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

Text File | 1996-09-22 | 6.9 KB | 129 lines

                        Trust Someone

                      by Sarah Stegall
                     [e-mail]
                copyright 1995 Sarah Stegall

     Since its first broadcast in the fall of 1993, "Ice"
has been one of the more intriguing and troublesome of "The
X-Files" episodes.  At once obviously derivative and
fiendishly original, its real focus is on the relationship
between Scully and Mulder, as mirrored in the relationship
between the scientific team of Dr. Hodge and Dr. DaSilva
(Xander Berkely and Felicity Huffman).  The catch phrase
from this episode, "We are not who we are", has echoed down
the seasons with an increasing resonance as we encountered
the strangers-behind-the-masks in "Shapeshifter",
"Irresistible", and "Colony/Endgame".  Issues of trust and
faith are central to "The X-Files", and never more so than
in this early and revealing episode.
     When it first aired, "Ice" was part of a younger,
considerably less sure-of-itself show.  Except for the
seminal "Conduit", viewers had had little insight into the
characters of Mulder and Scully, and even less into their
personal relationship.  The first time I saw it, I was
disappointed with the imitative plot, but the texture and
richness of the characterizations gave it a depth unusual in
television prime time.
     By now, virtually everyone is aware that "Ice" borrows
heavily from John W. Campbell's Cold-War era classic short
story, "Who Goes There?", which was subsequently made into
two movies, both called "The Thing".  With minor variations,
the story is the same:  an alien menace frozen in the polar
ice for thousands, perhaps millions of years, is
accidentally uncovered by a research team.  The organism
invades its host, turning the victim into a stealth killer
while retaining the outward human form.  It becomes
impossible to tell who is friend and who is foe, even by
reliance on that oldest of human skills, intuitive
understanding of another human being.  The puzzle becomes a
race against time to flush the alien killer from hiding
before all the humans are killed off one at a time.  Granted
that it is a familiar story, there is an artful subtext here
that transcends the contrivance.
     From the riveting opening sequences, where a fight to
the death becomes a mutual suicide pact between two
desperate men, this is a very tight story of paranoia and
trust.  We have seldom seen so claustrophobic a setting in
which to work out the dynamics of a relationship.   For Dana
Scully and Fox Mulder, this is the first real crisis testing
their professional and personal relationship.    Kudos to
Glen Morgan and Jim Wong (may their shadows never grow less)
for a subtler script than would appear on the surface.  Two
absolutely legendary scenes in this episode define the X-
Files team's alliance and their interdependence better than
anything else in the first season shows.
     The first scene, where Dana Scully and Fox Mulder are
caught up in the paranoia of the situation, has them
actually holding guns on one another.  In most professional
law enforcement relationships, this would be the end of this
partnership.  Few law enforcement agents could ever again
work with a partner who had aimed a loaded weapon at them.
In this excruciatingly intense scene, anger, fear, and
something deeper than mere disappointment wash across David
Duchovny's face to show us the struggle taking place within
Fox Mulder.  At last we see him really giving way to an
emotion connected with his partner.   Significantly, it is
Agent "Trust No One" Mulder who lowers his weapon first.
After those first few moments, he never again believes Dana
Scully is infected by the alien organism, although clearly
she believes he is.  For such an innately suspicious man, it
is a remarkable act of faith.  In the same scene, Gillian
Anderson gives us a highly emotional Agent Scully,
struggling courageously to maintain her calm and her reason
in the face of overwhelming fear.  Remember, Mulder is
supposed to have had several years of confronting the highly
unusual and the downright spooky:  Dana Scully is still
getting used to the idea that this is not all some weird
practical joke of Mulder's.   When the mortal danger of her
situation finally sinks home, her normal cool facade falls
away.  We see her true qualities begin to shine through:
courage, determination, her trust of science, and most of
all a commitment to justice.  She will not, for example,
make Mulder an involuntary guinea pig if there is some other
way.  At risk to herself, she goes in alone to his holding
cell to try to reason with him.
     The scene between Mulder and Scully in the holding cell
is incandescent.  Scully's barely masked terror, Mulder's
anger at and absolute trust in her, are two of the high
points not of the scene or even the episode, but of the
series.  This is a crucial moment in the character's lives,
when they will lose or re-establish the trust that binds
them as investigators and as friends.  I remember that on my
initial viewing, I was astounded at the depth Anderson and
Duchovny achieved with so few lines, such a short scene.  If
I had not been an admirer of the show until then, I would
have been afterwards. Their mutual physical examination
radiated a repressed sensuality that spoke of the
unacknowledged attraction between the two, while witnessing
a fundamental trust that words could not have accomplished.
It was a superb combination of writing and acting, the first
indication (to me) that this show had extraordinary staying
power.
     Interestingly, it is the team which does *not* question
one another, Dr. Hodge and Dr. DaSilva, which is flawed at
the heart.  From the outset these two present a united front
against the government agents they distrust, yet as the
crisis deepens their fragile alliance, built on cynicism and
a shared enemy, begins to fragment.  Yet until the very
last, Hodge is willing to trust Dr. DaSilva more than anyone
else.  His basic mistake is that his allegiance is based on
the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend; Mulder and
Scully's partnership is based on faith in one another.  Like
mirror twins, each pair reverses the image of the other.
     I think of the scene when, after re-establishing their
belief in one another, Mulder and Scully stand in the
doorway of the holding cell, clearly a team, clearly
together again as partners and friends.   Like paired
electrons, Scully and Mulder spin in opposite directions yet
are tightly bound in their mutual (if eccentric) orbit
around their search for truth.  It takes enormous energy to
pull them apart, and the result is likely to generate both
heat and light.
     If it had had a more original script, this would have
earned five sunflower seeds out of five.  As it is, the
mounting tension, taut writing, excellent characterisations,
and outstanding acting earn it four sunflower seeds out of
five.  I think this one is destined to be a classic.