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From X-Files Official Magazine (February 2002)
Transcribed by Megan
By K. Stoddard Hayes
FBI CASE STUDY: SPECIAL AGENT JOHN DOGGETT
AGENT FILE:
John Doggett
Assigned to The X-Files, 2000
CAREER HISTORY:
Former Marine and NYPD Detective
PERSONAL:
His son Luke was abducted and murdered in 1997 at age 7. The case is still open.
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John Doggett hates playing games. He is as open and direct as law enforcement work allows, and insists that those he works with be equally direct with him. When he is first assigned to the X-files, the whole issue of paranormal phenomena seems at first like just another game, played by people like Mulder and Reyes, who would rather seek a supernatural explanation than a simple criminal one.
As a sceptic, Doggett fills the role that Scully had when she began work on the X-files. And in that role, he pushes both Scully and Skinner into the true-believer role that was once Mulder's, as they try to convince him that there might be paranormal explanations for Mulder's disappearance.
As Doggett steps into Scully's shoes, he follows the same road of belief that she did. Like Scully, he instinctively seeks the rational, real-world (and, in Scully's case, scientific) explanations first, and only looks at the paranormal with great reluctance, when no other possibilities are left. When Reyes uses paranormal evidence to link a series of murders with the three-year old murder of Doggett's son, Doggett's first reaction is, "Not this again!"
Yet he has seen enough, and is honest enough, that he has to begin to question his own scepticism. He asks Scully why she began to believe in the paranormal.
"I realised it was me - that I was afraid to believe," Scully's answers.
Her words force him to examine his own fears. He tells Reyes, "I gotta believe that I did everything I could to save him, to get him back safe, to not let him down... These other possibilities that you talk about - if they're real, then that's something else I coulda done to save my son." ("Empedocles")
Once Doggett starts coming face to face with the paranormal, it's Scully's turn to help him, as Mulder helped her, to come to terms with one of the realities of the X-files - that most of the time, the truth will remain buried. In "Medusa", Doggett is determined that the chief of the Boston MTA should be held accountable for opening a subway tunnel that contained a deadly biological pathogen. When Scully points out that they have no evidence, Doggett can't believe it. He saw the organisms on his own skin and saw the results in the burned flesh of the victims, and he knows the MTA chief was more concerned with his rush-hour schedule than with protecting lives. But there's that word, "evidence". As Mulder and Scully have done countless times before, he has to learn to let it go.
Doggett's relationship with Scully in some ways parallels Scully's with Mulder: the sceptic facing their own beliefs, and the new partner winning the believer's trust and respect. At the core, though, his feelings for Scully are pure John Doggett. As a law enforcement officer, he believes he owes his partner complete loyalty from the start. He'll cover her back no matter what he thinks of her beliefs. But it very soon goes beyond that. Through the whole year, whenever Scully is in danger, when her pregnancy is threatened, or even when she's upset and grieving for Mulder, Doggett's overriding concern is always her well being. Yet he also cares enough to let her do what she must. When Mulder is exhumed alive and brought to the hospital, Doggett tries to spare her the pain of seeing him in this condition.
"I need to see," she says
"I know," he says gently. "But I wish you wouldn't." ("DeadAlive")
What does Doggett see in Scully that makes him care so deeply, in such a short time? Probably the same quality that Skinner and Mulder saw: and honesty that goes right through her. And for Doggett, that may be the most important quality anyone could have. Like him, Scully doesn't play games.
It's also a measure of how much he cares for her, that he understands that he will never be first in her life. When Doggett sees Mulder in the hospital, awake for the first time since his death, and Scully lying on his shoulder, Doggett just looks at Scully for a long moment, then he walks away alone. They don't need him, and he knows it.
Doggett especially hates being used as a pawn in someone else's game. When Absalom, who is holding him hostage, is shot by a government sharp-shooter, without any attempt at negotiation, Doggett knows something is wrong. He goes to his informant Knowle Rohrer for information, then realises afterwards that the information Rohrer gave him was intended as bait for Mulder. Doggett has been used to set Mulder up. He risks his own life to go into the ambush and warn a very sceptical Mulder, just in time to let both of them escape. ("Three Words")
Deputy Director Kersh is the champion game player in Doggett's professional life. He has chosen Doggett as an important strategic piece that will let him shut the X-files down for good. He counts on Doggett to prove that Mulder's disappearance has nothing to do with extra-terrestrials. And he assumes, because Doggett is a straight-arrow agent and a credit to the FBI (a complete contrast to the maverick Mulder), that Doggett will accept a promotion, and get out of the dead-end X-files assignment as quickly as possible.
The moment when Doggett joins the meeting with Skinner and Kersh in Kersh's office is a remarkable benchmark in Doggett's arc. He began the season as the outsider and adversary, apparently opposed to the true believers, Skinner and Scully. When Doggett sits down next to Skinner, it's apparent from the glances he gives Skinner, even before a word is spoken, that he considers himself on Skinner's side, not Kersh's. And he very quickly breaks Kersh's bubble of complacency, by refusing to jump at the promotion Kersh offers. He has too much integrity to walk away from what he considers unfinished business. More than that, he is too shrewd to miss Kersh's intentions, and too stubborn to let anyone use him for their own games.
"It's not my career he's thinking of," he tells Scully later. "In six weeks, you go on maternity leave. If he transfers me out, he gets to lock that door for good... We still got an open file on this case, and I got big questions." ("DeadAlive")
Doggett may never be a true believer in the X-files. Yet he has learned that Earth-bound forensic science can't explain everything and that the need for the X-files will always be there.
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