Walter Skinner

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The X-Files character
Image:Walter Skinner.jpg
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 appeared in an episode of The Lone Gunmen.

[edit] Biography

Walter Skinner is a former Marine and a Vietnam War veteran. In the war he once killed a boy at a very short distance, an experience which has scarred him for life. He is married to Sharon Skinner. 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." 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 Alex 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 John Doggett and Monica 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 (billed in the opening credits)

  • "Nothing Important Happened Today"
  • "Nothing Important Happened Today II"
  • "4-D"
  • "John Doe"
  • "Provenance"
  • "Providence"
  • "Jump the Shark"
  • "William"
  • "Sunshine Days"
  • "The Truth"
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