Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – S.R 819 and Those Nanobots

Twenty-four hours. That is how long Mulder and Sully have to save Assistant Director Skinner’s life when he falls ill with a biologically engineered disease in the episode S.R. 819 which aired January 17, 1999. The writers of the series must have been asking themselves how to make Skinner seem less expendable now that he was no longer Mulder and Scully’s boss because after a series of stellar monster of the week episodes, suddenly Mulder and Scully are all about saving the guy’s life.

It is the makeup and special effects of this episode that really sell this illness as Skinner shows up to the hospital with his veins showing purple and pulsating through is skin at the hospital. After an unsuccessful attempt to revive him from cardiac arrest, doctors pronounce him dead. Cue heart stopping, “Um, what?” from viewers.

The episode then backtracks 24 hours. Skinner becomes dizzy whilst playing basketball and heads to the hospital where he receives a call on his cellphone from a computerized voice. It gives him the ominous message that he only has 24 hours to live. Mulder and Scully see the growing bruise on his ribs and investigate footage from the entrance to the FBI building. Scully sees Dr. Kenneth Orgel, advisor to a subcommitee on ethics and new tech, had stopped Skinner earlier that day. Mulder takes Skinner to Orgel’s house only to find the man is already being held hostage by people who don’t speak English.

Scully checks Skinner’s medical records and blood samples to find it contains a multiplying carbon nanotechnology. She and Mulder follow more leads that lead them to Senator Richard Matheson who at first seems like a dead end but eventually it turns out that Skinner was investigating a heath funding bill called S.R. 819 that Matheson was involved in. Back at the hospital, the cardiac arrest that Skinner was in at the beginning of the episode is stopped when a bearded man working with Matheson deactivates the nanotech in Skinner’s blood from working.

The bearded man working with Matheson turns out to be Alex Krycek, rogue FBI agent and series antagonist, because of course it does. He makes it known that he now has complete control over the nanotechnology in Skinner’s body.

The strength of this episode is the makeup effects combined with Mitch Pileggi’s acting. Some of the plotting gets a bit convoluted, especially when Alex Krycek is all – its me, bitches. Seriously, though, him reappearing in such a manipulative way in the FBI can only mean bad things for the X-Files. Not that Spender being in charge of the X-Files at the moment wasn’t bad enough.

I don’t love this episode, but the imagery of Skinner with the purple vein makeup is so memorable that I’ve been waiting to watch this since season four. While it isn’t directly related to the main mythology of the series, it does offer a break from the monster of the week episodes that dominate the first ten episode of season six and Krycek returns so we get to see another familiar face.

If I remember right, these nanobots in Skinner’s blood don’t really get used again but I could be wrong. My memory of the final three seasons isn’t that great since I have rewatched those seasons less than the first six. Maybe I’ll be surprised in season eight or something and it’ll be Krycek threatening Skinner to use the nanobots to manipulate him. Or not. We shall see.

Until next week, the truth is out there.