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The Cave's
X-Files Commentary Archives:
1. Grand Plans Back in the days when I was mostly focused on the dynamic partnership at the heart of this series, the Tunguska/Terma arc seemed like a mytharc-fest where Mulder headed for Russia accompanied by the suddenly-reappeared Alex Krycek (whose motives, as usual, were suspect), got captured at the prison camp and subjected to the mysterious and extremely creepy Black Oil while Scully fended off Syndicate-motivated questioners in the Senate who were determined to find out where Mulder was. Following a harrowing escape, Mulder finally made it back to the States, where he and Scully attempted to track down the Syndicate's Oil-related research and another of the rock samples. With, you know, some Krycek, CSM, WMM and nefarious-consortium-research-on-elderly-people-in-Florida thrown in for good measure. But that was before my interest in the mythology and one of its lynchpins, that enigmatic meddler Alex Krycek, grew. Having set out, at one point, to write a life history of this character and in the process connect the sometimes far-flung dots that mark his appearances in the show, I've spent quite a bit of time pondering questions like, 'What the heck was Krycek doing with that militia group, anyway?' 'How, for that matter, did he really manage to get out of the missile silo?' 'What's the significance of his rather obviously preexisting friendship with the Russian prison camp commander?' And of course, 'What on earth does this shadowy guy really want???' In the process, I started to see that there was a lot more going on in the background of the Tunguska/Terma arc than I'd realized at first. While Mulder and Scully get sucked up into the mystery at hand in this particular story arc, the set-up and much of the execution are Krycek's, and they're elements that would have taken a long time to put in place. The short story, as I see it: Krycek has two goals. One is personal: to protect Mulder from the Oil by having him inoculated with the Russian vaccine. The second is a blend of long-term strategy mixed with revenge: to destroy the Syndicate's vaccine work so he can, at some later date, become the sole source of a working vaccine to the group. What makes me think so? Central to both hypotheses is the obvious fact that Krycek already knows the camp commander, as demonstrated in the scene (Terma) where the prisoners are being marched out to work. Krycek holds a lighter for the camp commander; they talk, joke and embrace in the manner of old friends. If he knows the man--as he clearly does--he must also be aware of the research/experiments going on there. Given that this is Alex Krycek, the research itself is likely the reason Krycek has ingratiated his way into the commander's good graces in the first place. Remember: the Syndicate that has thrown him out has yet to come up with a working vaccine, so he personally has been thrown (post-car bombing) beyond any available safety net when it comes to the eventual alien invasion. If Krycek can get his hands on a viable vaccine, he's better off than the old men in the board room. And if he can dangle the carrot of such a vaccine in front of the group, he's trumped them and can name his own price for supplying it to them. In a word, he can ultimately control them--a sweet possibility. This explains the job he has Vassily Pescow perform: destruction of the competing Black Oil vaccine research being conducted by the Syndicate by eliminating both the group's head researcher and her unwitting test subjects. [In this regard, it's noteworthy that the communique from Krycek to Pescow comes--according to the notes in the transcript at InsideTheX--from Kraznoyarsk, and at a point after Krycek is taken from the prison cell, demanding to talk with the guard's supervisor. The fact that his message gets out promptly to Peskow shows that Krycek certainly isn't being held incommunicado.] Of course, as personally satisfying as Krycek's plan for control and revenge might be, his ultimate focus is elsewhere... on a matter that concerns himself and Mulder "and about five billion other people." Having experienced the takeover of the Oil in a very personal--and undoubtedly terrifying--way, Krycek lives daily with the awareness of ultimate invasion. He knows he's going to have to fight it some way, but certainly (as Strughold himself said), "One man alone cannot fight the future." Realistically, neither can two. But giving up is simply not in Krycek's genetic makeup. Then again, who will help him? The men of the Syndicate, as harshly pragmatic as Krycek himself, have proven they are interested only in their own survival at the expense of the rest of humanity's, and I think Krycek is smart enough to realize that 'survival' as a human-alien hybrid would be a piss-poor excuse for actually living. Besides, what's the likelihood that once the old men have given the aliens what they want, the promises made to them will be respected? It would be naive to assume this (and really, this has always seemed--to me--a huge plot hole in terms of characterization of the Syndicate's higher-ups. Why would schemers such as themselves believe, even for a minute, that the aliens will keep their promise once the Syndicate members have done what's been asked of them and suddenly find themselves without any leverage?) For as much as the street-wise Krycek may scoff at Mulder's idealism, he also knows that 1) Mulder believes that the aliens exist, 2) that he's thoroughly invested because of his sister and 3) that Mulder would never sell out humanity--or anyone fighting with him--to save his own skin. If he fully realized the seriousness of the situation, Mulder would fight to the death and never give up. This is the kind of partner/accomplice/ally Krycek needs. Quite aside from the above, my own reading of Krycek is that in spite of his assignment as informant to CSM when he was playing Mulder's partner at the FBI, Krycek sincerely enjoyed working with Mulder while he did. After Mulder's initial attempt to push him away (see our analysis of Sleepless), the two men actually seemed to fall into an easy partnership. Granted, this led to Mulder trusting Krycek and ultimately experiencing a harsh jolt of justifiably angry realization later. For Krycek, however, I can see where the memory of working with Mulder would be a good one. (This easy partnership also surfaces again briefly for viewers to see in the Siberian woods, from the time the truck drops them off to the time they're chased and caught by the guards on horseback.) But to be a viable ally in the future, Mulder must be immune to their real common enemy, the Black Oil. Which brings us to the beginning of this story arc. Mulder isn't going to believe anything Krycek says, and he's certainly not disposed to want to become Krycek's friend. There's no way he would agree to allow himself to be inoculated with a strange and unidentifiable vaccine. So Krycek must accomplish this without Mulder's participation, and he must start from Square One; he has to gain Mulder's eye in a positive way, and then attempt to gain his trust... at least enough of it to lead Mulder toward the camp where the vaccine awaits. Real trust, and a lessening of the hate Mulder obviously feels for him, will hopefully come with time. Krycek's relationship with the militia group is something that would have taken many months to develop; militia types are inherently suspicious and don't open up easily to newcomers. (Yes, I did the background research.) But patiently laying this groundwork enables Krycek to lay a tempting, juicy bust in Mulder's lap --one that will feed Mulder's sense of satisfaction at having potentially saved a lot of innocent lives. Krycek's first comment to Mulder, once he's out of the truck, betrays his plan: "I handed you this bust, Mulder." Cocky as he is in the capture/interrogation scene, Krycek makes sure Mulder gets the message that he wants the same thing Mulder wants: to expose and bring down CSM. For whatever reason, Mulder apparently believes him, at least to a degree, because the very next time we see the three, they're already chasing down the diplomatic pouch, a tidbit completely unrelated to the militia bust, a new lead that Krycek has dropped in Mulder's path without wasting any time. It's got just the elements to hook Mulder: mystery, intrigue, and the promise of yielding evidence of extraterrestrial life. The result? When Mulder retrieves Krycek from Skinner's balcony, Krycek urges him, "I say, follow the pouch." And Mulder does. The journey takes him straight to Krycek's destination of choice. He knows exactly what will happen to Mulder if he gets caught: he'll be used as a convenient guinea pig for the experiments with a now-functioning vaccine. Result: Mulder will have gained immunity to the Oil, a distinct plus when the invasion finally comes. All that's left is for Krycek to do is to come up with a way to spring Mulder from the camp. And my guess is that he had one ready... until Mulder broke from the script by staging his own escape. (I also think he had a cover story ready for the camp commander as to why he and Mulder were at the camp--perhaps that he'd found out this foreigner wanted to snoop around the old Tunguska explosion site and that though he'd tried to convince the man not to go, but when he couldn't do that, he followed him instead, to limit what he'd discover.)
It should be said that this plan is a long-term investment for Krycek.
He's not naive enough to think Mulder will want to cooperate with him,
but I think he's hoping that over time, things will fall into place a
little at a time. And even if Mulder never gets to the point of
actually wanting to cooperate with him, Krycek of all people
knows that when your back's truy to the wall, you'll work with anyone you can
find. Mulder and Krycek: These two characters work wonderfully together (or off each other) and this story arc gives us a number of the show's best examples.
Nick Lea: Having become intrigued with the layers Nick wove so subtly into Alex Krycek, I've gone on to watch a lot of this actor's fine performances, and the one he gives in this Season 4 arc has to rank among his best. Certainly it is a tour de force in terms of showcasing the many (often conflicting) aspects of Krycek as Nick brought him fully to life. The writing staff at 1013 was only looking for a villain, a foil for Mulder, a Snidely Whiplash to put plot points into play, but Nick took the few terse lines scripted for Mulder's nemesis and turned them into a full-blown, living-and-breathing man--yes, one many viewers love to hate, but a complex, vivid, memorable character nonetheless. The militia interrogation scene includes a masterful performance on Nick's part. Krycek here is at once casual, manipulating, calculating--the epitome of the trickster--and at the same time defensive, caught off-guard, hurt at Mulder's treatment of him. He seems genuinely not to understand the way Mulder treats him as he hauls him from Skinner's to Marita Covarrubias' apartment in New York to the airport, where Mulder threatens to abandon him. And contrast the cocky Krycek of the interrogation scene with the obviously desperate man who's about to be left in long-term parking, chained to the steering wheel of Mulder's car... or for that matter, the defensive man who sputters that his parents were Cold War immigrants... "What's it to you?" It's the ragged edges, the slips in the cool, collected facade that make Alex Krycek truly real, and Nick Lea takes advantage of every nuance--every bit of body language, expression and tone of voice--to give us that real man rather than a caricature or a rubber stamp villain. Scully: While Mulder runs off chasing the pouch, Scully stays behind and does something we've seen her do before: she puts her job on the line to protect her partner. She firmly refuses to answer Senator Sorenson's question about Mulder's whereabouts, even risking contempt of Congress charges to do so. When Mulder finally returns, her palpable relief leads her to momentarily drop her studied professionalism, and she gives him a heartfelt hug--something definitely noteworthy at that point in the show. She also boldly and somewhat surprisingly states to her congressional audience that "there is a culture of lawlessness [within the government] that has prevented me from doing my job. That the real target of this committee's investigation should be the men who are beyond prosecution and punishment." For Scully, inherently a defender of protocol and established institutions, admitting this to herself--much less to an audience of senators--surely must have been awkward and uncomfortable. And yet she presses forward. The confrontation between CSM and WMM: In one sense there's a subtle parallel here to the idealist/pragmatist contrast between Mulder and Krycek in the interrogation scene. When informed that Mulder may be following the pouch, WMM berates CSM for stupidity (even though CSM really didn't have anything to do with Mulder's decision to go to Russia, nor could he have foreseen it.) CSM counters, in his usual pragmatic way, that the situation can be taken care of, to which WMM scornfully replies, "This will take more than just a good aim." More than once, WMM has shown his scorn for CSM's methods of problem solving. He obviously sees himself as more genteel or humane, or perhaps simply more aristocratic than CSM. And yet in the end, he's part of the same group out to sell out the human race to save themselves. And when push comes to shove, such as in the scene aboard the freighter (The Red and the Black) where he goes looking for the boy who witnessed the Kazakhstan burnings, he carries a gun and it's obvious from his voice that he'll go to whatever length necessary to get the information he wants. Marita Covarrubias: This is the third time Marita appears in the series (the two previous being Herrenvolk and Teliko.) And this time she's even more mysterious/puzzling with her offer to help Mulder get to Krasnoyarsk. Is she working on her own, or simply helping the Syndicate keep track of him? Is she in cahoots with Krycek at this point, or does she even realize he's still alive? My own feeling is that though she works for the Syndicate, she's got her own interests and agenda (as witness her attempt, in the following season, to steal away Krycek's boy witness and deliver him to Mulder.) But whatever her real story may be, we never do find out what her goals are. Personally, I suspect 1013 probably didn't give them much thought. Vassily Pescow: Pescow brings with him a particular kind of creepiness because he looks like nothing more than a harmless old man. Contrast the man sitting at the bus stop and offering a slice of apple to a stranger with the man who then surprises Bonita Charne-Sayer in her horse barn with a polite 'Oh, pardon me"... and then proceeds to strangle her. Like John Lee Roche in Paper Hearts, it's Pescow's ordinariness that makes him truly chilling. The fact that an appearance so apparently harmless may be hiding danger or a monster is distinctly unsettling to all of us as viewers. The repeated Senate hearing scene: There were several occasions on which CC used this device, but I have to say that it didn't work for me here. It began to take me out of the story. In sum: All in all, the Tunguska/Terma arc showcases the mytharc aspect of The X-Files at its best. We see the Black Oil for the first time--and creepy it is--and discover the Russian connection. Krycek, who we assumed was dead, reappears. Marita wends her way into the mix. Mulder is captured, subjected to the Oil in one of the series' most chilling scenes, but ultimately escapes to return home to his partner. Krycek loses his arm in another shockingly dramatic scene... and one that could have proved pivotal for this enigmatic villain had 1013 only given the follow-through a little more thought. In the end, the Syndicate hasn't managed to keep Mulder from finding out more about the alien substance to which it's pledged secret allegiance, and yet what has Mulder learned, for all his effort, that he can use? In spite of Mulder's impassioned plea at the final Senate hearing (" Why is this so hard to believe? When the accepted discovery of life off this planet is on the front page of every newspaper around the world?"), he's met, predictably, with a "This is NOT why we are here today." After which, the file folder containing Mulder's and Scully's report is dropped casually into a trash can... and sprinkled with ashes from a familiar Morley. Life in the X-Files world moves on. The Syndicate continues to cover up. Mulder and Scully move forward, searching for evidence. And Alex Krycek, now with an awkward prosthesis, carefully dips a tea ball into a porcelain cup.
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