Case 04, File 03: Teliko

AKA: The Gang Kills A Melanin Vampire

Part of what keeps The X-Files unique and engaging is the fact they're always wiling and able to come up with new and interesting ideas for its monsters of the week. Sometimes these were cool monster designs, sometimes they were just a fresh take on an old idea or sometimes they were just presented in a cool way. However, this creativity can occasionally backfire, especially when dealing with other people's cultures

Our plot kicks off on a flight from West Africa, where an African man goes to the bathroom and is attacked by a thing. When the flight lands the man's body is found, looking like an albino. He didn't look like that before, I mentioned that right? Anyway, sometime later, Scully is called in by Skinner because young black men are disappearing all over Philadelphia and since one of them turned up albino, they think it's a pathogen and send her to investigate.

She's mid-autopsy when Mulder arrives (no doubt drawn by their telepathic bond) and decides that it can't be a pathogen and heads off to investigate. Specifically, he has Agent Pendrall look over some evidence found on our victim, who discovers a rare seed from West Africa. So Mulder decides the best course of action is to take said seed to Marita from Herrenvolk and ask her if she knows anything. Don't ask why Mulder did that, he's never wrong.

Back in Philly, we check in on Samuel Aboah, who we briefly saw leaving the bathroom on the plane before the guy from Africa turned up albino/dead and his immigration case worker Marcus Duff. Just in case him acting weird didn't tip us off, the next thing Aboah does is kidnap a guy from a bus stop, paralyzing him with the seed thing. The next day, Mulder and Scully are looking for the guy who went missing while Aboah kills his victim with a weird thing he pulls out of his throat (ick).

"This is just where I keep my blowpipe. What, where do people usually keep theirs?"

Mulder and Scully get some info about the African guy who died on the flight and decide to cross reference people looking residency with people from the flight with help from Aboah's case worker and come across Aboah, who immediately bolts. They find him in a drain pipe, which they admit is pretty weird and arrest him, holding him while they run some medical tests.

Mulder takes this opportunity to talk to a diplomat from Burkina Faso, who tells him about running into what he thought was a spirit when he was a child, who killed his cousin and drained his melanin. While he's doing that, Aboah decides he's gonna leave the hospital by hiding in the food cart and since his case worker has seemed like a stand up guy, decides he's going to kill him to drain his melanin. Gross. But the cops stumble across him and stop Aboah before he can kill his case worker.

Mulder hits upon his theory, that Aboah is a lost tribe people who drained other people's melanin to stay alive, and also figures out that some asbestos that they found on the first victim's clothes came from a building that was being torn down. If that feels like it came out of nowhere it's cause they mention the asbestos so fast that I usually miss it. Aboah paralyzes Mulder and tries to kill him, but Scully shoots him, like ya do, and the episode ends with her musing about how people try to avoid facts that disturb them.

Teliko is something of an awkward episode to actually watch. The racial stuff is weird, but in that intensely sincere way that a lot of mid 90s attempts to address racism often are. I do feel like it was trying to say something interesting about race and xenophobia, but that element got buried under multiple redrafts and all that we're left with is an episode with a weird concept and a plot that has trouble getting moving.

"Fuck that Tooms guy, always acting like he was gonna break out of the hospital. Follow through man!"

Which isn't to say that this episode is entirely without merits. The villain, such as it is, doesn't get much breathing room, but the handful of scenes we get with him are incredibly solid. Him pulling the thing out of his mouth is an incredibly unnerving scene, as is the shot of him peering out from inside the hospital cart. And while it suddenly hits out of basically nowhere, the finale inside the vents is actually really excellent.

Unfortunately to get to that finale they basically have to rush through its first and second acts. I'm having trouble identifying the exact issue but the closest I can come with is that it starts too far from its solution and has too much to get through to get to the end. Between visits with Marita, Pendrell, the ambassador, the case worker, Aboah himself there's just a lot of ground to cover to get to the ending.

The effect is two fold. The first is an over-reliance on exposition which undercuts a lot of the reveals and makes the episode feel incredibly dialogue heavy. I know they have to get all the information out quickly and don't have time to breadcrumb it, but it hurts to just have each person they run into throw information at them. The best conversation in the episode is the one with the Burkina Faso ambassador and that's basically a massive exposition dump that works because the actor sells the hell out of it.

The second however is undercutting Aboah as a character. The writers have talked about how they wanted this episode to be about racism and xenophobia, but honestly, for that to work they needed to make Aboah more of a character. Why is he coming to America? What happened to his tribe? What does he want, outside of melanin? The episode has no time for any of these questions, which keeps Aboah from being engaging as a human, which is a shame. Nor do they really have enough time for more than a handful of scenes with him acting as a monster, which is also a shame.

"Hey, are you guys busy? I can come back."

And then there's the racial stuff. Look, it's super weird that this episode features what can only be described as a melanin vampire, feeding exclusively on black men (as it proves in the finale, attacking Mulder, it could feed on white people too). The episode seems to realize this, and makes vain attempts to make it a thing, with Mulder thinking that Scully is being brought in to investigate because the government doesn't care enough about black people to do a real investigation, but it has no idea how to handle it, and basically ends up forgetting about it in favor of focusing on its story, which just turns the whole thing into a mildly uncomfortable undercurrent.

Teliko was always going to look a little weak, because Home is such a tough act to follow. I guess my issue with this episode is that, aside from being freaky as shit, it doesn't feel like a season four episode. This episode feels more like it's from late season one or early season two, when the series was starting to get consistently good, but they hadn't quite nailed down the rhythm and formula for how to make an episode flow. It certainly doesn't feel like the series at the height of its ability, which is why it ends up being something of a disappointment.

Case Notes:

• The cold open doesn't leave me with too much to grab onto, but it's solid enough I suppose.
• I had actually forgotten that this episode, of all episodes, changed the "The Truth Is Out There" title card.
• This episode opens pretty slow, with the CDC guy showing up to think the guys are dying to due to a de-pigmentation disease, so I don't have too many thoughts.
• "There's a Michael Jackson joke in here somewhere." Oh Mulder.
• Mulder's first instinct is that Scully's autopsy is designed to divert attention from the fact that the government doesn't care about young black men disappearing. Mulder is right of course.
• The guy they got to play Aboah is intensely creepy. Maybe not on the level of Tooms (which is what the episode is clearly shooting for) but he's doing great.
• Is this the first time Mulder and Pendrall have interacted on screen? I like it.
• Mulder's decides his best option is to go running to his new source. I actually don't recall if she's at all helpful in this episode.
• I've spent a decent amount of time at the Japan Society which is right near at the UN in New York, which is why I can say with certainty, the location they're shooting Mulder's meeting with Marita doesn't look anything like the actual UN.
• I actually like that Marita doesn't remember Mulder. She works for the UN, she probably meets hundreds of people a week, of course she doesn't remember Mulder.
• I want to criticize the scene with the bus driver leaving the victim where he was because he didn't respond, but then I once had a bus driver drive off because I was under a awning to avoid the rain and I didn't get to the door in time, so it checks out.
• Anyone else get Get Out vibes from the scene with the victim in Aboah's apartment, paralyzed and staring at the TV?
• Aboah pulling the plant thing out of his mouth is easily the freakiest thing in this episode, and the episode knows it.
• I dunno why Aboah books it when Mulder and Scully show up, he didn't freak out when the cops came to his door.
• Also reasonably freaky? Aboah hanging upside down in that pipe thing.
• The episode doesn't do as bad as some other media, but it does come down a little too hard on the generic negative portrayal of Africa.
• I love it when people tell Mulder he won't believe something. He's Mulder, he believes everything.
• The Bambara are an actual tribe of Burkina Faso, so good on you episode for doing some research.
• The episode never sorts out how Aboah is fitting into the small places he is, which honestly makes shots like the one of him peering out the hospital food cart even scarier.
• The bit with Mulder talking about how people reduce something unknown to an idea that's familiar to them is interesting, and I wish it got more play in the episode. This episode is lacking in a theme, since the brief attempt at a xenophobia theme doesn't go anywhere.
• I like how, the moment he gets drugged, Mulder starts yelling out for Scully. He knows she can rescue him.
• The bit with Scully wandering around the vents looking for Mulder is a wee bit more Alien than I think the episode realizes.
• Aboah crawling at top speed through the vents is genuinely scary, good shit episode. Also good? The shot of Scully with Aboah behind her.
• Hey this is an episode where they actually capture the perp and hold him to stand trial. Sure he's probably not gong to live long enough to stand trial, but that's a win by their standards.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Please check it out and consider joining up, I'm hoping to do a live stream of The X-Files' PS2 game in 2018, but I need some financial help getting there.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Marcus Duff, the case worker is played by Carl Lumbly, who was a main character on Alias (ironically ALSO named Marcus) as well as the voice of Martian Manhunter on the Justice League cartoon. I've never really gotten into either, but people tell me Justice League is good.

Audio Observations:

This is an odd thing to notice, but the score is really heavy on African drums. Admittedly our composer is Mark Snow, who is usually pretty big on so-called Tribal Drums, but this episode takes it up to 11.