The X-files
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Episode: 3X21
First aired: 04/26/1996
Written by: Howard Gordon
Directed by: James Charleston
A cool Skinner-centric episode!
FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner is presented with final divorce papers by his attorney, but he refuses to sign. At a bar, Skinner meets an attractive young woman and they go to bed together. Skinner awakens with a start from a nightmare in which he sees an old woman looking over him, he finds the woman next to him dead, her head twisted around.
Skinner tells Fox Mulder at the crime scene there is no reason for him to become involved. The detective on the case says Skinner wouldn't take a polygraph test and that he's a suspect. Dana Scully examines the body, detecting Skinner's fingerprints and signs of intercourse. Mulder learns that the woman is a prostitute. After Mulder leaves, Scully notices a phosphorescent glow around the woman's mouth.
The agents visit the hooker's madam who says she took Skinner's credit card the night before. Scully cites the mounting evidence against him, but Mulder stresses that they owe it to Skinner to find out what happened. Skinner has been released and he is clearly shocked to learn that the woman was a prostitute. He later glimpses the old woman again, on the streets, but when he catches up to her it turns out to be his wife, Sharon.
Sharon tells Mulder and Scully that they have been separated four eight months and that Skinner has built a wall keeping everyone out. Mulder, she adds, was one of the few work associates he discussed, and she asks flatly if Mulder thinks Skinner murdered the woman, in which Mulder replies no.
At Skinner's office Mulder and Scully are told that a formal hearing will be held the next day to determine his status. Scully tells Mulder that Skinner is behaving like a guilty man. She also discovers that Skinner was refusing treatment for a sleep disorder, dreaming about an old woman who suffocates him. Hypothetically, then, he could have killed the woman in his sleep without realizing it. Mulder notes that the woman sounds like a succubus, mythological spirits known to visit men in the night, sometimes killing other women out of jealousy. This prompts Scully to mention the phosphorescence, but when they check to body, it is gone.
Sharon visits Skinner, saying she wants to help him but that he won't let her. After she leaves he falls asleep again waking to see the old woman, with detectives at his door saying his wife has been seriously injured from having been forced off the road.
Mulder talks to Skinner, who finally admits that he had been seeing the old woman in his sleep. This had started, he says, when he had had a near-death experience in Vietnam, that she carried him away from the light. Mulder believes that the spirit is trying to protect Skinner.
Mulder checks Skinner's car, which had run his wife's car off the road, and has the airbag analyzed. Scully, meanwhile defends Skinner at the hearing. The FBI dismisses Skinner, and Mulder says they used the X-files to put them in check.
Mulder, who's found a face on the airbag that is not Skinner's, believes eliminating Skinner this way to be less obvious than another attempt to kill him. Mulder and Scully go to see the madam, but she is found dead, having jumped or been pushed off the roof. At the scene, they talk to Judy and ask her to arrange a meeting with the man, the man whose face was on the airbag, who hired a prostitute in Skinner's name.
At the hospital, Skinner's wife lies in a coma, and he tells her he won't sign the papers. Sharon suddenly comes out of her coma and tells her husband to listen to her.
Mulder waits downstairs at the hotel while Scully guards Judy in a room. Suddenly a gunman crashes through the door, dazing Scully. Mulder hears gunshots and finds Skinner standing over the would-be killer. In the investigation later, the dead man's identity remains unknown, and Mulder asks Skinner how he knew to be at the hotel. Skinner declines to answer. Alone, he reaches in his drawer and puts his wedding ring back on.
Important Quotes:
Skinner -- "I told you once what happened to me in Vietnam. That I was caught in an ambush."
Mulder -- "You were the only survivor. You also described what sounded like a near-death experience."
Mulder -- "It's not such a strange story... It's age old, actually. You may have heard it - although in slightly less clinical terms. In the Middle Ages, a visitation like the one Skinner described would have been attributed to a succubus. A spirit that visits men during the night in the form of an old woman."
Scully -- "Visits them for sex?"
Mulder -- "Usually."
Agent -- "D'ya know how an air bag works?"
Mulder -- "Your car hits somethin', a bag fills with air, you don't die."
Back to The X-files: Season 3