Andrew Cook
“Fallen Angel” is a return to form for The X-Files after “Space,” an ambitious misfire from series creator Chris Carter. “Fallen Angel” is a formative episode not only for the series, but for writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa as well. It continues the series’ stylistic visual development and features Gordon and Gansa in full thriller mode, setting the template for the show’s regular event episodes and presaging Gordon’s later work on the television series 24.
The episode begins with a mysterious object falling from the sky outside a small Wisconsin town. It starts a fire and a local police officer responds. He’s badly burned by something invisible, almost camouflaged. Meanwhile, the military picks the craft up on radar. The technicians are told to log it as a meteor despite its odd trajectory, but the officer in charge, Col. Calvin Henderson, dials up his superiors and confirms what it really is: a “fallen angel.”
After the credits Mulder gets a tip from Deep Throat about the downed craft, reported in the media as a toxic spill. He says a retrieval operation has already been mobilized, led by Col. Henderson, and he has roughly 24 hours to get to the scene and document proof before it’s successfully swept under the rug.
Col. Henderson framing the craft as something angelic suggests not only something vastly superior to our technological capability, but establishes a running theme for how the show will examine extraterrestrial existence. Henderson is a seasoned and highly decorated Cold Warrior, and responds with a show of force reminiscent of classic 20th century brinkmanship. He stacks one noble lie atop another. One about the toxic spill meant to deceive the public, then another about a downed Libyan fighter jet carrying a nuclear warhead. This second lie is for people close enough to power to expect a hidden truth, but not close enough to deserve to actually know, and is perceptively built around Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan political leader and one of the West’s favored villains in the time he was alive.
Mulder heads out to Wisconsin to look around. He voids the retrieval unit, outfitted with some pretty heavy firepower, and snaps a few pictures before getting caught. Violating quarantine is a federal crime, and Henderson promises to ruin Mulder for this. While in custody, Mulder meets someone else caught poking around: a NICAP researcher named Max Fenig.
The next morning Scully comes to pick Mulder up, and she isn’t happy. She’s been fed the line about the Libyan nuke and she believes it. She also tells Mulder their boss’s boss, Section Chief McGrath, has ordered a hearing over Mulder’s conduct. He intends to shutter the X-Files and fire Mulder.
They return to Mulder’s hotel room to find it’s been ransacked, and they find Max trying to escape through the bathroom window. He tells Mulder he was snooping around because he’s a fan, along with the rest of NICAP. They’ve been keeping tabs on Mulder’s investigations through the Freedom of Information Act. They’re also fans of a pseudonymous article Mulder wrote for Omni.
“Fallen Angel” presents us with the inverse of previous episodes “Conduit” and “Ice“—instead of Mulder’s position being met with suspicion, he’s seen by some believers as a counter-cultural hero, their man on the inside. This reach gives him some ammunition if he can manage to keep his job. It also hearkens back to “Deep Throat,” where his primary allies in the town outside Ellens were stoners.
Now that they’re friends, Max shows them around his trailer; they take a look at his radio equipment and Scully notices he’s on anti-convulsant and anti-psychotic medication. He plays a recording of the police and fire response to the incident, which convinces Mulder and Scully to go speak with the policeman’s widow. She knows something’s wrong, but doesn’t want to speak because they’re withholding his body for burial and threatening to withhold his pension if she raises too many questions.
Col. Henderson’s men get a lead on the target, but they’re all subject to horrific burns when they try and apprehend it. Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully talk to the ER doctor who saw the dead policeman, and he’s been cowed into silence as well. On their way out, Mulder and Scully run into Col. Henderson bringing his men in for medical attention. Col. Henderson tries to kick them out of the hospital, but the ER doctor intervenes on Scully’s behalf. He says if she doesn’t stay and help (and implicitly observe) he’ll refuse to treat the men, so Henderson settles for giving Mulder the boot.
Mulder goes to talk with Max and finds him having a seizure in his trailer. Max tells him he has epilepsy, but the symptoms should be controlled through medication. Max says he must have incurred a head injury at some point in childhood, but he doesn’t have any memory of it, and he’d also experience memory loss, waking up in strange places. Mulder helps him to bed and notices a strange scar behind his ear.
The next morning, Scully gets back to Mulder’s room. Only two of the soldiers survived, and even they’re still in critical condition. Mulder shows her Max’s scar, and shows her two instances of a similar scar in alien abduction cases. She reluctantly agrees to look at Max on their way to the airport.
Time again proves to be of the essence as the military detects another craft, seemingly there to pick up the alien, itself drawn to Max. When Mulder and Scully show up to check on him, he’s gone. Mulder realizes it can’t be an accident Max happened to be here for all this. Since Max is an abductee maybe the alien came for him. He also assumes if he’s figured this out the Colonel probably has as well.
Both the agents and Col. Henderson track Max to the waterfront. The alien is here as well. It fried some soldiers and is now causing painful stimulus through what seems to be an implant behind Max’s ear. The alien successfully abducts Max, injuring Mulder in the process. The abduction sequence is striking, with Max convulsing as he floats in the air, surrounded by a surreal blue light which strobes throughout the room. Mulder tells Henderson the aliens beat him to Max, before finally heading back for his hearing.
The hearing is brutal. McGrath is on the warpath, getting into a shouting match with Mulder about the cover-up and Mulder’s failure to observe proper protocol. It’s a great scene, brilliantly capturing Mulder and Scully’s relative weakness in frame, as well as the massive personal distance between them and McGrath. The writing is on the wall, and yet…
McGrath, upset and emasculated, has a meeting with Deep Throat later that day. Deep Throat countermanded their decision to fire Mulder, saying Mulder’s insubordination is less dangerous than his potentially turning whistle-blower and leading an army of truth-seekers on Washington.
“Fallen Angel” is full of interesting ideas, leaving the audience with much to think about. Gordon and Gansa explore the concept of the Thucydides Trap, a concept outlined by writer Herman Wouk in his 1980 speech to the US Naval Academy, through the character of Col. Henderson. Henderson’s lies and destructive behavior raise questions about American power and how it seeks to get along with others who could present a challenge, either to American military might or to the present economic and political order it buttresses. Through Henderson we also see the recurring concept of the truth as something costly, with pain being doled out by powerful men who lie as easily as they draw breath. The policeman’s wife, the ER doctor, and Mulder himself are threatened with serious, life-altering consequences merely for telling the truth.
Questions follow about the fallen angel itself. Is the creature threatened by American military presence? Do its intentions merit Henderson’s response? What could it have wanted with Max and to what extent is it aware its actions cause him pain? Tantalizing questions as the narrative moves forward.
Another interesting element of the episode is the role Deep Throat plays. This is the third time we’ve seen him, and so far all three appearances relate to secret technology, presumably utilized by the Department of Defense. First with the aircraft at Ellens Air Force Base, then the COS computer, now the fallen angel.
In the end, Deep Throat intervenes and saves Mulder’s job. Maybe in 1993 the threat Mulder potentially posed as a whistleblower held some weight, but in the 2020s we’ve seen how much whistleblowing is worth. It’s usually met with reprisal, imprisonment, some FUD and a handy counter-narrative for people to continue believing the lie, because embracing a myth makes it easier to go on living in a system you’d feel powerless to change. Deep Throat’s decision really feels more like a favor to Mulder. He has to go out on a limb to save Mulder’s job because he put Mulder in that position in the first place, and he has to do so without cluing anyone in that he and Mulder are working together, so he uses Fenig’s proximity to the case as an excuse for McGrath.
Visually, the episode is a lot of fun. Director Larry Shaw makes great use of the set design and locations. Shot after shot features interesting compositions and visual ideas, great use of line and spacing. The earlier episodes were certainly well-done, but you can see the crew has begun to get bolder and more ambitious.
“Fallen Angel” is an excellent episode. It’s smart, thrilling and prophetic, feeling like a preview for television yet to come. Not only does it give us a template for many of The X-Files’ own later episodes, not only does it establish what writer Howard Gordon will do in future shows like 24 and Homeland, but the verdant feel of the forest scenes evokes fellow Vancouver series Stargate SG-1, which wouldn’t debut for a few more years, and Larry Shaw’s method of capturing the alien’s POV through a fish-eye lens is reminiscent of a lot of classic edgy ’90s cinematography. It’s really kind of thrilling to watch early episodes like this and know The X-Files is still on the ascent stylistically and dramatically. There’s nowhere to go but up.
