Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Clones and Flames

Episode 1.11 – Eve

I don’t know how many of the monster of the week episodes I’ll review throughout this rewatch, but Eve certainly deserves to be talked about. It was pitched to Chris Carter by two freelance writers who were inspired by the film The Boys in Brazil but wanted to talk more about the human condition like in The Twilight Zone.

Mulder and Scully investigate mysterious deaths in different states that each leave a little girl the last of her family left alive, and the girls turn out to be identical. Deep Throat turns up to explain away some back story about the government experimenting with genetic testing and super soldier clones. Three of such clones remain alive and their names are Eve 6, Eve 7, and Eve 8. Eve 7 escaped their detention center and restarted the program, hence the identical girls living in different states.

Harriet Sansom Harris breathes life into Eve 7 and as far as characters go, she is pretty great, especially when it turns out that she actually wanted to help her fellow Eves by curing their homicidal nature even if she did it through violence. This is where The Twilight Zone inspiration comes in, by humanizing the person who was the villain most of the episode. The actress later appeared in episodes of Millennium and Space Above and Beyond on her way to quite the prolific television career with guest starring roles. Most recently, she appeared in The Agency and Shining Vale.

Eve really makes me want to watch Orphan Black which I think draws a lot of inspiration from that episode. Orphan Black follows several genetically identical human clones who end up finding each other and are forced to investigate why they exist. The show explores the ethical implications about cloning human and its effect on the clones’ identity. Eve did the same with Eve 7 trying to fix their violent tendencies.

Episode 1.12 – Fire

Mulder and Scully are brought given a case by a London Metropolitan Police officer who happens to be a former friend of Mulder’s. She is investigating multiple instances of people being burned alive, the perpetrator leaving little love notes to the victim’s wives. His next victim is visiting Cape Cod, and Mulder and Scully agree to help.

This episode is impressive more for the stunts that it employed than for actual story, which is saying a lot since the story is watchable too. As the title suggests, there is plenty of actual fire in this episode since special effects were no good enough at the time to make that amount of fire look realistic. It also adds to the Mulder’s mythology since he has a fire phobia that he must overcome in order to survive the episode.

Moreover, the dynamic between Mulder and his old British friend is great as she has a lot of funny anecdotes from his past that Scully finds amusing. This humor, and Scully’s reaction to it, is meant to show how close she and Mulder have become. That their new found respect for each other might actually become friendship in the future.

This villain is played brilliantly by Mark Sheppard who is equally charismatic and twisted. He can manipulate fire and even survive it himself. At the end of the episode, doctors are marveling at how quickly he is healing even with burns over most of his body.

Sheppard also appeared in M.A.N.T.I.S., a short lived FOX show that’s mere existence can be traced back to the popularity of The X-Files. There were a few years in the 1990s where FOX aired sci-fi shows that rarely took hold after the first season. Jessica Alba’s Dark Angel is another good example, and showed that having a small cult following did not always translate into good ratings. Millennium was the best success of the bunch lasting three seasons. The actor also appeared in Sliders, Star Trek: Voyager, and Firefly, and had a recurring role on Medium with Patricia Arquette.

Eve and Fire don’t add much to the mythology side of things in the series, but they do show us Mulder and Scully working well together. Their investigative work in each of these episodes not only save victims from killers, but also each other from two identical little girls who poisoned their drinks in an effort to escape.

Until next week, the truth is out there.