The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives: Episodes: Alpha (6x16)

Mulder makes the above remark to Scully partway through the episode, and to an extent it's true. The episode is overtly about the territoriality of a wild or 'pre-evolutionary' (dubious concept, that!) member of the dog clan. On a more subtle level it's about territoriality among women. Among other things. There's the e-mail relationships angle. And the 'trickster' theme. It's about Mulder and Scully. I keep thinking that there are overall similarities here to David Duchovny's movie*Playing God, in that there are many interesting elements thrown into the mix, thought the total production would definitely have benefited from a tightening of focus. Overall, though, for a MOTW ep, I found this to be intriguing. I wanted to keep watching to find out how it would play out, both with regard to the overt plotline and to Mulder and Scully.

Before I get into the good stuff, I'd like to mention a few details I particularly liked. I was glad to see Andrew Robinson again (Garak from Deep Space 9.) He always plays interesting characters and he did that here; I particularly loved the wild dog look he gives the animal control guy when he says he's going to kill the dog. I thought the part of Karen was particularly nice; it's refreshing to see a woman's part that doesn't revolve around stereotypical attractiveness, whether that be the Pamela Anderson type of thing or the super-attractive young scientist/lawyer/whatever.  Real people with all their warts and quirks count, too, though we rarely see them on the screen except in background roles. This was a great role to show off the acting talents of Melinda Culea (formerly of *The A-Team.) Really nicely nuanced job, fleshed out a good distance beyond the makeup and clothes with the hesitant walk, the body language and the flat intonation when she talked. Pictorially, I liked the man-to-dog morph and the morph from the St. Bernard into the wild dog--nicely done. And--imagine that--it was actually raining in one scene, proving that Southern California actually does get some of the wet stuff, though admittedly not much, as my winter water bill will attest.

I have to admit I'm not a MOTW fan in principle because the monsters themselves don't captivate me. I'm not in this to be scared; I want a good story and good character development, and it's easy for the monsters in these standalone eps to take over and so sideline the characters as to make them effectively two-dimensional, just errand-runners to advance the plot (I'm thinking of outings like *Teso dos Bichos and *Sanguinarium, not character-involved eps like *Squeeze or *Tooms or *Grotesque.) Jeff Bell went up a few notches in my opinion here for his weaving of the M/S element into the story, even though characterizational inconsistencies were apparent. The first office scene, though seemingly out of character for the way Scully has been portrayed recently, was intriguing enough to make me want to know where it would lead. There was a definite air of playfulness, almost flirting about Scully there. It was in her tone of voice, her face (she was actually smiling, as if she were full of some emotion that refused to stay inside her), and her near-invasion of Mulder's personal space. Mulder, too, showed the softness in tone and body language that has characterized his Season 6 interchanges with this woman he has declared his feelings for, even if she has not responded in kind. (David used a delivery here he's never used in The X-Files before, one I've only heard him use once in *Playing God (when he tells Angelina Jolie's character--going up the stairs--"she was a doctor") when he delivers the line about "multiple bite wounds". A soft, very light delivery. If you were to see this exchange for the first time with the audio off, it would be easy to take it for a strictly personal, rather than professional, encounter. 

The fact that the office was portrayed at all was something that made me cheer. Mulder's "I am home. I'm just feathering the nest", as well as being a great line, has been long overdue. We should have had this squeezed into *Arcadia somehow (theoretically the first case after they are reassigned to the basement files.) The office and what it represents are just too much a living part of our characters to be ignored the way they have been. 

Okay, I guess I have to pause here and talk about the inconsistencies I saw in terms of characterization. The Scully element came across to me, as the story progressed, as if Bell didn't really have a grip at the beginning on Scully's character, but that as things went along he finally got it right (the wordless exchange between them as Scully checks the dead Karen and that final gem of a scene in the office.) Now, I've had the same thing happen to me in writing stories--as you go along, you become more familiar with and more at ease with the characters. But when I do that, I go right back to the beginning and bring all that preliminary work up to par, and that wasn't done here. Bell has captured the M/S dynamic so perfectly at the end, but where was CC--or someone--to check over those earlier elements? Guess we'll never know the answer to that one.

As has been brought up already in this discussion, Scully's initial territoriality didn't seem to track to me. What would she have been afraid of? There seemed to be no danger here. Karen was quirky and, as Mulder said, a loner. If Mulder was  hoping anything shippy was going to develop between himself and Karen, he certainly wouldn't have brought Scully along. To be fair, I think the same characterization mistake has been made before. I don't feel that the jealousy she displays in *Fire had solid precedents in Scully's background either; after all, she hadn't been with Mulder that long at the time and certainly hadn't had the kind of relationship with him that should make her so edgy about a partner's former lover. I don't see that Phoebe Green should have affected her the way she appeared to. It could also be argued that Scully is only looking out for Mulder here, to keep him out of danger, but remember her first comment to Mulder when she realizes Mulder already knows Karen: "Oh, so you two are chummy?" Again, this is not just a bone I'm picking with Jeff Bell but with others who have taken a character we know to be slow to involve herself on a personal level--who certainly hasn't taken advantage of any of Mulder's various openings--and depicted her as very sensitively jealous, or at least territorial.

Scully was consistently developed as regards her gradual opening to extreme possibilities. When Mulder suggests that the dog has displayed extraordinary abilities, she says, "Even if there were such an animal, where would we even begin to look for one?" This is not your Season One Scully, or Season Three or even Season Five Scully.

Scully is suspicious of Karen and, any hypothesis of jealousy aside, she has reasons to be. She picks up right away on the fact that she is not welcome, that Karen wishes Mulder (Fox!) had come alone, and that, the situation being what it is, as soon as the business questions are over, in Karen's mind the visit is over, too. For two people who have exchanged a number of mails on topics that one assumes interested them both, this is a little abrupt, and Scully is well aware that it is her presence that is causing the abruptness. She realizes, too, that a woman so emotionally close to canids is likely to use canid trickery to get what she wants. And so we see Scully on alert, picking apart Karen's arguments in the computer scene, going back to interview Karen on her own, aware, as usual, that Mulder is often [too] quick to believe in people and their stories. In this respect she could very well be seen as a guard dog, patrolling a perimeter to make sure her charge--her partner--remains safe. This is a territoriality I can accept as very Scully and very substantial, unlike the more petty jealousy that I don't think really fits Scully's character.

The fact that the rare dog they are tracking is actually Dettwiler emerges gradually during the course of the story if you watch the hints, and frankly it was easier for me to swallow than a lot of the premises behind other MOTW eps. Karen, of course, is left with the sticky dilemma of wanting to protect the dog and yet knowing that, for the greater good it must be destroyed.

Some of the most interesting moments of the story came, for me, in Scully's and Karen's analyses of each other. Scully is quick to realize that Karen has a more-than-professional potential interest in Mulder ("In Mulder you found someone you could communicate with, someone who challenged you," Scully tells her. This, by the way, is classic Jeff Bell; as with the bathroom speech in *Rain King, Scully has voiced something here about Karen that actually applies as well--or primarily--to herself, and it was nicely smoothed into the context of the scene.) Scully also determines Karen's physical condition. And yet Karen holds her own here. She says to Scully, "I lack your feminine wiles" and "You watch, but you don't see." Even Scully admits at the end that Karen "sized people up pretty quickly." 

In the end, Karen decides to take care of the problem dog herself. She deliberately locks her dogs up, knowing that Dettwiler will come, and she leaves the front door open. She loads the tranquilizer gun, which appeared to me to be an assurance that she could control the dog until she got herself strategically positioned under the window, so when the dog attacked her, both of them would go out the window. Karen's sacrifice gives her a kind of release. Because of her medical condition, she can no longer live out in the field with the canids she so loves, and her attempt at finding a human connection has not gone as she had hoped. She has nothing really left to live for, and in destroying the wild dog perhaps she gives meaning to her own death. 

The final scene is one of the best I've ever seen done on this show. Everything--the script, the acting, the music and the photography--combine to show us the essence of true friendship between our two protagonists, and the depth of their 'realness' as people. Mulder, as usual, is distraught over what has happened to Karen; as John Donne stated so long ago, no man is an island, and Mulder is always the first to hear the bell toll. Scully, characteristially, realizes he will be blaming himself, at least in part, for what has happened. So she takes the time to come in and talk to him. Although she does not invade Mulder's space in the way he so often does with her, Scully shows her closeness--her openness--by sitting on the edge of his desk. When Mulder voices his regret for his quickness to believe Karen's story, Scully defends him by saying, "Why wouldn't you believe her?" She doesn't leave until she gets the assurance, in a glance, that he will be okay. Then Mulder is left alone, to open the poster and to return it to the wall where it has been missing for so long. I loved the piano music in the background and the focus on Mulder's face, for it is Mulder's fulfillment, and not the physical fact of the printed picture on the wall, that really make the office a home once again.

David has said that the communication between Mulder and Scully is in "communication beyond words" and we really see this in the final scene, as well as at the end of the preceding scene where Scully is looking at the dead Karen. The looks say everything; no words are necessary. This ending grasp of the characters and the dynamics of their relationship give me hope for this writer. Sure, there were plot holes--potholes like the guards in the teaser bllithely assuming they'd killed the vicious animal inside the box--and unevenness of characterization. And who is minding the store when words like 'pre-evolutionary' slip through, or that classic line of Mulder's from *Terms of Endearment that he's no psychologist? As I said, we'll probably never know that answer, but in the end I saw some good things going on here, and some potential I'd like to see developed further.

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