During Robert Patrick’s two-season stint playing FBI agent John Doggett on The X-Files, the show paid tribute to his signature role in Terminator 2. When X-Files star David Duchovny decided to depart the program as a series regular, taking his character of Fox Mulder along with him, Patrick’s Doggett was created to try and fill the void. Doggett was hardly a Mulder ripoff though, coming from a much different background, and in many ways being far more skeptical about the supernatural than Dana Scully.
While fans weren’t pleased about Mulder’s absence – outside of a handful of season 8 episodes and the season 9 finale – from The X-Files, many viewers did eventually warm to Doggett, and years later the character has a fairly loyal fanbase. That fanbase was saddened by Doggett’s absence from the two X-Files revival seasons, but scheduling issues involving Patrick’s now canceled CBS series Scorpion prevented his participation. By contrast, Doggett’s friend and partner Monica Reyes appeared in both season 10 and season 11.
Despite his memorable performance as Doggett, and in many other movies and TV shows, Patrick will probably always be best known for playing liquid metal villain The T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. With that in mind, The X-Files saw fit to playfully reference Patrick’s past.
How X-Files Paid Tribute to Robert Patrick’s Role in Terminator 2
In season eight, episode nine of The X-Files, entitled “Salvage,” Doggett and Scully investigate a case involving a believed to be dead man named Ray Pearce. It turns out that Ray is not only very much alive, but hellbent on revenge for being unwillingly exposed to a substance that is turning his body into an experimental metal alloy. Partway through, Scully speaks to Doggett about Ray’s apparent transformation, and Doggett replies with “What are you saying? Ray Pearce has become some kind of metal man? Because that only happens in the movies, Agent Scully.” Sadly, since X-Files isn’t (usually) a comedy, Patrick doesn’t then wink at the camera for maximum effect.
Amusingly, the idea for “Salvage” was actually developed prior to Patrick’s casting, making its similarity to the T-1000 and the Terminator movies a coincidence. However, the quote above was indeed written for Doggett later as an intentional homage to his role in Terminator 2. Interestingly, the part-alien super soldiers that first appear late in season 8 and play a big role in season 9 of The X-Files also bear many similarities to Terminators, being near-invincible and unstoppable killers. They aren’t in fact machines though. As for Ray Pearce, he attempts to kill himself near the end of “Salvage,” but it doesn’t appear to fully work.
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