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Name: Walter
S. Skinner Rank: Assistant Director, FBI Background: US Marine Corps Specialty: Dealing with members of the shadow government like X, the Cigarette-Smoking Man and Krycek |
Fox Mulder's first supervisor, Section Chief Scott Blevins, never even laid eyes on him, preferring to manipulate him through paper commands and through Scully, whom he thought of as his spy. Mulder's current boss, Walter Skinner, is not at all afraid to confront Mulder (or anyone else) directly.
Skinner, like many FBI agents, is an ex-Marine. In his first appearance, he noted Mulder's personal interest in preventing the release of genetic mutant serial killer Eugene Tooms and warned Mulder to play "by the book." After Tooms smashes up his own face with one of Mulder's shoes, making it appear that Mulder beat him up, Skinner advises Mulder to take a break and orders him to stay away from Tooms, apparently understanding that these things happen but laying down the law that they are to stop now. Skinner has trouble believing Mulder's report on Tooms, but when he asks the Cigarette-Smoking Man, the C-G Man says he believes it ("Tooms").
Skinner is worried when Mulder goes missing ("Little Green Men"). When Mulder turns up, Skinner chews him out for haring off after UFOs, but when the Cigarette-Smoking Man threatens Mulder's career, Skinner turns on him and orders him out of his office. He shows the same attitude in "One Breath" when the Cigarette-Smoking Man tells him to "sit" on Mulder. Mulder may need an ass-chewing now and again, but he's Skinner's to dress down, no one else's. This is a very Marine Corps attitude, where a leader expects his men to look to him for praise and blame and resents outsiders trying to promise them things.
Skinner assigns Mulder to the Flukeman case reluctantly, remarking that the case should have been an X-File, but that "we all take our orders from someone." ("The Host"). But when Duane Barry kidnaps Scully under bizarre circumstances, Skinner does "what they fear most" and reopens the X-Files.
Skinner respects and values Mulder, even though he rarely shows it. When Mulder tries to resign, Skinner tells him about an out-of-body experience Skinner had in Vietnam, then tells Mulder, "I am afraid to look beyond that experience, Agent Mulder. You -- you are not. Your resignation is unacceptable."
Skinner also relies on force more often than Mulder or Scully. When Scully is captured by the alien bounty hunter, Skinner waits with a sharpshooter at the ransom site. When he discovers that Mulder has been kidnapped and X may know where he is, Skinner demands the information and tries to beat it out of X with a duel of head butts and groin shots that ends with X's pistol at Skinner's head. "Pull that trigger and you'll be killing two men," Skinner tells him. Even in the midst of hand-to-hand combat, his mind is on the mission and on his missing man ("End Game").
This reliance on force can backfire: in "Piper Maru" Skinner refuses to drop the case he's working on after a warning from nameless men in suits and ties, so he is shot nearly dead in a coffeeshop.
Mulder talks back to Skinner and actually hits him in "Anasazi", but he's under the influence of poisons and Skinner's willing to overlook it. When the Majestic 12 digital tape goes missing, Skinner gets it back, but it is ambiguous whether he will share it with Mulder and Scully or turn it over to the Cigarette-Smoking Man ("The Blessing Way").
He may have a spirit guardian: an old woman who dragged him back from the brink of death in Vietnam and whom he sees when in the presence of people on the brink of death. Skinner's marriage broke up after seventeen years, driving him into the arms of a woman who turned up dead beside him. His wife, Sharon, is badly hurt in a car accident that may have been arranged by enemies of the X-Files; he goes to her hospital room, confesses how much he loves her, then sees the old woman again. Sharon wakes from her coma. Although he doesn't want to look any further into the mystery of the old woman, he is determined to try to save his marriage ("Avatar").
Skinner has become more comfortable with Mulder's odd beliefs after working with him for two years. At one point, he tells Mulder he was called in because the leader of a religious cult may "have some paranormal abilities" and describes Ephisian's control over his wives as "unnatural". Scully, naturally, objects to Skinner talking like a carnival huckster ("In the Field Where I Died").
Skinner trusts Mulder enough to let him chain Alex Krycek to his balcony. When a man is hurled to his death from that balcony, and Mulder goes missing, Skinner is quite understandably upset ("Tunguska"). But he goes with Scully to the Senate hearing and tries to get her not to provoke the Powers That Be ("Terma").
Text by Steve Johnson
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