X-Files Episode Guide: Salvage

Written by Jeffrey Bell

Directed by Rod Hardy

The good news is, this episode is better than Surekill. Unfortunately, the improvement is only the barest of minimums.

So far, the majority of the monster of the weeks (and sadly, that's all we've been getting) have been only marginal improvements over the ones we were getting in Season 7. The main reason we can at least say there has been some slight improvement is mainly from a character based standpoint. If these episodes would barely pass muster with the presence of Mulder, at least Doggett has the ability to give the story a fresh perspective. Sometimes that's barely enough to make them watchable (witness Patience and Invocation), sometimes its given the series fresh life (most notably with Via Negativa). But even at their best, they haven't been able to do much to make us forget Mulder (although Scully sure seems to by this point) What we have is a series trying to entertain us and try to make us forget that David Duchovny has disappeared.

Now, however, the series seems determined to reinvent itself by telling us piss-poor monster of the week stories that would've been hard to stand way back at Season 1 And this week, our ringmaster happens to be Jeffrey Bell, a writer who has barely managed to make tenable comedies, and now seems to be handling dramas. This has a better premise than Surekill in that tries to give both the monster and the man behind it some kind of character. Ray Pearce is given the picture of being a victim of some horrible crime, and has returned from beyond the grave to wreak revenge. Howard Gordon, frankly, did this a lot better, and Bell's big invention is to try and make Harris a man who is slowly turning into metal. So he goes on a killing spree to try and find the people responsible. (Wait a minute, he was a Gulf War veteran. You don't suppose this is where the idea for the supersoldier... No, that would be giving the writers way too much credit.

The killers are a little more inventive than usual, but really only technically. They don't have much more imagination or purpose than what we've seen dozens of times before. The only real originality in this episode is the fact that, for once, though he's killing up the chain, no one person seems to be to blame for what happened to him. Its an accounting consideration, nothing more. But that just somehow seems to makes this whole thing worse. It means that not only what happens to Pearce was really meaningless, it also means that all the deaths were meaningless, too, and if that isn't a metaphor for how big a waste of time this episode is, I can't think of a better one.

An even bigger waste of time is the fact, that for the third time in four episodes, Scully and Doggett are given practically nothing to do. Sure, they manage to make some deduction as to what actually happened to Ray Pearce. And their investigation is a lot more purposeful than it was last week - Doggett's character as a cop and a Marine seems to be coming a bit more into focus. But it is seems a bit more useless, because against the metal man that is Pearce, they know that they are practically ineffective. How exactly would they stop a man made of metal. And the fact is, they don't. God knows by this point in the series were used to cases remaining unsolved, but this one just seems to be something that is purely handled by a lack of psychology, rather than police. (And on a side note, I really hated Doggett's line about men being made of metal only showing up in the movies. Darin Morgan or Vince Gilligan might be able to get away with that joke, but even then they'd be more subtle than this.)

Like I said, Salvage is marginally better than Surekill. At least, there is an effort to give the characters reasons for their actions, and there is a little bit more dimension to them than what we got last time out. I approve an attempt effort over laziness, but the effort has to be one that has a reason for is story. As it is, everything that we get in Salvage is just like its villain - mechanical. And unlike the metal that provides the purpose for the story, its anything but smart.

My score: 1.5 stars.