Line #9 Recap/TheXFilesS01E23Roland


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3	'''Season 1, Episode 23:'''
4	!Roland
5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thexfilesroland.png]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:''"Don't some autistic individuals display unusual abilities?"'']]
7	->Written by Chris Ruppenthal\
8	Directed by Creator/DavidNutter
9
10	->''"Now, you see the way you work that toy is like what's happening to you. You're the spaceship, [[TitleDrop Roland]], and your dreams are the controls."''
11	-->-- '''Fox Mulder'''
12
13	A scientist has been murdered at the Mahan Propulsion Laboratory in Washington state, and the lone suspect is the janitor Roland Fuller (Creator/ZeljkoIvanek). Problem: Roland has an IQ of about 70, and couldn't have performed the deed. Something else is going on, and Mulder and Scully are there to find out. Could it have something to do with Arthur Grable, a scientist at the laboratory who died in a car crash a few months earlier? After all, [[BrainInAJar his head]] was [[HumanPopsicle cryogenically preserved]], and he is Roland's twin brother…
14	----
15	!!Tropes:
16	%%* AlmightyJanitor
17	* AmbitionIsEvil: Seems to be the theme. Ambition drove the entire research team even before Dr. Grable's death, leading to his colleagues claiming his unfinished work as their own, then him to take revenge on them and finish it from beyond the grave. And arguably, it drove wealthy upper class parents to pretend their son never had a mentally disabled twin.
18	* AssholeVictim: Let's face it, nobody in the research team is a particularly kind-hearted individual.
19	* BookEnds: This episode begins and ends with a Mach 5 jet engine worker being trapped in a wind tunnel by Roland, with them struggling to hold onto a grating as the turbine inside is activated. But whereas the first victim, Dr. Surnow, is [[TurbineBlender sucked in]], Frank Nolette is saved by Mulder and Scully's encouragement of Roland to do the right thing.
20	* BrainInAJar: Dr. Grable's head was preserved after his death.
21	* CharacterTitle
22	* DisabilitySuperpower: Mulder theorizes that Dr. Grable's [[BrainInAJar condition]] caused him to develop psychic abilities, most of all a telepathic link to his twin brother Roland. Apparently it works only below -160 degrees Fahrenheit, for some reason.
23	* EvilTwin: Dr. Arthur Grable plays an actual evil twin to his good twin, Roland, using their TwinTelepathy to possess him and make him commit murders.
24	* FightingFromTheInside: When Arthur had him kill his old team members, Roland complied, whether by not fighting strong enough against the compelling force, or by not being able to fight off hijacking of his body. But when Arthur tried to make him murder his similarly disabled friend from his group home, Roland pushes her away and runs to lock himself in the bathroom so as not to hurt her.
25	* HeKnowsTooMuch: Arthur tries to force Roland to kill his friend on this basis, on top of more revenge-driven other murders.
26	* HumanPopsicle: Dr. Grable, or rather, his head.
27	* IceBreaker: Roland kills Dr. Keats by dunking his head in liquid nitrogen and letting his body fall to the ground, his head shattering on impact.
28	* IdiotSavant: Zig-zagged. Roland has minor savant skills on his own, but creatively murdering people while developing a novel theory of jet propulsion is thanks to his brother taking control of him.
29	* ImprobablyHighIQ: Mostly an inversion of an ImprobablyLowIQ, as Roland is portrayed as someone with at least moderate disabilities (eg, can't operate a door opening system, limited speech capabilities, passing the time in his group home with typical child activities such as stickers), but is said by Scully to have an IQ of slightly above 70, which is in the borderline category like Forrest Gump, and he usually should be indistinguishable in everyday situations from everyone else. It is suggested that he has autism which could account for some of these factors as well as his head rolling (though he doesn't have most autistic tendencies like problems with eye-contact), but the well-known tendency is for IQ tests to significantly underestimate IQ in autistic people.
30	* MindRape: Poor Roland is clearly very unhappy with his body being hijacked every now and then.
31	* NoOSHACompliance: The episode kicks off because the wind tunnel totally lacks any safety features on the ''inside'' (like, say, an emergency stop button).
32	* ThemeTwinNaming: [[ChivalricRomance Arthur and Roland]].
33	* TurbineBlender: The death that opens the episode is of Roland locking Dr. Surnow in a wind tunnel and turning on the experimental jet turbine inside, sucking him in.
34	* TwinTelepathy: Between Roland Fuller and Dr. Arthur Grable.
35	----
36	->'''Mrs. Stodie:''' How could this happen? Roland never exhibited any violent tendencies.\

Context Recap / TheXFilesS01E23Roland