The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives: episodes:Talitha Cumi/Herrenvolk

The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives:
Talitha Cumi/Herrenvolk
3x24 and 4x01

Author: bardsmaid

Little does Mulder know when he gets wind of the intriguing case of a restaurant shootout (and we don't, in fact, learn how he finds out about it) that the incident will send him headlong down the paths of both his own family history and the greater unknown. As events unfold, he's forced to make a choice, and the choice--typical of this man--is for his family.

Talitha Cumi presents us, at the outset, not just with an intriguing happening--a restaurant shooting by a disgruntled man who is subsequently healed (as are all the injured) by a mysterious stranger--but with a whole new element that has the potential to broaden the show's mythology in intriguing ways. Our first glimpse of Jeremiah Smith is as a calm and kindly man with a remarkable ability for physical healing. Soon, though, we find out that he can also shapeshift. And that he, along with a far-flung group of identical others, are working away at something mysterious within the Social Security administration. Eventually, in his prison confrontation with CSM, he admits--without regret--that he no longer believes in 'the greater purpose' of alien takeover of the planet.

So we have in Smith a rebel, a man--alien--willing to expose the plan to the right person, someone who might be capable of using that information to change the course of the future. Whatever his specific experiences on Earth up to this point, Jeremiah Smith has gained a grudging respect for humanity. "You can't kill their love, which is what makes them who they are," he tells CSM. Whether or not he would have eventually sought out someone to tell his story to, Smith is inadvertently propelled into doing so when Mulder and Scully enter the investigation of the shooting incident at the restaurant. "I can explain everything to you," he says to Mulder.

But of course, things aren't quite so easy, as the appearance of the alien bounty hunter in pursuit of Smith reminds us.

Mulder, meanwhile, has been shocked by the news of his mother's stroke. He's equally distraught by X's revelation that CSM and Teena Mulder have known each other for some unspecified amount of time. Rushing to his mother's bedside, he considers her, strokes her hair, covers her with an extra blanket. She's all the family he has left; who will he have--who will he be--if she dies and he's left alone, the lone surviving Mulder?

At this point Jeremiah Smith interposes himself, offering to explain a number of mysteries. There's even the promise of information about his sister. And yet Mulder singlemindedly reaches toward his primary goal: if Smith can heal, there's a stroke victim lying in a hospital bed that he wants Smith to work his magic on.

It takes Jeremiah Smith some effort to make Mulder understand that those wanting to kill him will be waiting at the hospital, so nothing would be accomplished by going there. Mulder then acquiesces, throwing his enthusiasm into his path of second choice, and goes with Smith to a remote encampment in the Alberta hills, where Smith hopes that Mulder will prove an eager audience for his detailed explanation of the alien plan for Earth's future. And yet Mulder is once again sidetracked by the personal; he sees his sister, and even though he knows intellectually that these clones are not the little girl he lost one night while his parents played bridge at the Galbrands', he still insists on taking one of the Samantha clones with him. Jeremiah Smith is exasperated. "You have a chance here to understand something so much greater, to comprehend it, to expose it," he admonishes his unreceptive audience, but Mulder is a lost cause, able to focus only on the mute little girl by his side.

By the end of the two-parter, Smith has disappeared and it's many seasons before 1013 returns to this character again, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about him and his potentially critical role in reversing the planet's course toward alien takeover. What exactly is he? (We know he can shapeshift like the ABH, and heal. He also hints to CSM that his powers are greater than whatever CSM may have already witnessed.) What are Smith's limitations or vulnerabilities? What specifically was his assignment in support of the coming invasion? What caused him to change his mind and want to fight the alien future, to turn traitor to his species? Would he likely try to approach others with his information once his overture to Mulder fails to produce results? So many fascinating possibilities for this enigmatic individual.

Mulder leaves Alberta not much wiser than he was when he went there, and returns to the hospital sans Jeremiah Smith and the cloned Samantha. His mother is still in a coma. The outlook is not good and he berates himself for failing to save her. Scully, of course, is there to quietly support him. With help from X, she's managed to crack the code to the files Jeremiah Smith was working on and has discovered the chilling population cataloging that has gone on for years.

As for Teena Mulder, all is not lost because we discover that the ABH is capable of healing much like Jeremiah Smith. Whether because Teena's death will make Mulder a more reckless/dangerous enemy or for some personal reason that he isn't willing to admit to, CSM gets the ABH to heal her. Mulder will have her back, but the questions raised by the occurrences of this two-parter are bound to echo inside him as he and Scully move ahead. What does the existence of the clone girls say about what happened to Samantha right after she was taken? Was she harmed or hurt so that these clones could be produced? What was done with her afterward? Why was Samantha the one chosen as the prototype? Perhaps more importantly, what exactly had CSM meant by saying that he'd "known your mother since before you were born"? Is Mulder ready for the possible answer to that?

Beyond the more personal issues, this two-parter highlights a tendency that could easily impair Mulder's ability to effectively fight the future. While he's the show's protagonist and we may want him to defeat the aliens singlehandedly (or at least be the catalyst for their defeat), his personality and past history reveal a man who, when push comes to shove, defaults into defending those close to him. Threats to Scully have been used effectively by CSM/the Consortium for just this reason; likewise, the tantalizing promise of information about Samantha (a card CSM plays--not for the first time--in the hospital hallway in Talitha Cumi.) While Mulder would certainly want to defend humanity from a nightmare alien future, the question is whether the opposing side could successfully divert him from his efforts by a threat to Scully, his mother or the lure of finding out something about Samantha. In this two-parter, Jeremiah Smith offers him knowledge about the aliens and their plans far beyond anything he's ever had access to, and yet he's so immobilized by seeing the likeness of his sister that he's unable to ask the kinds of hard questions he might under other circumstances pepper a suspect with in an interrogation room. This tendency to defend those close to him, while admirable as a trait in normal times, could prove a significant handicap in fighting the future. (It's also one of the reasons I believe that some sort of working alliance--even a tenuous one--between Mulder and Alex Krycek might be the only way to make real headway against the alien threat. Krycek may not be 'nice' or trustworthy under other circumstances, but he certainly wants to survive, and his past experience leaves him tightly closed against the kinds of personal vulnerabilities that might prove advantageous points of attack against Mulder.)

A note about Scully: Though she often rejects Mulder's hypotheses out of hand, in this instance she finds herself out on the proverbial limb herself. She goes to Skinner and the higher-ups positing a system of cataloging people by a tag in their smallpox vaccinations, as 'out there' seeming as anything Mulder might have come up with. And yet she simply (as always) needs proof. In this case, she's traced the trail of physical evidence that leads her to the conclusion she presents. She's solidly convinced that she's on the right track, even in the face of Skinner's private skepticism in the outer office.

Spy vs. spy vs. spy: So much happened in these eps in terms of the kind of behind-the-scenes maneuvering that's a hallmark of the XF world. X follows CSM to Quanochontaug and witnesses his argument with Teena Mulder (and saves Teena's life, for which no one ever bothers to thank him.) The elders catch on to the fact that information is leaking and catch him in a trap. X dies a theatrical death, spelling out the name of his successor... Which indicates that X hasn't been alone in his desire to expose the old men; obviously he must have already had enough contact with Marita Covarrubias to know she felt as he did, and to trust her enough to know it was her he'd send Mulder to if anything happened to him. Covarrubias herself will prove another enigma (in great part because 1013 never takes the time to develop the character and her motivations), possibly with Mulder and possibly against him as he digs for more scraps of information about the aliens and their plan.