X-Files S8E1: Terminating the old methodology

Sestra Amateur: 

New season, new opening, new name in the credits. Robert Patrick has joined the main cast as Special Agent John Doggett and you know what that means, right? Yep, less Mulder. There are pros and cons to this development. Viewers during the original run must have been livid to learn he knocked up Scully, and because of behind-the-scenes reasons, Fox would not be there when Dana needs him most. Of course, I would have liked for Scully to turn to Walter Skinner for solace, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. My other preferred option would be seeing the show embrace the comedic aspect of Four Men and a Baby (Skinner and the Lone Gunmen, of course) but I don’t think that would be appreciated by fans tuning in to watch a sci-fi/mystery series.

Anyway, Scully wakes up abruptly after having a dream about Mulder being imprisoned by aliens. Or is Fox actually a prisoner and the Chris Carter/Kim Manners dynamic duo wrote/directed the scene that way to create ambiguity? Your call. Dana returns to work the day after Mulder’s abduction. She’s a wee bit more frustrated and angry than usual, and not just because she’s been abandoned by her baby daddy. Fox's office is being ransacked for clues to his location and Assistant Director Skinner has no control over it. Turns out, there’s a new sheriff – er, Deputy Director – in town. Actually, he’s a familiar face: Alvin Kersh is back in control at the FBI and wants Team Sculner to give their sworn statements to Agent Doggett, head of the Where’s Mulder Task Force, ASAP. Kersh also insists there should be no mention of alien involvement. Walter claims he’ll tell the truth, even though Dana tries to sway him for Fox's sake. Doggett’s a slick one; he interviews Scully without her realizing it, at first. Their meeting ends with Dana throwing a cup of water in his face.

Back at home, Scully learns more about her new enemy – I mean, future partner: former Marine, former NYPD detective, respectable resume. After a bout of morning sickness (at night), an emotional Dana realizes her phone is tapped and someone is watching her apartment. Uh oh, Scully is in full, Mulder-esque "trust no one" mode. She calls John and reams him out for spying on her, which he denies. Armed with her gun, Dana chases her landlord through the apartment building, not realizing it’s him. He claims Fox was outside her apartment. 

Scully goes back upstairs and realizes someone stole her laptop. She then heads to Mulder’s apartment. Wow, his place is uncharacteristically dusty. I think we would have realized his computer was missing even without the clean spot. Dana curls up with one of Fox’s shirts and takes a nap. And now it appears Mulder is undergoing some horrifying torture at the hands of his unseen captors. His facial skin is stretched in a way that’s reminiscent of Katherine Helmond in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and/or X-Files alum Andrew Robinson in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Let’s just say it would be the worst time for Fox to sneeze. And if you thought the dentist scene in John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man was hard to sit through then you’ll want to skip the 18:00- to 19:00-minute mark of this episode.

By the way, my Four Men and a Baby wish seems to be gaining traction. Walter is working with the Lone Gunmen to track Fox's location based on data our trio obtained through questionable means. Season 1 Skinner would never have allowed that. Meanwhile, because of Scully’s livid-but-paranoid phone call, Doggett touches base with Kersh and realizes there’s more going on than he’s been told. John’s a sharp one. He finds Dana at Mulder’s apartment and they briefly have it out before he confronts her with car rental receipts in Fox's name. She claims not to know where Mulder was going on his weekends. 

But we’ll have to put a pin in this for now, because someone using Fox's ID card entered the FBI office and stole some relevant files. I thought that place had cameras. Back in the office, Walter gets ambushed by Kersh, John and an extra who all seem to think Skinner is either helping Mulder or involved with the theft. Scully reveals to Doggett that Fox was visiting his family’s gravesite on the weekends. For some reason, the Mulder family headstone has been brought to the task force headquarters and now includes Fox's death year.

John reveals to Dana and Walter that Mulder was terminally ill. Remember Fox's “extremely high brain function” diagnosis in "Biogenesis" (Season 6, Episode 22) and "The Sixth Extinction" (S7E1)? Apparently, Mulder did not make a full recovery after all. Doggett’s theory? A dying Fox staged his abduction to validate his obsession. Skinner is convinced he knows what he saw. Scully tries to support Walter while quietly begging John not to close his file with that conclusion. 

Team Sculner meet with the Lone Gunmen (Four Men and a Little Lady?) to review current data to locate Mulder. Dana realizes the information is leading them to chess-playing savant/psychic Gibson Praise, who we first met two years earlier in "The End" (S520). John is almost on the same page because an unknown person slipped Gibson’s file under his door. He thinks Fox wants to hurt the boy, assuming Mulder considers him “evidence” of alien existence. And now everyone is converging on Arizona, looking for Gibson.

Meanwhile, Mulder is back in the alien dentist’s chair. Now he’s naked and bolted to it through his arms and legs. Have you noticed Fox’s “alien abduction” situation keeps getting worse and worse? Now there’s a bone saw cutting through his chest! Luckily, Scully wakes up, which supports the theory that Mulder’s torture scenario exists only in her nightmares. Dana and Walter are driving through Arizona while Doggett and his task force head directly to Gibson’s school. John has the advantage; he’s in a helicopter. You gotta love those government resources. Scully sees a mirage but shrugs it off, she and Skinner are too close. Doggett arrives first but Gibson bails through the window when he sees John. Team Sculner arrive in solid second place while Doggett’s lackeys take third. A white male who dresses like casual Mulder finds Gibson and walks away with him. Doggett tracks them up one of the hills and points his gun at … Mulder! How did my Four Men and a Little Lady turn into Clint Eastwood’s A Perfect World?? 

Sestra Professional: 

In seven seasons, The X-Files understandably became "The Mulder and Scully Show," but I always thought the concept could be more malleable than that. And the introduction of Robert Patrick as John Doggett backs that up nicely.

Nice to meet you, Agent Doggett: Series creator Chris Carter started the attack on Doggett's person before the fan base could even get a real crack at it, but shippers probably would have preferred a vat of acid to a mere Dixie cup of water. Still, it gives John -- and us -- a starting point for the new beginning. This is actually rejuvenating for Gillian Anderson, although the pregnancy will surely slow Scully down. This soapy development ranks as one of my least favorite, maybe because it comes complete with the obtrusive "Scully's Theme" which Mark Snow meant to convey Dana's inner turmoil. To be truthful, it gives me morning sickness too ... at night as well. Oh well, at least Scully's hair looks better.

Moving the pieces around on the proverbial board also gives Skinner much more than he's had to do in recent seasons. Thank goodness. Walter seems to have dropped a rung in status with AD Kersh back in the fold, but he did see what he saw at the end of last season. And his reaction to that puts him in as much of a different place as it did Mulder. Well, almost, anyway, he's not naked with tubes coming out of different orifices.

Even with an open mind, it took me a while to come to terms with David Duchovny's reduced role in Season 8. But looking at "Within" from a distance, it's a splendid introduction to the new co-lead. And for proof, look at Kersh. Through no fault of portrayer James Pickens Jr., Alvin's as two-dimensional as they come. Luckily he chose his underling wisely, because from the get-go, John's got much more going for him (although surely neither of Kersh's dimensions will appreciate that). As we repilot, it's easy to get psyched up about taking the trip with Doggett. And coming off a lackluster season, that is most welcome indeed.

I'm probably not supposed to be giggling at Fox's fate ... or Dana's depiction of it. It makes me think about what that must have been like filming this on the set. After all, David did put the show behind the proverbial 8-ball by bowing out of the series. It feels like some kind of on-screen retribution. Is it revenge when Duchovny gets to utilize the completely dead-pan look that made him famous as "casual Mulder" at the end of the episode?

Give a little, get a little: Doggett does show us all that he's an ace. Maybe Kersh shouldn't have made the head of his task force someone smart enough to wade through the bull. He probably needed someone more like Jeffrey Spender who sits around waiting for his superiors to tell him what to look for and what to avoid. What John wants to do is find Fox, he's laser focused on that task. He's dogged in that pursuit, so his name might be a wee bit on the nose.

The Mulder sightings in and around his usual haunts are quite intriguing. They're disorienting, we don't know what to think about any of it. We know what we saw, the same as what Skinner saw. But that doesn't explain the VISA receipts nor the grave marker in the slightest. Even Dana doesn't know what to think, and we know she's the one who knows him best. But his partner in and out of the office didn't know that he was suffering from a recurrence of that Season 7 opener brain thingy. That makes for the most interesting development on the show in years.

Doggett's supposition doesn't seem too far off base, logically speaking. If we didn't know Fox as well as Dana does, we could buy that Mulder staged his disappearance. On a regular procedural, we might presume a character backed into a corner would be doing something like this to create doubt. That a man whose life had been threatened, whose work had been denigrated to the point that his premise no longer held water had just one play left to make. John's a smart man, it didn't take me too long to join his team.

It may seem like a tried-and-true X-Files scenario now with Scully in Fox's believer role and Doggett in Scullyville. And it is, to some extent, but John's giving us a new wrinkle on that old chestnut. He can't come around via autopsies and science, like Dana once did, but his brain absorbs police reports like nobody's business. He doesn't need Lone Gunmen and a bunch of UFO reports to point him toward Gibson Praise, especially when a well-timed folder is slipped under a door. Doggett may just be an asset to Dana, to the X-files as a department and to The X-Files, the show, after all.

Major props to Carter and Kim Manners for getting all this accomplished over the course of the first episode of Season 8. The literal cliffhanger is -- again -- the best one in quite a while. Everything, especially Gillian, looks great. Seemingly on fumes for large portions of the previous season, the tank is full once again.

Meta-morphosis: Want to know who some of the other names under consideration for the role of Doggett were? According to The Complete X-Files, that list included Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Lou Diamond Phillips, D.B. Sweeney, Dominic Purcell, Bruce Campbell, Hart Bochner, Esai Morales and Craig Sheffer. ... "When Robert walked in the door, I think we all just said, 'This is him. This is John Doggett," co-executive producer John Shiban said in the book. ... "The character was me, and there was just no way I wasn't going to do it," Patrick added. I say, thank goodness. ... Oh, and we all know Dana was named after legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. Well, Vinman's partner just happened to be named Jerry Doggett.