The Grand X-Periment Day 8 Part 1

10/8/11

20) 731- Season 3, Episode 10- When we last saw Mulder, he was on a moving train that was carrying, something, along with an assassin and a Japanese war criminal. The resolution to this, while exciting and entertaining, was not really that vital to the Mythology, all things being equal. The Japanese scientist had gone rogue and was killed for trying to betray the conspiracy. Otherwise, we only find out a few small pieces...the alien/human hybrids start looking like aliens after awhile. Abductees likes Scully were experimented on in train cars. Scully gets fed a line of crap by the Fat Man (another conspirator) that contains just enough truth to make her skeptical again just as she was starting to buy into the UFO thing. That development was probably the biggest purpose of this two-parter.

The real fun of the episode was in Mulder finding himself locked in a train car with an NSA assassin and a ticking timebomb. Nothing of narrative consequence takes place in this setting but it is fun to watch Mulder try to think his way out of the situation. X actually does something useful for once and rescues Mulder, allowing the hybrid (or real alien, who knows?) to die. Really, there are (or were) tons of them so I am guessing there will always be a chance to find more. The leper colony was a nice, plausible touch in that those would be good places to hide people altered by alien DNA.

21 & 22) Piper Maru & Apocrypha- Season 3, Episodes 15 & 16- Even though it is four episodes down the road from 731, Piper Maru picks up right where the last one left (mythology-wise) and introduces a new wrinkle to the mythos. Nisei/731 dealt with the recovery of a UFO in the Pacific as well as the pilots. A French vessel goes to the same spot and finds a crashed World War 2 plane and the diver gets infected with the Black Oil.

See if this isn't convoluted. Krycek has decoded the MJ files (which he had on him when Cancer Man tried to kill him back in the start of Season 3). He is selling things like the location of downed UFOs to others who are trying to salvage it. The conspiracy is trying to get the files back and kill Krycek. Mulder figures out that the French salvage vessel was hired by a middle man company, whose sole employee he tracks to Hong Kong (she says she was, in turn, hired by a woman who we don't see or learn more about). Mulder finds Krycek, gets the employee of the middle man company killed and lets Krycek get infected with the Black Oil.

Now, I remember the Black Oil from the first time I watched the show (although I don't think I have ever seen these episodes before). Apparently, it is the medium through which an alien entity enters one's body. Once you are under its control, you can irradiate your foes and not be harmed. Seems like a weird power and it has nothing to do with what we know about the aliens so far.

Everybody gets back to the U.S. where Black Oil Krycek hands the MJ tapes back to Cancer Man in exchange for being reunited with his spaceship. In the meantime, we resolve Scully's whole "who shot my sister?" thing. Skinner gets shot, all the clues lead back to Krycek's partner. Like the One Breath episode where Mulder had a chance to kill Scully's abductors, Scully gets a chance to kill the man who killed her sister and makes a similarly merciful decision to not take revenge.

So, three season in and they introduce a completely new aspect to the alien mythos. I am curious to follow this thread from now on. Krycek ends up locked in an abandoned silo with a UFO filled with sentient Black Oil...which would have been a cool last appearance for him but there is more Rat Boy to come. This one had plenty of action and was well-executed but it felt like a weird deviation from the whole hybrid/colonization thing.

I have to run now but I get back, Jose Chung's From Outer Space and Season 3 finale, Talitha Cumi. I didn't even mention the flashback to Mulder's dad and Cancer Man investigating the original appearance of the Black Oil in WW2, but it was pretty awesome.