X-Files S1E20: Mites make rights

Editors' Note: On the rewatch of The X-Files, Lorrie plays the part of Sestra Amateur and Paige serves as the resident "expert," aka Sestra Professional.
 
Sestra Amateur: 

In northwest Washington state, a group of loggers are panicking. They run through the woods all night. Two guys get swarmed by a swarm of ... swarmy things. Picture neon-green homicidal lightning bugs. They fly; we don’t know what they are. Doesn’t that make them UFOs by definition? As Veronica Cartwright -- who plays a recurring X-Files character in the distant future -- said in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, “Why do we always expect metal ships?”

Back east in less-buggy Washington, D.C., Mulder explains the case to Scully. It may be eco-terrorism, but he's assuming it’s an X-File since a similar incident occurred 60 years earlier. 

Sculder meet with Larry Moore of the Federal Forest Service and Steve Humphreys, who employs the 30 missing loggers. They drive up toward the loggers’ camp together, but get delayed when eco-terrorist road spikes disable two of their tires. They continue on foot to the deserted camp where it looks like the loggers left in a hurry. Remember that scene in Aliens when the Colonial Marines arrive on LV-426 and the colonists’ camp appears completely empty? Well, it’s like that without the rain. Too bad the missing loggers probably don’t have locators implanted in their bodies. Their trucks also were disabled with sugar. Damn those eco-terrorists; they never account for potentially deadly infestations. 

Sculder and Ranger Larry check the area and locate a large cocoon in a tree. They hoist Scully up to it and she sees a desiccated body inside. Meanwhile, Steve finds monkey wrencher Doug Spinney in the kitchen. Doug tells them his friend (and fellow eco-terrorist) was devoured by the bugs and warns they will come back ... when darkness falls. The non-Sculder folk then get sidetracked arguing about their own agendas. 

The next morning Doug proves Steve’s loggers were in the wrong. Good news though: No trees were harmed in the making of this episode. The tree Steve touches is amusingly fake. Mulder notices a weird ring in the fallen tree’s stump. Larry analyzes the sample and sees living wood mites. Doug claims everyone disappeared and his partner died after the loggers cut down that particular tree, which was several hundred years old. Steve hikes back to Ranger Larry’s truck, but Numbnuts forgot to get the keys so he’s stranded out there ... when darkness falls. Naturally, the swarm gets him.

Back at the cabin, Scully conducts a biology class and Mulder delivers a history lesson that ends with his ancient insect eggs theory. Spinney seems to appreciate the poetic justice. The next morning, Mulder trusts Doug with the last can of gasoline and lets him leave to check on his friends/fellow eco-terrorists.  Scully and the ranger are a teensy-weensy bit perturbed at that, especially since they don’t have enough gasoline to run their own generator all night. So darkness falls ... and our heroes barely make it through the night. 

They hike back to Ranger Larry’s truck with a spare tire. And that’s when they find Humphreys. Poor cocooned Steve. Mulder’s faith in Spinney is justified when he arrives to save them. While driving out of the forest darkness falls yet again ... and Doug flattens their tires with the road spikes he probably forgot were in the roadway. Spinney exits the Jeep, gets swarmed and runs away. I’m pretty sure that’s the end of Doug. Sculder and the ranger get swarmed inside the Jeep and are found the next morning in a cocooned state by government operatives in containment suits. Looks like they found our heroes just in time. Even Ranger Larry probably gets to survive this one, but I’m pretty sure we’ll never see him again. How do I know this? I checked IMDB.

Sestra Professional:

"'Darkness Falls' across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand. Creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorize your neighborhood." This episode makes me itchy. And not just for Skinner's arrival in the next episode.

It'll be a nice trip to the forest:  For once, Mulder's not going the supernatural route. He doesn't believe the rugged manly men taken out in the full bloom of their manhood were felled by Bigfoot -- "That's a lot of flannel to be choking down, even for Bigfoot." He develops something of a rational, coherent theory that Scully, for once, doesn't have to move heaven and Earth to try and disprove.

The eco-terrorists ensure Sculder and the Freddie and the head lumberjack wind up good and stranded. The road spikes effectively take out multiple tires on their vehicle, while rice and sugar was used in the tanks of trucks up at camp.

So this is definitely a better way of going about a statement episode than last week's ill-formed "Shapes." The loggers may be planting saplings in place of trees they cut down, but they've also taken out specifically marked old-growth ones they weren't supposed to touch. In doing so, they released carnivorous mites and doomed themselves. When corporate Paul Bunyan refuses to believe, he gets caught in a no-longer-proverbial web of his own making. 

Sanctimonious crap: Mulder's a bit too do-gooder for his (and Scully's) good in this episode. And when Scully calls him on letting Spinney go without so much as a word to her and Ranger Larry, he says she is the one delivering "sanctimonious crap." OK, he gets some brownie points back by being able to calm his usually unflappable partner down when they realize the bugs are all over everything -- in and out of the light.

And ultimately Mulder wasn't wrong, Spinney did come back. Of course, in this episode of ultimate comeuppances, the eco-terrorist hits one of the road spikes while driving them out and subjects all of them to the deadly fireflies. Good thing that they made some calls for help before the generator died.

This episode went so fast. It's nicely paced by executive producer Chris Carter and skillfully weaves its message with the action. But I have to admit, I've scratched at least 20 times rewatching this thing. (Editor's Note: Now up to about 50, since I played it again while putting the blog together.) And the government's big plan for putting an end to the issue? Controlled burns and pesticides. Will they never learn, when it's Man vs. Nature, the latter tends to win out.

Guest Star of the Week: The eco-terrorists call themselves monkey wrenchers? And guest star Jason Beghe starred in underrated 1988 horror gem titled Monkey Shines! Just a coincidence? Well, yeah, probably. Especially since plays the "Freddie" -- employee of the Federal Forest Service -- and not a monkey wrencher.