With all our favorite shows taking their usual break in the summer months, this opens up an opportunity to watch some of our old favorites. That’s where the Multiversity Summer Binge comes in. Last year, I took a look at the entire first season of my favorite show ever, The X-Files and this summer, I’m back with a vengeance covering season two. The first season of this show was more of a prelude. It teased all the things that were to come and spent a lot of time doing the ground work. In the second season, the show really kicks into gear. Truth be told, of the 11 seasons, this is easily top three for me. I’m really excited to be writing about these episodes, particularly the middle of the season. This week I’m looking at “Colony” the first of a mid season two parter that has some huge revelations involving Mulder’s long missing sister Samantha.
1. The Premise
“Colony” opens with Mulder dying. OH NO GUYS! Okay, no he’s not going to actually be dead for good but he is found in horrible condition in the Arctic. He’s been taken to an emergency outpost and Scully arrives to tell them that he can’t be helped normally because the cold is what’s keeping him alive. We’re then taken to an event two weeks earlier. A ship was found and inside was a man, that man then fled and is considered missing. The doctor watching this unfold on tv runs and that man that was found suddenly appears and kills the doctor. It turns out that there have been multiple deaths of doctors who all look exactly the same but they aren’t related. Mulder is given all this information for some reason still unknown to him but he decides to investigate this with Scully. “Colony” is a mythology episode so it doesn’t have the same feeling that the last few episode have had. This is a big two parter with lots of big ideas and it’s pretty good when taken in together instead of separately.
2. Alien Bounty Hunter
As the episode goes on, we see that the person killing all these doctors with the same face is an unknown man that we will very soon come to know as the Alien Bounty Hunter. He is incredibly deadly and damn near unstoppable and he’s on a mission to kill all these doctors with the same face and so far, he’s succeeding. His blood is supposed to be toxic to humans and that proves to be true when another F.B.I. agent Mulder calls in is killed by it. The Alien Bounty Hunter can change the way he looks and he does this to fool Mulder and Scully a couple times in this episode alone. The debut of this character is a big deal because this show doesn’t exactly hide the fact that aliens are real. It’s always there but the goal for Mulder has always been trying to get proof and to show the world, something he’s never quite able to do. The Alien Bounty Hunter is someone who presents a physical force to stop them from getting closer to the truth but not on purpose. Mulder just gets in the way a lot. This character will show up a lot in later seasons and his introduction here is handled really well. He’s silent and menacing. He’s unlike anything we’ve seen yet and he’s so physically powerful that he really feels like he could kill Mulder or Scully at any moment.
3. Samantha???
The core of this episode however is the reveal that the woman hiding in the shadows the whole time with the doctors is supposedly Samantha Mulder, Mulder’s long lost sister who was apparently abducted by aliens. She first goes to their parents and Mulder’s father is the one who calls him home to show him what’s going on. Their mother is beside herself but Mulder has his concerns. The two of them get some time to talk and Samantha tells him that she was taken and then returned but without her memories. She says that she was adopted by a family and raised as theirs but she knew something wasn’t right. Samantha then tells Mulder that the clones are actually aliens and that’s why the Alien Bounty Hunter is there. She claims that he will come after her after he gets the cloned doctors and Mulder decides to protect her. There is a lot happening here with Samantha’s sudden reappearance but the most interesting is how Mulder reacts to it. He’s emotional, yes and he believes it’s her but I think under all that there’s a subtle questioning of this. There is a piece of him that doesn’t trust this and I think his father knows this. I mentioned this a bunch last summer but Samantha’s reappearance here is a major part of the show going forward and it will keep testing Mulder’s faith all the way down to season 9.
Continued below4. Mild Friction
Mulder is basically being given all this information that starts to prove all that he’s believed and it’s creating some friction between he and Scully. Scully spends much of this episode actually investigating things while Mulder just believes the stories he’s told, no matter how wild they may be. When they’re getting conned by the shape shifted Alien Bounty Hunter, Scully points out how crazy the story about them being Russian clones are but he’s only hearing the conspiracies that he wants to. She’s putting things together and getting actual evidence and he’s left for home. He doesn’t see this case the way that she does and is going off blind faith, turning back on his “trust no one” mantra. These big mythology episodes really push them and at this early stage of the series, Mulder hasn’t really had his faith broken just yet. He’s had his dedication tested but not his beliefs and that’s an important distinction.
5. Cliffhanger!!!
At the end of the episode, Scully gets really close to some dangerous truths and the Alien Bounty Hunter is on to her. Scully goes to hide the rest of the clones but the Alien Bounty Hunter follows her. At the hotel room she’s staying at, he comes to her as Mulder but as she sees him, the actual Mulder calls and that’s how it all ends. Scully is in huge trouble and I. Don’t. Like. It. Leave Scully alone.
