The X-Files Body Count: Season 8, Episode 9: Salvage

Synopsis

In Indiana, a woman mourns the death of her husband, Ray Pearce, due to Gulf War Syndrome. However, Pearce shows up soon after when a friend comforting her wraps his car around him. Pearce isn't injured, and kills the friend. A guy who looks exactly like Pearce clips some metallic whiskers at a halfway house, but Pearce's wife insists that he's dead. When Pearce shows up at the salvage yard where he used to work, the man who runs it blasts him with a shotgun but Pearce survives and kills him.

Doggett notices that the operator was shredding documents related to Chamber Technologies. Pearce has become increasingly metallic (with a couple of nods to the Terminator series, natch). Doggett visits Chamber Technologies and finds that they're working on molecular memory alloys that can repair themselves from damage, but that the researchers consider it a pipe dream. Scully determines that the blood from the salvage yard matches Pearce, but has enough metal to be considered lethal. Pearce sneaks into Chamber Technologies and is trapped, but smashes his way out. Pearce's wife tracks him down at the halfway house, and he says that some people have to pay for what they've done.

At the salvage yard, Doggett finds a Chamber Technologies drum containing the body of a metallic man and former doctor at the company. Another researcher says that the man was trying to protect the company after some fatal work with the metal alloys, and Scully surmises that he infected Pearce when the drum was transferred to the salvage yard. The agents realize that Pearce's wife knows who he's after, and eventually find out who it is. Pearce attacks the man, who authorized the shipment of hazardous materials to the salvage yard, but stops himself after seeing that the man has a young son. Scully figures that Pearce may have become more machine than man, but retained a flicker of humanity. The episode ends with Pearce crushing himself in a car compactor.

Wade Williams, who plays Ray Pearce, also played Brad Bellick on Prison Break. Arye Gross, who plays Dr. Tom Puvogel, formerly played Adam Green on Ellen. Tamara Clatterbuck, who plays Larina Jackson, also had roles on The Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless. Randy Walker, a Hollywood police adviser, plays a SWAT cop here; he formerly faced off against Robert Patrick in the same role in Terminator 2.

Episode Body Count