Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Fearful Symmetry

I vaguely remember having seen this episode more than most in reruns during the show’s original run. Perhaps Fox thought Fearful Symmetry was a better episode than most. While I’m not sure if I agree that it is a top tier episode, I do have a fondness for it because it carries themes about the pitfalls of animal cruelty and keeping animals in zoos.

Mulder and Scully take on a case where several people claim to have heard animals running near them, but could not see any. Destruction in the area suggests a large animal was at fault and the only possible culprit was an elephant who died in an accident nearby. The agents discover a zoo nearby whose only claim to fame is that no animal has ever had a successful birth there.

The head of the zoo, Willa Ambrose (Jayne Atkinson) tells the agents they are on the verge of closing and that local animal rights groups have been against the zoo for years and she blames them for the elephant getting loose. When Scully does a necropsy on the animal, she discovers that it was pregnant which Ambrose says is impossible since it never mated with another elephant.

Mulder contacts the Lone Gunman and they inform him that the zoo is located in a city known for UFO sightings. Frohike and Byers also have knowledge of Ambrose’s gorilla who is known for her ability to use sign language as a form of communication.  The gorilla is apparently afraid of light, and is also pregnant – a secret kept from the agents by Ambrose.

One of the animal rights activists tries to rescue a tiger from the zoo, but is killed in the process even as the tiger disappears after a bright light can be seen on the activist’s camera. Law enforcement demands that Ambrose hand the gorilla over for its own safety and Ambrose tries to escape with her. The gorilla disappears after a flash of bright light, but like the elephant, reappears in front of a vehicle and is killed.

Mulder believes that aliens were trying to conserve the animals and were the reason they were ending up pregnant, but their efforts went awry somehow causing the animals’ deaths.

I find this episode to be heartbreaking, especially when the gorilla dies. Willa Ambrose obviously cared for the animal deeply. I’m an animal lover myself, so this kind of thing also distresses me. Perhaps that is why I remember it so well or that I remember it being played in reruns so often.

Jayne Atkinson brings a mother’s love to the role, filling the episode with heartbreaking empathy. Later in her career she would appear on the television adaptation of James Patterson’s Zoo and on The Walking Dead. She portrayed a CTU employee on a couple seasons of 24 and starred in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village – one of my personal favorites. Before she was cast in this episode, she played the foster mother in Free Willy. In each role, she brings the same feminine strength and has a wise way about her even when her characters make mistakes. She always seems to be a maternal sort of character.

Lance Guest, who portrays the animal rights activist, starred in Jaws: The Revenge long before he made is appearance on The X-Files. I always find it interesting how both Guest and Atkinson were in films or television throughout their careers where they were in projects that carried some of the same themes about how humans interact with animals as this episode did. How humans are often responsible for the animal’s deaths even if it isn’t intentional.

The movie that this episode really reminds me of was the 1995 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Congo starring Laura Linney and Tim Curry. The film follows a man returning his sign language speaking gorilla to her home in Africa. He travels with a group of people trying to rescue their colleague who disappeared on an expedition. It carries the same themes of animal cruelty toward gorilla populations but also has gorillas who live in a volcano and protect the diamonds within at all costs. The new expedition ends in disaster as well, but at least the gorilla has a happy ending, unlike this episode of The X-Files. Crichton’s novels often utilize of how interactions with animals and science can go horribly wrong for both the humans and the animals as well which is probably why I connected the two. Hubris of man and all that.

While I would not call this episode a monster of the week since the gorilla here is by no means a monster, it does not involve any of the overarching mythology of the series even though Mulder believes aliens were responsible. This episode was the beginning of a stellar run of monster of the week episodes which make the second half of season two so watchable. I look forward to talking about the rest of them as I watch them.

Until next week, the truth is out there.