From `T' To `X' With Love: Robert Patrick Opens `The X-Files'

Duchovny has scaled back his ``X-Files'' involvement this season, in part to escape the specter of Fox Mulder. And into his shoes steps Patrick, a character actor still best known for his performance, back in 1991, as the evil, shape-shifting T-2000 in ``Terminator 2: JudgmentDay.'' ``I can certainly understand David, the actor, trying to get out from underneath Mulder, the character,'' says Patrick, who will join the cast on Nov. 5 with the still-untitled eighth-season opener. ``I've been living in the shadow of that shiny guy from `T2,' but I'm as proud of my work in `T2' as I'm sure David is of his work with `The X-Files.' ``You just hope that audiences can see you in different ways and can see you as different characters,'' he says. ``But I don't look at `X-Files' as putting on a new straitjacket in any sense. I've done 55 films, and in none of them that have hit a vast international audience have I ever been seen as a good guy. ``Now, I've done good-guy roles before,'' Patrick hastens to add,``but they were all in very small and obscure films that wide audiences didn't see, and my point of view is that nobody has seen me do this, even though I've done it. ``Here's my chance to blow it open as a good guy, and I couldn't have asked for a better forum in which to do it.'' He understands, of course, the stakes for which he's playing. ''`The X-Files' is huge,'' Patrick says by telephone from his Los Angeles home. ``It's on a global level. This is exactly what I said to my agents I wanted to find in a job and in a character. I totally see it as a blessing.'' Patrick plays Special Agent John Doggett, who arrives on the scene following the apparent alien abduction of Mulder. A popular figure within the FBI and an ardent nonbeliever, Doggett pairs up with Scully (Gillian Anderson) after being kicked downstairs by A.D. Kersh (James Pickens Jr.), who considers Doggett a serious threat to his authority...