The writing by Chris Carter makes this a compelling episode which turns out to be a two part story, wrapped up in the following show of the series, "Ascension". The quandary faced by agent Mulder is whether the protagonist Duane Barry (Steve Railsback) is an actual alien abductee or a habitual, compulsive liar. A strong case is made for both, with Scully doing the leg work to uncover his past tenure with the FBI. Mulder places the dilemma in context when he states that Barry skirts the fine thread of sanity.
Having read some of the Whitley Strieber stuff and stories of people who claim to have been abducted, I wasn't surprised by some of the elements introduced in this story, like the alien experiments and body implants. I believe the most common implant is marked by a small, crescent shaped scar behind the victim's ear, replaced in this story by the one on Barry's abdomen. It was pretty clever of Scully to take one of those objects removed from Barry's body and run it through a supermarket checkout scanner making it go berserk.
For someone who wasn't trained in hostage negotiation, I thought Mulder did a pretty good job getting the peripheral detainees out of there without incident. To do it though, he had to perform a balancing act regarding the instructions given him by Agent Kazdin (CCH Pounder), whether to identify with Barry's abduction story or disregard his psychosis to set up the rescue team. By this time, you knew Mulder was going to do whatever he wanted anyway.
With Agent Krycek still partnering with Mulder at this point, I had to chuckle over how much the guy was given short shrift by virtually everybody he came in contact with - Mulder, the Smoking Man who he was secretly working for, and the ultimate ignominy of filling a mocha grande order for Agent Kazdin. You didn't actually see him get the coffee, but you had to know his frustration at being a lackey for his superiors. Serves the creep right.
Having read some of the Whitley Strieber stuff and stories of people who claim to have been abducted, I wasn't surprised by some of the elements introduced in this story, like the alien experiments and body implants. I believe the most common implant is marked by a small, crescent shaped scar behind the victim's ear, replaced in this story by the one on Barry's abdomen. It was pretty clever of Scully to take one of those objects removed from Barry's body and run it through a supermarket checkout scanner making it go berserk.
For someone who wasn't trained in hostage negotiation, I thought Mulder did a pretty good job getting the peripheral detainees out of there without incident. To do it though, he had to perform a balancing act regarding the instructions given him by Agent Kazdin (CCH Pounder), whether to identify with Barry's abduction story or disregard his psychosis to set up the rescue team. By this time, you knew Mulder was going to do whatever he wanted anyway.
With Agent Krycek still partnering with Mulder at this point, I had to chuckle over how much the guy was given short shrift by virtually everybody he came in contact with - Mulder, the Smoking Man who he was secretly working for, and the ultimate ignominy of filling a mocha grande order for Agent Kazdin. You didn't actually see him get the coffee, but you had to know his frustration at being a lackey for his superiors. Serves the creep right.