X-Files S8E13: Be kind and rewind

Sestra Amateur: 

We’re delving into the mythology for this episode. How do I know? Because the recap goes as far back as Season 2. In an unknown hospital, a woman – not Scully – is in labor. There are complications and the doctors – the sinister types we usually see in X-Files episodes -- drug the woman before they remove the baby via C-section so she only has a distorted view. They knock her unconscious after she starts to panic. She’s out for the count; we see an alien baby.

Dana is looking at an ultrasound of her own fetus and gets emotional. When she gets to work, the no-longer-pregnant woman’s husband Duffy Haskell (Jay Acovone) is waiting for her with Agent Doggett. Duffy claims he first contacted Scully eight years earlier; his wife Kath McCready is an alien abductee, like Scully … allegedly. Haskell is now a widower who believes his wife was murdered after a history of multiple abductions and experimentations. He shows Dana the ultrasound of their alien baby and claims Kath was not physically able to conceive a child. Duffy accuses Kath’s doctors, including Dr. Lev, of being in cahoots to steal the baby.

Doggett recognizes how Kath’s story mirrors Scully's. And Sestra Pro was right; John does not know Dana is pregnant. I thought he read it in her medical file when he saw Scully in the hospital in "Via Negativa" (Season 8, Episode 7). Dana doesn't appreciate Doggett reading that file, but an X-file is an X-file, Agent Scully.

Then Dana flashes back to an elevator conversation with Mulder about her infertility. Most people talk about the weather or sports in that 30-second ride. After he exits, Fox reveals he knows Dana is barren because her ova were stolen from her. He actually found them but they were not viable. Dr. Scully is wise enough to seek a second opinion. She goes to Zeus Genetics in Germantown, Maryland. (I can just see their marketing strategy -- if Zeus can’t get you pregnant, no one can!) There is no office staff so Dana wanders around, finds a panicked woman being treated by doctors and enters a room full of distorted fetuses. That’s an odd interior decorating choice, Zeus. A doctor catches Scully and kicks her out of the office.

Dana, worried because her ultrasound may be similar to Kath’s, calls her OB-GYN Dr. Parenti. He’s busy at Zeus Genetics unwrapping an alien baby, but says he’ll look at them. Scully flashes back to a previous meeting with Dr. Parenti, who claimed at the time that she might be able to conceive with “the proper approach.” As far as the sperm donor goes, Past Scully already had someone in mind. Present Scully meets with Dr. Parenti and he allays her fears. (Present Parenti has a goatee; past Parenti has a beard. That’s one way to keep track.) Later that afternoon, John informs Dana she left an ultrasound photo at Parenti’s office. Scully claims it’s hers but Doggett doesn’t believe her.

Team Sculett and Assistant Director Walter Skinner confront Duffy Haskell, the president of the Ohio chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. Duffy has a history of writing threatening letters to doctors. Skinner reminds Duffy he is breaking the law with his threats. Haskell seeks support from Dana but doesn’t get it. In the elevator, Duffy calls Dr. Lev, who appears to be conducting an autopsy on an alien baby. They’re working together. Back at home, Past Scully gets a visit from Past Mulder, who agrees to her request for a sperm donation. (He can finally put his hobby to good use.) Present Scully gets a visit from Present Mary Hendershot, the panicked woman Dana saw at Zeus. Both of their babies are in danger!

Scully sets up a clandestine meeting with Team Skinett in a diner. She’s taking a leave of absence but won’t tell her partner why. Walter thinks she should confide in John, who sees the woman in Dana’s car. Scully takes Mary to the Walden-Freedman Army Research Hospital to meet with a “trustworthy” OB-GYN team. (Place your bets here.) Back in the X-files office, Agent Farah breaks open the closed Haskell/McCready case for Agent Doggett. Turns out, the real Duffy Haskell has been dead for over 30 years. Dr. Miryum performs an ultrasound on Scully and claims Dana is carrying a healthy 14-week old fetus. 

The next morning, Doggett meets with Knowle Rohrer, played by Adam Baldwin. (That sure looks like an anagram name but for the life of me I can’t come up with anything.) John asked Knowle to research “Duffy Haskell,” but Rohrer says he doesn’t have answers yet. Doggett doesn’t buy it. Present Scully is about to undergo an amniocentesis when she realizes they’ve been betrayed and she needs to get Mary out of the facility. John realizes the doctors can’t be trusted and Dana may be in danger so Skinner reveals her location. Walter calls the Army Hospital’s security desk while Scully is sneaking Mary out of the building. They encounter Knowle, who claims to be a friend of Doggett’s. Dana is suspicious but she and Mary leave with him. Hendershot goes into labor and they stop the car to deliver the baby. Scully tries to intervene but Rohrer sedates her. She experiences what Kath McCready did in the opening scene. Never trust a person whose name looks like an anagram!

Dana wakes up in the hospital with John by her side. He now knows about Scully’s baby. Mary Hendershot and her baby boy are alive, although Dana claims the baby was switched. A DNA test can confirm or deny that but we, the audience, will never get to know. Doggett says the official story is Scully overreacted to everything. Dana is in full Fox-conspiracy mode, convinced they were used to cover up what happened to Mary. Hopefully she now realizes she can trust John. Past Scully meets with Past Mulder in his apartment and he learns his sperm did not fertilize her egg. Guess they’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Sestra Professional: 

I've been enjoying bringing the new guy along this season so much that I almost forgot about the old guy. Almost.

There's a lot of old-school feel to "Per Manum" by design. As Sestra Am mentioned, the callbacks to Dana's abduction certainly help in that regard. But didn't things somehow feel less macrabre when we thought it was just aliens doing the experimentation? Now that we're watching humans attempting to cultivate hybrids, everything seems way less eerie and a lot more ghoulish. This would not seem to bode well for Scully's impending bundle of joy.

We have a largely quiet episode -- eerily too quiet, save the delivery sequence -- that depends heavily on subtle work by Gillian Anderson. In that regard, it's beautiful. She's come a long long way since Scully's second-season kidnapping. Gillian's acting and Dana's hair are soooo much better now (although it seems a little floofier in this episode to distinguish it from the flashbacks to last season.)

It's all right there in the X-files: Who else thinks of S6E3's "Triangle" when Season 8 Scully walks into the elevator, and then when the doors open up again, we see Season 7 Mulder. If I believed the sequence in the FBI building during "Triangle" actually happened, then I would think the apparatus had some kind of mystical properties along the lines of S1E7's elevatorial killer in "Ghost in the Machine."

The Season 2 questions have lingered for a long time. Scully never really believed she was abducted by aliens -- save the emotional Season 5 hypnosis session -- but she didn't follow up on that aspect of the investigation either. We learn about two women (Kath McCready and Mary Hendershot) who weren't part of the second season, but whose stories seem very familiar to us regarding that time of the mythology. 

Dana's understandably concerned about her belly bump since Kath's situation appears to mirror her own. Anderson's reactions are perfect -- small but broad, free of hand-wringing and screaming -- the hallmarks of TV dramas in the late '90s. Seeing her baby on ultrasound kind of raises some questions. I think all babies kind of look like aliens on ultrasound now. 

I could do without Scully keeping Doggett in the dark as long as she does, by this point, he'd proven to be a top-clearance ally. I wish that transition was smoother, John had her respect. The clunky way Dana clings to her reasoning about being afraid of keeping her job doesn't seem to do much more than prolong the inevitable. 

The answer is yes: I'm no shipper, but the flashbacks to Past Sculder discussing Fox as Dana's potential baby daddy and the late revelation that the donation didn't pan out fit in perfectly. The latter comes as a true surprise. Our heroine's pregnant, but it wasn't courtesy of her alleged last chance. These moments are basically all I need on the personal front, Scully and Mulder have a bond that no one else shares and no one can break. But we're going to need to find another counterpart for her support squad -- Doggett. 

There's a lot of double dealing in this episode. There aren't too many people not playing both sides of the road as the story progresses with some new faces, most notably military intelligence operative Knowle Rohrer. Just like in the old days, everything Dana uncovers is explained away by saying she overreacted -- completely different from how she behaves to finding out her doctors are involved in the experiments. But we know that Scully's completely correct, she is our modern-day Mulder after all. 

Guest star of the week: At first, Jay Acovone appears to be toiling in the Fox mold without actually being the guy we knew and loved for seven seasons. Since no one else really can have that distinction, his ultimate flip doesn't come as a surprise but works well in the scheme of things.