Walter Skinner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The X-Files character
Walter Skinner
Affiliated with	FBI
First appearance	Tooms
Last appearance	The Truth
Portrayed by	Mitch Pileggi

Walter Sergei Skinner is a fictional character played by Mitch Pileggi on the Fox television series The X-Files. Skinner is an Assistant Director of the FBI and is the direct supervisor of Special Agents Mulder and Scully and the X-Files office. He also makes an appearance in an episode of The Lone Gunmen.

[edit] Biography

Walter Skinner is a former Marine and a Vietnam War veteran. He was married to Sharon Skinner, from whom he was divorced on March 7, 1996 after 17 years of marriage. He has been treated at a sleep disorder clinic, suffering from recurring dreams of an old woman, which may either be a hallucination arising from drug use during Vietnam or a succubus. Skinner's hobbies include jogging, and boxing, the latter of which has been shown in his ability to outfight Mulder and X and to defend himself reasonably well when he was attacked by Alex Krycek and his men.

Skinner has a friend named Wayne Federman, a Hollywood screen writer. In the episode Hollywood, A.D.(7x18) Wayne writes and produces a movie called The Lazarus Bowl, which is based on an X-File Mulder and Scully investigated.

[edit] Work on the X-Files

Initially, A.D. Skinner acts solely as a supervisor to Agent Mulder's investigations of the paranormal. It is unclear whether he is entirely independent in his actions or controlled by people such as the Cigarette Smoking Man. In early episodes, the frequent presence of CSM in Skinner's office suggests that Skinner is at least partially under his power. Eventually, Skinner begins trusting Mulder and Scully and becomes their ally. He stands up to the conspirators that tried to control him, for which he frequently pays throughout the series.

After Skinner has long broken free of the Cigarette Smoking Man, he is again forced to take orders, this time from Krycek. He is covertly infected with nanotechnology, which allows Krycek to control him. Two years later, Skinner is finally able to rid himself of Krycek, when during an attempt by Krycek on Mulder's life, Skinner fatally shoots Alex. At Mulder's murder trial, Skinner is asked to act as Mulder's lawyer, having become a supporter of Mulder's cause. When Skinner is last seen, he and Deputy Director Alvin Kersh are confronting the Toothpick Man in Kersh's office. The consequences of this meeting are not revealed, but it is suggested that it leads to another closing of the X-Files division, as Agents Dogget and Reyes discover that X-Files office had been emptied out.

Skinner is known to get angry at Fox Mulder's decisions to go off on outlandish hunches and his instinct to immediately think that supernatural forces are at work whenever things don't quite add up. His many run ins with Agent Mulder often lead to the line 'Is there some sort of problem, Agent Mulder?', but he never actually disciplines his behaviour.

[edit] Appearances

Skinner appears in the following episodes:

Season 1 Tooms Season 2 Little Green Men The Host Sleepless Ascension One Breath Colony End Game F. Emasculata Anasazi Season 3 The Blessing Way Paper Clip Nisei Grotesque Piper Maru Apocrypha Pusher Avatar Wetwired Talitha Cumi Season 4 Herrenvolk Teliko The Field Where I Died Tunguska Terma Paper Hearts El Mundo Gira Memento Mori Unrequited Max Small Potatoes Zero Sum Season 5 Redux Redux II Kitsunegari Bad Blood The Red and the Black The Pine Bluff Variant Folie à Deux The End

The X-Files: Fight the Future (Movie) Season 6 The Beginning Triangle S.R. 819 Two Fathers One Son Monday Field Trip Biogenesis Season 7 The Sixth Extinction The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati Millennium Sein Und Zeit Closure En Ami Chimera Brand X Hollywood A.D. Je Souhaite Requiem Season 8 Within Without Via Negativa The Gift Per Manum This is Not Happening DeadAlive Three Words Vienen Alone Essence Existence Season 9 Nothing Important Happened Today Nothing Important Happened Today II 4-D John Doe Provenance Providence Jump the Shark William Sunshine Days The Truth (Series Finale)

The X-Files
Episode List | Official Website
The X-Files	Fight the Future | Books | The Game | Resist or Serve | Unrestricted Access | The Album | The Truth and the Light | The Magazine
Main Characters	Fox Mulder | Dana Scully | Walter Skinner | John Doggett | Monica Reyes | The Lone Gunmen | Informants
Other Characters	Baby William | Duane Barry | John Fitzgerald Byers | Jose Chung | Leyla Harrison Flukeman | Melvin Frohike | Alvin Kersh | Richard Langly | Robert Patrick Modell | Samantha Mulder Teena Mulder | William Mulder | Agent Pendrell | Donald Pfaster | Cassandra Spender | Jeffrey Spender | Tooms
The Syndicate	Cigarette Smoking Man | Marita Covarrubias | Deep Throat | First Elder | Alex Krycek Knowle Rohrer | Second Elder | Conrad Strughold | Well-Manicured Man | X | Alien Bounty Hunter Black oil | Colonists | Men in Black | Purity Control
Related	Songs in the Key of X | Millennium | Harsh Realm | The Lone Gunmen