Salvage (The X-Files)
"Salvage" was loosely based on Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a 1989 Japanese cyberpunk film by cult-film director Shinya Tsukamoto.
The episode contained several elaborate special effects sequences, most notably in the teaser, wherein a man stops a car with his body.
The next morning, Doggett checks out the new murder scene and finds an interesting shredded document with the company name for Chamber Technologies.
Doggett, Scully, and SWAT team members surround the chamber but Ray tears his way out of its back wall.
Doggett, searching in the salvage yard, finds a Chamber Technologies drum, inside of which is a metal corpse.
In truth, the Clifton was poisoned by his own work with alloys and requested that he be put in the barrel in order to not ruin the company or slow the research.
At the same time, Doggett notices Nora Pearce at the lab, looking through files for the person responsible and, in talking to her, make her understand an unfortunate series of accidents led to Ray's poisoning and no one was truly to blame for his death.
After Doggett and Scully interrogate Nora, she arrives home and Ray shows up demanding the name of the person responsible.
However, he realizes that Harris was an accountant who accidentally sent the barrel to the salvage yard and, seeing that he was ultimately innocent, Ray spares him and goes off to die.
Scully believes that this act represented the last of Ray’s humanity and that whatever drove him to kill also made him spare a man who begged for his life.
[2] "Salvage" was written by X-Files staff writer Jeffrey Bell and was "loosely" based on Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a 1989 Japanese cyberpunk film by cult-film director Shinya Tsukamoto.
[3] The idea to write an episode about a man whose body is made completely out of "dense metal alloys" was developed by Bell before actor Robert Patrick joined the show.
[3] Robert Patrick had previously played the role of a liquid-metal T-1000 android assassin in the 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
In fact, Patrick had been cast as Agent Doggett by the executives in a hope that his role in the movie would appeal to the 18–34 male demographic, upon which advertising prices are based.
[4] Indeed, the episode contains an explicit reference to Patrick's role, written in homage: after hearing Scully's theory, Doggett replies, "What’re you saying?
In order to create this effect, Wade Williams, the actor who played the metal man, was filmed against a green screen.
To create the illusion of being hit by a car, the lighting was dropped and a gust of wind from fans occurred at the moment of the supposed impact.
[10] Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode one star out of five.
[12] However, Vitaris did praise the make-up in the episode, noting that "that makeup is [Wade Andrew] William's performance […] he is an astonishing sight.
She applauded the way the guest star was allowed to "take over" the episode, but felt that the de-emphasis on Scully and Doggett rendered their scenes "boring".
