Millennium 3ABC18: “Darwin’s Eye”
The Millennial Abyss | Episodes | Season Three
“Dawin’s Eye” (3ABC18)
Written by Patrick Harbinson
Directed by Ken Fink
Edited by Peter B. Ellis
Aired April 16, 1999
Summary
Frank Black and Emma Hollis are perplexed by inconsistencies relating to an escaped mental patient with a violent past who has taken an apparently compliant hostage.
Synopsis
As alarms blare, twenty-two year old Cassie Doyle escapes from a mental institution and makes her way to a nearby road. She stops a passing police car and tells Deputy Joe McNulty that someone is trying to kill her. The deputy begins to suspect otherwise, but before he can react, Cassie grabs the gun from his holster and points it at his head. Meanwhile, an African-American man places several items — including a headless chess piece and several paper palms — inside a wooden box and mails it to Emma.
Agent Baldwin is assigned to investigate the brutal murder of a nursing orderly who worked in the mental hospital where Cassie was interned. It is believed that the missing Cassie is responsible for the orderly’s death, as she was convicted of murdering her parents in 1992. The orderly was decapitated after he was killed, as was Cassie’s father. In both cases, the heads could not be located. Baldwin and Frank observe Cassie’s room at the hospital. The walls and ceiling are covered with writing. A short time later, Baldwin discovers the head stuffed above white ceiling tile in the men’s bathroom.
Though McClaren had instructed her to take some time off, Emma returns to the Bureau. She joins Frank in the conference room, where they review police video of Mr. and Mrs. Doyle’s murder.
Meanwhile, Cassie forces Joe to drive away from the hospital. She convinces the deputy that she had nothing to do with her parents’ murder. She also convinces him that the FBI is out to kill her. Joe stops his police cruiser when he encounters an FBI roadblock. To prove her innocence, Cassie hands him his gun. Joe exits his car, then approaches the FBI agents. When he returns, he instructs Cass to keep her head down. He passes through the road block and drives off.
Baldwin reviews the facts in the case for a handful of FBI agents. Using a slide projector, he shows the group a montage of the ceiling and walls of Cass’s room, which reveals some crossed palms. He then advances to a slide of the nursing orderly, Roger Cheveley, who once served in the Army. Emma notices the same crossed palms on Chevely’s uniform (which is part of a military insignia).
When word of Joe’s disappearance spreads, Frank tells Emma that the deputy is now siding with Cass. When Emma returns home, she examines one of the five wooden boxes kept in a drawer. Inside the box are the paper flowers and headless king. She notices a notch in one of the flowers, and as she unfolds them, discovers images of different parts of a human face. When the pieces are assembled, it forms a photograph of Emma’s sister, Melissa. Emma drives to her father’s apartment. She finds James Edward Hollis on the living room floor, surrounded by wooden boxes, chess pieces and bits of paper.
James is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Emma tells the physician that her sister Melissa was murdered in the family home when she was ten-years-old. Her father then folded a photograph of Melissa’s face into flowers. The physician doesn’t quite know how to respond to this piece of information. But he does tell Emma to allow her father to rest.
The relationship between Joe and Cass grows, and Joe rents a hotel room. Dressed only in a shirt, Cass slides atop Joe. She tells him to close his eyes. As they begin having sex, she tells him to open his eyes.
The headlights from a passing car throw the shadow of crossed palms on the ceiling. Meanwhile, Frank finds Emma inside Cass’s room at the mental hospital. Emma turns on an old desk lamp and sweeps the beam across the writings on the wall. It becomes apparent that the words all combine into a drawing of Cass’s face. Frank asks Emma to perform more research on the dead orderly, Roger Cheveley. Struck by an idea, Frank then pays a visit to the morgue. He asks a doctor to determine if the orderly had sex just before he died. The doctor opens the autopsy report and confirms Frank’s suspicions.
Emma telephones Frank with news about the dead orderly. Military police had investigated a report regarding Cheveley’s involvement in an alleged rape in Saudi Arabia. But Cheveley left the Army shortly after the incident transpired and charges were never filed. Frank concludes that Cheveley had raped Cass. He also believes that Cass was raped by her father. By cutting off the heads of both attackers, Cass blinded them. The only remaining clue to the location of Cass’s father’s head are the crossed palms. Emma discovers a Palm Court Motel only a few miles from the Doyle’s old house.
Frank locates the motel room where Cass and Joe are staying. Cass grabs Joe’s gun and, fearful of the FBI, refuses to surrender. Frank asks Cass if she allowed Joe to see her. She confirms that she did. But she also insists she would never hurt him. Cass then makes her way to the bathroom, where she caresses Joe’s severed head. A SWAT team storms the room, and Cass is taken into custody. As before, she claims she is innocent. Shortly thereafter, Baldwin recovers the head of Cass’s father.
Later, Emma receives a phone call from the owner of a corner grocery store. She finds her father at a photocopy machine, making copies of photographs featuring wild palms being destroyed by a nuclear blast.
Starring
Lance Henriksen as Frank Black
Klea Scott as Emma Hollis
Peter Outerbridge as Barry Baldwin
Guest Starring
Tracy Middendorf as Cass Doyle
Peter Simmons as Joe Doherty
Alfred E. Humphreys as Sheriff Randall
John Beasley as James Edward Hollis
Lesley Ewen as Dr. Hilary Heath
Kevin McNulty as Dr. Arnett
Alex Zahara as Dane
Kurt Evans as the Clerk
Production Credits
Production #6ABC18
Music by Mark Snow
Production Designer Mark Freeborn
Director of Photography Robert McLachlan
Associate Producer Jon-Michael Preece
Co-Producer Robert Moresco
Co-Producer Paul Rabwin
Producer Thomas J. Wright
Co-Executive Producer Ken Horton
Co-Executive Producer John Peter Kousakis
Executive Producer Chip Johannessen
Executive Producer Chris Carter
Soundtrack
"Trimm Trabb" (1999) by Blur
Location
Book Excerpt
“Blur’s ‘Trimm Trabb’ is used fairly conventionally to soundtrack the teaser sequence of ‘Darwin’s Eye,’ but it is still very effective at ramping up the sense of peril... It pushes the energy level much higher… more importantly, it lets us know that this moment sets the entire rest of the episode in motion. Here are our players, and here is the essence of their relationship.”
—Joe Tangari
Back to Frank Black
REVIEWS
"It is a very odd piece of television... At this point in the third season, it feels like Millennium is beginning to recapture some of the ethereality of Millennium at its best. It is the kind of idea that could easily collapse under its own weight, and represents the kind of trippy abstraction that the first half of the third season consciously tried to pull away, but ‘Darwin’s Eye’ commits wholeheartedly to its weirder elements. There is no attempt to temper the weirdness or hedge its bets."
—Darren Mooney
The M0vie Blog
“Dawin’s Eye” print ad.