Essay #3: "Dana by Darwin"

[Charlotte P. D. Price]

Barbara Ruef wrote:

> Essay #3: "Dana by Darwin"
> March 15, 1997
> bjr...@unix.tamu.edu
>
> The evolution of Dana Scully from "Fallen Angel" to the present
> has been quite an evolution and one not without pain. Picture
> Scully standing in Mulder's holding cell, valiantly trying to
> convince him of the possible explanations for the downed craft and
> the covert search underway. It's embarrassing to hear such a
> naive interpretation of events and stand by while Mulder laughs.
> It's also sad to consider the motivation behind it. The X-Files
> motto "I Want To Believe" is thought to be the domain of Mulder,
> but I've always seen it as particular to Scully and her struggles
> as well. Scully wanted to believe in the government as a
> righteous and just entity. She wanted to believe that, in giving
> up a career in medicine and joining the FBI, she threw in with the
> good guys. To side with Mulder and buy into all his beliefs and
> paranoia is to abandon all hope. Scully won't completely cross
> over to Mulder's way of thinking, but she has changed and evolved
> since "Fallen Angel" in her beliefs, her placement of trust, and
> her stake in Mulder's quest which has now become her own.

You're right. She has changed and evolved since "Fallen Angel" but her
evolution began some time before that episode. Although you could argue
that the first step towards becoming a 'believer' occurred in the Pilot,
probably in that rainsoaked graveyard, possibly when she saw those 3
little marks on her back and just for a moment contemplated that she
just may have been abducted (was that prophetic or what?!!!); or even in
"Deep Throat" when she goes out of her way (and I mean out of the way of
her personal philosophy as much as anything else) to save Mulder; but I
think the most noticeable change both in her professional and personal
development comes in "Squeeze" where, for the first time, we see her
getting the same treatment as Mulder ("Mrs. Spooky", etc.), and she
makes the conscious decision to stay as his partner when everyone around
her is offering her an escape from the X Files and back on to the 'FBI
fastrack'.

The scene to which you refer in "Fallen Angel" just accentuates Scully's
need to make some kind of sense of the world she has entered, not just
as a scientist but as a human being. Similarly, she's just doing her
job. She was assigned to the X Files to give some kind of scientific
validation to Mulder's work. That's partly what she was doing in
"Fallen Angel" and that's what she has done ever since. In essence, by
constantly referring to scientific explanation she's supporting Mulder
perhaps even more than if she agreed with his theories. If she didn't
it's very possible that Skinner (despite his own support of their work)
would be pressured to close them down.

Considering this, I find it difficult to understand why people complain
about Scully's continued 'skepticism'. When she looks for alternative
explanations, for scientific proof, she's not playing the skeptic, she's
actually being a good partner to Mulder and, in a broader context, a
believable character, because she's being faithful to her own
characterisation.

Even in an episode like "War of the Copraphages" when she comes right
out and says that there is no scientific proof for the existence of
extraterrestrial life, she's playing a part. She's being the other side
to Mulder's coin, not to mention continuing what must be a long, long
running, jokey conversation between them.

Furthermore, it is totally necessary for us as an audience for Scully to
continue to find alternate 'truths' to Mulder's theories. Just as she,
for herself, tries to make some sense in a world that makes no sense,
she does the same for us. She, more than Mulder, is the audience's
eyes.

> Scully is a skeptic. This should have no negative connotation
> when you consider that she is fresh out of her training in
> science, medicine, and forensic pathology, in particular; a
> background which is predicated on a search for clues that are
> there if you know where to look, and proof in answers that can be
> found if you know what questions to ask. In Scully's mind, all
> Mulder's mysteries are explainable if approached in a rational,
> scientific manner. But logic and rational approach fail her in
> "Beyond the Sea" when she is personally impacted by an event
> that Mulder would normally embrace for its paranormal bouquet.
> With no hard evidence, Scully is capable of explaining away this
> instance but by the end of season one, her skepticism suffers its
> first major blow. For a non-believer, the one thing certain to
> alter their view is a personal experience and proof that can be
> held in their hands. "Erlenmeyer Flask" offered Scully all the
> opportunity she needed and she was so moved as to apologize to
> Mulder for not trusting his instincts. The scientific results
> combined with the shutdown of the X-Files division must have been
> compelling evidence to Scully that something was out there.

Again, I think that must have happened before "The E-Flask", either that
or she spends the entirety of Season 1 in denial. Personally, I don't
think she does, she's too much the scientist to do that. It's true that
it is an amazing sight to see the skeptical Dr. Scully with an alien
foetus in her hands, but she has the same type of evidence in her hands
in "Ice".

The episode "Beyond the Sea" is an interesting example, however. As you
say, in this episode more than any other in the first season, Scully
becomes the believer. One thing that has occurred to me recently, which
can be applied very easily to this episode, is the difference in Scully
when she is in a professional or personal mode. It's as if she wears a
mask when she's working - unemotional, detached - perhaps in order to
prove that she can survive the FBI "boy's club", or simply to prove
herself the objective scientist. We're used to this professional mask
because we rarely see her outside of her work, and since joining the X
Files you could argue that she has started donning her professional mask
even in her personal life. Of course, in "Beyond the Sea" personal and
professional collide and the first time we begin to see some real cracks
in that mask. It makes you wonder if her apparent skeptism is only part
of that mask and something that can be shed as easily. (Not that I
think it's that easy for Scully to shed her professionalism, but that's
another story: Scully as control freak. :-) After all, as I said, her
scientific detachment is her function in the X Files, it's her way of
supporting Mulder, it's her *job*.

What made think along these lines is that the other day, I started
comparing two incredibly different episodes, "Piper Maru" and
"Quagmire". In the first 20 minutes of "Piper Maru" we see Scully at
work, but during that time she is told something that effects her
personally, that her sister's murder case is being made inactive. In
that scene with Skinner, we see her struggling to keep control. First
of all she doesn't say anything, but we can see the beginnings of tears
in her eyes; and when she does speak her voice shakes. But the words
she speaks are said in anger, not in sadness. Anger is considered a
masculine emotion, therefore acceptable in the male FBI sphere.
Ultimately, despite her need to cry, to 'show weakness' she maintains
the mask. Similarly, later on her personal and professional lives clash
when she visits the Miramar naval base. In the scene that has never
failed to reduce me to tears, Scully, as she's on her own, on personal
terrirotry, for just a moment allows the mask to slip as she watches the
children playing. (At which point I reach for a box of tissues.) And
then, with a swallow, the mask returns.

Compare this with *that* scene in "Quagmire". I'm always entrance by
that conversation between them because of the expressiveness of Scully's
face. In the conversation on the rock we see her at ease, with a
friend. She can let down her guard because she's no longer on
professional territory. (That rock is an island in the middle of her
personal lake of professionalism, just as much as Big Blue being
symbolic of Mulder's obsession.) I think it's her relationship with
Mulder that could partly be responsible for the fact that we do see her
express emotion far more now than in the first season. She feels safe
(or safer) expressing emotion around him. That doesn't mean to say that
she has ceased to pull the "I'm fine" line out of the hat, because she
does (in "Piper Maru", for example), but she probably does this less
because she trusts him more and more.

With leads us back to her 'skeptism'. Paradoxically, the more Scully
trusts Mulder, the more scientific, more skeptical she's going to be
because her science and her professionalism validates his work.

> And she isn't wrong to be skeptical since Mulder's eagerness to
> always think "alien" should be tempered with their increasing
> evidence of rogue government elements. Beyond Scully's own
> abduction, the final straw in her hope of a just system is placed
> when her sister is killed in a case of mistaken identity. The
> only justice Scully can hope for is the capture and conviction of
> the man responsible for the murder, and yet this is an
> unsatisfactory offering. Her involvement in the X-Files, her
> struggle in the quest that was once Mulder's alone, has taken on
> the shade of a personal vendetta where a more satisfactory price
> of justice might be sought.

It's no longer just Mulder's quest. It's Scully's too, that's what
makes her as intrinsic to the X Files, and the show itself, as Mulder.
She can never walk away from this now, because her entire life
(literally, now) is invested in her work. Without the X Files she
doesn't have a life. (What was that line in "Jersey Devil"?!)

> An examination of Scully's evolution is more easily approached by
> focusing on the things that have remained the same. Her loyalty,
> her stability, her scientific approach, and most importantly, her
> search for justice. In "Squeeze", Scully noted that she was on
> the side of the victim. The fact that she is herself one of the
> victims of the project has not altered her lawful pursuit of
> evidence and justice. The most obvious change from season one to
> two was Scully's beliefs. She didn't throw off her scientific
> approach for the tunnel vision of Mulder's beliefs, but she began
> to view their cases in a new light. From season two to three, the
> main change was in her placement of trust. Having once desired
> that placement to fall on the FBI and government as a whole, she
> now settled it more firmly on Mulder, and Skinner to a lesser
> degree.

That happened in Season 1, in "EBE". And that's what hasn't changed
throughout the series, her trust for Mulder, which can be seen from the
very beginning. You could argue that that trust was first gained when
Mulder opened up and told her about Samantha, but even before that, she
trusted him enough to knock on his door in the middle of the night
dressed in nothing but her underwear. If anything has changed in their
relationship it's that the trust has only grown deeper, and cultivated a
very close friendship.

> In his attempt to help the partners and his just and
> honorable nature, Skinner represents to Scully her original hopes
> for the Bureau. The latest evolution of Scully from season three
> into season four has been her stake in their quest for the Truth.
> Scully has knowledge of her abduction and the proof of the
> experimentation is slowly coming to light. This intimate
> connection to the X-Files and the Truth they contain has upped the
> stakes for Scully and her desire and determination may outweigh
> Mulder's in the future.

Doubt it. Equal, maybe. :-)

> His motivation began in the past but hers
> is placed fully in the present.

But Mulder lives in the past; the past *is* his present. "Paper Hearts"
proved that. He's as determined as ever to find his sister, and I think
his investment in their quest has been added to by Scully's abduction
and consequent illness. It's true that he's not in it for himself, he's
always been in it for others, firstly his sister and now Scully.

In fact, it's ironic that as she isn't technically speaking 'the
believer' in the partnership, it is Scully who's an X File in herself.

> Scully began to alter her beliefs
> at the end of season one and I firmly believe that she would have
> embraced Mulder's ideas sooner if she hadn't become so integral a
> part of the Truth they sought. Her abduction and personal
> involvement lead her to a state of denial that she has just now
> emerged from in "Memento Mori". Her beliefs. Her trust. Her
> stake. The more these things evolve and change, the firmer her
> character is set. Scully has always been, and shall remain, the
> more stable and rational of the partners with a sense of justice
> that will see her through to the end of their quest.

I don't know how much I agree with this, although I can totally
understand where you're coming from. Looking at it in terms of
characterisation, it is, without a shadow of a doubt, Scully that has
changed and developed, not Mulder. Mulder stays the same, and has to
until he discovers that enigmatic truth. In fact, in some ways, this
makes Mulder the more stable of the pair.

Wow, thanks, Barbara!!

Touchy Feely sisters, time to play!!!

Charlotte