Case 04, File 01: Herrenvolk

AKA: It Is A Physical Struggle To Not Make A Wicker Man Reference

Season 4 of The X-Files is a special season for me, probably my favorite overall, and part of that was the sheer freedom they were getting from Fox. It was this year that The Simpsons made the crack about the only three shows Fox had that were consistently making money, one of which was The X-Files and the writers seemed to use that freedom to take the show in a bleaker, more brutal direction, that gave the series more bite and made some of the most intense and memorable moments of the series.

After a cold open involving a telephone worker getting stung by a bee in front of 5 identical children who stand by while he dies, our episode kicks off right where we left off; Jeremiah Smith is about to share some info with Mulder and Scully when the Alien Bounty Hunter shows up. After a quick chase, Mulder stabs the Bounty Hunter in the neck with his stiletto. Mulder wants Jeremiah to go heal his mother, but Jeremiah says they need to see something else, and he and Jeremiah bolt off to go check it out, leaving Scully behind.

Of course things can never go well for Scully, it turns out the Alien Bounty Hunter isn't dead and he captures Scully. After checking in with the Syndicate, who knows someone (read: X) was following the Cigarette Smoking Man and decide to figure out who it was, we find Mulder and Jeremiah are in Alberta. They call Scully, but she's being held hostage by the Alien Bounty Hunter and he follows them off to Canada.

Mulder and Jeremiah arrive at a farm in the middle of Alberta, finding the dead telephone repairman, a bunch of weird flowers oh and Mulder's sister. Lots of Mulder's sisters, cause it turns out they (and the blonde kids from earlier) are clones without personalities or language. Back in DC, Scully gets some info from the various Jeremiah's computers that she investigates and, after a visit from X (who gives her some false information from the Syndicate) she figures out they're records of Smallpox vaccination, and that the vaccines are being used to track and catalog everyone who got them.

"Well this went from 0 to Children of the Corn in a hurry."

Back in Alberta, Mulder and Jeremiah start to leave the farm, with one of the Samantha clones in tow, but the Bounty Hunter shows up and gives chase. They decide to hide in an apiary, which includes those bees that killed the telephone repairman. Also Mulder pours gas on himself to avoid the bees. That happens. When the Bounty Hunter follows them in, they drop a part of the hive on him and bolt.

Mulder calls Scully and requests help getting Jeremiah to his mom's hospital room safely, but the Bounty Hunter catches up them, knocks Mulder out and kills Jeremiah and the Samantha clone. Mulder makes it to Teena's hospital room, exhausted and despondent that he can't save her. As if that wasn't enough, X gets a message to hit up Mulder's apartment and is shot in his hallway. Sic transit gloria X. He manages to write SRSG on the floor in his blood and Mulder heads to the Special Representative to the Secretary General of the UN, where he meets Marita Corvarrubias, who tells him the farm was cleared out but makes it clear she's an ally. And with that, the episode ends with the Cigarette Smoking Man ordering the Alien Bounty Hunter to heal Teena.

Herrenvolk is a bit of an odd season premier in that it has its moments of real awesomeness and intensity, but they only make sense thematically or from a story point of view as an extension of Talitha Cumi. Taken as a separate entity, Herrenvolk is a bit of a wonkily paced episode with some good moments that spends too much time spinning its wheels. Taken as a third act to the first two acts set up in the previous episode, its an intense climax...that still spends too much time spinning its wheels.

"Mulder, the Bounty Hunter is still alive. You should have let me kill him, I'm much better at killing things than you are."

Take for example the death of X, which is a fantastic scene, but in the context of Herrenvolk alone, it's not built up to at all. X briefly stops by to tell Scully some info and then gets killed a few scenes later, there's no buildup. But, when you add in the events of the previous episode, it gets to be a little more meaningful, since we have X spying on the Cigarette Smoking Man and attacking Mulder, and suddenly there's buildup to X's final scene, which makes it more meaningful.

That goes double for our character of Jeremiah Smith, who in the previous episode exhibited a lot of interesting character traits but in this one is only there to drop some exposition about the Syndicate's plans and get killed by the Alien Bounty Hunter, so our attachment to him is based entirely around how he acted in the previous episode, his calm collected demeanor, how he seemed to care for humanity. None of that makes it into the episode, but so long as you keep it in mind, you'll feel bad when he gets killed by the Bounty Hunter.

And then there's our new addition, Miss Marita Corvarrubias, whose name never looks like it's spelled correctly. I feel like she's a character who never got her full due, compared to Deep Throat or X. You don't see her showing up in posthumous flashbacks with The Lone Gunmen. But introducing her literally the next scene after X's death may not have been the best first impression, so it's not surprising that she didn't get a fair shake. I'll be talking more about her as she shows up in the future, but for now I'll just say I intend to try and rehabilitate her as a character.

Outside of those comments, the episode is overall pretty solid. I have little quibbles, in that the Alien Bounty Hunter seems to be akin to a deus ex machna, showing up when he's needed, without any idea how he got someplace or how he knew how to find Mulder. That's a minor thing though (he is an alien) and the episode is overall very exciting, doing a lot of work with very little. In particular the chase into the bee hive is very well realized, especially for a concept as inherently silly as "Knock a beehive over on someone."

"I gotta ask, why are we taking the Samantha clone with us?"
"I have one consistent motivator and I'm not giving it up now."

And then there's the larger Myth Arc. Season 4 is still a time when the Myth Arc was moving forward, before the intense wheel spinning set in, and we do get some of the bigger elements of the Myth Arc here, such as the Bees and the idea of Colonization involving a new species. On the other hand, this is also the first time the series dangles Mulder's sister in front of him only to yank her away, a pattern I find incredibly exhausting now that I know it's leading nowhere, so maybe that deducts points?

I'm not overly down on this episode, but as I said, Season 4 is probably my favorite season and this episode seems like kind of an awkward way to kick it off. The best dual episodes manage to make both episodes work on their own (a point I'm sure I'll bring up in a few episodes) but Herrenvolk is leaning on Talitha Cumi a lot to make itself work, and that feels a little awkward, given the usually episodic nature of the series. Still, any complaints I'm have with this episode are about to get buried under the avalanche of fantastic episodes this season, so why am I still spending time on this one?

Case Notes:

• I like that the episode eschews its normal location subtitle by telling us that the cold open is taking place in Alberta via license plate, but Alberta is over 250,000 square miles, so that information is not helpful.
• Watching the dude working on the power lines die via bee string, and subsequent fall, is creepy and the identical kids non-reaction even more so, but am I the only person who thinks it'd be creepier if his body just stayed up there? Eh.
• Mulder tells Scully to stay out of the Bounty Hunter's way and that she can't use her gun, and she immediately gets in his way and draws her gun. Oh Scully.
• This might just be my TV/the room I watched this in, but the chase scene in the factory is really dark and hard to follow.
• The Alien Bounty Hunter lands on Scully's car and she honks her horn at him. Yes, I know she did it to warn Mulder, but it's still very funny.
• Mulder and Jeremiah just take off on the boat and leave Scully there to get attacked by the Bounty Hunter. Harsh.
• I'm like 90 percent sure that the plan the Syndicate has for catching X feeding Mulder information is the same one Tyrion had in A Clash of Kings.
• Mulder just straight up steals a car in this episode. In a foreign country. I want to make that clear.
• The stuff with Scully trying to solve the files Skinner and Pendrell pulled from the Jeremiah's computers had dropped completely from my brain.
• The clones and their weird little community is extremely weird, but it raises a lot of questions that I dunno if the episode ever answers. What's their strategy for if someone wanders into it?
• As the Smallpox thing shows up here, I start to remember it and why I forgot it: It's one of those circular threads that doesn't really go anywhere.
• I don't want to tell you your business X-Files, but it's a 40 hour drive from where the Bounty Hunter left Scully to Alberta, so I dunno how he got there. I doubt he's getting on a plane.
• Mulder covering himself in gasoline to avoid the bees is straight baller.
• The bit about how the Smallpox vaccine is being used to tag people is cool, but it reads a little too close to anti-vaxxer stuff for my comfort. Maybe The X-Files  helped anti-vaxxers take off? Subject for another time.
• The Bounty Hunter just immediately finding Mulder and Jeremiah is beginning to run into Deus Ex Machina territory. How come he can just immediately find where they are, is he tracking Scully's phone?
• I have no idea how exhausted, injured, in-shock Mulder got from Alberta to Rhode Island, but the scene with him at his mother's hospital bed is solid, so I'll overlook it.
• X's death scene is pretty fast, but it's a good scene and him putting the name of his next informant on the floor in his blood is fantastic. I will miss him.
• Special Representative to the Secretary General of the UN is such a specific thing though.
• I like the scene introducing Marita. She kind of got lost in the shuffle of informants, but she's a good character.
• I've always read the scene with Cigarette Smoking Man telling the Bounty Hunter to save Teena as him justifying wanting to keep her alive, rather than the reason he gives.
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Future Celebrity Watch:

Marita is played by Laurie Holden, who would go on to have a recurring role on The Walking Dead and a minor role in The Shield. She was also in The Mist, which is a badass movie you should absolutely see.