"Per Manum"

"I'm in the dark pretty much my entire time on The X-Files."
Originally Aired 2/18/01

Scully has been mysteriously pregnant since the conclusion of last season and this is the first episode to make it the focus of an entire hour. "Per Manum" opens with a freaky sequence of a woman giving birth to an alien baby. It's really intense because the doctors seem to know what's going on yet the pregnant woman was clearly in the dark about what has been growing inside of her for 9 months. I'd compare it to the scene in The Fly, where Gena Davis gave birth to a mutant maggot baby. I also like the use of the woman's point of view being out of focus, so we don't know what she gave birth to either until it's finally revealed, yet we hear an alien shriek. Even the baby alien creature is a cool prop since it's mouth is clearly moving as it cries. The little snot plunger thing makes me laugh, though.

The husband of the lady who gave birth to the alien shares his story with a skeptical Scully, while Doggett actually believes it in an interesting twist. Apparently he's still been reading every X-Files investigation case file, as was stated back in the episode "Patience", and tells Scully that the man named Duffy shared a story that sounds similar to her's- abduction, being diagnosed with cancer, and a miraculous recovery. On past seasons of The X-Files, Mulder and Scully would quite frequently split up into two separate investigations, mostly in these mythology tales. This time it is clear that Scully is filling the role of Mulder and she conducts a secret investigation unknown to her partner. Meanwhile Doggett looks into the background of this shady Duffy character. There's even a third thread woven into this episode, which features a returning David Duchovny in flashback sequences with Scully remembering past conversations with Mulder that callback to Season 4's "Memento Mori." With having three separate stories within one episode you'd think it would be a mess, yet "Per Manum" has allows each story to have equal time and never feels rushed.

I've always been intrigued by the happenings of the Syndicate, since as viewers we only saw the meetings held in the creepy boardroom with the Smoking Man and the Elders, but there had to be so many levels of this conspiracy. There were the Elders at the top, the men in black underneath them like X who worked for the Smoking Man, also cloning doctors that we saw in "Memento Mori", then later the doctors working on the hybrid project in "Two Fathers", but I'm sure it had to go deeper than that. And what happened after the Syndicate was burned alive by the aliens, did these doctors just stop working on their evil experiments? I feel like this episode finally gets us up to speed on what's been happening since Season 6, that several of these doctors have possibly continued their work on alien-human hybrids. The grey-haired doctor from the alien baby birth sequence has always looked eerily like Donnie Pfaster to me. And revisiting this episode after so many years away, I still recall laughing at Doggett's pronunciation of the doctor's name as "Paren-TAY", while Scully says "Paren-TEE." It's the small things that make me laugh.

Speaking of Doggett, he's seemingly dropped the "dickish" side of his character, now transforming into 'Concerned Citizen Doggett.' He's been left out of the loop on this whole pregnancy, so I understand his frustration and I like the development of his character in this episode. I watched Season 8 way back in 2007 across a single weekend, Memorial Day in fact, and I believe this was a watershed moment for Doggett and when I began to really like the character. I also recall this not only being a turning point for Doggett, but for the entire season, because until now it was almost entirely standalone episodes. From here it becomes a string of mythology episodes as it builds into the series finale. A new character is also introduced, as Doggett turns to a friend for help, who would be special guest star Adam Baldwin in the role of Knowle Rohrer. I met Adam in 2013 and I was surprised he correctly spelled that name on my X-Files poster.

I think "Per Manum" is a fantastic episode that improved through a rewatch or two, though it's not without a gripe or two. My main gripe with this episode, or actually the season as a whole, is that Scully's pregnancy was written out of thin air. It was briefly hinted at that Scully and Mulder were much closer than partners and friends, but nothing of her wanting a baby seemed to be clear either. Now through these flashbacks they've attempted to rewrite this pregnancy in reverse, as we learn Mulder told her she was left barren, so Scully sought fertilization treatments to become pregnant. I don't mind it so much, because "Per Manum" has injected the paranoia into the series that's been long gone since Scully's cancer arc was wrapped up in early Season 5.