X-Files S2E18: These animals are animals

Sestra Amateur: 

Two weeks of Mulder back story is all you get. We’ve returned to bottle-episode mode. I’m starting to think these stand-alone eps are for primarily for Mulder’s sanity, because he gets to be cheeky again. Or maybe it was so David Duchovny could show the Emmy voters he had range. At least this one includes The Last Starfighter himself, Lance Guest, who is starting to look like a cross between Dylan Walsh in Congo and Weird Al Yankovic. Of course that comparison to Congo is not accidental.

Two custodians in Idaho are hard at work when they feel vibrations. I don’t think Idaho is known for earthquakes. The front windows shatter and some cars – cheap cars, luckily – are destroyed by an unseen force. Then “it” attacks the only construction crew working the night shift and kills one of the workers. The next morning, a trucker drives through fog and almost has a head-on collision with an elephant. I’ll bet that driver thought he had seen everything, but it was probably the first time he encountered an elephant who thinks she’s traveling on English roadways. 

The next morning the elephant, Ganesha, is found dying in the roadway from exhaustion, not impact. Sculder are on the case but come up empty-handed with witness statements and evidence. They learn Ganesha’s cage was locked. So how did she escape? Ed Meecham, who works at the zoo, points Sculder in the direction of his boss, Willa Ambrose. Willa has her own problems; Ed doesn’t like having a female boss, the zoo is in danger of being closed and she’s being sued for the release of a gorilla named Sophie. 

Willa blames Ganesha’s escape on a radical animal rights group called the Wild Again Organization. Kyle Lang – our Last Starfighter – believes all animals should be free but denies involvement with the Ganesha situation. Kyle shows Sculder videotape proof of how Meecham poorly treats animals at the zoo. Kyle also takes issue with Willa keeping Sophie in captivity, even though Willa raised Sophie. Kyle’s silent partner – literally silent, he never says a word – has nothing to contribute except blank stares and Sculder don’t ask him anything. Later, Scully uses science, of course, to explain how Ganesha caused the damage and construction worker’s death even though no one physically saw her do it. 

Mulder requests assistance from The Lone Gunmen. Via video chat, Frohike and Byers -- Langly is said to be averse to having his image bounced via satellite -- have conspiracy theories about this particular zoo. Turns out, it just happens to be located near a UFO hot spot. They also point out no animal there ever had a successful pregnancy. Meanwhile, silent WAO guy is at the zoo with his video camera. While recording the animals in their cages there’s a blast of bright light – and just like that the tiger he was filming is outside of its cage attacking him. Too bad it’s invisible or he might have seen it coming.

The next morning, Scully and the police confront Kyle and he actually sides with the tiger over his own partner. Wow, those radical types are cold. Sculder return to the zoo because Fox wants to interview the witness -- Sophie -- who communicates through American sign language. See what I meant earlier about the Congo references? Sophie tells Willa she is scared of the light. Willa also mentions that Sophie wanted a baby. Based on the Lone Gunmen’s theory, Sophie’s at the wrong zoo for that. 

Dana and Willa perform a necropsy on Ganesha and learn she was pregnant. The missing tiger turns up in downtown Boise. Sculder, Ed and Willa go there to secure it. The job is easier now that it’s no longer invisible. Meecham shoots and kills the tiger when it attacks Willa. Based on the recent events, the board closes the zoo and arranges for the animals to be moved. Sculder learn the tiger was female and also pregnant, so Mulder, of course, suggests alien abduction. Willa scoffs so Fox tells her to ask Sophie if she’s pregnant.

Willa then gets served with a court order to give up custody of Sophie. She goes to Kyle, of all places, to ask for his help but he declines. He wants Sophie to return to Africa and live free. Dana learns Kyle and Willa were involved in the past. They were part of the same animal rights organization. Later that night, Kyle goes to the zoo to talk to Willa. He finds Sophie’s empty cage. He then gets zapped by a cattle prod and crushed. The Last Starfighter ... is dead! Nothing can stop them now. Oh wait, this is The X-Files. Sculder got this. 

The agents confront Willa, but she denies asking Kyle for help. She’s now pretty keen on the alien abduction theory. Since we’re down to two suspects, Mulder follows Ed and Scully stays on Willa, who admits Ed took Sophie to a safe location and Kyle’s presence at the zoo surprised him. Sophie is in a frenzy, so Fox and Ed attempt to calm her with a tranquilizer gun. Ed tricks Mulder and locks him in with a very pissed-off Sophie, who clocks Fox upside the head. Then the gorilla backs away and says something in sign language. The bright light comes and Sophie disappears from the room. 

Scully finds Mulder and tells him Ed has been arrested. Fox shows Sophie’s final sign message to Willa, who says it means “man save man.” They learn Sophie was hit by a car and killed. Ed and Willa get arrested for Kyle’s death. None of the pregnant animals live happily ever after. This is a pretty downer episode with morals that smack you in the head about as subtly as Sophie hit Mulder. But there’s one last moral to the story, whether it was intentional or not -- pregnancy hormones result in death and destruction. Discuss. 

Sestra Professional:

Should there be an award for best teaser in an episode that doesn't ultimately fulfill that promise? If so, I nominate "Fearful Symmetry." The elephant, first invisible, causing mass destruction on the city street and then coming into the trucker's view makes your heart thump, or maybe that was just the reverberations from Ganesha's charging footsteps.

Having said that, there's a reason why writer Steve De Jarnatt (who wrote the cult favorite Miracle Mile) and director James Whitmore Jr. (a veteran actor who went on to helm various NCISes) didn't come back for subsequent episodes. Not only is the story heavy-handed, but Mulder's go-to alien hypothesis aside, it doesn't fit quite fit the mold. And most of the heavy lifting story progression is handled by the two visible Lone Gunmen (maybe Langly's just invisible!)

This ep kind of reminds me of the misguided Jaws 3 sequel, in which environmental concerns factor heavily into the plot. We have three different viewpoints here -- the zoo keeper charged with keeping the animals in line, the woman who wants to work with what she's given and the man who seeks to free them all at any cost, including human. Of course, they're all harboring different secrets and it's very X-Files to have aliens factor into the equation. 

It's not really black-hole season: Practically before the credits finish rolling, Mulder zips through other possibilities for the destruction caused by Ganesha before settling in on his "novel theory." Sonic boom? Another vehicle? Tornado? Black hole or cosmic anomaly? Invisible elephant? David Copperfield? Elephant rebellion, in which the animals turn on their keepers and destroy their cages? Nah, gotta be aliens. 

It's not such a long shot to think the rebellion thing might have had some merit. As Kyle explains to us, an elephant really needs about 20 square miles in order to really stretch out, but Ganesha was living in a 50x50-foot cage. "It's like you or I living in a pickle barrel," he says. The elephants have more reason to rebel than the Starfighters.

Nevertheless, we see Scully about as pissed as she's been at any point this season, and it's because Kyle seems to care more about the animals than the death of his comrade? Maybe it's just me, I found that a strange thing for her to get all worked up over in the wake of everything she's seen and gone through. 

It's all happening at the zoo: It's much more fun to watch Dana deal with getting up close and personal with Ganesha's insides, particularly her uterine tissue. And the truth is in here -- the elephant autopsy is one of Gillian Anderson's favorites over the history of the show.

Ultimately, we don't get proof of a lot, although I guess you can say Sculder solved the crime of who cattle-prodded the Last Starfighter. I don't think it's that far of a leap to declare that "Fearful Symmetry" is one of the faithful's least favorite episodes of the whole run. But famed writer William Gibson was a huge fan of this one, the X-Files fan will go on to pen a couple episodes later on. (That's one more than De Jarnatt.) Oh, and if you were wondering about this show's title, it's from a line in the William Blake poem "The Tyger."

Guest star of the week: Apologies to Jayne Atkinson, who does about as fine a job with Willa as it's possible to have done. But it's The Last Starfighter for me. I had the opposite reaction than Scully when Lang cared more about the tiger than the fallen silent guy. Lance Guest did a fine job in that scene, his hair carried the day the rest of the time.