X-Files--"Teliko"

Get ready for a bit of a letdown here. After three four star episodes in a row, you knew it had to be coming. ‘Teliko,” the last Friday night airing of The X-Files before Millennium took over the timeslot, is a mundane, formulaic story. I could not help but feel how much it would have fit in better within the first season when the series had not yet found its voice. A saving grace is my enjoyment of the first season. “Teliko” may be pedestrian, but it does have Mulder and scully working a mysterious case in their old role of faith versus reason with it somehow working out in the end.

Mulder and Scully are called to Philadelphia--yes, Pennsylvania two cases in a row--to investigate the disappearance of four black men when one of the men’s corpse is discovered completely devoid of pigmentation. The men have been kidnapped and drained of pigment by Samuel Oboah, an immigrant from West Africa who has no pituitary gland, so he has to survive as a hormone vampire Mulder and Scully find him mostly through shoe leather detective work They discover he has been stashing the now albino bodies in the ventilation system at a construction site. Oboah captures Mulder for dramatic tension, but he is saved by Scully, who shoots oboah.

The faith versus reason tension between Mulder and Scully consists of Mulder learning about the Teliko, a lost African tribe who prey on other Africans, living them albino as ghosts. Scully believes there is a scientific explanation for Oboah’s lack of pituitary gland, perhaps some new disease. Even though she believes this, she is not wearing a haz-mat suit or even a surgical mask when performing an autopsy on the first albino victim even though, under her own theory, he may have suffered from a new, contagious disease. Is that supposed to be an admission Mulder is most likely correct and she is just being contrary for the heck of it?

I mentioned above the story is a shoe leather detective story. That is true except for one point which I think it awkwardly thrown in just to legitimize Mulder’s new status with Syndicate insider Maria Covarrubias. Mulder goes to her to find out whether there is something bigger behind the discovery of a paralyzing West African plant found in the blood stream of the first albino corpse. No, it is just the drug Oboah uses to knock out his victims. Nice to see you, though, Maria.

There is nothing inherently wrong with “yeliko,” unless you want to count the pointless appearance of Covarrubias. There is nothing terribly exciting or scary about the episode. Mulder being put in peril briefly is manufactured drama that could have been done better. He is not actually a hostage, he is just paralyzed and cannot tell scully to look out behind her as Oboah stalks her. Unremarkable is the word.

Speaking of words, Scully uses the words inveigle and obfuscate in regular conversation. I love her.

Rating: *** (out of 5)