Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/xfiles/x-files3/colony.rvw

Text File | 1996-09-22 | 12.8 KB | 233 lines

                      War in the Shadows
                       by Sarah Stegall
                copyright 1995 by Sarah Stegall
                      [e-mail]

     Up to now, "The X-Files"' Spooky Patrol has investigated
hints and clues, isolated incidents, quirky events with a
confused pattern and little meaning.  But with "Colony" and
"Endgame", the series took a 90 degree turn into global
engagement, as Mulder and Scully are drafted into a shadowy
internecine war where neither side appears to hold the moral
high ground.  I find myself running out of superlatives as the
series takes on a grand design, one in which our heroes assume
a larger role as defenders of not just some abstract "truth",
but the possible future of the human species.  Layer upon
layer of deception peels away during this two hour epic, in
which the direction and tone of the series must be forever
altered.
     In "Colony", written by series creator Chris Carter from
a story by himself and star David Duchovny, Mulder and Scully
investigate the deaths of three unrelated yet physically
identical abortion clinic doctors.  The team uncovers what
appears to be a plot with Cold-War overtones, recalling the
darkest days of anti-Russian paranoia and the very birth of
the CIA.  A deadly assassin becomes their target as the chase
leads them through several states and across the Arctic
Circle.  Mulder finds his past and his present intertwining as
his long-lost sister Samantha (Megan Leitch) re-surfaces in
the middle of the mystery, only to be lost again--or is she?
The last half, "Endgame" (written by Frank Spotnitz) takes
Mulder on a quest literally to the ends of the earth in his
heroic search for truth.
     If "The X-Files" has a motto, it is not "The truth is out
there" but "We are not who we are".  The character who is not
what he seems to be is almost a hallmark of the show.  In
"Colony", Mulder himself turns out to be a ringer!  Later we
discover that not only are the doctors *not* Russians, they
are not even human.  The usual ambiguities apply:  the "good
guys" are not necessarily all that good.  Their human-tissue
experiments have more in common with the works of Nazi
geneticists in the death camps, experimenting with human
subjects.  Time after time, Mulder and Scully's allies--FBI
agent Weiss, CIA agent Chappelle--turn out to be the enemy in
disguise.
     The implications of the Terminator-like alien are
frightening:  he is the ultimate exemplar of the stranger
hiding behind the friendly face.  More alarming, this supposed
offworld assassin, fresh off the UFO express, knows enough
about our history and our culture to concoct a tissue of
plausible lies about the CIA and the Cold War.  These aliens
know enough about Mulder to convince his *parents*, for God's
sake, that this is Samantha.  They know enough about him to
push every emotional button he has.  I began to wonder whether
his involvement in the case was as accidental as it appeared.
     Even Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), has some surprises
for us.  It would be so easy to make the part of Assistant
Director Skinner into a caricature of the iron-jawed tyrant.
Instead, we keep getting glimpses of a softer, more human
side, of a man with old-fashioned ideas about loyalty, duty,
and honor. I love watching Pileggi's reactions as Skinner
tries to reconcile his sense of duty to his office with his
sense of loyalty to his agents.  For him to come to Mulder's
aid not once but twice shows that he has more respect for his
unruly agents than he would like to admit to.  And to find him
literally butting heads with the odious Mr. X (Steven
Williams) was simply wonderful.  This was a very nice piece of
character development.
     We have come to expect the outstanding from
"The X- Files", and we were well rewarded in the acting department.
The power to move an audience, to manipulate their emotions
and enter their dreams, is one of the headiest rewards of
writing or acting.  That brief moment when you hold the
audience in the palm of your hand, their emotional response
dependent on the next line or the next scene, on the smile of
a beautiful woman or the tears of a sorrowing man, make up for
the grueling hours and the endless frustrations of the
performing arts.  So surely David Duchovny and Gillian
Anderson are smiling in their sleep tonight.
     Gillian Anderson has absolutely patented that wide-eyed
look of apprehension and that look of intelligent skepticism.
She once again turns in a fine performance, full of fire and
spirit. I loved the scene between her and David Duchovny in
Mulder's office, where Dana Scully holds her own against her
partner as they disagree on the pursuit of the case.  Mulder
angrily invites her to either agree with him totally or butt
out. She reaches past his defensive belligerence to get to
that mind she knows is hiding behind Mulder's sulky reaction.
Her reaction to the false Mulder in her hotel room is cool and
competent.  Scully's skepticism serves her better than Mulder,
as she doubts early on in the game that CIA Agent Chapel is
everything that he appears to be.  Her tenacity and courage
lead her to the warehouse on "Edmonton" Street, where she
witnesses the assassin's destruction of the fetal tissue
experiments being conducted by the aliens.  Anderson showed us
a resolute and daring Scully, one who does not hesitate to face
down her superior or a decidedly hostile Mr. X when it came to
rescuing her partner.
     An actress blessed with both talent and beauty may choose
to neglect one over the other--Hollywood does not demand much
in the way of talent from most actresses (though they may have
it).  Many actresses would be content to walk through their
lines, knowing that audiences would be satisfied with her face
and figure onscreen.  To her undying credit, Gillian Anderson
gives us better than we deserve.  She uses her beautiful face
as she should--as another aid to her performance, not as its
center.  I am thinking particularly of the last scene, where
against the stark background of the Arctic station, with its
corrugated-tin walls and concrete, Scully sits beside Mulder's
bed, waiting for him to live or die.  When she realizes that
he will live, her rare and beautiful smile tells us many
things about her struggle, about her feelings for Mulder,
about the desperate battle she has helped him wage.  Mulder
does not see it, but we do, and it is a wonderful perspective
into the complex woman behind the serene facade.  Gillian
Anderson knows how to use that face, and that is the mark of
an accomplished actress.
     I don't know whether to compliment David Duchovny's
writing or his acting for the nuclear intensity of Mulder's
scenes with his father (Peter Donat).  Mulder goes to embrace
his father and the old man puts him off stiffly with a formal
handshake and lecture.  We see that Mulder gets his
stubbornness from his father--it takes real obstinacy to keep
trying after 22 years of this treatment.  Later, the scene
where he tells his flinty father that Samantha is, once again,
lost to them, broke my heart.  How does a 34 year old man
manage to look like a shamed 14 year old?  Guilt, contrition,
and humiliation fought for dominance on Duchovny's face.  We
see also that Mulder gets his "inquiring mind" from his
mother, who even in her joy questions whether this is, indeed,
her daughter come home.  And the scene on the front porch
between Fox and Samantha Mulder was exquisite--he so
desperately wants to believe, but is struggling with his
innate doubt.  One of the most chilling things I have ever
seen on television is David Duchovny as The Bad Guy.  Talk about
freezer burn!  The look in his eyes as he manhandled Gillian
Anderson was the coldest stare I've seen since Lee Van Cleef
in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".  The scene in the
abortion clinic, where Mulder comes face to face with the
truth about his "sister" as he meets the clones, is
outstanding.  I *saw* the birth of a bone-deep rage in Fox
Mulder on David Duchovny's face as he realizes the depth of
his betrayal.  This time the enemy has hit a vital spot in
Mulder's psyche, and his self-respect will depend on how he
recovers from this blow.  He may not have been willing to kill
to learn the truth in "One Breath", but he is willing to die
to learn it, which is a different thing.  [Anyone still
maintaining that this man's acting is 'wooden' is invited to
meet me at dawn, ahorse or on foot, with their weapon of
choice.]
     I could only find one noteworthy plot flaw:  Dana Scully
foolishly calls Mulder with a secret message--from the middle
of a crowded bus.  Why not just take out an ad on TV? This is
an example of the plot driving the character--Carter
needed the alien assassin to know her plans so they
made Scully do something stupidly out of character.  It's a
plot "solution" that weakens the plot, but it is not a fatal
wound.  Her lapse in judgement results in her capture, thereby
forcing Mulder to choose between his partner and the sister he
has sought all his life.  I'll forgive the blunder for the
enrichment of the story line.
     Although I have no evidence, I would like to think that
the tighter plot and more careful handling of important
details in this arc owes something to the mind of David
Duchovny, the professionally trained teacher of literature. Do
lines like "an ether of vague memories" and "truth as elusive
as memory" echo the poet in Duchovny?  Moreover, I wondered
who came up with the subtle levels of meaning in this script.
On the surface, we can see the involvement of the plotline in
the current controversies surrounding abortion, fetal-tissue
research, and genetic engineering.  We hear echoes of the
"ethnic cleansing" of the Nineties and the racial purity
campaigns of the Thirties.  But on a more abstract level, we
can see "Colony/Endgame" as the pitting of the individual
against the mass mind.  The aliens are, by nature, clones.
They lack the genetic diversity and quite probably the
emotional stability of a species which embraces change as part
of its survival strategy.  Less adaptable, less independent
than our aggressively individualistic species, they would
naturally look with suspicion on attempts to "dilute" their
genetic code through hybridization.  Whereas change comes
naturally to non-clones, it must represent disaster to those
whose evolution has dictated conformity at the cellular level.
     A sea-change has taken place in the environment of "The X-
Files".  As fun and trendy as it has been to play with
nihilism, no scenario can be sustained indefinitely on the
premise that we live in a chaotic and unpredictable universe.
We can enjoy the occasional excursion into chaos, but we must
always return to the ordered world we know.  The failure to do
so will ultimately bore the audience, who finds the novelty
wearing off, and nothing more substantial to put in its place.
We know there are dark and bitter nights full of death and
fear, but we also know that the sun rises inexorably every
morning. While we may say we like fantasy, we also
subconsciously react to a story on the basis of our cell-deep
knowledge of reality, based on mundane experience. To confront
us week after week with ambiguity and despair and confusion is
to risk losing our belief--and our attention.  Carter has
wisely moved us forward into a newer, more mature plot
environment.  From now on, we will know something of the
structure of this secret empire against which Mulder and
Scully struggle.  We are being invaded slowly, silently,
insidiously by an enemy who hides in our skin and behind the
faces of our loved ones.  The lines are more clearly drawn,
the stakes are more clearly understood as Mulder and Scully
are drawn into this war fought in the shadows. We lose
something of the thrill, perhaps--the monster we imagine is
always worse than the monster we see clearly--but we gain
structure and coherence we were needing.
     Series television rarely aspires to mediocrity, much less
to this level of excellence.  In my search for a basis of
comparison, I could find no recent television series in which
the writing and the acting approached this level. The closest
I could come were miniseries such as "Lonesome Dove" and
"Shogun", where career-making performances matched up with
outstanding storytelling to create a modern classic.
"Colony/Endgame" is epochal storytelling that reflects our
fears and hopes even as it shapes our mythos, the way "Star
Trek" entered the mythos of modern America in the Sixties.
Like all good stories, it tells us more than an entertaining
adventure:  it tells us something about trust and faith and
the human spirit.

     I award this one six sunflower seeds out of five.  I may
have to revise my rating system...


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              Sarah Stegall * [e-mail]
      David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade, X-Phile Illuminati
         DDEB Web page:  htpp://www.egr.uh.edu/~escco/DDEB.html
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