101 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
101 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
Review of "Goblins"
|
|
|
|
The X-Files: Goblins
|
|
|
|
review by Sarah Stegall
|
|
munchkyn@netcom.com
|
|
|
|
The translation of an idea intended for the strictly
|
|
visual medium of television to the literary medium of the
|
|
printed page is always difficult and often unsuccessful. In
|
|
many ways, Charles Grant has succeeded in interpreting Chris
|
|
Carter's "The X-Files" into book form ("The X-Files: Goblins",
|
|
HarperPrism, 1994, $4.99).
|
|
Agents Mulder and Scully are assigned by their new boss,
|
|
a newcomer named Douglas, to investigate two murders in a town
|
|
near Ft. Dix, New Jersey. The MOs suggest a serial killer
|
|
known to his victims, who prefers a slashing bayonet for that
|
|
up close and personal touch. An eyewitness to one murder
|
|
claims the assailant was a tree. Another claims to have seen
|
|
the murderer emerge from a solid brick wall. Assisting
|
|
Mulder and Scully are two other rather bumbling FBI agents,
|
|
the likable Hank Webber and a blonde agent named Licia
|
|
Andrews. Grant has faithfully included our favorite elements
|
|
of the show: Mulder and Scully must battle not only the bad
|
|
guys "out there" but the forces working against them within
|
|
their own team. The skies are appropriately dark, the alleys
|
|
are properly endowed with an air of menace, there is the right
|
|
sense of ambiguity and concealed menace. Mysterious
|
|
informants pop up in unexpected places to whisper cryptic
|
|
comments in Mulder's ear. Not everyone is who he seems to be.
|
|
There's plenty of paranoia and suspense to go around.
|
|
But. (You knew that was coming, didn't you?)
|
|
It is plain Grant's heart is not in his work in
|
|
"Goblins". Although he has done a manful job of capturing the
|
|
basic components of "The X-Files", there's a sense he's doing
|
|
it all by the numbers. So many informants, so many eccentric
|
|
characters, so many grisly murders, so many attacks on Mulder,
|
|
so many jokes per chapter. The body walks, but the soul is
|
|
missing. Take a look at this:
|
|
"Dana Scully stood amid the clutter of Mulder's office
|
|
and flapped her arms hopelessly."
|
|
This sentence sums up everything that is wrong with the
|
|
novel. It is not Fox Mulder's office, it is *their* office.
|
|
And "flapped her arms" is just plain clumsy writing. Scully
|
|
was shrugging her shoulders, or raising her arms helplessly,
|
|
but she was not attempting take-off. Throughout the book,
|
|
these awkward phrasings jolt us out of the flow of the story.
|
|
Her fit of pique is petty and bad-tempered, not traits we
|
|
associate with the cool, reserved Agent Scully.
|
|
Continuity errors abound: during one crucial
|
|
conversation that takes place during the *absence* of one of
|
|
the key players, the "absent" character suddenly turns around
|
|
and speaks. How did she get there? Obviously, because she
|
|
was left over from an earlier draft and the revision was
|
|
incomplete. The result is total confusion. This is an
|
|
amateur's blunder that blew me completely out of the story.
|
|
Motivations are muddled: in one scene the conniving Major
|
|
Tonero vows to get the killer of his sister's fiance, but
|
|
later actively blocks the FBI's investigation. Carl Barelli,
|
|
Mulder's friend, pleads with Mulder for help and then gets in
|
|
his way when Mulder investigates. But worst of all, there is
|
|
absolutely no motivation for the early murders. Like Mulder
|
|
and Scully, we are baffled by motiveless crimes until the
|
|
murderer begins cleaning up "loose ends": only then are we
|
|
able to connect the later victims and draw conclusions.
|
|
Merely ascribing the murders to "psychosis" is inadequate.
|
|
Psychotics are compulsive, acting out obscure but discoverable
|
|
agendas, as Special Agent Fox Mulder could have told us.
|
|
Grant does a serviceable job of fleshing out Fox Mulder.
|
|
Our first sight of Mulder, sitting on the steps of the
|
|
Jefferson Memorial eating lunch on a spring afternoon, is
|
|
wonderful: I wanted to sit down and break out the tuna fish
|
|
sandwiches. His flirtatious relationship with a waitress
|
|
(Kellie Matthews-Simmons, call your office!) in his favorite
|
|
neighborhood bar, his sardonic tolerance of his eager-beaver
|
|
junior partner Webber, his interest in sports, made him real
|
|
and present and human many times. His interior dialogue is
|
|
believable, and we get some memorable Mulderisms. Even the
|
|
obligatory dream sequence, rehashing yet again the
|
|
disappearance of his sister, is well-handled. Mulder doesn't
|
|
break character once.
|
|
Dana Scully, however, is a shrew. Even her teasing of
|
|
Mulder is spiteful. Throughout the book, Scully functions as
|
|
an irritant, not as an equal partner. She is constantly
|
|
nagging, obstructing, nay-saying. Rarely does she contribute
|
|
anything to the advancement of the plot. The one "insight"
|
|
she is given, which is supposed to make her the one who
|
|
discovers the key to the mystery, is set up in advance so
|
|
obviously my three year old could have spotted it. I don't
|
|
think this is sexism from Charles Grant, I thinks it marks a
|
|
bewildered inability to get inside Dana Scully's head.
|
|
"Goblins" shows all the earmarks of a novel written
|
|
hastily to specifications. It is competently done and a fair
|
|
read, but the seams show. If this were an episode of "The X-
|
|
Files", I would give it two sunflower seeds out of five.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sarah Stegall
|
|
munchkyn@netcom.com
|
|
|