X-Files Rerun: "Colony"

"I changed it to 'trust everyone', I didn't tell you?"
Originally Aired 2/10/95

Once this X-Files episode gets rolling with a case involving the deaths of abortion clinic doctors, Scully tells Mulder she has a bad feeling and that none of it makes sense, "we've got three deaths of identical victims, no bodies, a non-suspect", and I tend to agree. It's bordering on wacky, even by X-Files standards, though we have seen clones last season in the form of evil, young girls. In "Colony", these doctors are revealed to be clones from an earlier experiment and now they're working on a new experiment, with each man working at separate clinics. But really, that's just an excuse to introduce a brand new character, the man who's eliminating these clones- the Alien Bounty Hunter. That name sounds so ridiculous on paper (or on computer screen), and is he an alien who is a bounty hunter or a hunter of aliens who have bounties on their head? Well, he's actually both, and he's The X-Files version of The Terminator. He actually isn't sent to harm humans, just to eliminate evidence of cloning experiments. Notice that green blood too, which we've seen before in Season One's finale, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", which introduced an alien-hybrid plot. The plot, err, blood thickens.

Enter a man named Ambrose Chapel, a CIA agent who introduces himself to Mulder and Scully and explains the clones we've just seen get wiped out by the Bounty Hunter. He states that these clones are "Gregors", from a Soviet experiment that replicated a genetic anomaly in twins. These Gregors traveled into the United States and were stationed in different locations as "sleeper agents", then during the threat of war, they'd contaminate our blood supply and pharmaceutics. Seems legit to me, Scully. I like the real world aspects by tapping into a Cold War conspiracy, which the series would do again in later mythology installments.

While I enjoy the Bounty Hunter and the nonsense with the Gregor clones, what I did not like when I first watched this episode in 2008 and still don't in 2015, is the return of Samantha Mulder. Fox Mulder has agonized for years over the abduction of his sister, so her return at some point in the series was inevitable. I just feel like she's introduced late in this episode, on top of a Bounty Hunter and clones, and it's always seemed odd to me how accepting Mulder's parents are of this person as their long-lost daughter. Maybe its because I'm not a parent and have never had a child go missing, so I don't have that sense of loss. I understand the reasoning behind introducing the character into the series in this way, and now after watching seven seasons' worth of episodes, I know that's just the way they paced things on the series. It wasn't as serialized as television shows are today, leaving the writers and producers with limited options.

I realized I haven't even mentioned the most important aspect of this Bounty Hunter, that he's a shape-shifter. He changes his appearance to fool Mulder and Scully into believing he's a CIA agent so they'd lead him right to his next target, and by the end of the episode he even appears as one of them! Another interesting aspect is that Scully is actually right in this episode- well, beyond her earlier assessment when he she wanted to abandon the case. Now she doesn't trust CIA Agent Chapel and digs deeper into his background, even doing her own investigation after her brand new high-heeled shoe is eaten away by that bubbling, green alien blood. I've always known Scully was the more interesting character, mostly since Mulder is willing to believe anything, so watching Scully struggling and coming to gripes with meeting the paranoia, supernaturally elements leads to more suspenseful moments. For that, "Colony" is a home-run and has an excellent cliffhanger following a lot conspiracy elements for the viewers to digest.