've gotten involved in something, but it's not at all
40:42
what you think. What are you talking about?
40:45
Whatever is on that train is not alien.
40:49
You're wrong, Scully. Mulder, Ishimaru Jamal.
40:52
He was experimenting on innocent human subjects.
40:55
He's been doing it for years, operating out of a leper colony.
40:59
Whatever his name was, Scully, he's dead.
41:02
I don't think this has anything to do with lepers.
41:04
The. Leper Colony was just a front.
41:07
Tests weren't just on lepers. They were on the homeless, on on
41:09
on the insane. They were brought here and they
41:12
were subjected to diseases and radiation tests.
41:19
Who told you this? The man who handed me the phone.
41:22
Why do you believe him? Because of what he's shown me.
41:26
What? What has he shown you?
41:33
Sir, I'm standing in a train car just like the one on your alien
41:36
autopsy video, only I realize that I've been here before.
41:40
What are you talking about, Scully?
41:42
This is where they brought me, Mulder.
41:44
This is where they put the implant in my neck in one of
41:46
these cars, Scully. It all makes sense, Mulder.
41:50
Ishimaru Zama. He was using the secret railroad
41:52
to conduct his tests across the country.
41:55
Women in Allentown, they don't. Remember these cars, Scully?
42:02
Scully. Can you hear me?
42:04
Yeah, So what are you saying? That Zama is the one who
42:07
abducted these women. What I'm saying, Mulder, is that
42:10
there is no such thing as alien abduction.
42:13
It is just a smokescreen happily created by our government to
42:16
cover up the biggest liable. What about the UFO I saw them
42:19
working on? That wasn't a UFO Mulder, it was
42:22
a piece of a Russian nuclear sub that was raised more lies.
42:26
How can you be so sure? Because I have what I told you I
42:28
needed, Mulder proof. Two weeks ago, the president
42:33
made a public apology for secret radiation tests that have been
42:36
conducted on innocent citizens up until 1974 only.
42:41
Guess what? Those tests never ended.
42:44
Mulder, listen to me. You have got to stay out of that
42:47
train car. Why?
42:51
Because there is a bomb on board Holder.
42:54
If that bomb detonates, thousands of people are going to
42:56
die from hemorrhagic fever. That's what the test subject
42:59
inside has been exposed to well. Scotty, you're a little late.
43:03
I'm locked inside that train car.
43:07
Well, then we've got to get you out of there, because that
43:09
device is on a timer. Where is it?
43:12
There should be a ventilation grid on the ceiling that's
43:14
hidden up inside. So he shows her where she was
43:22
operated on and where she had the implant put in.
43:25
And he also confirms that there is a bomb on the train that
43:30
Mulda is currently on. So let's go back to Mulda,
43:34
because everybody is on the train with Mulda and it's like
43:38
Murder on the Oran Express. I mean, you walk up and down
43:42
these carriages and Mulda's looking for people and the head
43:47
scientist Zama is there either looking for people or trying to
43:50
avoid people. And we have the red haired man
43:53
there who's looking for people and trying to bump people off.
43:57
And of course we've got what's going on in that carriage at the
44:00
end in the quarantine carriage. So everybody's moving up and
44:04
down and we find eventually that Zama is murdered by the red
44:09
haired man. And of course he's now going to
44:12
take out whatever is in that carriage.
44:14
But he and and Mulda both get caught in there and they're
44:18
stuck in the carriage by themselves.
44:21
So the red haired man just says, I'm only here to kill the
44:24
Japanese scientists and then I'm here to to take care of the
44:28
whatever the entity is in the train.
44:30
And that's it. So then his phone rings, and
44:33
guess who's on the other end of the phone?
44:36
It's the first elder. And guess what?
44:38
He's got Scully with him, and Scully wants to talk to Mulder.
44:43
So Scully talks to Mulder, and then she tells him exactly what
44:47
she's just found out, which is that she, along with all these
44:52
other unwitting subjects, were operated on by Zama on the
44:56
secret railway, with the alien abduction theory used as a
45:00
smokescreen for what they were actually trying to do.
45:04
She then confirms, of course, that there is a bomb in the car,
45:07
and she believes that the quarantine subject is infected
45:10
with hemorrhagic fever, which is not what Molda believes.
45:14
And of course she thinks that thousands will die from the
45:17
disease if the car explodes. And so Molda finds the bomb.
45:22
But there's still no way to stop the bomb, so Mulder has given
45:26
up. He's decided that his fate is
45:28
sealed along with the red haired man, who he then interrogates to
45:31
a certain degree to try and get answers from them before they
45:34
both die. And of course, the red haired
45:36
man believes that the patient who's at the back is immune to
45:39
biological warfare and that Zama had been trying to sneak him out
45:44
of the country, but the US government would rather see it
45:47
destroyed than let the research fall into Japanese hands.
45:51
So Mulder now believes that the subject is still an alien human
45:54
hybrid. The red haired man has been told
45:57
that it's a person who is immune to biological warfare.
46:00
And of course Scully thinks it's got hemorrhagic fever.
46:03
So there's lots of opinions and theories going on out there.
46:07
Scully of course then comes to the conclusion that she can find
46:10
out what the code is to get out of the car by looking at the
46:14
alien autopsy video and seeing Zama punch in the code, which
46:18
she then does. And as soon as he punches it in,
46:21
of course, Mulder's about to leave.
46:23
But of course he's put turned his back on the red haired man
46:27
who beats the living bejesus out of him and he is knocked out.
46:31
And so he's going on his way and he thinks he's got enough time
46:34
to get out and get away from the car.
46:37
He walks out of the car and he's shot dead.
46:40
Well, he's certainly going to be dead, but he's shot.
46:43
And guess who it is? Old Mate X Old Mate X has found
46:47
the train, he's found the carriage and he's come.
46:50
But did he come to save Mulder or did he come to save the
46:54
creature that was in the quarantine car?
46:58
In the long run, he hasn't got time for both.
47:00
He can only save one and he chooses Mulder.
47:04
But do we actually think that that was who he was coming to
47:07
rescue at this point in time? He gets off the car, the car
47:12
explodes. Mulder awakens in hospital and
47:16
of course wants to find out information on the rail card,
47:19
but he's unable to do so because that's just the way it goes.
47:23
The last scene we have, though, of course, is at one point in
47:27
time. Mulder has found journals that
47:30
were written in Japanese that were obviously talking about
47:32
these experiments and how they were progressing.
47:36
And Scully hands him these Diaries in the hospital, but he
47:41
says these aren't the real ones. These are fake.
47:45
And of course, we see the last ever seen with a Japanese person
47:50
who is translating them and our friend the Smoking Man, looking
47:54
over him as he does so. And that is the end of the
47:57
episode. So there's a bit more to this
48:01
one. Again, we have the two stories.
48:03
We have the Scully side of the story and we have the Molder
48:05
side of the story. The Mulder side of the story at
48:09
least had some interest in it because we had the conductor who
48:13
was helping him to try and find these different people all way
48:15
long. And from the start of the
48:17
episode, and every time I watch this episode, I continue to
48:21
believe there's more to this guy than we thought.
48:24
There's something going on. You can't trust this guy.
48:26
He's going to turn around and he's going to be the bad guy.
48:29
And it doesn't work out that way.
48:31
And that's really interesting because I think the way it's
48:34
portrayed and the way it might even have been written is that
48:37
you were supposed to be led to believe that this conductor was
48:40
going to be the bad guy. But in the long run, he wasn't.
48:43
He was just a conductor who then went off with the train after
48:46
they left it. So it was going to explode.
48:49
Yeah. But I really enjoyed that part
48:51
of it. It was a shame that the red
48:53
haired man was dismissed and killed because he's such a great
49:00
actor, Stephen Mccatty and he was so good in the role that he
49:03
would have thought that they could have used him later on.
49:05
And I wonder at times how often the writers thought to
49:08
themselves, oh, I wish we hadn't killed that bloke off because he
49:12
would have been really good to use in this scene or this scene
49:14
later on. Anyway, that's the brakes.
49:17
So this was a better episode than the previous episode.
49:21
Again, it's it's not quite perfect.
49:24
And I do like the fact that we had the three degrees of what we
49:30
actually thought the creature was in the quarantine car.
49:33
Whether it was a patient suffering from hemorrhagic
49:35
fever, whether it was someone who'd been operated on and then
49:40
had immunity to, you know, nuclear warfare or, or anything
49:45
like that. Or whether in fact it was just a
49:48
human hybrid, which is what we believe, or the other creatures
49:51
were that have been offed off the back of the Hansen Disease
49:55
Research Facility. So I like how they played
49:58
against each other. And there was no real definitive
50:01
answer given at the end of the episode, which left it open to
50:05
be explored later on, which of course it is.
50:08
So for me, this was a 3 1/2 out of five episode.
50:13
It had its moments, but again, the tension sort of is eased off
50:20
because you just know that Mulder's not going to die.
50:23
And I think that's, that's the hard part about it sometimes,
50:26
that there's no position at any point in time where it really
50:29
felt as though he was going to die.
50:30
There was always a way for him to get out.
50:32
And that's exactly what happened.
50:39
All righty well, that's all from me for this episode.
50:42
And we're well and truly underway for season 3 now.
50:45
And it's it's great to see these episodes continuing on the way
50:49
they did. So yes, as I said, these
50:52
episodes of these podcasts too are also motoring along.
50:55
I'm getting along every couple of weeks at the moment.
50:58
I'm ahead of my time and hopefully I can stay that way
51:01
for some time. So thanks for listening and for
51:04
being a part of this project, this podcast episode.
51:08
If you'd like to get involved and give your thoughts on this
51:11
episode or the whole podcast, there are a number of ways you
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Bill with the handle at real medal Kevin.
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the page for this episode. And if you know anyone who may
51:49
be interested in going on this journey with us, please pass on
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this episode to them and let's get them on board as well.
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Righty O enough for me this episode.
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Thank you once again for listening.
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And we will return soon with the next episode of Revisiting The
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X-Files, where apology is policy.
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Cheers.