Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Samantha’s Return

Today I’m discussing the first appearance of the alien bounty hunter and all the Samanthas. Yes, I mean the two episodes in season two devoted to the clones made of Samantha and the bounty hunter’s need to destroy them. Colony and End Game were the midseason episodes that nearly ended Mulder’s life.

Colony

Scully plows her way into a makeshift medical facility in the arctic and demands to see Mulder who has been found hypothermic and unconscious. His heart monitor flatlines. This introduction to this particular story is jarring until the episode takes you back two weeks and starts over at the beginning but leaves you wondering about Mulder’s wellbeing.

The alien bounty hunter’s ship crash lands in the ocean and he immediately begins his search for clones which leads him to Pennsylvania. He stabs a male clone in the neck with a stiletto weapon and sets the building on fire before moving on to the next clone. While Mulder and Scully investigate these murders, Mulder discovers that his sister Samantha is alive and has returned. He, with his parents, try to understand how this is possible after all this time, and why she has information about who this bounty hunter is.

Scully finds the four remaining male clones and tries to put them in a safe place, a jail where they would be surrounded by law enforcement. The bounty hunter, however, can shape shift into anyone he wants – because of course he can – and wearing a cop’s face kills the remaining male clones before following Scully back to her hotel room where he pretends to be Mulder. The episode ends with Scully being knocked unconscious.

End Game

The bounty hunter arranges a trade with Mulder; Scully for Samantha. Mulder enlists the help of Skinner, an unwitting ally, who then has a sharpshooter waiting to kill the bounty hunter during the trade. It goes wrong when Samantha tries to kill the bounty hunter and Skinner’s sharpshooter is unable to kill him.

Samantha had informed Mulder that the clones were the progeny of two original aliens who wanted to set up a colony on Earth. They set up their operation at abortion clinics to gain access to fetal tissue. Believing that the clones had somehow tainted their alien race, they sent the bounty hunter to kill them. He can only be killed by stabbing him at the base of the neck with the very weapon he has been killing the clones with.

When Mulder finds the clinic where the clone Samanthas are working, they inform him that they had sent one of their own to get him to protect the original clone, the one that they were all made from. Mulder barely has time to be angry about the lie when the bounty hunter arrives, knocks him out, and proceeds to kill the remaining clones. Mulder enlists the help of Mr. X who leads him to a submarine in the Beauford Sea in the Artic.

Scully goes looking for him, but has to also enlist the help of Mr. X who refuses to help her. It takes Walter Skinner threatening him to get the information out of him. It is this moment when Skinner finally shows his hand. While he may not always show it, he will be on Mulder and Scully’s side of things even if it costs him dearly. It doesn’t here, but it will later in the series.

Scully arrives in the arctic to find that Mulder has been exposed to the bounty hunter’s blood which is toxic and lethal to humans. She manages to convince the doctors to help her save Mulder and soon, he is on the mend.

What I find so great about these two episodes is that they play out like a cop procedural with an alien twist. We are led to believe that Mulder will not survive from the very beginning, but of course Chris Carter was never going the let Mulder die that early in the series. The dynamic is also changed here because now it is up to Scully to save Mulder, a reversal of what played out when Scully disappeared earlier in the season. Skinner also plays a much larger role here as well, helping both Mulder and Scully to figure out what is going on.

Brian Thompson, the man who played the bounty hunter, was cast specifically for his distinctive look because the role would be recurring throughout the series. Each time he reappeared during the season’s original run, I would gasp. His appearance meant nefarious things were in play and it always made for a great episode. Thompson’s career spans decades making appearances in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, and even Baywatch. He also played Hercules in a television adaptation of Jason and the Argonauts.

Megan Leitch was only in four episodes of The X-Files as Samantha, but because she played clones and the appearance had such a drastic effect on Mulder and his family, it always seems like she was around more often. Like so many who starred on this show, she also had roles in Fringe, Stargate: Atlantis and SG1, The Outer Limits, and Supernatural. I guess once you appear in made for television sci-fi, you tend to be a mainstay there.

I look forward to seeing both Thompson and Leitch in future episodes as I get to them because, much like teenage me during the show’s original run, I find myself getting a little giddy at their reemergence in each of their episodes. Samantha and the alien bounty hunter still have a lot to bring to the mythology aspects of this show.

Until next week, the truth is out there.