"Salvage"

"Certainly for any ordinary man."
Originally Aired 1/14/01

I think the worst part of David Duchovny's absence from the series has been the lack of humorous quotes to highlight each episode in these reviews. Instead, I've tried to select a line of dialogue that could best sum up each episode's investigation, but these last two have been exceptionally difficult.

While the series' humor has been lacking, I do like the return to these darker "X-File" cases. Season 6 was riding on a creative high, with Vince Gilligan contributing to 7 scripts, as many as series' creator Chris Carter. All of their episodes pushed the series to it's limits and beyond, and one such episode has quickly become an all-time favorite of mine, that featured Mulder swapping bodies with a Man in Black from Area 51. Even David Duchovny joined the fun and wrote an episode about baseball that was set in the 1940's. However that creative high seemed short-lived. The 7th season suffered from a lack of direction, with one episode being slap-stick comedy, and next week's featuring a snake-charming cult. Revisiting Season 8 for the first time since 2008, I appreciate the focus on this style of storytelling.

"Salvage" feels somewhat familiar though, reminding me of the 'villain on a path of destruction' scenario that occurred in Season 6's "Trevor." This time Ray Pearce is a victim of circumstance- he somehow was exposed to a metallic substance, died from that exposure, then was resurrected as a man with metallic blood, which is now consuming his entire body. Some scenes depicting this transformation remind me of sci-fi movies from the 1980's, the original Terminator and David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. Ray looking in the mirror and plucking metal shards from his skin is eerily similar to when The Terminator is looking in the mirror at his exposed skeleton. Also Seth Brundle in The Fly had brittle hairs poking through his skin during the early phase of his transformation as well. New series director Rod Hary, whose first appearance was this season's "Roadrunners", is a fine choice to direct this installment. I feel like he could have been paying homage to those movies, creating a unique atmosphere for the episode, showing that he's a fine addition to this season, and the series overall. The Fly and The Terminator rank among my favorite movies, so I'm aware that skews my enjoyment of this episode compared to the casual X-Files fan.

Doggett and Scully enter the story just after Ray's resurrection, although I think this episode may have benefited more from showing the end of Ray's life as man. It could have built more sympathy for Ray, instead he's just like a Terminator actually, bulldozing through his former coworkers. Perhaps the episode could have began with his actual resurrection and the teaser ends with his body leaving the morgue. Although that's likely too similar to "Leonard Betts", which I just remembered is an earlier example of this style of villain.

While the story is familiar, I do like the visual effects of the metal consuming Ray's body and taking him over, both inside and out. There's even a glimmer of Ray's humanity that shines through at the climax, with "Salvage" ending in classic X-Files style. I do like a good tragic story.