Phyllis Paddock-Flukeman-Golem-Chinga Doll

Welcome to the second entry of Monsters of Week!

This time, we are going back to the golden era with cult episodes from the first five seasons. I will talk about another classic episode on Satanism/cults, but this time with a twist; I will present you one of the most legendary monsters of the whole series; I will tell you about a heartfelt twist on the Frankstein mythology dealing with antisemitism and finally it will be time to play with the first equipment coming from the first and only episodes written by Stephen King.

So, no more introductions! Open your umbrellas (raining toads are forecasted), put your best protective diving suit, relax as in the end, we will all become just dirt; and get ready, there is no time to play! Another journey into the spooky is starting!

It’s raining toads! Alleluja! (S2E14)

Disclaimer: This article will have spoilers. If you are looking for the episode to catch up by yourself, it will be immediately under the name of the card; you will not need to read further than that. Whenever I have had doubts while writing the article, I consulted the X-Files Wikia. I would suggest to anyone looking for more information relating to details of the X-Files lore to go there for further details. This post is not, and it will never be, an article for the lore maniac of the series. If you find mistakes or imprecisions, comment, and if I find them meaningful, I will add them and cite you.

Phyllis Paddock – XFB056

Season 2 Episode 14 – “Die Hand Die Verlentz”

Quote of the episode:

P. Paddock: “For your final examination, one-half of your grade will be based on your diagram of a dissected pig embryo. Of course, these are actually hog embryos, belonging to the order of the archeodactyl, or creatures with hooves. Be sure to remove the heart and lungs and draw a diagram of each. Be neat. Extra credit will be given for dissecting the heart. You have until the end of the period.“

Not as scary as the card’s photo made you believe right? She seems the average middle-aged teacher you may have seen in countless movies or not so modern TV series, and that is exactly how she is intended to appear. Phyllis Paddock ( PhyP for the rest of this post for brevity) can not be exactly described as the antagonist in the episode, even though she deserves her title as the “Monster of the Week” being the killer our heroes, Mulder and Scully, need to stop. Phyllis is another incarnation of evil or the devil itself, coming back to punish the members of a satanic cult worshipping her as they are not following anymore the rituals of their religion as they should.

Actual scene of the “Quote of the episode”. Maybe it is just me, but this scene was creepy even without the final effects. You Americans are hardcore with these types of school exams…

So what is this episode about? Well, we are going back to the “satanic ritual abuse” panic of the ’80s and early ’90s in the USA. This is a common theme of plenty of X-Files episodes, with this one, being so early in the series, becoming one of the most famous ones, and for a lot of reasons also one of the most interesting.

First, we are in a moment in which Scully not only shows her typical disbelief toward solutions based on the paranormal, that will characterize her till at least Mulder’s abduction, but she also still trusts the government agencies. During the episode, she bases her skepticism of any actual widespread satanic cults movement with a real FBI review that “proved” that almost all those claims were based mainly on hysteria and imagination affecting impressionable minds.

This was clearly a hot topic at the time and the producers clearly wanted an episode backing up neither the FBI position nor the concerned public one. So they created a fairly balanced and in some way satyrical episode in which we have a possible victim of the satanic cult spelling out all the typical abuses described in the media, see video, (WARNING: it is a very dramatic and well-acted scene, don’t watch the following video if you are easily impressed or you are in a good mood) and while she was actually the daughter of a member of the satanic cult, we will discover that most of her recollection is false and just coming from confused memories related to some of the rituals she had to participate in coupled with what she heard and read in the media.

While it is a very sad moment played for drama in a sci-fi TV series, I think this is also an interesting memorandum of what were the accuses toward some of these cults, and why the public opinion may have been so shocked by them.

But what about PhyP? Well as I said at the start, while she is the killer, she is never actually after Scully and Mulder in this episode. In a way, she is also helping them. In a twist that made this episode rise from great to cult, the satanic group leading the school is represented as a mundane group of people following these ancient rituals without really believing in them anymore, just paying lip service to them without much faith behind it, mirroring the same behavior of many modern believers toward the most largely accepted religions.

When their evil God is accidentally conjured by some local teenagers, she will take on her hand the task of punishing the members of the cult and at the same time go after the type of sacrifices of children that they were not performing anymore in her name as it was encoded in their faith. To remain on the theme of the episode, this evil entity will take the form of a teacher, representing the fear of the parents of having their children seduced by evil in an environment in which they can’t control them.

Still, the true nature of this innocuous teacher will not be understood by anyone in the episode until the resolution, in which the Satanists will receive their punishment for their lack of discipline and Mulder and Scully will be indirectly saved from them because of it, leaving PhyP as the only true winner of the episode. Impressive for such an innocent-looking Monster of the Week, right?

At the end of the episode, she will even make fun of our protagonists by leaving a message for them, that if you have watched the card I am sure you will recognize.

The message “Goodbye. It’s been nice working with you” has a double meaning as it was a farewell from two historic writers of the series, James Wong and Glen Morgan, who would come back only for few episodes in season 4 after writing this one.

The photo chosen for this card is one of the few they could have used from this episode to make her look like a monster. In particular, here, she is remotely controlling the big snake you can see in the first video to murder one of the cultists.

Stats:

Cost: 6. ATK/DEF: 8/8. Wounds: 2. I am kind of lost here. I have tried my best but I can’t come up with many connections. If anyone has any suggestions, I will edit this post. 2 is the season in which she appears, 6 we know is a number that can be associated with evil, 8 can be a snake biting its tail. But to be honest that is the best I can do.

Powers:

Range: Throughout the episode, she is never seen physically assaulting anyone, and all the homicides are made through magic. So, while it may not be your standard interpretation of a ranged attack, I think it still fits more than well.

Demonic Sacrifice: Another smart choice giving flavor to the card. PhyP is not actively searching for conflict, she just wants you to follow the rules. And the rules include offering to her some sacrifices. So be nice, KO somebody you care for, and she will just go back to rest.

It’s been nice working with you: Referencing the message left by PhyP at the ending, it connects to her benevolent nature toward anyone who is not her target. The number of cards you can draw, two, may refer to the two writers leaving the production after writing this last episode.

Flavor Vote: 8/10. It is a card that for sure makes the connections to its episode clear and in a smart way, but I still miss some connection for the stats to up the vote.

Card Vote: 7/10. It is a versatile card, interesting primarily for its effects on possibly KOing a character before dying and letting you draw two cards, which makes her extremely interesting for a lot of Combo decks. On the Aggro side, she has decent stats and 2 wounds but she suffers from “Therearebetterchoicitis”.

Flukeman – XFB054

Season 2 Episode 2 – “The Host”

Quote of the episode

Scully: (looking at the flukeman) Mulder, this is amazing! Its vestigial features seem parasitic, but it has primate physiology. Where the hell did it come from?

Mulder: I don’t know. But it looks like I’m gonna have to tell Skinner that his suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm after all.

Well, I hope you survived the wall of text from the previous monster. We are just starting.

But don’t worry, this time we are going back to the basics: a horrible looking monster appears, Mulder and Scully get involved, they track it down and kill it (or at least one of them). And while this now seems like an obvious clichè, this is probably the episode that brought the formula to the definitive success.

So what is the Flukeman? It’s a genetically mutated creature evolved on a Russian freight containing salvaged material from Chernobyl, he made there its first kill, finding later a way to the sewer system of an American city. Here he attacked a workman, that, saved by a colleague, was able to get away but with mysterious bite marks on its back that prompted the involvement of Mulder and Scully.



The wound left by the Flukeman bite and some real-life Liver Flukes.

During the episode, we discover that this bite transmitted a larva into the victim, which then becomes the host for the flatworm that, once released from the victim, will find its way toward the sewer system to develop and become a new Flukeman (WARNING: the video is mildly disgusting. And no you can’t use the excuse of having being traumatized by my article and stopped showering if you smell bad at the next tournament).

A new, cute baby Flukeman is born.

Simple and effective, this episode condensed three basic fears: fear of radiation and unwanted mutations; the unknown that we never considered in our daily life, but that is just under our feet in tunnels extending for kilometers, where anything could evolve independently from us; and finally the fear for parasites and infection from other organisms.

This simple formula, coupled with impressive practical effects like the Flukeman costume, made this monster so iconic that it was constantly cited by fans and production as the best or one of the best traditional monsters in all the X-Files seasons.

This episode was also an incredible directorial feat, with some scenes actually shot in real sewers, and with many anecdotes talking about members of the team having vomiting sessions during production. Another particularity of the episode is that it is one of the few Monster of the Week episodes directed by Chris Carter, the series ideator, who normally focused on the mythology arc.

The chosen card’s photo perfectly describes how disgustingly looking the Flukeman is, while also showcasing the quality and details of the costume.

Flukeman is joining the “Everybody is beautiful in its own way” movement.

Stats:

Cost: 5. ATK/DEF: 5/7. Wounds: 2. Again, I have not much to say about the numbers, apart from the obvious 2 wounds being justified by the presence of 2 Flukemen in the episode, and the episode being the second of the second season.

Powers:

Transmit Flatworm Larva: another successful flavor implementation in my opinion. If you attack or defend against the Flukeman, you are in deep s**t (literally) and you can’t expect to get out of it without consequences. The infected mechanics can be imagines as the larvae slowly growing inside the enemy character until he is stunned while vomiting the flatworm. I would have loved a mechanic where a flatworm token is produced when the character is stunned due to this power.

Flavor vote: 7/10. Just one power and not much apparent reasoning behind the stats would normally make me give a low vote, but the power mechanic was perfectly crafted around the character so I think it deserves to receive a 7, though barely reaching it.

Card vote: 8/10. While very simple, I think this card has plenty of potential. It can really mess with the opponent formation by starting to erode the stats of high drop characters and/or main character with high defense.

Golem – XFB053

Season 4 Episode 15 – “Kaddish”

Quote of the episode

Mulder: A ghost is a spirit without form. I believe what we’re looking here, is… is form without spirit. Something called a Golem.

What would you do to have your loved ones back? This premise has been the center of countless pieces of literature and media, and it is also the driving force giving life to this Monster of the Week. A soulless and unstoppable creature of the Hebrew mythology made from dirt and given life by the intense love of a mourning partner, with the only goal of avenging the mourned one by murdering the killers and who inspired them with his anti-semitic propaganda.

So this episode is kind of a hard one for me. It is for sure interesting, and his focus on anti-semitism made it a cult in certain environments, with realistic depiction of anti-jew propaganda coming from real examples of the time, but the Monster by itself is not that particular, and the concept of a spirit-less lifeform will be something re-used other time in the series (e.g.: “Arcadia-6×15” and “Home Again-10×4”).

For me, what made this episode a memorable one was the family/mourning theme and the opportunity of learning about some Hebrew traditions and in particular the lore of the Golem iconography which was something I was familiar with as a term but never knew the origin. The title of the episode itself, Kaddish, refers to the prayer made daily in a time of mourning for thirty days in memory of spouse and relatives. I will expand a bit on the Golem lore later when I will explain the “Emet” keyword. For now, I will just highlight how, even though the appearance is similar, the Golem is not a zombie or an undead, but a totally new creature created by the conjurer out of mud and that lives completely independent from the human he may be copying.

The romantic theme instead is what gives some emotional support and depth to a plot otherwise hindered by a representation of Nazis/Jew-haters that resemble too much a caricature more than a realistic depiction. The promised spouse of the dead one and her father are both flawed characters that will not help the investigation and that will even actively hide the truth from M&S (Mulder and Scully, not Marks & Spencer in case there are some British readers), allowing for a decent amount of twists about who is actually the conjurer. When it will be revealed to be the promised spouse, just unable to let go of the partner she loved too much, a beautiful ending scene will close the episode with her finally accepting the death and dismantling the spell.

“Killing it softly with her love…. Killing it soooftly… with her love. Erasing its whole life, with that word. Killing it softlyyyy”

The photo chosen for the card is the moment in which the Golem is created, right on top of the burial site, by a then-unknown member of the Jewish community affected by the murder. It was almost an obligatory choice as most of the other apparitions of the golem are in very black scenes and in general, it just looks like a dirty looking/zombified human being.

Stats:

Cost: 4. ATK/DEF: 4/4. 2 Wounds. I struggled quite a lot to see anything meaningful in these stats, together with the choice of giving him swarm as I will discuss later. But I think I have now found the key. As I said, the Golem is not a Zombie, so the 2 wounds may be seen as representing the actual human, followed then by the Golem. The returning number four may be a reference to the season, or to the use of four in Hebrew tradition. The fourth day of creation is the one in which the material universe is completed (sun, stars, moon), referencing if you want that the Golem is not actually a true lifeform, just a mockery of it using lifeless materials. Four is also the number of victims of the Golem in the episode.

Powers:

Swarm: As said, I struggled a bit with this as it really doesn’t make sense considering just the episode. Conceptually, of course, it is based on the fact that Golems do not have an “identity” so nothing stops two of them appearing on the same side. They are not living creatures per se, and they are not linked to specific souls.

Bulletproof: being a magical creature of mud and dirt, it can’t be killed. Considering what they had in mind for its last power, of course, they had to find a trade-off between making it what you might call impervious, and at the same time still killable. So I think that bulletproof is a decent compromise that will for sure make this character not so easy to deal with in the future.

Emet (אמת): ok, this could get veeeery long as I really fell into a rabbit hole with this. But I think you are already heroes if you are still reading at this point, so I will make it short. Emet means “truth” in Hebrew. It is formed by three characters (Aleph, Mem, Tau), and it is put on the Golem to give him life by its creator. This is not really exactly how Golems work, but in general, their true mythology here is just lightly touched, as the main force was supposed to be love instead of proper Kabbalah teachings. It still heavily references the power of words and the words contained within words that is a fundamental principle of Kabbalah. The only way to dismiss the spell is to remove the first letter, Aleph(א), leaving Met which means dead. Which his exactly what she is doing in the previous picture, first lightly and lovingly caressing its hand where the word is, then finally with her lips saying goodbye. But hey, your opponent can’t force you to do that in-game so you will never lose.

The letter Aleph being removed from the hand, killing the Golem.

Flavor vote: 8/10. I think we are in a similar situation to Phyp. A card starting with a Monsters with not much potential, that is made great by some smart choices, but still is on the low end of the 8/10 scale. I just love the implementation of the invulnerability and the use of the word Emet, but I think more could have been done with it. Still, Golems are protective figures in the Hebrew tradition, and no protection is better than literally not letting you lose while it stays face-up.

Card Vote: 9/10. Well, needless to say, this will be a card that will see plenty of use. If well-defended, it can really mess up with any main character or game plan relying on alternative win conditions.

Chinga Doll – XFB060

Season 5 Episode 10 – “Chinga”

Quote of the episode

Doll: Let’s have fun! I want to play!



It’s Purple Man Chucky. Yes, she is called Chinga because it sounds vaguely like Chucky and female. No, Stephen King didn’t know that “Chinga tu madre!” doesn’t mean “Give a doll to your mother” in Spanish. No, there is not anything more than that, she forces characters to hurt themselves and that’s why she has that power. Thanks for reading, that’s all for today. See you next time!

What? You have survived till here and you want more? Even though she is a possessed doll and possessed toys are the stupidest concept ever implemented in a live-action production?… Ok fine. But it was you, not me making this article 5-10 minutes longer. So no complaints will be accepted afterward.

Ok more seriously, I love the card, I hate the concept of the episode, but it was still a good average X-Files in execution, particularly considering the “Monster” we are dealing with. Why do I hate the concept? I was traumatized when I was young from a TV series that had an episode about killing toys. I was between 8-10 years old, and I think I have spent weeks afterward checking the toys before sleeping, controlling they were staying exactly where I put them. Ceramic dolls are of course even creepier and I don’t know how anyone could have ever played with those uncanny valley freaks.

(link to the episode that scared me if you want to laugh about how easy it was at the time to impress a child https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbM_Mym2ti4 . Btw while searching for this, I was impressed by the… uh… talent of the female actresses involved)

What’s worse, is that seeing any implementation of the killer doll concept as an adult is extremely cringy. In these movies, you have adults faking fights against dolls. I am talking about grown-ass actors having to fake that they are struggling against Baby-Yoda sized toys. Made of ceramic or plastic. Wow. At least, it is always good for a laugh to picture the atmosphere in the set while shooting.

But you see, this time we have Stephen King, the genius, co-writing. So how to avoid embarrassing the whole crew? Well, you see, Chinga is not physically attacking its victims. She is forcing them to hurt themselves. So you just need a creepy enough kid to make the fact that she is not trashing that creepy doll fuck in the dumpster immediately believable, and voilà, you have your Monster of the week.

An example of the not so bad killing ideas in the episode.

Also, this power is connected to one of the good parts of the episode. The (mild) gore presented or hinted when the victims kill themselves is interesting and well presented, and in general, the tension of the episode is kept at a good level in between the mother of the creepy kid trying to avoid further killings and the inevitable deaths when she fails to contain the doll.

Another particularity is that this episode has Scully alone facing the case while she is on vacation, since, of course, being a Stephen King idea, it needed to be set in Maine. At least no teenagers orgy is necessary to get everyone safely out of the nightmare this time, and Scully will simply put Chinga into a microwave destroying it. Yes, I am not joking.

Scully ‘s talent for cooking was never on par with her talent as a scientist.

As a serious, final consideration I think that this was a great idea to implement the first equipment of the photographic universe. The episode is cheesy, but in that ’80s horror way that it is entertaining if not taken too seriously. The involvement of Stephen King, Scully having to solve the case alone while consulting by phone Mulder and the violent scenes caused by the doll made it a cult episode that was for sure worth it of being included in the set.

The interactions between Scully and Mulder in this episode where honestly hilarious. This is the final scene where Scully comes back from the “holidays” and found that Mulder was not exactly productive in her absence, with the “throwing pencil while bored” running gag here appearing for the first time.

Powers:

I Want to Play: This, together with “Let’s have fun” are the only two expressions of the doll, and they pre-announce that she is going to make someone hurt himself/herself. Believe it or not, also the choice of the cost has meaning as “energy”, in particular inexplicably high and localized emission of electrostatic energy, is throughout the series associated with telepathic and telekinetic manifestations.

Flavor vote: 9/10. Yes, it is a simple card. But it is an equipment, and it does exactly what she does in the episode. It is one of these cases where I wouldn’t even know what to add.

Card vote: 7/10. I think the power is great but given to a team with very few good supporting characters to help bring her into the playing field, and having to pay a blue for it make it a bit less interesting for me.

Wow, I made it! And if you are still reading, you made it too! Making this article was great fun, but honestly considering the amount of time necessary it was also probably a bit too much effort for a set that is already getting old news. So please, if you like this content let me know it here in the comments or on the facebook page. It really helps to motivate me.

I also want to thank anyone that read and supported the last entry, even though the website was as barebone as it can get. It is a little more presentable now but I know there aren’t any real engaging features. I hope you have found this content interesting again! Let me know if you have any advice to improve!