"Alpha"

"Animals that aren't supposed to exist, like Sasquatch, the Ogopogo, and the Abominable Snowman-"
"Don't mind him. He'll go on forever."
Originally Aired 3/28/99

Sixteen episodes into the season and we finally have a back-to-basics, "monster of the week" investigation. Yet, it just feels so plain and ordinary, at a time when revisiting the "monster" format should feel refreshing. Mulder and Scully are tracking a wild animal on a killing spree, which turns out to be a shape-shifter, so it really is back to the old format since that type of story was done before in Season One's "Shapes." While that episode focused on Native America lore, "Alpha" focuses on an extinct form of a dog called a Wanshang Dhole. I almost wrote that as "D'hole"; guess I was thinking about Homer Simpson's exclamation of "D'oh." "D'oh, it's time to watch 'Alpha!"

The basic story of the evil dog isn't where the episode fails, that lies with it's use of guest stars. Andrew Robinson, famous for being the killer in Dirty Harry and as Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is Dr. Detweiler who had actually captured this dog once before. Melinda Culea is Karin Berquist, an animal expert whom Mulder had met on the internet. The episode tries to go in a direction where there could be a flirtation between Mulder and Karen, yet I'm just not buying it at all. The lady doesn't just love dogs, she worships them and even writes books about how they're better than humans. Maybe that was an attempt to make her just as "quirky" as Mulder, yet we have seen entertaining quirky characters that are easily relatable to Mulder; the Lone Gunmen, Max Fenig, even Eddie Van Blundht. Berquist, however, is just far off in another plateau of weirdness and the only thing she shares with Mulder is an old, familiar poster. Scully appears to pick up on the wedged-in "romance", though I'd rather believe she is suspicious of Mulder and Berquist meeting on the internet because she remembers a previous case too well. That would be Season 3's "2Shy", in which a man used a dating service to seduce his victims. Otherwise Scully has no reason to infer anything between Mulder and this creepy lady because Mulder has even found X-Files cases through grocery tabloids and old VHS tapes; using the internet is just updating the series to follow the current trends.

What the episodes lacks in the script, it makes up for with the series' trademark visuals. I really liked the scenes with the killer dog appearing in foggy alleys and the camera angles used throughout the episode. The make-up crew added to the visuals with gruesome wounds inflicted by the dog, making this feel they were straight out of a horror movie. So while this episode was filmed in California following the move between Seasons 5 and 6, I wouldn't have guessed it judging by it's use of camerawork. In fact, the only episodes where the California location is obvious would be "Arcadia" and "Monday." So it's a credit to the series' crew that they were successfully masking the California setting by keeping things in the shadows. There is another positive aspect of "Alpha", that is the return of Mulder's "I Want To Believe" poster, which puts the final touches on his return to The X-Files.