Invocation
A boy who disappeared ten years ago returns unaged.
Invocation was an episode of two halves. Firstly, we had the
Underwood case, with all its clichés and irritations, and then we had the much
more interesting clues about Doggett’s past. The latter worked well, and whilst
the former was heavily derivative, the episode still made for an interesting 45
minutes.
The photo in Doggett’s wallet
certainly raises all kinds of questions. My first thought was that it showed
his brother; a second later I realised that they probably didn’t take school
photographs like that when Doggett was a child. Having eliminated that possibility,
it seems most likely that the little boy was his son, and it’s safe to assume,
even if you think the psychic was a crank, that the child was the victim of
some kind of crime and is either dead or missing. This raises the questions:
what exactly happened? When? Did they find a body? Did it happen before or
after Doggett joined the FBI? Was the boy’s death the reason why Doggett works
in law enforcement? I hope the answer to that last question is no. That would
bring Doggett uncomfortably close to Mulder (it’s been noted in several places
that this episode was Doggett’s Conduit), and while I think this
parallel between them is a nice idea, it doesn’t need to be overdone.
Although the case clearly brought
back disturbing memories for Doggett, we were allowed to see this without him going
off the rails or having some kind of emotional showdown. We didn’t even see him
and Scully talking about it, and I wonder whether she broached the subject with
him or if she left him to have some space. The closest he came to letting his
own feelings interfere with the case was that episode with the bag. That was,
perhaps, slightly unprofessional, and I wonder how well any evidence from a
traumatised little boy who was effectively being bribed would stand up in
court, but I wasn’t sure it deserved the explosive reaction from Scully and the
Underwoods. In general, I thought Doggett was good with Billy.
For the last four episodes I’ve
been trying to make up my mind, and been getting pretty close to deciding, but
now I’m now sure - I like Doggett. Not because of his dead son – that storyline
has to arouse sympathy in the stoniest of hearts, but it’s never going to make
anyone like the man. It’s his attitude that I find so interesting, the
way he wants to “put the person who did this out of business” but finds their
methods less important. It was fitting that this was how the case was “solved” –
Josh’s life was saved and Billy’s killer apprehended with no good explanation –
and yet Doggett (and the audience) was ultimately unsatisfied. Scully once said
that “science only tells us how, not why.” Scully’s, by her own admission, weak
explanation instead suggested why, but not how. While this was appropriate for
the episode, leaving the audience to theorise for themselves, it was also a
little frustrating. To quote Jenny: “I was kind of disappointed with that one
on the “let’s explain what the hell’s going on” stakes.”
So I enjoyed the Doggett storyline, and I think it made up for the weaknesses in the Billy Underwood plot. In the previous paragraph I said that simply giving a character a distressing past isn’t going to make people like them. Take Mrs Underwood, for example. Whilst I felt sympathy for this character who’d been through something I can’t even begin to imagine, I found her constant misplaced positivity extremely irritating. She didn’t seem in the least bit bothered by the extraordinary events – it wasn’t that she hadn’t been able to take it all in, she just didn’t seem to think there was anything out of the ordinary. Mind you, they might all be bit strange in that town, if they think that a suitable way to break the astonishing, life-changing news that her son has reappeared is to just show him to her on a swing, with no preparation, no warning.
There were some very derivative
moments in Invocation. The “important symbol appears in many places”
device has been used many times, and its appearance on the psychic’s head was
reminiscent of The Exorcist (although, to be fair, in that film the
message “help me” appeared on the skin of the possessed girl). The psychic’s
convulsions were not very original either, and the backwards song on the tape
recorder also appeared to have been inspired by The Exorcist. The
writers even resorted to that tried and tested device, “dog knows someone is an
imposter / alien / ghost / demon.” There can’t have been a single viewer who
hadn’t guessed there was something odd about Billy by that point; there was no
need for the dog to ram the point home.
A minor plot hole – it’s hard to
believe that Josh’s parents never told him not to wander off and talk to
strangers in the dead of night, even if they do have nice ponies, and even
harder to believe that Josh, jumpy and tired as he must have been, would want
to.
On a positive note, though, Billy
really did look very creepy, yet still shellshocked enough that it was
convincing that the parents would think he was traumatised rather than evil.
Kudos to the casting directors. And the opening shot was very striking, with
the pony harness equipment instantly reminiscent of a pentagram, and very
effective music. It wasn’t until the second viewing that I realised the
tinkling background music was the song from the tape recorder. An interesting,
if flawed, episode which has the longest review of the season so far J
Doggett: You know, these words –
anomalous, supernatural, paranormal – they purport to explain something by not
explaining it. It’s lazy.
Scully: Do you not somehow
recognise how strange this is?
Psychic: Is this going to happen?
Doggett: Shouldn’t you be telling
us that?
Scully: I know where you are with
this, I have been there. I know what you’re feeling, that you’ve failed, and
that you have to explain this somehow.
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