“Mulder, if you’re still suggesting that an elephant did this it defies logic. Someone would have seen it.” – Dana Scully.
FEARFUL SYMMETRY [Standalone] Aired February 24, 1995
Episode: 2×18 / 42 Overall
Director: James Whitmore Jr. • Writer: Steve De Jarnatt
Animals from a zoo in Idaho are suspected of killing several people, but witnesses claim the real culprit is a powerful invincible force.
This is one of the rare episodes I can remember watching on TV during it’s original airing. I recall at the time that I found it quite disturbing and now 20 years on from that first impression little has changed to dissuade my opinion. Written and directed by another pair of X-Files one-timers, it’s certainly understandable that some critics and fans have had unfavourable reactions to what seems at first to be a rather ridiculous premise. The script feels very Carter-esque which pushes an agenda regarding animal rights and concludes with stern warning to human-kind that our reckless attitude towards nature and our current state of apathy regarding our imminent self-destruction will lead to our downfall. This is unless we receive some assistance from another civilisation who has the foresight to anticipate our demise and help us prevent it. The common consensus that this episode is unintentionally comedic is a justifiable reaction, certainly invisible elephants and animal abducting aliens could err on the side of absurdity. And it’s possible that my enjoyment of this episode is due to a sense of nostalgia rather than it being good story telling. Nevertheless, contrary to popular belief I still find this worthy of a re-visit.
Aliens abducting animals may seem like a silly idea on paper but one could easily make the argument, if human abductions are so easy to accept within the realms of science-fiction then why not animals? After all, all life on earth should be foreign to an alien civilisation. From an alien perspective, there is conceivably just as much to learn from experimenting on a cockroach as with a human. Going one step further, the argument could be made that animals are in fact easier to deal with since there is no need to wipe their memories and people are much less concerned with the disappearance of an animal versus a human being. Therefore the subject matter of this episode is well within the boundaries of the believable. The idea is handled with a sense of realism and re-watching the episode I found nothing comedic about the execution.
The connection between the episode and it’s title alluded me until I discovered that it’s taken from a line in a poem written by William Blake, The Tyger –
The pre-CGI practical effects of the invisible elephants destruction is worth a mention as they have held up extremely well over the past two decades. The scene where the animal rights activist is mauled to death by an invisible tiger is also done well, both of these sequences could have severely hampered the intended effect however I found them very serviceable even today. This is certainly not the greatest episode of the series, however I do believe it’s unworthy of it’s harsh criticism. On whole the direction is hit and miss, there’s an over-abundance of close ups in the early scenes that ends up feeling like a series of talking heads, yet on the other hand there’s the previously mentioned opening sequence which is very memorable. Much like season one’s Space which was panned by critics for it’s supposedly outlandish plot, Fearful Symmetry seems to have received the same unwarranted backlash from an audience who maybe forgot what television show they were watching at the time. This the X-Files remember, unexplained paranormal phenomena abounds.
★★★☆☆
The X-Files Retrospective Project 