1X10 FALLEN ANGEL

"We have never picked up any hardware. By that we mean any pieces, parts, whole articles,
or anything that would indicate an unknown material or object. "
Captain Edward Ruppelt - Project Blue Book 1953

"Code Indigo Delta Echo Niner. I have a confirmed Fallen Angel in Sector 87.
Mobilize Operation Falcon immediately."
Henderson

SYNOPSIS

TOWNSEND, WISCONSIN
A Fallen Angel, a downed UFO, is investigated by Mulder, who is captured by government officials, and by a UFO-Conspiracy buff, Max Fenig.

SCULLYVISION

Fallen Angel tells us some interesting things about Mulder and Deep Throat and introduces us to the wonderful and quirky Max Fenig. It seems to tell us that Max is a tortured soul but a really good guy, and it tell us that Mulder can be kind and caring. What it tells us about Deep Throat, however, is unclear. He keeps Mulder close because Mulder is the enemy to those who want him to stop his work, or Deep Throat wants the bureau chief to think he thinks of Mulder as an enemy.

In this episode we had to wait a while before Scully makes her appearance and when she does she immediately blows off Mulder's sarcasm. She doesn't find Mulder's activities amusing at all. She protests his actions knowing that he is jeopardizing the X-Files, his job and maybe even his life. Scully seems a little hesitant during this episode and even tends to look to Mulder for his lead more than she did, certainly, in Ice. Her medical abilities are called upon once again. Yet, dealing with people who are severely burned may have impacted her. She goes along with Mulder's theory because she fells that something has to be done.

When Scully is literally called to the table by the FBI suits to answer for Mulder, she is alone against the bureau, but she holds her ground. She is not intimidated and remains loyal to Mulder, even though they have no interest in what she has to tell them. A lesser agent, and a lesser person, would have folded.

The Mulder/Max component of this episode is fascinating. Mulder is kind and caring to Max even taking care of him following the seizure. And Scully just watches all of this in apparent amazement. Maybe she's amazed at how off the wall Max is and yet Mulder seems to be his soul mate.

She's believing of the government, until she sees Mulder's ransacked room while he was in captivity, and Fenig tells them how his fellow believers have been watching Mulder for years. Then, the old trusting Scully breaks through again by telling Mrs. Wright that she could actually get the truth out of the government and get her husband's body back.

Even though Mulder had terrible manners in the previous episode, Space, here he listens to her and even introduces her when introducing himself. Maybe they had a little talk. :-)

After visiting with the doctor who saw the bodies of Wright and the military men killed by the alien, Scully is still wondering if their deaths could have been from exposure to the core of the onboard nuclear missile, like the government said.

Mulder is be absolutely loved in this episode. He gets to see a UFO, he meets a bosom buddy in Max, comforts him during an epileptic seizure, is a good partner to Scully, but at the meeting with the big shots at the FBI at the end, well, he pours out his heart to unfeeling bureaucrats. You gotta feel for him and his quest. Along with the Pilot and Conduit, this is another episode where we really, truly see where Mulder is coming from, how much he's seen, written about, investigated, and how badly he needs answers.

OH COME ON!

There is no Townsend, Wisconsin.

Soldiers are jumping out of the back of an Army van and Mulder picks that moment to crawl out from underneath the truck, and no one notices him?

How would Scully know that Wolf Industries supplies the CIA with all it's surveillance equipment?

When the alien took over and abducted Max, why did it just throw Mulder across the warehouse instead of blast him with radiation which had been his way of doing things all through the episode?

Mulder heals fast. He got a cut on his cheek one night and the next day, it's gone.

THINGS LEARNED
or All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From the X Files

There are 7,087 man made objects orbiting the Earth.

An FBI agent's expense records are a matter of public record.

Wolf Industries supplies the CIA with all it's surveillance equipment.

Don't put out a "Search and Destroy" signal to your men when you're dealing with an alien that emits extremely high radiation.

CARTERVISION

The aliens are abducting folks and implanting metal in their bodies. Abductees have two warts on their back. There is Missing Time whenever the aliens are around, and electronics go wacky. There's that mysterious smoker that seems to have access to the Pentagon storage room. He's a superior to Blevins, who has at least one job description of assigning agents to departments. There's a 'Senior Agent' that sits alongside Blevins, have no clue as to what his purpose is. There's suspicion of Roswell, Ellen's Air Force base. There are regular folks who are believers.

Samantha's abduction may not be a one time event. Young girls and woman are taken all the time. Family members of abductees can channel Voyager information, so the aliens must have intercepted it. Aliens are choosy. Out of all the people who must have been camping at Lake Okobogee, and Kevin right next to Ruby, they only took Ruby, the female teenager.

FALLEN ANGEL

Downed UFOs are so prevalent that's there's a code name for it's cleanup, Operation Falcon. Usually all traces that anything has happened is wiped clean within 48 hours. This alien emits 200,000 megahertz of radiation and zaps whoever is near. It's also invisible to the human eye. Like the bartender in Conduit, Max Fenig also has a mark behind his ear signaling a close encounter, although the bartender's ear was burned, and Max had a sort of symbol that looks like this: < branded on him, the signal of a VERY close encounter, actual abduction. Max also started experiencing seizures after his first abduction. This alien also seems to be one that can get inside a host, as the military were going to retrieve Max and got fried instead. It also has super-human strength as it threw Mulder across the room. X Rays revealed Max had an implant in his cerebellum. And Deep Throat has the power to countermand the chief's decision to kick Mulder out of the FBI.

SFX

Cool red laser fencing around the perimeter of the Fallen Angel. Really neat effects with the alien rushing through the woods. The burns on the military men were properly gross. The hovering Max in the warehouse was right on.

RECURRING CHARACTERS

Deep Throat!! Max Fenig!!

WRITERS
Howard Gordon/Alex Gansa

A cross between Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Predator. Cool. The plotting is brought to good effect here. Special kudos for creating the wonderfully paranoid character of Max Fenig. You gotta hand it to Gordon and Gansa, they watch their movies, and take great lines from the great ones, "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" is straight out of the Godfather.

DIRECTOR
Larry Shaw

Another new director to the series, who did a very nice job. He might have gotten the idea of filming the unseen entity of the alien in the woods by watching Predator, but the special effects and tracking of it were wonderful in the episode. Side note, the absolutely silly red tomato man in the DVD version of special effects can be turned into the invisible alien? Pretty cool. Using slow motion during the alien's attack on Deputy Wright was good, along with the lighting. Mulder climbing up the hill to see the downed UFO at night was reminiscent of Roy climbing up the side of Devil's Tower to see the landing pad for the mother ship in Close Encounters. Nice angles and wide lens to show us what the alien sees with the red laser fence and trees, trucks going by on the highway, and in Max's trailer during his abduction to the warehouse. The blood pouring out of his ear was believable. High white lighting is used to good effect all through this episode, when the alien attacked Deputy Wright, during the flashbacks to Mulder's talk with Deep Throat, with the cleanup in the forest at night, when Scully arrives to bail Mulder out, Max's abduction. When Deep Throat walked away from McGrath at the end of this thoughtful episode, we're treated to the view of a reflecting pond. Very nice work on this episode.

RUNNING TALLIES
Flashlights - Deputy White
Guns - Mulder and Scully pull them out to check on who's in bathroom, Max
Also in the warehouse at the end
Mulder Breaks a Law - breaks into Operation Falcon Headquarters
Mulder wears glasses

Side note: In later episodes, whenever they show the office or Mulder's apartment, play "Where's the NICAP Hat", you just might find it..

ATHENAEUM

Mulder went back to Athenaeum in the basement of the abandoned warehouse, this time wanting to see if they had any for information on Project Blue Book. This time, he hadn't been invited.

Instead of finding a Richard Nixon lookalike, dusty old library shelves, the lamp and chair, in a huge dark room, all he saw after he went down the stairs was a huge dark room, no books, no shelves, no neo-Nixon. Nothing.

Puzzled, Mulder went home to his apartment to find that a folder had been slipped beneath his door. It was marked 'Project Blue Book.' He sat on his sofa and read it.

Project Blue Book was an effort by the USAF to investigate Unidentified Flying Objects. The Project began in 1947 and ended on December 17, 1969. It was headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. They investigated 12,618 UFO sightings, with only 701 remaining unidentified. Nearly half of those unsolved cases occurred in one year, 1952. None of the sightings were identified as extraterrestrial vehicles.

Project Blue Book stated that the sightings of UFOs were the result of: A mild form of mass hysteria, individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity, psychopathological persons, or misidentification of various conventional objects.

Some sources believed that the Project failed due to lack of time, money, and expertise. Other sources believe that the project was aimed at keeping the public's eye on terrestrial enemies like the Soviet Union in an effort to divert attention away from the truth.

Following the termination of Project Blue Book, a civilian consultant formerly hired by the Project, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, continued the investigation by forming, with other researchers, his own agency, the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in 1973.

Mulder closed the file. An old parchment fell out of the file as he tossed it on the couch. The note was simple and to the point: "Do not ever attempt to visit Athenaeum or contact the Curator again. It is only open to invited guests only."

QUOTES

DEEP THROAT I'd say you have...24 hours before the entire area is sanitized. After that it will be like nothing has happened.

MULDER I think you knocked out a filling.

MAX Are you MUFON or CUFOS?

MAX Um, say no more. You're a cautious man. Trust no one. Very wise. After what happened to JFK I understand completely.

SCULLY It was a downed Libyan jet with a nuclear warhead.
MULDER You really believe that story?
SCULLY That story happens to be highly classified.
MULDER A highly classified lie.

SCULLY My assignment is to bring you back, not to help you dig yourself in deeper.
MULDER "The Last Detail" starring Dana Scully

MULDER I didn't order room service.
SCULLY This isn't funny, Mulder. What's going on?
MULDER Looks like housekeeping hasn't been here yet.

MAX Whoa. Don't shoot. Don't shoot.

MAX We at NICAP have been following your career really closely. Ever since you became involved with the X-files.

MAX M.F. Luder is an anagram for F. Mulder. You really didn't think that would fool us did you?

MAX I've lived with epilepsy all my life. I'm not in any danger. It started in South Dakota when I was ten. The doctor said I must have incurred a head injury. I don't remember hitting my head.

SCULLY Are you saying Max Fenig is an abductee? Mulder, the man is taking powerful anti-psychotic drugs. I saw them in his RV.

MULDER You don't seem to understand Scully. Max doesn't believe he was abducted by aliens, I believe he was.

CHIEF KORETZ Well, sir. The meteor, seems to be hovering over a small town in Eastern Wisconsin.

MAX They're coming for me. Now I know....They're coming for me. That's why they're here.

MULDER Then what can I say? How can I disprove lies that are stamped with an official seal?

MULDER You can deny all the things I've seen. All the things I've discovered, but not for much longer. Because too many others know what's happening out there. And no one. No government agency has jurisdiction over the truth.

DEEP THROAT What he knows... (laughs) ... what he thinks he knows... (sighs) Always keep your friends close, Mr. McGrath, but keep your enemies closer.