Fearful Symmetry (The X-Files)

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“Fearful Symmetry”
The X-Files episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 2X18
Written by Steve De Jarnatt
Directed by James Whitmore Jr.
Guest stars Jayne Atkinson
Lance Guest
Jack Rader
Original airdate February 24, 1995
Episode chronology
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"End Game" "Død Kalm"
Episode list

"Fearful Symmetry" was the eighteenth episode of the second season of The X-Files science-fiction television series created by Chris Carter, and deals with alien abduction. This episode won an EMA Award for its environmental message.[1]

Contents

[edit] Plot

The episode begins at night in downtown Fairfield, Idaho. A couple of migrant janitors are cleaning in the lobby of a building when they hear a loud noise, followed by the destruction of a wall-length window. The janitors survey the damage just in time to see a small car get crushed by an invisible force just down the street. Later that night on a nearby highway, a team of federal construction workers are attacked by the invisible force, and one of them is killed. The following day, a trucker drives along a lonely stretch of rural highway when an elephant literally appears out of nowhere in front of him. The trucker abruptly stops to avoid hitting the animal, and after a brief staring match between the two, the elephant walks away. We next see the elephant, surrounded by police and spectators, dying on the highway.

Mulder and Scully travel to Boise and interview witnesses to the incident on the city street. Mulder is, of course, more interested in the theory of an invisible elephant, while Scully is naturally skeptical. They are soon met by Ed Meecham, an employee for the zoo in the town of Fairfield. Meecham tells them that the elephant most likely died from exhaustion, and that he had found the elephant's stall empty but locked tight upon hearing the news. He also refers Mulder and Scully to his boss at the zoo, a naturalist named Willa Ambrose.

Upon meeting Ambrose at the zoo, she shows them the elephant's stall. When the agents notice the stall's cramped size and tie-downs on the floor, Ambrose tells them that she has been trying the reform the way animals are treated at the zoo, much to the dismay of Ed Meecham. She also notes that with the recent death of the elephant, the zoo will have to face a public relations nightmare in the face of an environmentalist group called the Wild Again Organization, or W.A.O.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Recurring Roles

[edit] Guest Star

[edit] Trivia

The zoo featured in the episode, Fairfield Zoo is also mentioned on a brochure in The X-Files: The Game; which is about a slightly similar topic to the episode, the disappearance/abduction of Mulder and Scully.

The title is from the poem "The Tyger," by William Blake: "What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

[edit] References

  1. ^ IMDB. Retrieved on 2007-07-08.

[edit] External links

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The X-Files Season 2
Episode List | Official Website