"The Puppet Masters" and XF (season 9 spoilers) -- X-Philes World-X-Files Movie 2

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Date Posted: 14:05:13 06/29/02 Sat
Author: Islandgirl
Subject:

"The Puppet Masters" and XF (season 9 spoilers)

Note: This post contains major spoilers for the series finale of XF. It also contains spoilers for the ending of the sci-fi novel "The Puppet Master", if anybody is planning on read that.

****

A couple of months ago, we were discussing Robert A. Heinlein's sci-fi novel "The Puppet Masters", which has been cited as one of the major influences for "The X-Files", along with the TV movie "The Night Stalker". At the time, my input to the discssion was somewhat limited, as I'd never read the book. I finally found a copy of it and got a chance to read it this summer, so I thought I'd reopen the discussion.
The book is pretty good. The funny thing is that it's apparently set right about now. It was written in the early 50s, and there's no specific date of when the events of the novel are supposed to be taking place, but at one point the hero refers to an event of his childhood taking place in the 1980s, and as he seems to be in his mid-30s during the book, I guess early 21st century would be the right time frame.
The two main characters are Mary and Sam, "agents" who work for a federal law enforcement agency of some sort that is never specifically named. They are similar to Mulder and Scully, right down to the facts that Mary is a redhead and they both only ever use one name apiece. (They use different last names on various undercover assignments, but their real last names are never revealed.) They are basically investigating an alien invasion which is just the opposite of the abductions Mulder and Scully often investigated; instead of the aliens taking people away, they latch on to them as a kind of parasite and control their speech and actions. The aliens are about the size and shape of jellyfish and are difficult to detect when people are fully clothed; they usually latch onto the back of the neck or between the shoulders and are covered up by hair and/or clothing. Naturally, Mary and Sam have a hard time convincing people in power that there is really an alien invasion, that it's really as widespread as it appears to be, etc.
During their first case with each other they have to pretend to be brother and sister, which annoys the heck out of Sam. By about the third chapter he's making sexual innuendos and suggestions to Mary, which she originally bats off as being "too busy" for, but she eventually succumbs. Indeed, one of my minor gripes with this book (prepare to faint, since you had to listen me to complain about the exact *opposite* problem with XF) was that their relationship became romantic/sexual too early on. They got married (I liked that part, of course; and, I guess, most companies of the early 1950s would have been reluctant to publish a book in which a woman who was being portrayed as "good" had a sexual relationship outside of marriage) about midway through the book. After a brief honeymoon, they returned to alien-fighting without much of a hitch.
Another major character in the book was one they referred to as "the Old Man". He was boss of the agency they worked for and nobody ever called him anything else. What we don't find out 'til near the end of the book is that he really *is* Sam's "old man"; that is, his father. This reminded me of the entire "who is Mulder's father" question that basically spanned the entire run of XF.
The ending was bittersweet and very reminiscent of the last few eps of XF. It comes in an epilogue that takes place several years after the main events of the book. At this time, Mary and Sam are the parents of a young daughter and scientists have finally pinpointed the planet (actually a moon of Saturn) where the aliens originated from. They want Mary and Sam to be part of the astronaut force that goes to eliminate the aliens so they can't come back and stage another invasion. The time needed to make the trip (part of which will be spent in suspended animation), complete the mission and return to Earth is estimated to be over a decade. But they can't take their daughter with them. So they finally decide to leave their daughter with "the Old Man" (her grandfather) and go on the mission because it's what they need to do in order to save humanity. I kind of wonder if this ending is what made CC decide that William "needed" to be put up for adoption.

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