Premise: Violence-inducing worms trapped in the Arctic ice
This episode is a blatant rip-off of… The Thing (Or so I’ve heard. It’s been a very long time since I saw The Thing. And it may have been the wrong version.)
Hey, its… Xander Berkeley (a.k.a. George Mason from 24)! Steve Hytner (a.k.a. Kenny Bania from Seinfeld)! Jeff Kober (a.k.a. Zachary Kralik and Rack from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)! And Felicity Huffman!!!
How good is this episode?
Yet another not-very-good episode. The dialogue is corny (“Mulder, you may not be who you are!”), the internal logic is inconsistent (Checking for infection initially requires a blood and stool sample, then turns into looking for swollen buboes, and finally becomes a simple matter of a neck-rub), and the ending is disappointing (Da Silva shows no signs of psychosis before her final freak-out). On top of which, the cast spend less time actually fighting the monster than they do pointing fingers at each other and yelling, “You’re the murderer!”, “No, you’re the murderer!” Still, like “The Jersey Devil”, it is at least memorable for its character moments.
How ace is this episode?
Four men and two women are trapped together in a research station. Mulder and Scully are partners, and Hodge and Da Silva are friendly with each other, but there’s no explicit romance.
Great moments in queerplatonic bonding
Mulder and Scully pull guns on each other for the first time, showing the amount of strain that the situation is putting on their partnership. That their partnership survives shows how strong it already is. Mulder trusts Scully enough to lower his gun first, and Scully cares for him enough to keep sticking up for him even when she believes he has killed Murphy. This leads them to their first ever “Trust” conversation. It’s a tentative beginning. Trapped in a room by three people, one of whom he knows to be infected, Mulder says only that he wants to trust Scully over the other two. In a few short minutes, they earn each other’s trust, and, when they emerge, they present a united front to Hodge and Da Silva. It’s not the same as standing up to the United States government, but it’s a start.
Mulder and Scully also get handsy with each other in the famous “checking for worms” scene. I’d be lying if I said this scene wasn’t erotic AF, and it may mark the formal introduction of U.S.T. into the series. I don’t have time now to give all my thoughts on Unresolved Sexual Tension and why it’s important. Suffice it to say that U.S.T. will play a vital role both to the affirmation of Mulder and Scully’s friendship and to my understanding of that friendship as a queerplatonic life partnership.
Favourite moment: Mulder grabs the back of Scully’s shirt and pulls her back. There’s just so much going on in that one gesture. Mulder is basically saying, “So, you’re a scientist? I’m a scientist, too. You need proof? I need proof, too. You want me to trust you? Fine. But now you have to trust me.” It’s a reminder that theirs is a relationship of equals. It’s also representative of how, though they will come to trust each other implicitly, that trust is not blind. It’s something they both have to earn.
Random Musings:
- “Leave it there.” Anyone else half-expecting Scully to follow that up with “It’s Chinatown”?
D
The Realm of Asexual Possibility 
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