By Owen Quinn author
Photos copyright Fox
‘They’ say that Bigfoot is roaming our forests. Thousands disappear in National Parks across America every year, spawning allegations of cover ups to keep the dollars flowing from families and tourists. There are long time hunters and campers refuse to go back into the woods where they grew up. Rumours of feral humans, dogmen and much more permeate town bars where strange things have happened.
But what if there are things out there that don’t want us in their territory and are not afraid to come into your home to ensure their existence is not revealed?
So when two men surveying the Leon county area of the Appalachia National Forest Park vanish followed by a man, Mister Asekoff and his son Louis, while out hunting, a new mystery falls into Mulder and Scully’s laps as if sent by God.
In the precredit sequence, we get a new forest creature. The surveyors are at odds as one is against this land before concreted over while another is all for it. All of a sudden, he cannot pull the ranging rod from the ground. On further investigation, he finds a substance on the ground that could be blood. He vanishes and the undergrowth erupts as something heads for the other man. He hides but suddenly two red glowing eyes open in the ground beneath him and he is dragged somewhere screaming.
What The X-Files always does best is take the normal and make it a doorway for creatures and monsters to push their way into our world. Our homes should be our castles but sometimes those castle walls crack. Indeed the monster for this can be seen as protecting its castle. It would have heard the conversation between the two surveyors about the entire area being concreted over. Their home is in danger of being destroyed so they are taking steps to prevent that from happening. If you go missing in the forest, then it never really ends well. The attack on the father and son may well have been a knock on effect from the surveyors. They are human so may well be part of the threatened encroachment so the forest creatures may will be thinking to dispose of each as they come but this only generates more attention. There is a clear conservation theme and message in Detour done very well without being in your face.
Even the theme of your home is your castle is a two way street when the forest creature goes after the son of the hunter. Every kid at some time has been scared of something either under the bed or in the closet and here we get the monster under the bed. Given the chameleon qualities of the forest creatures, those two deep red eyes are enough to evoke fear as the shadows enforce their intensity. When Louis is chased through his house by something with red eyes, it is tense especially as the creature has locked his mother out of the house.
Mulder and Scully are passengers with fellow agents Michael Kinsley and Carla Stonecypher en route to a team building exercise which Mulder has thus far managed to avoid thanks to a haemorrhoid condition he develops this time every year. His disdain for it is heightened when Kinsley and Carla gush over how hard they found the exercise where you couldn’t use negative language. Kinsley had particular issue with the word ‘but’ which Mulder symnpathises with. This brings much needed humour to the episode and to be honest, we all hate team building exercises. They are a complete waste of time.
But a police roadblock soon stops them as the search is under way for the missing father. The distressed wife goes to Mulder whose interest is piqued by this. Unidentified tracks leading away from the attack scene immediately hook Mulder. Dismissing the team building, Mulder decides to stay despite Officer Michele Fazekas dismissal of his help. In the scene where he says to Scully how he can put it without using negative words, shows just how much they have evolved and know each other so well. Indeed, Scully brings him cheese and crackers. When Scully realises that this sudden stay isn’t just a ploy to get out of the conference, they have an X-File.
After Louis’s attack, the thing walks on the balls of its feet, is seemingly invisible and there is more than one. Scully and Mulder join Fazekasand and Jeff Glaser, her local tech head. Everyone who has ever taken photos in a forest will tell you they are very green. Everywhere you look has that unreal emerald hue so if you can merge with your background, the more advantage it is against trespassers and predators. By the way, Glaser is played by Anthony Rapp who would later gain fame in Star Trek Discovery.
What we have from here on in is a game of cat and mouse where that green vista I mentioned before becomes a confusing road to separate the group. Michelle is taken first and then Jeff. With no cellphone reception, they are split on what to do. Scully agrees with Jeff and they need to go back.
I find it a bit strange that Mulder had just told Scully that whatever they are dealing with demonstrated a divide and conquer methodology with Louis and his mother. Yet now he allows them to fall into that just so Michelle can be taken.
The forest is devoid of animal life or noise despite a cicada noise when the creature is about and this helps adds to the atmosphere. Jeff is taken because he runs off in panic and Mulder is attacked as he and Scully track the creature. Whatever it is, it tried to pull Mulder beneath the ground. This allows us to gain more insight to the relationship between Mulder and Scully. She talks about how she was angry when she was battling cancer. And both agree, they identified with Betty’s bustline in The Flintstones but would never have married Barney.
This is a conversation and banter they could never really have had before season four. They are relaxed in each other’s company in a world where they only trust each other. Mulder even manages to convicne Scully to sing to keep awake as the night falls.
But something is only able to stay hidden as long as you don’t figure out how it shields itself. When Scully falls into one of the underground tunnels where she finds a barely alive Michelle. Mulder joins her and she shoots one of the creatures, allowing a close up look at it.
Just then, Kinsley and Carla find them and they are rescued. Mister Asekoff is also found but Jeff is not, nor are the surveyors.
In an interesting ending, we again get a reminder of how other agents in the FBI view Mulder even after they have witnessed the supernatural just like he has. Mulder believes that they are Spanish conquistadors who came to this area to find the Fountain of Youth. There was an inscription in the tunnel, ‘ad noctem’ ‘meaning into darkness. Those conquistadors may well have adapted in seclusion to the forest. But Kinsley berates him, saying that he is only makign that up so he can write off the hotel with the FBI. That look in Mulder’s face says it all and yet another reaon for him to seclude himself from agents just like the conquistadors did.
In one final twist, Mulder races to find a lone Scully in the hotel room as these things have demonstrated a taste for those that encroach their territory. However, Scully has killed one of them and may be in danger. He ushers her out of the hotel room and in the closing shot, we see two red eyes under the bed.
Detour is a nice contained episode that further explores and deepens the relationship between Mulder and Scully. It also makes us look twice at the forest and world around us and wonder what is really in there? What is making people disappear all over the country like that? Aside form convenient timing on the rescuers behalf, Detour is yet another solid entry into The X-Files with no signs of slowing down.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 