Duane Barry

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This article is about the character from The X-Files. For the episode named after this character, see Duane Barry (The X-Files episode).
The X-Files character
Image:Duane_B005.JPG
Duane Barry
Affiliated with FBI
First appearance Duane Barry
Last appearance Ascension (regular)
The Truth (archive footage)
Portrayed by Steve Railsback

Duane Barry is a fictional character from the television show, The X-Files. He is what is known as a repeat abductee, and comes to serve in an important capacity to the X-Files mythology. He is portrayed by the actor Steve Railsback.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

He is first introduced in the 2nd season episode, "Duane Barry". Duane has escaped from a psychiatric hospital in Marion, VA, taking his doctor hostage. Agent Fox Mulder is soon called in by the FBI to help in the negotiations, as by then Duane has also taken a group of employees at a travel agency in Richmond, hostage. Mulder at first has no idea why he has been assigned to help, as he has no particularly extensive history in dealing with hostage negotiations. Soon, however, he learns that Duane is ex-FBI, and claims to be an alien abductee. Mulder eventually is sent into the building to negotiate with Duane.

Duane explains to Mulder that he has taken his doctor with him in order to provide a substitute abductee, as Duane can no longer endure his own abductions. Initially Mulder believes Duane is truly an abductee, however, Scully runs a background check on Duane, and discovers why he was dismissed from the FBI in 1982, after he was shot in the line of duty. The bullet pierced his bilateral frontal lobes, which left a visible scar on his forehead, and consequently he developed a rare state of psychosis, with a tendency towards violent and bizarre behavior, including consistently referring to himself in the third person. Mulder, who believes Scully, then sets up Duane to be captured and taken into custody.

Soon after, however, Duane manages to escape the hospital he was being held in, and heads for Georgetown, where he kidnaps Scully from her apartment. It later becomes evident that Duane was led to take Scully with help from information given to him by Alex Krycek. Duane heads with Scully to Skyland Mountain in Virginia, where he was first abducted, in order to have her in his stead. While Mulder manages to track Duane down, he is impeded unknowingly by Krycek, who was on orders from Cigarette Smoking Man, and ends up not being able to save Scully. Duane is taken into custody, but before Mulder can interrogate him thoroughly, Duane is poisoned by Krycek in order to keep silent.

Duane's perceived abductions were probably an amalgam of his delusions and his actually being abducted. Most likely he was not actually abducted by aliens though, as these perceptions were probably a result of his mental state resulting from his accident, and/or a weapon that was used on Duane, unbeknownst to him, in order to induce his paranoia. It is later shown that the Syndicate had the technology capable of achieving this since at least 1989 ("Unusual Suspects"). Duane's abductions were most likely the work of the Syndicate scientists shown later in "731".

Duane Barry's character was originally called "Duane Garry" but research led to the discovery that a real FBI agent held the same name, hence the slight name change.

While Duane regularly appeared in only two episodes of the mythology, Scully's abduction became an intricate part of the show's mythology. Gillian Anderson, who plays Scully on the show, was actually pregnant in real life, and so her absence on the show because of her maternity leave was explained by the writers as her being abducted.

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