The X Files / Fallen Angel / Notes

 I will include user comments from an IMDb review from January 3, 2016.

This is one of my favorite episodes of the first season dealing with Deep Throat and Mulder's difficulties with the FBI and how they want to close the X files. This is a template for how the series operates: Mulder gets close to the truth, faces a setback, seems on the verge of being dumped by the FBI, with forces at work in the government that override Mulder's potential dismissal. This had that big ending where Deep Throat seemed to reveal himself as perhaps not a Mulder ally. Perhaps Deep Throat was working Mulder or perhaps he is working those who consider him an ally. Throughout the first season Deep Throat leads Mulder to places, such as he does in "Fallen Angel", to Wisconsin where an actual cloaked alien moves about burning folks severely it comes in contact with while Marshall Bell's Colonel Henderson trying to catch up to it and kill it. Henderson wasn't about to let Mulder subvert his mission, doing whatever he could to make sure he was not standing in his way. Scully is so frustrated with Mulder in the episode because she wanted him to return to DC to face a tribunal over actions regarding his trip to Wisconsin. Mulder's pursuit of the truth was far more important to him than FBI superiors scolding him or even preparing to fire him. Scully tried, bless her heart. Deep Throat revealed as the one who kept Mulder from being removed from the FBI once and for all is such a juicy bit of chum, though. I remember at the time thinking, "Wait, wasn't Deep Throat on Mulder's side? Why send Mulder to Wisconsin to begin with? Was it to place Mulder in trouble knowing his hunger, his thirst for the truth?" Now I just admire that bit of a twist that sort of questions everything we had seen before. Granted, later on Deep Throat's "agenda" is clarified. He is in a position of power, close to FBI, and with that entitlement, he could give Mulder some information and send him on his way. That was until "Erlenmeyer Flask".

Max Fenig, an abductee who doesn't realize it, and follower of Mulder's work--Mulder failed to realize how important his work was to the UFO community--is in Wisconsin for "some reason" and the cloaked alien soon identifies him, luring him to a warehouse where he's momentarily levitated and vanishes within a bright light. What did the alien want with Fenig? What's with that peculiar L-shaped marking behind the ear? Mulder and Scully were right in the thick of it, but Scully, unfortunately, missed the actual alien experience while Mulder was there to experience it first hand--and get hurled across the room into a pallet and boxes.

One of the key episodes of the first season places suspicion on the Deep Throat character portrayed by Jerry Hardin as he orchestrates Mulder's pursuit of the truth regarding an alien spacecraft that crashed in rural Townsend, Wisconsin, with a radioactive being loose in the area. Marshall Bell's ornery "crash retrieval unit" Commander Calvin Henderson does what he can to recover the alien while quarantining the wilderness region surrounding the downed craft. However, the alien is dangerously radioactive and its ionized "weapon" severely burns any soldier of Henderson's that threatens to try and capture it. Mulder (David Duchovny) encounters an epileptic alien abduction nut, with all kinds of equipment in his metallic van, named Max Fenig (Scott Bellis) who knows a great deal of personal and professional history about the X-Files FBI agent. Meanwhile, Mulder's capture while taking photographs of Henderson's cleanup crew taking care of the spacecraft lands him in hot water as the Bureau will be conducting a review of his actions, requesting him back in Washington, DC, to face his superiors for insubordination. Scully (Gillian Anderson) tries to get Mulder back to DC but he's persistent in proving that "the truth is out there".

What makes the episode so compelling to me is Mulder's passion for getting evidence, and the inability to help Fenig who has this incision scar that is like an alien abduction mark. This episode at least allows Scully to be in the midst of possible proof of alien activity, particularly when Fenig and the alien are picked up on radar inside a warehouse as Mulder tries and fails to keep him safe. Lifeform readings showing three and then one, with Mulder (and us, the viewers inside with him) seeing Fenig lifted up in a type of tractor beam, soon to be taken off by a second spacecraft (there are a few scenes inside Henderson's military headquarters, with radar that picks up curious unidentified aircraft, in US airspace, as officers detect obvious alien spacecraft but must consider them "meteors"). Mulder's constant refusal to return to DC leaves Scully in a difficult spot, but you start to see increasing loyalty to him as she herself realizes there are questionable actions being made right in front of her. That becomes a conundrum for her: the FBI or Mulder? The term "fallen angel" is lingo for possible spacecraft to be retrieved before the media or particular unwanted press get wind of their presence.

I loved the scene where Fenig discusses his knowledge of the X-files, Mulder's published work under a pseudonym, and the "enigmatic" Scully. Also the doctor in Townsend who is willing to share information with the agents because he is sick and tired of Henderson's threats to keep secret what they see in the hospital. The finale, where it appeared as if Fox was about to be dead to rites, and Hardin is revealed to possibly be against Mulder, his supposed ally ("Keep your friends close, and enemies closer."), but responsible for keeping the X-files open is a fascinating fade to back. That is one of the reasons the show was so successful.