X-Files S4E9: Hands on, hand's off

Sestra Amateur: 

Mulder was last seen on vacation in Russia and getting a facial at a local spa. This week we begin in Vancouver’s version of Boca Raton, Florida. An elderly woman is committing suicide with assistance from a family member and a creepy man. The black oil leaks from her nose and mouth while she’s dying. This must be The X-Files' version of the Kervorkian method. During the opening credits, “the truth is out there” is replaced with “E pur si muove.” Don’t break out the Google translate, I looked it up. It means “and yet it moves.” That reminds me of the Seinfeld episode in which wackiness ensues when George gets a massage from a male masseuse. I’m sure there will be less wackiness here. 

Now we’re in St. Petersburg – Russia, not Florida ... good thing they clarified or this would get confusing – watching an old man make tea. Turns out he’s a retired Russian agent who’s about to get back in the game.

Mulder wakes up back in his cell. His neighbor, a former geologist, tells him Fox was exposed to the black cancer from Tunguska rock. Mulder reveals his motivation, he needs to live long enough to kill Krycek (sorry, Sestra). Fox's jail neighbor gives him a knife to further the cause. Scully is still trying to save Dr. Sacks. She finds a cluster of black oil worms nesting inside his body. Meanwhile, the tea drinker, Vassily Peskow, meets with Dr. Bonita Charne-Sayre in her horse stable late at night and strangles her to death. 

Assistant director Skinner arrives at Dana's apartment and summarizes the events of previous episode "Tunguska" in about 20 seconds. He also reveals the pouch containing the rock was supposed to be delivered to Dr. Charne-Sayre, who was allegedly accidentally killed after a riding accident. Clearly Peskow is evil if he has no qualms about framing an innocent horse like that. Side note: The cell-phone plot contrivance continues; why would common-sense Scully turn off her phone when they’re in the middle of an investigation especially when her partner is on the other side of the world with the man who killed her sister? Even if she didn’t know Mulder’s exact location, she knew they were together and Krycek could not be trusted.

Fox, exhausted and staggering around in prison grays, watches Alex smoking with the enemy back in Russia. Mulder knocks out Krycek, threatens to stab the others and takes off with an unconscious Alex in tow in a work truck. Krycek regains consciousness and notices the brakes aren't working, so he chooses to jump off the back. Fox crashes and the truck rolls down a hill with a Crash Test Dummy-Mulder behind the wheel. (I guess this week’s budget needed to divert funds elsewhere.) 

Well-Manicured Man meets with Cigarette-Smoking Man to complain about Dr. Charne-Sayre’s murder. Clearly she’s not an innocent in all of this, but we can't just root for the Russian assassin. Well-Manicured Man claims he cannot call off the congressional investigation, but says Senator Sorenson is an honorable man. Cancer Man knows about Mulder’s imprisonment and his escape. As usual, he has some pretty efficient sources. Krycek is running through the woods and gets picked up by men willing to help him. Mulder continues to fend for himself by hiding from the prison camp guards.

And now we’re back to the beginning of Episode 8, Dana is trying to read from her prepared statement before the committee. Refusing to give up Fox's location, she is found in contempt of Congress. At least she’s the best-dressed prisoner on the cell block. The owner of the truck Mulder stole to escape the prison camp finds Fox and brings him home. The driver’s wife knows what’s going on with the prisoners and Mulder asks for her help. Meanwhile, the men helping Alex wake him in the middle of the night, hold him down and torture him with a knife. Too bad they didn’t interrogate him at the same time because Krycek would have spilled everything.

Scully is killing time in her cell with some light reading (Variola Virus by Dr. Charne-Sayre) when Skinner stops by. Dana summarizes the events of both episodes in about 20 seconds. Don’t these two ever have small talk about the weather or favorite sports teams? Meanwhile, Peskow gets to Dr. Parks and injects him with something that expels the black-oil leeches from his body. Cancer Man updates Well-Manicured Man with the identity of Dr. Charne-Sayre’s killer. 

The next day Dana is brought back before the committee. She really wants to talk about the pouch and its contents, but they still want to know where Fox is. So Mulder shows up right on cue. Now that the men have the answer they’ve been seeking, Scully finally gets to finish reading her statement. Too bad Skinner interrupts to tell her about the death of Dr. Parks. 

The committee suspends the inquest. Sculder make plans to head to Boca Raton. Turns out Dr. Charne-Sayre is a board member for the chain of convalescent homes. Too bad Vassily beat them to it, he switches out the medications so residents exposed to the black cancer die. Old Man Peskow hides in plain sight in one of the beds. 

The agents head to New York to meet with Terry Mayhew, the would-be bomber working with Krycek in the previous episode. Mayhew claims Alex came to them with claims about the black cancer. Fox elicits information about the second bomb and thinks it will be used to unleash the oil on a larger scale. Sculder make plans to intercept it in Canada. Vassily smoothly crosses the border in Alberta. Fox finds the truck while Dana catches up to the Russian in an old factory. 

An oil pump sends up a shower of the black stuff, drenching Mulder. The bomb in the truck goes off, causing a huge explosion and knocking him unconscious. Scully gets distracted by the explosion and Peskow easily takes her gun from her but let’s her live. Dana runs to help Fox. The next scene has her before the committee yet again. Scully identifies Krycek as the person who killed the man on Skinner’s patio. Senator Sorenson scoffs at Dana's assertion of the extraterrestrial aspect of the biotoxin by making the stereotypical “little green men” comment. Mulder jumps in and defends the rock’s origin. He asks outright why they are before the committee. Instead of answering the question, Senator Romine calls for a recess.

Vassily is back at his home in Russia, where Krycek is patiently waiting and making tea with a prosthetic hand. Now we know how the men tortured him. Behind closed doors, Senator Sorenson is reading the reports and sharing information with Cancer Man. Not sure how long we’ll have to wait to get more answers, but in the meantime, Sestra Pro can tell us how the Latin phrase from the opening credits applied to "Terma." And while you’re at it, how did the title apply to the whole episode?


Sestra Professional:

I'm glad you asked, Sestra. According to the trusty official fourth-season guide, the opening quote paid homage to Galileo and the Inquisition that forced him to recant his theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. Of course, "still, it moves" also refers to the ever-mobile black oil. And the name, beyond the obvious North Dakota connotation, refers to hidden text in Tibetan Buddhism, the guide says. It also means prison in Russian and death in Latin, so it covers a lot of the episode's ground in that regard.

The two-parter conclusion takes us in a lot of different directions at once. It doesn't suffer from this course for the first half. We're getting information in drips and drabs, but it flows a lot better than it might have if Mulder and Scully picked up pieces of the puzzle here and there together. It's after they're reunited that the episode actually feels more herky-jerky with the agents jetting off to Florida, New York and the Canada border trying to wrap up the loose ends. Maybe some of the "Tunguska" padding could have been relieved with "Terma" plot points.

It's a little disconcerting at the start here to see Mulder's desire to stay alive fueled only by a desire to get Krycek. What about the truth? (Maybe Fox believed Alex's little diatribe on that in the last episode -- there is no truth and the conspiracy is just making it up as they go along.) But you gotta admire Mulder's pluck for breaking ranks and escaping by truck. A little black-oil dosing hasn't wiped that out of his system.

"Terma" is not a particularly strong showing for the Syndicate. Not only is the gap between Cancer Man and Well-Manicured Man widening, but they're undermining their own cause. The spiffy Englishman seems waylaid by his affair with the doctor and Cigarette-Smoking Man's network just doesn't seem to be able to get the job done as well as the Russian hitman. Peskow methodically handles everything. And he's supposed to be retired. 

It is a stronger episode for Scully, despite the fact that Vassily gets the jump on her near the end. Her desire to get to the heart of what happened to Dr. Sacks proves far more interesting than her usual run-of-the-mill autopsy. She's striving to make sense of what's happened the best way she knows how -- through science -- and here it's more than a way to subvert Mulder's theories. Too bad Fox upends her a bit with his soapbox speech to the committee about alien life. 

Lawyers ask the wrong question only when they don't want the right answer: I'm not sure remaining silent to the Congressional committee is the right way to go, despite Dana's explanation. She doesn't really know where Fox is, and she can't help anyone as a Prison InStyle cover girl. But she raises an interesting question. With all that has happened over the course of the two eps -- the murder, the intercepted pouch, two subsequent deaths, infected biologist -- getting stuck on the whereabouts of Mulder seems decidedly off book.

Someone used Krycek, then Krycek used us: Alex's subplot is an interesting one. The fate that befalls him with a red-hot knife courtesy of his one-armed rescuers comes off as far more in the spirit of the proceedings than the farcical beatings he tends to suffer at the hands of Mulder and his cohorts. At least Alex can't be tracked by through his smallpox scar any longer. Only later do we find out from the head revolutionary that his story from "Tunguska" about being picked up in the missile silo was bunk ... big surprise there. 

It's a perfect moment when Krycek is waiting for Peskow at the end of the episode, but that's diluted rather rapidly when then chairman of the committee hands over Scully's findings to Cancer Man. The conspiracy didn't seem to be particularly threatening this go-around if he needs the Cliff Notes to catch up.

After the exciting first-parter helmed by Kim Manners, director Rob Bowman got to handle a lot of action sequences -- runaway trucks, horse chases, helicopters, oil gushers and explosions and -- and did it all with movie-quality style. David Duchovny described the differences in style between the show's two powerhouse directors in The Complete X-Files: "I think Kim was very attuned to the emotion of the relationship between Mulder and Scully. And Rob, I believe, was very attuned to the action-flick action sense of the show." No small wonder Bowman ended up tasked with the first feature film, production of which started at the break at the end of this season. 

The meta never ends: According to the episode guide, three different versions of the show were created for the original airing over concerns about the black-oil worms. Frank Spotnitz, who co-wrote "Terma" with Chris Carter, said the first one went to a couple TV stations in the Midwest that needed an early feed, the second went to Canada and the third to the rest of the United States as editors worked to make those scenes better. ... Among the unusual presences on set were a number of horses, their handlers and a Russian-speaking dialogue coach for Nicholas Lea (Krycek), the guide said. ... The oil explosion at the end was originally penned for an entire refinery, according to the guide. Ultimately 35,000 gallons of oil-colored water and 2,000 gallons of liquid propane were utilized.

Guest star of the week: Veteran actor Jan Rubes (Witness, but known best to me for the little gem Dead of Winter) does a masterful, methodical job as the Russki of death. It's such a neat little performance that we can't get stuck on the fact that this intelligent and spry old man is getting the jump on everyone, from our heroes to the conspiracy. Rubes is as masterful as the guy he was tasked to play.