X-Files Episode Guide: Teliko

Written by Howard Gordon

Directed by Jim Charleston

One wants to give this episode more credit than it deserves, but the sad truth is that this is simply one of the more unimaginative and pedestrian episodes of the series. One wants to give Gordon for not falling back on his old staple of paranormal revenge, except that in doing so he blatantly steals the basic idea from one of the founding episodes of this series.

Because what this episode resembles is a rip-off of Eugene Tooms, both in basic principle (Samuel Aboah kills for melanin, Tooms for livers) and it basic foundation (Aboah turns pale when he needs his fix, Tooms turns jaundiced) and both had the ability to squeeze themselves into really tiny places. Now there's room for variation on this theme, if its done well, Jeffrey Vlaming demonstrated a certain imagination with Virgil Incanto in 2Shy, and we'll see another, much better variation of it later this season. But Gordon doesn't seem to have the fundamental ability to go into deeper meanings of what it means to drain the pigmentation of a black man.

That's the thing that Gordon doesn't have the strength to deal with. Given an opportunity to take a look at race, or among the principles of immigration, he instead opts to take the direction of so many weaker first and second season episodes of the series, and simply tell the story of the teliko as though it were nothing more than an African myth made real. Thus what could have been an interesting story devolves into a story like Shapes or Red Museum, detached and apart from so much of the modern world. And it's not enough that he does this, he tries to give this story something a conspiracy flair where it doesn't belong--- he changes the title phrase to 'Deceive, Inveigle, Obfuscate', and has Mulder and Scully keep repeating it for no real good reason, he has Mulder and Scully try to give it more urgency by passing over the question of why Aboah would come to America in the first place, he has Mulder meet with Covarrubias for reasons that don't seem to give the show any sting. It doesn't seem to have the urgency of one of X's visit or Deep Throat's pronouncements; it just seems that Mulder is trying to get a date with the pretty blond chick who works at the UN.

And what makes this such a shame is that there are some very good African American actors presents given roles that could potentially have great power that are essentially wasted. Carl Lumbly, one of the more gifted black actors, is given the wasted role of a social worker, and the script can't decide whether he'd be better served as an advocate for Aboah or a victim of his---- so it has him be both and neither. Zakes Mokae,  a truly legendary African actor has a great deal of majesty in his presence, but in this episode he's basically just given the role akin to a tribal elder and one can't help but feel the wasted opportunity. The music doesn't help either, with Mark Snow demonstrating, not for the first time, that his ability to produce interesting music from another culture is essentially nil.

Now don't get me wrong. There are a lot of dreadful episodes in X-File lore, and this one isn't even close to that horrible. It's not even a series worst for Gordon, who was in the middle of the pack as far his ability to write for this series went. But basically Teliko doesn't have anything new to say and isn't delivered very interestingly. It doesn't even have the ability to be as painful as some of the other episodes this season will be. Its a monster-of-the-week episode that doesn't even bother to create an original monster. its a refreshing change of pace to have Scully save Mulder's life instead of the other way around, but considering that whole episode seems to come down to whether she can read the message in his eyes doesn't say much for the writing. We'll see worse episodes for the series, but very few as  with as little ambition as this one.

My score: 2 stars.