The X-Files: “Alpha” / Millennium: “Saturn Dreaming Of Mercury”

“Alpha” (season 6, episode 16; originally aired 4/28/1999)
In which there is a very bad dog…
I’ve been having a good run this season of reviews; with the exception of a minor mythology episode, I’ve been lucky enough to cover a number of classic or near classic hours of The X-Files, while poor Todd has gotten stuck with most of the wet ends. It’s only fair, then, that I get at least one less-than-stellar entry, and “Alpha” fits the bill, a muddled, tepid bit of television that never really seems to know what story it’s trying to tell. Are we supposed to be invested in the animal loving shut-in with a crush on Mulder? Intrigued by the monster dog that’s been murdering strangers to demonstrate dominance? Questioning the motives of the politely sneering Dr. Detweiler? All of these threads come together by the end, but none of them are very well-developed, and none of them have the clarity the episode needed to be effective.
In many ways, “Alpha” is old school, with a structure that harkens back to the show’s early years. This is refreshing, at least at first; season six has gotten some terrific TV out of stretching its legs and poking at the boundaries of just what an X-Files episode can be, but it’s nice to see Mulder and Scully back in familiar territory, tracking the inexplicable in between standard stalk-and-kill scenes with doomed guest stars. Unfortunately, it turns out there’s a reason the series started to move away from this approach: by now, it’s been done so many times that it’s easy to predict each distinct beat, which turns what should be a slowly building series of tension-building setpieces into a checklist of death. Oh, here’s the cold open kill. Oh, here’s the first act kill. And so on. This is an old structure, and, predictable or not, it’s a sound one—there’s a reason shows keep returning to it. But this particular show has spent so much time thinking outside the box that going back inside can’t help but seem reductive, and disappointing.
All of this wouldn’t matter so much if the story was better, but the tale of the Wanshang Dole would’ve been a dud even if it had aired back in 1993. There’s this dog, see, and according to Detweiler, the expert (played by Andrew Robinson, with a disappointing lack of menace or flare) who claims he had the animal shipped into the country, it’s from a rare and long believed extinct breed. The dog kills a couple of crewmembers dumb enough to open his crate, and then disappears onto land, where he dispatches a security guard, and a U.S. Fish And Wildlife agent dumb enough to track him. Mulder and Scully get involved after the first kill, primarily because the crate where the first two victims are found was locked from the outside, and dogs don’t usually know how to operate locks. Or cover up evidence.
Already, this isn’t exactly compelling. Mulder makes some so-awful-they’re-funny dog puns, but threat-wise, the Wanshang Dole just looks like a big wolf; being told he’s super intelligent doesn’t provide him with a personality. Things get more interesting when the third victim actually sees a human figure transform into a dog, but “interesting” is only a relative term here; this is a werewolf story, and apart from the foreign origin and cool sounding name, there’s little to distinguish it. We learn two thirds of the way through the hour that Detweiler has been lying the whole time, and that instead of catching a Wanshang Dole and bringing it home, he was actually bitten by the creature during his expedition, and came down with a bad case of lycanthropy. Apart from raising the question as to just what was inside that shipping crate (Detweiler only becomes a dog at night; did he just ship himself home somehow?), the reveal doesnt’ do much to change the dynamics of the episode. We’re never encouraged to feel much pity for the doctor, and we never get to know him beyond his basic twerpy-villain status.
That could’ve been fine, though, since Detweiler is never supposed to be the heart of “Alpha.” That honor belongs to Karin Berquist (Melinda Culea), the animal loving shut-in who calls Mulder in on the case after meeting him on the Internet. It’s funny how much the episode makes of that last part; just the fact that Mulder had never met Karin in person before, but had shared information with her online, seems to make their interactions suspect, and color Scully’s view of both their relationship, and Karin herself. Because Karin is quiet and awkward and withholding, and for some reason, Scully decides that she’s keeping secrets in an attempt to win the affections of our favorite Fox. The fact that Scully’s basically right doesn’t change how badly this cynicism suits her. It’s less a matter of the vague sense that Scully’s defending her own territory when it comes to possibly rivals for Mulder’s affection (although that’s slightly there), and more how quickly she goes from “Huh?” to “This woman is lying to you.” Karin is, in fact, withholding information, but there’s never any clear reason as to why Scully would become suspicious. For an episode with a relatively straightforward premise, “Alphas” is often muddled, with a script that dictates its twists instead of developing them. First Karin shows up; then Scully decides she’s weird; then Detweiler’s a monster; then Karin decides to sacrifice herself to stop the monster. There are pieces of compelling drama in there, but none of them fit together the way they should.
Which is frustrating, because parts of this episode work quite well. Karin, for instance. Culea gives a low-key, convincingly uncomfortable performance as a woman so wounded she can barely stand to be around other human beings, and her conversations with Mulder, and even Scully, show glimpses of a much more interesting story, something that gave her character enough screen-time so that we could more fully understand her loss. Really, Detweiler and his canine proclivities come off more as a distraction than anything else, especially considering that he and Karin have knowledge of each other prior to the story. Karin giving her life to kill the doomed doctor is treated like the conclusion of some awful tragedy, but while the scene is well handled, there’s nothing to really support it in the rest of the episode. I’m a fan of Robinson’s (his work as Garak, the spy-turned-tailor on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is one of that show’s highlights), but isn’t giving anything to do, and while Culea makes the most of her scenes, it still feels like something is missing. Maybe the script could’ve used an extra few drafts.
Still, while it’s not really earned, I did like the final scene, with Mulder back in the X-Files office, feeling lousy about what happened. Scully tries to give him a pep talk, but while the actual dialogue isn’t strong, the discovery that Karin mailed Mulder a gift before she died, a copy of the I Want To Believe poster that has so long being his character’s hallmark, serves to end the hour on a bittersweet note. It’s too bad the rest is such a mess.
Grade: C