The Host is the subject of today’s video, and it is a fantastic way to start the second season of The X-Files. Chris Carter works on “event” episodes of The X-Files. In more ways than one, his name appears frequently on episodes that move the show forward. Carter is frequently mentioned in the writings because he built the show with the amazing mythos. The X-Files developed its own personality and fiercely carved out a space for itself.
The show did not make the top 100 performances of the 1993-1994 season, although it was close to making the top 50 plays of the same year. That is a meteoric rise, with the second season continually honing its craft. When the writing and effects of the X-Files are top-notch, the show is “spooky.” That is because Season 2 begins with a “monster-of-the-week” episode.
The Host is a science fiction film about a huge mutant worm. The narrative and monster realization are both outstanding, allowing for that all-important suspension of disbelief that takes this episode to the top. The show does not exist as a continuation of a genre that the show established during its first year on the air. The Host, on the other hand, is clearly intended to be the monster-of-the-week episode.
The initial broadcast of “The Host” achieved a Nielsen household rating of 9.8 with 9.3 million viewers. The episode received positive feedback, with many fans praising the villain’s creepiness. It is an hour of television designed to elicit a reaction, pique people’s interest, and get them talking. This episode is aimed squarely at everyone who heard about the summer sabbatical and was curious as to what all the fuss was about.
An institutionalized experiment went incredibly wrong
Mulder and Scully learn about a sewer-dwelling creature devouring people alive in the second-season episode “The Host.” The monster is revealed to be the Flukeman, a repulsive-looking mutant discovered outside the Chernobyl accident site. The Flukeman boarded a cargo and began targeting residents in the New Jersey sewers, infecting them with flatworms. He has the appearance of a hybrid between the Creature from The Black Lagoon and some of the gooier “Hellraiser” Cenobites. Darin Morgan also plays him.
A crewman attempting to repair the ship’s toilets on a Russian cargo off the coast of New Jersey is sucked into the septic system. Days later, his half-eaten body is discovered in Newark’s sewers. Fox Mulder is assigned to the investigation and meets with Detective Norman in Newark, where he is shown the unidentified body. Mulder meets Assistant Director Walter Skinner angrily, believing he has been handed the seeming “wild goose chase” as punishment.
F.B.I. Special Agent Fox Mulder is conducting wiretap surveillance in a tiny, darkened room at Washington, D.C.’s Longstreet Motel when he is relieved of the duty by an Agent Bozoff, who is followed to the room by an Agent Brisendine. Brisendine exits the room and informs Mulder of his new assignment: a murder case in Newark, New Jersey, where his point of contact would be Detective Norman. Mulder is astonished that Assistant Director Walter Skinner has requested his reassignment.
Craig, a city worker in Newark, is carried underwater in the sewers but is saved by a co-worker. He thinks he was bitten by a python. He chooses to go to the doctor, with Mulder accompanying him, and complains of a strange taste in his tongue. A four-pointed wound forms on his back during a medical check-up in Sayreville, New Jersey. Mulder runs into Detective Norman at a downtown crime scene.
The investigator walks Mulder down a sewer on his way to the victim’s body. He and Mulder make a small conversation about how disgusted they are with their surroundings. Norman then takes Mulder to the body, demonstrating little evidence. Mulder walks away, accepting Norman’s statement that the front side of the body has been mostly eaten away, and tells the detective to deliver the body to the F.B.I., care of AD Skinner.
Mulder has essentially been flying blind regarding the X-Files and continuing his research after what he’s witnessed. While investigating “Flukeman,” he receives two phone calls from an unknown person telling him that he has an ally in the F.B.I. and that his work on the X-Files is essential.
Agent Scully approaches Mulder when he sits alone on a bench late at night. Mulder quips that he may be suffering violent tendencies, but Scully responds humorously that she is armed. Mulder expresses his dissatisfaction with the apparent triviality of his task to Scully, confessing that he had lately considered leaving the F.B.I. Someone slips a newspaper item under Scully’s door at Quantico, allowing her to identify the original victim as a crewman aboard a Russian ship. Mulder and Scully run into each other in the processing facility.
They both stare at the mysterious, fluke-like figure. Skinner wishes to charge the creature and submit it to a mental examination, which Mulder believes will be tough. Skinner informs Mulder about Craig’s death and confesses that if the X-Files were still active, this would have been an X-File. Mulder expresses his dissatisfaction, alleging that a specific pair of X-Files agents may have saved a life.
Skinner says, “Everyone receives instructions from someone,” meaning that the decision was not his and was made by someone higher up the chain of command. Scully persists in assisting Mulder with his current investigation, reminding him that there is a dead corpse to investigate. Scully subsequently continues the inspection, even though the scent of the corpse disgusts her at first. She observes a bizarre tattoo on the victim’s right forearm when commenting on the review. She is surprised to discover a type of grey flatworm while probing the man’s internal organs, which she then attempts to remove.
Craig, a sanitation worker in Newark, is pulled underwater repeatedly and cries in pain as he begins work in a sewer. The second man, positioned on a catwalk above the river, feverishly tries to help Craig by flinging a rope into the water near him. Their efforts are finally successful, and the distressed guy is dragged from the sea.
However, he has a massive cut on his back, so his co-worker, shocked, rushes away to get help. Craig is seen by Doctor Zenzola, who mentions a strong taste in his mouth – then Mulder enters – so the doctor inspects her patient’s throat and offers him a piece of gum. The doctor then speaks alone with Mulder, advising him that the sanitation worker claims to have been assaulted by something unknown. Zenzola also cites the man’s back wound, describing it as “very odd.”
Employees unrestrainedly load the Flukeman in a U.S. Marshal’s van that night. Still, it kills the driver and flees to a nearby campground. The flukeman hides in a portable toilet and gets suctioned into the tank of a truck the next day when the toilet is emptied. Mulder receives another phone call from the anonymous caller, reminding him that success in his present job is critical for the X-Files to be resurrected permanently.
Scully denies any participation when he quizzes her about it. The flukeman is returned to the processing facility. Scully believes the flukeworm she discovered in the body is a larva trying to reproduce. The flukeman has been found in a storm drain overflow.
Ray informs Mulder that something has been found in a segment of pipe. Ray shows Mulder the precise site of the sighting, the same area where the first body was discovered – an overflow system connected to the port, using a map of the sewers. Mulder assumes that the Flukeman entered the sewage system and is now making its way back out to sea. Mulder notices the Flukeman crawling into the overflow pipe and rushes to lock the gate, splitting the entity in half.
Back in Washington, D.C., Scully joins Mulder at their bench once more. Mulder informs her of his mystery contact, who claims the importance of his work. However, Scully first misidentifies those comments as coming from Skinner. Scully tells Mulder that the Flukeman, capable of spontaneous regeneration like any fluke or flatworm, is a human transformed by radiation from the Chornobyl nuclear meltdown. It had escaped aboard a decommissioned Russian ship in the disposal of salvage material from that disaster.
The Flukeman rejuvenates down beneath, opening its eyes and taking long, rasping breaths. The creature at the center of The Host is featured repeatedly and prominently. Although it hides in the shadows, we have seen enough to know that it is neither a ghost nor an illusion.
The episode not only allows the viewer to get up and personal with the monster. Even Mulder and Scully are so near to it that they can’t deny it. They can even take half of it home with them. Scully approaches Mulder again after the episode after he assumes the monster has long since died to sort of finish things off. Scully discloses that this creature is not a monster but rather a man. Humanity is primarily responsible for the appearance of this creature.
A Genetic Mutant – The Flukeman
The Flukeman was a genetic freak that infiltrated the New Jersey sewer system and murdered numerous people before washing up on Martha’s Vineyard. It is expected that the Flukeman will become stuck in the sewage system. The Flukeman has been transmitting via its bite as a means of reproduction, and the Flukeman is seeking hosts. The Flukeman’s bite conveyed its larvae, a type of flatworm.
The creature sought hosts to multiply and attack because the bodies of its victims offered generative nutrition. The Flukeman — a quasi-vertebrate human – was an example of reproductive and physiological cross-training caused by radiation. The creature was essentially a consequence of human research rather than nature. It possessed parasitic traits, but it also had primate physiology.
The Flukeman, like other flukes or flatworms, lacked sex organs and was genderless. Yet, he was technically human and capable of spontaneous regeneration. Chris Carter’s writing was arguably his greatest up to this time. The concept is original and well-executed. This has to be not just one of the most repulsive creatures on the show but also one of the most exciting and well-developed.
Typically, a Flukeman bite survivor would get infected with a flatworm, which the sufferer would cough up later. The Flukeman’s bite wound pattern resembles scolex attachment but is significantly bigger. There is evidence that a Flukeman bite may cause a survivor to experience a strange, disagreeable taste in their mouth that is difficult to remove. However, this is not accompanied by trouble swallowing.
At the time of the assault, one reported the incidence of a Flukeman bite victim feeling such a terrible taste. The victim had also ingested a mouthful of sewage. As a result, it is unclear if the nasty taste was caused by the Flukeman or the sewage. The Flukeman’s natural habitat was underwater, but it could also thrive on land under normal air conditions. The creature was apparently powerful enough to drag its victims underwater with it. Flukeman was just an ordinary person stuck in a sewage truck and became what we see in this episode after mixing with the sewage, radiation, and worms. He reappears in the comics, and he remains immensely frightening.
Why you should watch The Host
“The Host” is a fantastic episode, and it never ceases to amaze me how good it is every time I see it. It not only has one of the show’s most significant, strangest, most memorable, and most terrible creatures. But it’s also incredibly intriguing in terms of the ongoing plot of the X-Files being shuttered and the politics behind it, Mulder and Scully’s relationship, and character writing. It’s not only a fantastic episode because it has a terrific monster; it’s also a phenomenal screenplay that accomplishes something in every element of “The X-Files” as a series.
It might have been a cliched episode about something lurking in the sewers. Still, it’s wonderfully made, inventive, evocative, and exceptionally well written. Beware, there are some stomach-churning sequences with fluke worms entering the human body. This is a compelling b-horror episode, although it is ultimately a silly ‘monster’ episode. We have atomic mutation from the other side of the Wall. Still, the monster ends up in the New Jersey sewers, body horror, some murky sewer environment. Still, it is simply a selfishly reasonable belief that they could and did get away with anything like this. It contributes to the conspiracy theory, but what else?
If horror is your thing, this is one of the standout episodes, with deep dark tunnels and moments of guys being assaulted and dragged beneath the sewage water. It’s creepy, humorous, clever, engaging, and fun. “The Host” manages to be all of those things, thanks to writing that goes beyond the case and characters and into the wider mythos. “The Host” is a true classic and one of the finest episodes of season two and the whole series.