Duane Barry
- Episode aired Oct 14, 1994
- TV-14
- 45m
A former FBI agent who claims he was abducted by aliens takes several people hostage. Mulder agrees to be the negotiator.A former FBI agent who claims he was abducted by aliens takes several people hostage. Mulder agrees to be the negotiator.A former FBI agent who claims he was abducted by aliens takes several people hostage. Mulder agrees to be the negotiator.
- FBI Metallurgical Expert
- (uncredited)
- FBI Agent
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaIn the supermarket scene Agent Scully buys pickles and ice cream. This is an in-joke as Gillian Anderson was pregnant at the time.
- GoofsScully bases the notion of Barry's mental illness on reports of Phineas Gage, who supposedly underwent a personality change after a blasting accident drove an iron rod through his head and out the other side. However, the idea that Gage became violent, immoral, or a pathological liar, like Scully describes him, is an urban legend. Gage lived a productive life for 12 years following his accident.
- Quotes
Scully: Mulder, it's me. I just had something incredibly strange happen. This piece of metal that they took out of Duane Barry, it has some kind of a code on it. I ran it through a scanner, and some kind of a serial number came up. What the hell is this thing, Mulder? It's almost as if... it's almost as if somebody was using it to catalog him... Mulder! I need your help! Mulder!
[shouts]
Scully: Mulder!
- ConnectionsFeatured in The 47th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (1995)
- SoundtracksThe X-Files Theme
(uncredited)
Written by Mark Snow
Okay, typically for the show we have a well executed thriller. The show had several of these in its first two seasons, even some I don't like but can see their being efficient; Squeeze, Ice, Darkness Falls, even The Host. The problem was usually silly monsters. The better ones were character-based explorations of mental states that had some thriller aspects, a good example is Beyond the Sea.
The thriller here involves possible alien abduction, mysterious body implants, and a hostage situation with Mulder in it. The ending at Scully's home is intense, arguably the most intense moment thus far.
Why I deem this worth watching, quite apart from the show's ongoing fixations and mythology, is that we have a volatile state of narrative truth. We can't be sure of Duane Barry's story of abduction; we can't be sure if our vision of that story isn't being imagined by Mulder, possibly fed by his own paranoia linked to his sister's similar vanishing, down to the imagery of a 'bright light and a presence in the room'; we can't be sure if it is all a hoax masking some other government experiment.
Mulder here is the viewer, Duane Barry's audience in the hostage crisis. He wants to believe, and presumably so do we. He partly is, and so are we, Duane Barry—imaginatively entering a world of borderline madness to experience the intensity of revelation.
- chaos-rampant
- Jun 2, 2013
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro