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"Patience"


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Episode 8ABX04

Title: Patience

First screened in Australia: 21 February, 2001
First screened in the USA: 19 November, 2000

Credits: Director: Chris Carter
Writer: Chris Carter Starring: Guest Stars: Plot:
While tackling his first X-File case about a series of gruesome murders surrounding a bat like creature, Doggett quickly learns that his investigative techniques are somewhat dissimilar to Scully's.
Sofcom
My Rating: 7/10
Holy cow ... it's Batman.

Just don't know what to make of Chris Carter. This is his annual early-season "directed by and written by CC" episode. On casual viewing it's an enjoyable episode although I don't think it's particulalry well-written and there are plot holes large enough to flying an alien mothership through.

It seems to me he was trying too hard to play out the Scully is Mulder theme and at times some of the reactions (think Det Abbott) to her were downright unbelievable. There's always too much left unsaid, when a little explanation would make things a whole lot clearer. Communicate people!! The main gripe is that Doggett obviously believes there is a man-bat (he has that newspaper clipping ... and where did it come from?) but he and Scully are still butting heads. Why can't he support her against the local law enforcement?

The whole premise of the episode is built on swampy ground though. Why did the man-bat wait for over 40 years? He must have been pretty stupid not to have found Stefaniuk and his wife on the island for 4 decades then all of a sudden there's a killing spree of everyone connected to the body?

Despite that, I can't deny that it's a very "watchable" episode.

Where Have I Seen That Face Before?
Bradford English (Det Abbott) has been around since the early 1970's, typecast as a cop or prison guard in movies such as "The Anderson Tapes", "The Onion Field", "Basic Instinct", "Higher Learning" and "Thick As Thieves". He's also appeared in episodes of many TV shows including "Seinfeld" and "Kojak".

Jay Caputo is a stuntman and has worked in movies such as "The Brady Bunch", "Batman and Robin" and "Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me". His acting roles include "Congo", "Ed", "Spawn" and Instinct".

Gary Bullock (Tall George) has been seen in "Species", "Blue Sky", "Terminal Velocity", "Roswell", "Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me", "Robocop 2" and "Robocop 3". On TV he's appeared in episodes of "Ally McBeal", Buffy" and "Roseanne". He is also a writer and has a website, gary-mil.com.

Annie O'Donnell (Elderly Woman) had a recurring role in "Night Court" and the soap "Days Of Our Lives" and has also been seen in episodes of "Ellen", "ER" and "Beverly Hills 90210". Her movie roles include "Saturday The 14th", "Heartbreak Ridge" with Clint Eastwood, "Hot Shots" and "Blast From The Past".

Gene Dynarski (Ernie) has a creer strecthing back to the mid 1960's with many TV guest appearances on shows like "Star Trek", "Batman", "The Monkees", "Bonanza", "The FBI" plus a starring role on "General Hospital". His movie roles include "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind", "Duel" and rhe disaster flicks "Airport 1975" and "Earthquake". More recently he guest-starred on 2 episodes of "Seinfeld" - "The Blood" and "The English Patient".

Dan Leegant (Myron) has appeared in "Escape From Alcatraz", "Peggy Sue Got Married". His last role before this X-Files appearance was in 1990 in "Ernest Goes To Jail".

For information on Brent Sexton (Gravedigger) see Medusa.

Trivia and Research:
The type of animal used in shooting was an Egyptian Fruit Bat (Rousettus aepytiacus).

On the evolutionary ladder, bats are speculated to be closely related to prosimians (such as gliding lemurs) which are also primates, but not apes.

Bats have five toes on their hind feet, as well as their front feet. However, their four front "toes" are part of their wings and their "thumb" is on top, outside of the wing.

The anticoagulants that Scully finds on the body are only found in the saliva of vampire bats.

Unlike the bodies of other animals, a bat's body is best adapted for hanging upside down. Its hind limbs have rotated 180 degrees so that its knees face backwards. This rotation aids in the bat's ability to navigate in flight and to hang by its feet. Bats actually have specialized tendons that hold their toes in place so that they are able to cling to their roosts without expending any energy. In fact, bats must flex their muscles in order to let go of the roosting surface. These adaptations are quite helpful for a flying mammal since bats only need to let go of the roost in order to drop into flight. Hanging upside down also provides bats with roosting space away from predators in safe places on the ceilings of caves, in trees, and buildings that few other animals can use because they have not evolved to hang upside down by their feet.

All bats can see, but some use a special sonar system called echolocation. These bats make high frequency calls either out of their mouths or noses and then listen for echos to bounce from the objects in front of them. They are able to form pictures in their brains by listening to reflected sounds just like we form pictures in our brains by interpreting reflected light with our eyes. In this way, bats are able to comfortably move around at night, avoiding predators, maneuvering around obstacles, locating their food, and capturing insects in total darkness. With the aid of a bat detector, a bat's ultrasonic echolocation calls become audible to the human ear.

For more information on bats, go to Bat Conservation International.

Media Article:
TRIAL BY 'FILE'
Scully and new partner face first 'monster' test

Now that the two-part season premiere of Fox's "The X-Files" has come and gone, the real test begins.

Last Sunday's episode concluded yet another chapter in the paranormal series' so-called "mythology". This intricate, sometimes confusing history of the show includes government cover-ups of alien existence, alien plans for world domination, and the struggle of intrepid FBI agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) to reveal the truth.

Mulder has been abducted by those marauding aliens and subjected to some really nasty experiments. This storyline is a convenient way of explaining away Duchovny's absence from the series, since he's only contracted to be in half of this season's episodes.

"The X-Files" passed its first test. It recast Mulder's partner, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), as the show's new center, a former skeptic of things that go bump in the night. It introduced John Doggett (Robert Patrick) as Scully's new associate in investigating X-Files who also leads the investigation into Mulder's "disappearance". And it effectively put Mulder in the background while keeping him very much a part of the series.

But the meat and potatoes of "The X-Files" has always been its "monster" episodes. These are the standalone segments that featured Mulder and Scully tracking various freaks, mutants, and creatures.

The first such episode is scheduled for 8 p.m. Sunday on WFLD-Ch. 32. Scully and Doggett investigate their first X-File together, a case involving murders that seemed to have been committed by a batlike creature.

If the relationship between Scully and Doggett doesn't work, and if the story feels like a re-hash of of other monster episodes, it could signal the final creative demise of "The X-Files." (No advance tape of the episode was available.)

Those connected with the series say don't write the obituaries yet. According to producer-creator Chris Carter, the show has "found a new way to tell good scary stories," mostly because of the addition of Patrick, the abduction of Mulder, and Scully's transformation to a reluctant believer.

"I think what that does for us is is forces us to increase a new dynamic in the story-telling," Carter says. "And I think of it as going back, really, to the first season and telling good, scary stories again, using this new dynamic.

"The cases come to them through the X-Files office, but now, of course, Scully is the one holding the remote on the project and taking Doggett through the cases, and he is the one who is shaking his head saying this can't be."

Says Patrick of Doggett: "He has to really lean on Scully's experience with this, and he's sort of nurtured that relationship, I guess, as a working partnership. And he's dealing with things that he's never had to deal with before."

Carter had planned to do less mythology episodes this season, but now he realizes that any show that has Mulder in it "becomes a kind of mythology episode."

As is his nature, Carter is coy about future stand-alones... except for one, a man who is contaminated by "smart metal... which I think Robert [who played the morphing metallic cyborg T-2000 in "Terminator 2"] and everyone else can appreciate."

Whether the stand-alone episodes work or not wasn't an issue with Anderson. She had tired of the job and just didn't want to be back (she was not only contracted for an eighth year, but she also is going to be around for a ninth if Fox wants one).

Now, she feels renewed.

"I felt that I was losing sight of what I had left to give," she says. "Much to my chagrin, and also [because of] some conversation with Chris about the potential for the new season and the introduction of the new character, I started to get more interested and more excited about the potential of the new year."

Anderson and Patrick are co-stars, but it really falls on Anderson to carry the show as Scully because she is the one fans have formed a relationship with. Anderson says rediscovering Scully is the reason she has been able to shoulder the load.

"What I've found since Scully has had more to do, and Mulder has kind of temporarily fallen into the background, [is] is almost feels like Scully has found her voice again," she says. "It's almost as if when there was two of us [Scully and Mulder], part of me kind of stepped down or stepped backwards in a way. and now that half of that equation is no longer here, it's kind of allowed me to open up a bit more."

Carter is going to see how this season goes, but he stresses, "I don't want to go on with the show, unless the show can be good."

We'll just see how good it is on Sunday.

Written by Allan Johnson, Chicago Tribune.


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