Ice


Synopsis

When an Arctic research team mysteriously kill each other and themselves only days after drilling deeper into the ice than ever before, Mulder and Scully accompany a team of doctors and scientists to investigate.
They discover an organism which infects living creatures and accelerates the host's feeling of anger and paranoia and the agent's colleagues on the expedition begin to question their government knowledge.

I'm sure we've all thought the same - The Thing. It's a valid comparison because, in all honesty, the set up is a pretty blatant rip off. There's an enemy amongst them, but they don't know who it is. And whilst Mulder and Scully are not dealing with an alien spaceship that is buried in the ice, they are dealing with an organism that was brought to Earth by a meteor... that is buried in the ice. Hmm. There is also a small echo of Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan in the way the worms enter the body, via the ear.

But that's pretty much all the moaning out of the way. This is a fantastic episode, full of genuinely creepy, chilling moments, paranoia and explosions of violence. The guest cast are excellent, particularly Xander Berkeley and the ever dependable Jeff Kober. After Bear's grisly demise he probably wished he'd stuck to advertising Malibu, or whatever it was.

But it is the Mulder/Scully relationship that is really the highlight for me. The stand-off between them after the others discover Mulder crouched over Murphy's body, ending up with them pointing guns and yelling at each other, is one of the high points of the season.

The solution to the problem is nicely thought out, and the scene in which Scully goes to talk to the confined Mulder is very well played out.

Mulder: I don't trust them. I want to trust you.

It's an indication of how far the characters have come in such short time that Mulder is prepared to turn his back on Scully so that she can check him for infection. The fact that he doesn't let her leave the room without checking her, too, shows just how much paranoia is flying around but, maybe, that they still have a little way to go before that trust is complete.

After a dip for a couple of episodes this is a marvellous return to form.

9/10

There's two ways of looking at this episode. It is a ripoff of The Thing as Steve's mentioned. That aside, if you're going to rip something off, make sure it's a great piece of w**k to begin with, and make sure you do it well. They succeeded on both counts.

Paranoia pieces hold a particular interest for me, The Thing being the very embodiment of how such a concept should be examined. Ice, not only covers similar ground, but also adds to it. The examination is enhanced here as there was never the same kind of relationship between two characters in john Carpenter's original movie that there was here between Mulder and Scully. As there characters go, this is a pretty important episode, there's a level of trust there, but that's take further by the episode's end.

The story, as a story also works. Not much to fault at all on this one. perhaps the dodgy 'worm' effects whenever they showed them entering someone's body :rolleyes: