REVIEWED BY: Jennifer J. Chen ON: April 29, 1999
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: March 29, 1998
For an episode that had no Scully and very little of Mulder, I enjoyed Travelers. The X-File was interesting--in The X-Files, there are rarely open and shut cases. This is true of life as well--there are many more victims than there are persecutors, and the roles of those two definitives are often interchanged. Often, if a person is one, s/he is the other as well. I contend that there is almost never a true persecutor. Persecutors are often victims themselves. And though if one considers long enough, this is inevitably true, this episode brought that knowledge to the forefront for me.
The X-Files has always been very good with being honest in this way. Most of the human monsters that we have seen on the show are not "simply evil"--they have been affected by society, by their respective environments. Perhaps they were predisposed to turn into the monsters they became, but they were ultimately victims themselves. Donnie Pfaster, Edward Skur, Nathaniel Teager, Gerry Schnauz, Eddie Van Blunht, and even Robert Modell.
Does the fact that they were victims excuse their crimes? Of course not--it cannot be so. If that were to happen, human beings could then give in to any impulse that strikes us at any time, feeling that we are but avenging the wrongs done to us. Society cannot function with such a premise. Everyone has been victimized at some time in their lives; some on a greater scale than others.
Edward Skur was a killer. No matter what the horrors were that were visited upon him, no matter how he got to be in his condition, the fact was that he was a killer, and I was not sorry when he died and was no longer a threat to others. He was victim--yes, absolutely. But once he became a murderer, his new status overrode his status as a victim. His victims became the ones to empathize with. At one moment in time, a person can only be one or another. At a distance of time and the impersonal, a person can imbue facets of the victim and of the tormentor at the same time. But choose a single moment, and a person can only be one or the other. Think of any of the confrontation scenes between any of the above named characters and one of their victims--at those moments, those perpetrators cannot be victims. To consider them as such would be to lose sight of the horrors of their actions, as well as to lose sight of the victims that can be saved. That is perhaps the most important element to consider, that the true victim is necessarily the one who can still be saved.
This does not mean that we lose compassion for the victim within the killer. Skur was made into a monster against his will--his killing impluses were not honed through years of psychological, societal conditioning, as with the cases of the others mentioned above. He had been physically violated when they grafted that thing inside him, the thing that made killing a horrifying but undeniable need. We can weep for the human being that was Edward Skur, for the life that was taken from him, for the emotional and mental horrors that must have plagued his mind when he had to accept what he had become. But the tragedy was not his alone--when he became a killer, his victims became the ones to protect.
Character-wise, it was a great exploration of Bill Mulder as a man. We have seen him through Mulder's eyes, heard him referred to by many others, but we never knew him as we know Mulder, on a first-hand basis. I liked Bill Mulder, no matter what he became at the end of his life. Who is to say that we would not have acted exactly as he had done, as a pawn in a dangerous and powerful game? So he wasn't the man his son is--but how many Mulders are out there? Not many. Yet we saw where Mulder's "good guy" streak came from--we saw the beginnings of it in his father. Bill Mulder was not as strong as his son would come to be, but he was stronger than most. No one else in the circles that he traveled in would have had the compassion and nerve to free Skur. Fox Mulder may have ten times his father's strength, determination, and sheer force of will, but the seeds were planted there by Bill Mulder. Arthur Dales says, "I even thought that maybe...maybe some poor innocent bastard--somebody with a conscience--might have let him go." Mulder asks why anyone would do that, and Dales replies, "In the hope that by letting him live, the truth of the crimes that were committed against him and the others might someday...be exposed." This last line can be most satisfactorily taken as Bill Mulder's hope for his son--to find the courage and strength that he lacked. His hope was that his son would be able to be the man that he wanted to be, but wasn't. So it is ironic that they should have been as estranged as they were, because Fox Mulder greatly exceeded his father's hopes and expectations. Yet the result of this was necessarily Mulder's disappointment in his father. As a strong and determined person, he cannot fathom why his father was so weak, why he allowed himself to be manipulated by sinister forces.
I believe that Dales' story helped Mulder to see his father with clearer eyes--not as one who had the right to expect more, but as one who saw through a stranger's eyes, Dales' eyes. And he saw that to a stranger, his father had compassion and integrity. Dales may not have seen it--I cannot speculate on whether he suspected that Bill Mulder was the one who had let Skur go. But he seemed to admire whoever did it, and I think that Mulder is a keen and talented enough investigator that he figured it out. He's profiled some of the most difficult cases I've ever seen (bordering on the amazing)...I doubt this was that difficult. So if he suspected that his father was the one who took pity on Skur, and heard the same compassion coming from Arthur Dales, it had to have been a revelation to him that his current ungenerous feelings toward his father may be slightly skewed because of the emotional connection of being Bill Mulder's son.
I cannot avoid discussion of the wedding ring. How can I, when Duchovny did everything he possibly could to draw attention to it? He even invented a nervous gesture of brushing his hair off his forehead in order to sweep that hand across the screen. It would have been less irritatingly obvious if he had been sweeping his hair to the left using his left hand, but he was using his left hand to sweep to the right. Not unheard of, but still suspicious. Damn Duchovny and his desires to constantly keep the viewer flabbergasted and in turmoil. His little whim--"I just wanted Mulder to be married, but would never, ever, talk about it" could very well, if taken seriously, destroy the very basis of interest in the show for many people. Perhaps I am putting too much emphasis on what was essentially, a practical joke. And I could possibly just brush it off as if it was never there...but I can't. Mulder wore the ring. When it was such a glaring part of the episode (almost detracting from the X-File), I cannot separate Mulder and Duchovny--it is Mulder sitting there talking to Dales. Duchovny doesn't exist.
So what are my justifications for that ring? Well first of all, I cannot accept that he was once married. That is simply impossible. Why? Not because of the idea that he was once married. If that were true, the knowledge wouldn't exactly thrill me, but it was pre-Scully, and we've seen Mulder do stupid things with women. My view on the fact of him being previously married is, who cares? But it is not the fact that he was once bound in that institution that concerns me--it is the fact that if it were true and he has not told Scully that matters. If that were true, the driving force behind the show would disintegrate. I am not a proponent of believing that anything but the bare essentials of human living happens between the two agents outside of our viewing. Anything important that happens between Mulder and Scully happens within our sight and hearing. So no, I do not believe that they are lovers, or have pursued any kind of romantic association other than what we have seen with our eyes. I therefore will not dupe myself into believing that Mulder has told Scully about a former marriage outside of our presence. They would have referred to it in some way--especially in Avatar, when Skinner was going through his divorce. So it can only be concluded that Mulder has never said anything to Scully about having once been married. And if he were to confess now, after being partners for six years--well, it would be like he had been a stranger this whole time. She is supposed to know him inside out, yet she doesn't know about this vital part of his past? No way.
But who knows what Mulder could have been like before The Pilot, before he and Scully met, before our prying eyes watched their relationship unfold? Maybe he went through a pathetic period--he wanted to know what it felt like to wear a wedding ring. Or maybe he wasn't ready for commitment and it deterred overeager women from expecting anything from him. Or maybe he even did it to attract women, like from some episode of Seinfeld. Any of those things don't speak too well of him, but at least it would save the show. The basis of the show lies completely on Mulder and Scully's relationship--their utter dependence and connection with each other. To have kept something as important as a former marriage from Scully, it would suggest that she does not know him at all, or that he was not completely open with her, and it would destroy the fabric of what holds the show together. It would suggest that Mulder, in hiding these things, or not divulging such a significant event, did not entirely trust Scully. And that would be the end of my interest in The X-Files right there.
So then you say, well if he could have done anything before The Pilot, why couldn't he have been married? We don't know. You're right--we don't know. And if Duchovny's word can be taken as intent, we'll never know. But in my universe, unless they explicitly state it on the show, Mulder can't have been married, because it affects the present events of the show too greatly. If he confessed to any of the alternative possibilities suggested above, he and Scully's relationship would remain virtually unchanged. She would shake her head at yet another of his quirks, maybe even be exasperated or embarrassed for him (like his penchant for porn), but it would hardly be a life-changing revelation. If, on the other hand, he were to divulge that he had once been married, after six years of baring their souls to each other, risking their lives for each other, sharing in one of the most intimate relationships ever conceived, then it would turn all that into a lie. Everything I watch the show for, everything that makes their bond so special, would disappear into dust. As a viewer, buying into and utterly believing in Mulder and Scully's bond, I would feel deceived and betrayed, as if I had been investing all my love and interest into something that turned out I didn't even know. In short, I would feel like Scully.
This doesn't even have anything to do with being a Shipper. Let's say they have absolutely no UST and no romantic interest in each other at all. That same bond would still be there. But Mulder keeping back such a huge detail about his life would utterly destroy that bond.
So the Wedding Ring must go by way of Melissa Riedel--brushed aside, considered an anomaly. In this way, Travelers must be considered a stand-alone episode outside of the X-Files universe. Take Arthur Dales, take his account of Edward Skur and Bill Mulder, take Mulder conferring with Dales, but if the show is to survive, Mulder cannot have been married, as Melissa Riedel cannot be his soulmate. It ultimately is just a damn television show, and the whims of the actors and writers that go completely against what holds the show together can be brushed away like the pesky gnats they are.
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1999 by Jennifer J. Chen