X-Files S8E3: He's ... wait for it ... Man-Bat

Sestra Amateur: 

The opening credits no longer include David Duchovny’s name and now his only presence is Mulder’s falling, flailing body. Hope that didn’t end up becoming a metaphor for David’s movie career. In Los Angeles’ version of Burley, Idaho (I really prefer using Vancouver’s versions to Cali’s), undertaker George accidentally wakes up his wife, Tahoma, in the middle of the night. She soon sees him get attacked by a bat-like creature which then comes after her.

Back in the X-files’ office at FBI headquarters, Special Agent John Doggett shows how different he is from Mulder, especially when it comes to the other agents. This guy actually has work friends. Hopefully they won’t turn on him, because it’s been a while since we’ve seen Scully with any work-related comrades. That’ll probably be a side effect of her new role as the “believer.” She even presents the new cases now, slide projector and all. 

They head to Burley and meet with Detective Abbott, a burly man himself, who shows Team Sculett an unusual footprint. Dana is in the awkward position of having to train another agent to be open to any possibilities in their investigations. John finds more weird footprints inside the house and assumes they’re looking for a human killer with a deformed foot. He's a student of Occam’s Razor, which theorizes that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Scully points out the deformed foot killer leaves a print every 25 feet. That’s quite a ... feat. Sculett check the open attic crawlspace in the victims’ bedroom. Doggett and his trusty pocket flashlight find two of George’s fingers while Scully reveals they’ve been regurgitated. And both agents observe claw marks in the beams of the victims’ house.

At the nearby McKesson residence, an old lady is attacked by the “Man-Bat.” (Of course this is not the same Man-Bat created 40 years ago for DC Comics by Frank Robbins and Neal Adams, although an X-Files/DC crossover could have been very interesting.) Dana finishes the autopsies on the first victims and her conclusions lean toward animal/inhuman, especially because of enzymes she’s identified that exist only in bats. Wow, she’s on the right track only 15 minutes into the episode. John's research supports her conclusion. He somehow found a 1956 article about a bat-like creature who killed five people in Montana. 

Det. Abbott calls our intrepid heroes over to the McKesson home, which resembles the first crime scene. Scully finds a connection between McKesson’s recently deceased daughter and the two cases. Doggett runs interference after Abbott gets fed up with Dana's wildly speculative conclusions. Abbott obtains a court order, but the daughter’s grave has already been exhumed and her coffin shows evidence of scratch marks. He sees Man-Bat with his own eyes and that’s the last of Detective Abbott. Do you think his last thought was “Damn feds were right?”

The late detective’s anger is passed on to the sheriff’s deputies, who want Team Sculett off the case. But Scully’s results of the daughter’s autopsy show she died of natural causes and was burned afterward. There’s only one person still alive who had contact with the woman’s dead body: Myron Stefaniuk, who is related to one of the men, Ernie Stefaniuk, in Doggett’s 1956 story. They find Myron and learn Ernie is his missing brother. While staking out Myron’s house, Dana and John learn a little more about each other, at least on a professional level. They don’t realize Man-Bat is just hanging around -- literally -- in Myron’s garage. 

The agents locate Ernie on Bird Island late at night. Luckily, Scully now has her own pocket flashlight. It’s actually surprising she “never” had one before. Ernie claims he and his wife, Ariel -- the dead burned body in question -- hid on the island for decades, with Myron’s help. When his wife died, she wanted to be buried in consecrated ground so he accommodated her dying wish, which triggered the Man-Bat. Ernie points out the creature only attacks at night, so Doggett leaves to check on Myron and gets attacked for his trouble. Do we need another new co-star already?

Ernie is berating Dana for endangering herself and John when his radar warns them of Man-Bat’s presence. After shooting several holes in Ernie’s roof, Scully investigates outside the house. Meanwhile, Ernie gets attacked by Man-Bat inside the home. Dana shoots at it, as does Doggett, who is alive but injured. He’ll learn very quickly how lucky he is to have a medical doctor as his partner. They don’t capture or kill the creature but manage to scare it away. So would William of Ockham agree the simplest solution is that Man-Bats exist?

Two weeks later, John gets a message from Ernie, who’s gone back into hiding. Doggett's concerned because the brass doesn’t like how the X-files unit closes their cases. Scully, who’s clearly used to it, agrees to let him use Mulder’s office space. After all, even Occam’s Razor supports the theory that an agent assigned to the X-files unit should have a desk in the X-files office.

Sestra Professional: 

My resolve is to have more patience with this episode than I've had in previous rewatches. Truth be told, I've often fallen asleep during the latter third of "Patience." That will be kind of hard to do while working the rewatch blog on it.

The Doggett indoctronation continues. In the season opener, he learned how not to be liked be his co-workers. Last week, he found out that the higher-ups don't really like it when phrases like "aliens" or "shape-shifters" are used. And now he gets to test his mettle in one of those supernatural cases that don't appeal to other FBI agents.

The first thing that actually caught my attention in this episode was victim Tahoma's accent in the teaser. Didn't even have to look up at the screen to recognize that as belonging to actress Annie O'Donnell, or as I better know her "Yugoslavian recidivist knucklehead" June Wheeler -- Brent Spiner's spouse on their recurring episodes of Night Court. Something worse befell her than the "usual" stories of woe told by Bob and June Wheeler. It seems so unfair, that woman deserves a win.

I say that assumption is the problem here: John went over every X-file in the cabinet in the wee hours of the morning. How is that possible? Oh, that must be the post-fire cases, aka after the Vancouver years. OK, I can believe that.

I'm very much enjoying Scully's new dynamic. She's still got her base of science to work from, but at the same time, she's got a wealth of confidence from taking over as veteran leadership on the X-files. We feel Mulder alive and kicking inside of her -- not a baby reference, just a nod to the fact that she's no longer adverse to "Occam's Principle of Limited Information." And she's kind of enjoying the fact that someone else is in the position of "WTF" agent. Probably reminds her of some early shapelessly dressed days.

'V' for victory: We're also getting a sense of what John Doggett can bring to the proceedings. And that's why I've long considered The X-Files a malleable concept. As much as we thrill to the adventures of Fox and Dana, there are other ways of looking at investigating cases beyond wild theories and autopsies. Doggett gives us that, not just because he's apparently able to sift through newspaper archives very quickly, but due to his deeper attention to that kind of documented detail.

Detective Abbott is a mystery to me, well, as long as he was alive anyway. I'm not sure any answer would have satisfied him. He doesn't appreciate Scully saying the suspect was a man, nor does he later like the determination that the two cases are connected -- by the way, wouldn't that be proof of Occam's Razor, the simplest answer would be the correct one? My Hulu feed froze on the eye of the Man-Bat as he was about to attack Detective You-Were-Cruising-for-It. And that was pretty creepy. I won't be falling asleep any time soon.

The law enforcement in this episode clearly leaves something to be desired. It's the only thing making me lose my patience for this one. But at least it's not a far reach for us to back the new guy against the lynch mob with his reasoning that the only person/thing responsible for the murders is the person/thing that did it. So the supposition that Det. Burly's death falls on Dana feels as hollow as a pecked-out eye socket. I can buy Ernie Stefaniuk finding it ridiculous, but not peacekeepers who don't have any other explanations.

I'm no Fox Mulder, but I can tell when a man's hiding something: The car scene is a nice advancement of our storyline. For all her newfound strength, it's good to see Scully unsure of her foothold at this juncture. And John shows us something too. His whole world is based on facts, and if the facts back up Dana's supposition, he's not going to close his eyes to that fact. All that from one little scene in a car, not bad for a couple minutes' work.

Doggett getting attacked in the lake doesn't work quite as well. I kind of was hoping for Big Blue from "Quagmire" (Season 3, Episode 22) to surface and have some kind of battle akin to King Kong and the giant snake in the former's movie. But at least we got John's feet wet ... and the rest of him as well. Talk about jumping right in. 

Guest star of the week: As much as I wanted to give a nod to Annie O'Donnell or Brent Sexton for his quick cameo as the gravedigger, television veteran Gene Dynarski gives a heartfelt performance as the loner Ernie Stefaniuk. No, he doesn't earn it just because he played Ike in my favorite movie of all time, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Dynarski gave Burley's story some emotional weight. But Ike did go into hiding in Wyoming, home of Devils Tower. That means something, that is important.