Aliens Among Us?

Coming hot on the heels of the latest installment in the Alien series (Alien: Romulus) is a new TV series slated for release next year, titled Alien: Earth. I'm holding out hope that it will be good, but making the choice to do a prequel set on Earth doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence. It's the same mistake that the Alien vs. Predator movies made. Setting such an early precedent for the presence of xenomorphs on Earth not only undermines the considerable effort to which The Company will later go to procure a specimen at the edge of the galaxy, but also effectively neutralizes the tension created in the original movies, built around the urgent need to keep this threat from reaching our home planet.

"If those things get back here, that will be all. Then you can just kiss it goodbye."
- Ripley, from Aliens

Certainly, you could write a script that keeps the action quarantined, where the monster is eradicated and nobody lives to tell the tale (or at least, nobody believes them). I don't doubt that this strategy would keep production costs down. But why write yourself into a corner, when there are still stories to be adapted that take place in the aftermath of the encounter on LV-426 - when the aliens not only eventually reach Earth, but completely colonize it? Imagine a post-apocalyptic landscape with xenomorphs instead of zombies or marauders! Or, if you'd really prefer to fill in holes, instead of continuing the story, I'm dying to see a depiction of Newt's harrowing ordeal, from the time that Burke orders her parents to investigate the derelict ship, through her survival as the aliens take over Hadley's Hope, until the space marines finally show up. You'd have to find an exceptionally talented young actress to do it, but I've seen a few over the years that could have pulled it off.

This comic is a good start, but it kind of glosses over the best part
in favor of retelling Aliens from Newt's perspective (partly).

Regardless of whether or not you preserve the timeline's continuity, bringing the xenomorphs onto a 21st century Earth erodes their mystique. I'll tell you why. Although I did not dislike Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, they've basically established as canon (as clear as I can figure) that the xenomorphs are an artificially-engineered biological weapon. Speculating from a scientific perspective, this is interesting, but not as captivating in my opinion as the alternate hypothesis that our encounter with these creatures essentially functions as an interstellar equivalent of the fatal mistake that Tolkien's dwarves made when they dug the mines of Moria.

"Too deep we delved there, and woke the nameless fear."
- Glóin, from The Fellowship of the Ring

If you've ever read Wait But Why's discussion of The Fermi Paradox, you'll be familiar with the concept I am describing. This paradox can be summarized by a simple question: if space is filled with stars, then why is the night sky so dark? Or, more to the point, is there anybody out there? In the vast expanse of the cosmos, shouldn't there be other intelligent lifeforms? Then what's with all the radio silence? Well, one possible explanation is that other beings are smart enough to keep their mouths shut - they don't want to announce their presence, because they know what's out there, and they're afraid it will find them!

As the premise for a cosmic horror story, I love this idea. Rather than a bio weapon, I'd prefer to think of the xenomorphs as an eldritch abomination lurking at the edges of the universe (or at least our galaxy). As our technology advances, and we begin to probe further into the depths of space, searching for more resources to deplete, we may - if we are not careful - encounter this denizen of chaos, birthed from the void, that strikes terror into the hearts of men. Not only does it put our individual lives in jeopardy, it poses an existential threat to our entire species. But if you toss it into our metaphorical backyard without lasting consequence too many times, it begins to lose its teeth (or inner jaws).

While we're on the topic of missteps in the ongoing Alien saga, I have to bring up one of Alien: Resurrection's many sins, because Alien: Romulus veered in the same direction toward its end; it's the only significant criticism I have for that movie. I can understand The Company's desire (however misguided) to harness the xenomorph as a weapon, but creating an alien-human hybrid? What is this, The X-Files? (There's even a black oil involved in the alien's lifecycle now!). The reason this plot point bothers me (aside from the fact that it deviates the monster from H.R. Giger's inspired design) is because it violates the original conception of the xenomorph - as I understood it in my youth - as a parasitic organism that takes on properties of its host. In other words, the typical xenomorph we're used to seeing in these movies is already the "human form" of the alien!

That's why, in Alien 3, when the creature hatched from a dog, it had more canine characteristics. It's the conceptual basis for the entire line of Alien toys that I collected as a child - which featured bull aliens, snake aliens, gorilla aliens, etc. Part of what makes the xenomorph the "perfect organism" is that it assimilates the genetic code of its host, picking out the most adaptable traits. I guess we saw a little bit of this evolution in Prometheus and its sequel. But if bio-engineered, it's more of a Frankenstein's monster run amok, than a naturally occuring phenomenon - like a cosmic storm, that cannot be effectively fought, only sought shelter from. All that said, I was able to enjoy AvP: Requiem, despite essentially being a suburban slasher set in the unremarkable year of 2004. So all hope is not yet lost!

Alien: Romulus (2024)

I just saw the new Alien movie today, and it was good. Very much a return to form. Effectively paid homage to the classics, melding elements from the original films, while gently innovating to keep the film feeling relevant and not simply redundant, but without being too jarring to the mythos. I like that they kept the "working class sci-fi" perspective, and it was interesting to explore in a new way the prejudice against synthetics. Andy was a great character, giving the filmmakers an opportunity to convey the grey area involved with making difficult moral choices. At the right times, he managed to be intimidating while still remaining sympathetic.

I lost a little bit of interest in the climax, where the inspiration from Alien: Resurrection was strongest. And since you can't help making comparisons to earlier films, I was distracted by the disparity of wardrobe in the final, post-bedtime arc. It makes you wonder how a movie that relies on body horror, and whose creative vision was guided by an artist who shocked the world by marrying sex with death, can be so gymnophobic. We have to watch the xenomorph crawling out of what, by all accounts, appears to be an alien vagina (actually, that was pretty cool), but we don't get to see the female lead in her skivvies? What kind of dystopian future are we living in?

But, that's a pretty superficial complaint. Overall, I enjoyed the movie very much.

Alien (1979)

I can still remember the first time I saw the movie Alien as a child. It was playing on TV, on one of those perfect summer evenings, where it stays light long after dinner. There's something about the experience of settling in to watch a horror movie while it's still light out, and then having twilight descend, leaving you in the dark of night by the time the credits roll. The movie's sequel, Aliens - the epitome of the rare, successful sequel, raising the stakes while employing clever innovation over the familiarity of thematic repetition - undoubtedly had a larger impact on my childhood, but this is where the nightmare started. And when I say "nightmare", I mean that literally.

From the slow and misdirectingly eerie opening crawl (in all its retro-futuristic glory); the down-to-(ironically)-earth depiction of blue collar life among the stars (a stellar presentation of plausible characters that feel lived-in); the atmosphere of fear and paranoia that develops (second only to John Carpenter's The Thing) when an unfamiliar alien lifeform is discovered on a cold and forbidding wasteland of a planet; to the shock and visceral terror of the xenomorph's startling appearance - a scene unrivaled in cinematic history; and then the inspired biomechanical design of the creature, thanks to the now late visionary artist H.R. Giger, which taps into our fears of sex and technology and our own bodies and - as a young child with arachnophobia - the primal terror of an eldritch predator, sleek and black, that moves uncannily and lurks in dark corners and tunnels, waiting to strike its prey without warning; all building up to the climactic finish, with its flashing lights and hissing shadows, leaving viewers breathless and on the edge of their seats as so many movies promise, but so few can actually deliver.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Alien is so effective that it manages to transcend the label of a slasher film - even though that's exactly what it amounts to on paper - elevating itself to the level of sci-fi/horror legend. And for the fortieth anniversary of its initial release, I'm going to watch it again - in a movie theater for the first time!

Honeymoon (2014)

It's crazy how movies can sneak up on you sometimes. And once again, I'm baffled by how disparate people's opinions can be, that I can watch a movie that I think is great, only to hear people complain about how awful it is, when the movie I thought was dreadful has viewers lining up to sing its praises. Sadly, it's almost predictable. I made up a shortlist for this October of lesser known horror movies that have received some accolades. As expected, they've been hit or miss; so you never know going in what you're going to get. The description for this movie sounded like a typical slasher setup - young couple's weekend in the woods turns into a nightmare. So I was pleasantly surprised when after the first night there was something considerably more otherworldly than a masked killer stalking the woods - something that looked suspiciously like a UFO searchlight. But, to its credit, this movie doesn't develop like a stereotypical alien abduction flick either. It's a creepy slow burner, that builds to a majorly anxiety-inducing crescendo. And for a movie that's focused almost exclusively on two characters, the production scored a couple of good actors with very natural chemistry together. They make for a very cute newlywed couple on their honeymoon, at least until things start to get weird. And the way that the one character begins to transform - little things that are off here and there that make you feel like something's wrong - is majorly unsettling. I recommend it.

The X-Files - S10:E6 "My Struggle II"

[ S10:E5 "Babylon" <<< Season 10 >>>  ?????? ]

Last week I said this season could live or die by its finale, but the truth is, it was already dead in my heart. It probably died six weeks ago, when the premiere failed to live up to my expectations. I don't want to see Mulder and Scully looking and sounding so old. I don't want another excuse for why the Smoking Man has escaped death and found another way to play the megalomaniac yet again, and I don't want to watch The X-Files in hi-def, with super-slick CGI. What I wanted was a revival of the good old days, and that's most decidedly not what this is. This isn't The X-Files seasons 2-5 revisited, this is The X-Files season 10, the one that comes after 9 (except that everybody's fifteen years older). The only bit of it that's worth watching, honestly, is Darin Morgan's episode - Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster. Treat it like a one-off canonical modern spoof of The X-Files featuring the original actors, and forget that it's part of a dubious "revival".

Spoiler Warning: Yeah, the rest of this review is going to contain spoilers.

I suppose I should talk about the finale. To start with, it feels a little weird that all this stuff happened in the premiere, and then Skinner's like "do something about it", and reopens the X-Files (like, what kinda difference is that supposed to make?), and then they detour for four weeks, after which all of a sudden, pow! - time to wrap up those story threads! It's like they took a classic two-parter, but instead of sticking them together, they wedged a few episodes in the middle.

Tad O'Malley is back, but he exists literally to do nothing more than spout exposition on his little webshow. Sadly, Sveta did not survive that car crash like I hoped she would. Agents Miller and Einstein are back, too. I neither loved them nor hated them in Babylon, but they feel kinda like set dressing here, in spite of driving major plot points (because Scully could have done that science herself, and Mulder could have saved himself from the Smoking Man if the writers had so willed it). Weirdly, there's a non-cameo by a nameless thug who could well have been Alex Krycek's stand-in - to hell with plot consistency, they should have just brought him back! Oh, and Agent Reyes turns up. It's nice to see her again, actually (though it's a pity Robert Patrick wasn't available), but she doesn't do much of consequence either, except try to make excuses - both for being absent for the past decade, as well as why she made a deal with the devil (the way a certain Agent Fowley did once before her).

On the plus side (I guess), there are a lot of explanations in this episode, and we do finally get that global invasion (of sorts), that's been a long time coming (but don't expect to see any aliens on this show). We get to see how the Smoking Man was pieced back together after being incinerated (no matter how final that death seemed to be). And we learn a little more about the alien's plans. Or the conspirators' plans. Whichever. The aliens are indeed working in a The Day The Earth Stood Still capacity, intent on wiping out mankind before it becomes a danger to the rest of life in the universe. The Smoking Man, having made a deal with those aliens, holds the trigger to the device that will wipe humanity out. It's moderately clever - involving a global contagion in the form of not a disease, but actually a genetic invader (finally giving a purpose to all those hints about smallpox vaccinations in the original series) that deactivates a person's immune system, effectively making them susceptible to just about any disease on the face of the planet. They call it "the Spartan virus".

Scully and Einstein share a scene that's weirdly homoerotic.

Anyway, there's a lot of time spent in the hospital, as the world falls apart in a very Outbreak-like scenario (that we've all seen a million times before). Mulder has a confrontation with the Smoking Man (like we've all seen a million times before), that ends with neither one of them dead or in any different a position regarding their feelings for each other than they were before (other than the absence of any pretext obscuring the fact that the Smoking Man is indeed Mulder's father). And the episode closes on a dubious ending in which Scully runs through the streets to save Mulder's life by injecting him with the alien DNA inside of her (courtesy of her abduction experiments) that renders her immune to the Spartan virus. She babbles something about him needing stem cells (all of a sudden), that can only come from their absent son, William. Does this mean Mulder's doomed? Cue the deus ex machina, in the form of a UFO hovering above them, inside which I'll be damned if William isn't waiting.

Except, that's the end of the episode. Just like that. It's not even really a cliffhanger - you can't put "to be continued" if there's no guarantee that there will ever be any more episodes. (The tagline that replaces "The Truth Is Out There" at the beginning of this episode ominously - but probably insincerely - reads "This Is The End"). Except that Chris Carter had dispensed with using "to be continued" for his season finales going all the way back to Requiem in season 7 (season 5's The End, if you count tie-ins to movies - hint, hint). Frankly, I think he's gotten too comfortable with the uncertainty of knowing whether the series will continue or not. At least back then, his finales had a sense of closure, even as they left certain questions unanswered. Here, it's like a foregone conclusion that the story will continue - and that may well be the case, but it's still a pretty dickish way to end the episode and the season.

(On second thought, the last time a UFO appeared out of nowhere, it was to kill somebody else with alien DNA. What an ending that would have been if Mulder and Scully had been obliterated by the aliens as the human population teetered on the brink of extinction. As depressing as that would have been, it would have been a much better ending than simply cutting off right there, leaving us all guessing. Hmm, I smell headcanon).

Honestly, though - by this point, I'm just not that invested. I'll definitely watch if there are more episodes coming in the future (frankly I think doing one last big movie to end the series once and for all would be the best move). Maybe I'll even start to like it better now that I no longer have any expectations to be dashed against the rocks. In any case, this has been one hell of a long ride, starting back in June of last year, when I embarked on my series-long marathon. I'm damn exhausted, man, and let me tell you, I'm pretty much sick of reviewing X-Files episodes right now. It's time I had a vacation.

Did I mention that Scully's an alieum?

Memorable quotes:

Tad O'Malley: What may seem like science-fiction, but is science fact - the legitimate and verifiable discovery of alien DNA that's in virtually every American citizen.

(See, this is one of the things that really bugs me about this series. Misdirection is fine, and it's entirely understandable that characters will acquire faulty information and then spread it around like the truth - sometimes deliberately, in the case of the villains. But it gets to a point after a while, that this device has been used so much, it becomes frustrating. I know one of the major, underlying themes of this series is "trust no one", and that you often can't take people at their word. But given that so much of the show's mythology has been actually explained in dialogues that felt disingenuous (like the Well-Manicured Man telling Mulder just "what he wanted to hear" in Paper Clip - despite it also being the absolute truth), it makes an already muddled mythology that much harder to piece together. Come to think of it, the villains are more consistently trustworthy than the good guys - Mulder's informants included. In this case, you're clearly supposed to be strung along by this idea that every American citizen possesses alien DNA - which also dovetails with the whole "alien astronauts"/"more human than human"/"everybody has inactive DNA inside of them that comes from aliens" plot that we've encountered before. And yet, later in the episode, we learn the critical fact that not everyone has alien DNA - only a select few (like Scully, and Sveta) - and that having that DNA isn't what's causing the coming plague, it's actually the cure for it! In other words, Tad O'Malley's "legitimate and verifiable" discovery is complete baloney. Well, that just pisses me off).

(Also, later, they test Scully's DNA, and the alien DNA isn't there. But then they re-test it once more, and boom! - there it is. This could be a lesson on double-checking your work, but it really just feels like unnecessary padding).

Scully: While we share a faith in science, I have come to the understanding that the science that we were taught takes us but a distance towards the truth.

(I like Scully better as a skeptic than a believer, but it's a wonder she hasn't taken this perspective from the start. One of her greatest moments as a scientist was in End Game, where even if she didn't understand the alien toxin that was killing Mulder, she used science to save his life. Scientists aren't usually so hubristic as to assume that science has explained everything. A scientist might claim that science can eventually - or theoretically - explain everything. But just because a scientist encounters something that science hasn't explained, doesn't mean that the scientist will dismiss its existence out of hand - unless it's a well-established hoax, as most paranormal activity is in the real world (but not, as we've seen, in the world of the X-Files). No, in the face of apparent evidence suggesting the existence of "extreme possibilities", a scientist wouldn't stubbornly shut her eyes, she would get out her lab equipment and study it, in the hope of logging documented evidence of the phenomenon, and maybe extend science's reach a little in the process - just the sort of thing that might win a scientist academic esteem - especially if said scientist had previously tarnished her reputation by joining a paranormal investigative division. It would be the proof to redeem her decision in the eyes of her superiors who look down on her).

(Also, I know Scully is Catholic - to her detriment - but I don't like the phrase "faith in science". Faith is something you have in the absence of evidence. The whole point of science is that it backs itself up. You don't need to trust it, because whether it's right or wrong, it'll let you know either way. So rather than faith, one should have confidence in science - not as the truth, but the most reliable method that will lead to the truth).

Smoking Man: You see a man lying here - a seemingly weak man. But I am the most powerful man in the world.

Smoking Man: The world will go on - just in my image, instead of God's.
Reyes: You think you can play God?
Smoking Man: No, not God, certainly.

Smoking Man: Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just...cigarettes.

Smoking Man: Neither you nor I could save mankind from self-extermination.

Mulder: So you plotted your end game?

Smoking Man: I just changed the time table. Everyone still dies in the end.

Smoking Man: The ultimate irony: the defeat of the big-brained beasts by the tiniest, unthinking microbes.

(War of the Worlds much?)

Tad O'Malley: It would now appear...we go out...with a whimper...a frightful, deafening silence.

The X-Files - S10:E1 "My Struggle"

[ I Want To Believe <<< Season 10 >>> S10:E2 "Founder's Mutation" ]

To cut straight to the point of this review, I'll say from the outset that my overall impression of the first episode of this new miniseries is...lukewarm. Maybe I got my hopes up a little too high expecting it to be insta-classic X-Files, just add water. But it's only the first episode, and there's still time to improve. Besides, a lot of this episode seems to be setting up, getting us back into the groove. Perhaps we'll have Mulder and Scully shouting each other's names and waving their flashlights around more in the monster-of-the-week episodes. Regardless, I'm eagerly anticipating the episodes by Darin Morgan, Glen Morgan, and James Wong.

Spoiler Warning: The rest of this review is going to contain spoilers, both for this episode, and for much of the mythology of the series, to which this episode begins a new chapter.

So, my first impression as the episode began was that it didn't look or feel like classic X-Files. It's all very modern (and not just because of the hashtag in the corner of the screen). I see heavy usage of digital effects, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am about that. One advantage it may provide (although I've never been prejudiced against men in rubber suits), is that perhaps this series will actually have some aliens in it for the first time in like forever. Despite what I said during my marathon back around the time I reviewed the first movie, the series never really switched over to alien-alien characters. Right up to the end we were still dealing with alien replicants and Super Soldiers that looked, to the viewer's eye, entirely human.

And now we have an alien pilot crawling from the wreckage of a crashed UFO (Roswell, 1947, if I'm not mistaken). But it doesn't look like the crashed UFOs we've seen before. It's less esoteric - less glowing lights and men in hazmat suits, and more a broken saucer sticking out of the ground. In the first of many throwbacks to the series' earlier mythology, we see a presumed government agent executing the alien pilot, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1013 (as alluded to by Deep Throat in E.B.E., and then addressed more explicitly in Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man).

I think the thing I like best that this episode has done, conceptually speaking, is restructure the entire conspiracy around which the show hinges. Even if that requires considerable retconning (one of the more eye-rolling examples of which is changing the date of the alleged alien apocalypse, as discovered in The Truth, to the date of the start of a countdown). The episode hearkens back to the fifth season's mythology quite a bit, even insofar as ostensibly placing Mulder in a position of doubt (initially). But while there has been alien contact, it is not the aliens that are the threat, but the government alone. Acting in a The Day The Earth Stood Still sort of capacity, the aliens have been drawn by mankind's achievement of nuclear warfare, and ever since 1947, the government has been stealing alien technology and hiding it from the public (creating ARVs - Alien Replica Vehicles, like the UFOs we saw in the episode Deep Throat), in a long-term plan to take over the world.

At least, that's what conservative talk show host Tad O'Malley (Joel McHale) is convinced of. And in true X-Files fashion, it's not altogether clear who one should trust. But Tad wants Mulder and Scully on the case, for obvious reasons, what with their background in fighting the conspiracy. It's not an easy sell, although, much like in I Want To Believe, Mulder seems more readily drawn to the action than Scully, who is again seen working as a doctor at Our Lady of Sorrows. Tad has been in contact with an abductee by the name of Sveta (a radiant Annet Mahendru), who appears to be exhibiting mind-reading abilities similar to those that Gibson Praise has demonstrated. Scully determines that she does indeed possess alien DNA, but then, as an abductee herself, she does, too.

Another thing that I think I like about this episode (in spite of myself) is how convincingly it seems to depict Mulder's obsession in an unhealthy way. I've always defended Mulder, and he'll probably turn out to be right yet again, but it really does start feeling like he's gone off the deep end. It doesn't help that he's getting older, and going gray, yet rambles (frequently only just barely coherently) more and more with the passing years. Tad - young and coiffed though he is - doesn't seem to be helping things, with his ultra-paranoid mentality (almost reaching levels witnessed in the episode Trust No 1; I daresay even The Lone Gunmen would call him crazy - and that's saying something).

No, don't kick it, Mulder!

As the episode opened, it was immediately clear that this series is sticking to its UFO-centered subject matter. But it really hammers on the paranoid conspiracy talk. A lot of it coming out of these characters' mouths sounds as obsessively paranoid as it would coming out of anyone's mouth. Similar to the fact that the best argument against conspiracies is that people are messy and prone to error, the fact that technology exists for perfect surveillance doesn't mean that we have the human resources (or inclination, necessarily) to use it that way. Just as the possibility of being seen when you pass a window doesn't mean that somebody will necessarily be looking at the instant you pass, the fact that there's a security camera on the street corner doesn't necessarily mean that you are or ever will be witnessed walking past by any human eyes. Similarly, Google may save all your emails, but somebody's still got to sit there and read through them all, and who has that kind of time?

Obviously, this isn't an argument against standing up for our privacy, because even if it's not ubiquitous, if the capability exists, there will be cases of people taking (selective) advantage of it. Power corrupts, and all that. Plus, if you throw into the mix the knowledge that computers are getting smarter, there may conceivably come a time when a machine could be up to the task of spending the necessary man hours (which would be considerably fewer computer hours), as well as an AI sophisticated enough to parse meaningful information. I guess, then, the important thing is a proactive defense of our privacy, laying the framework now, before it's too late (and the machines - or those that control them - take over)!

Which, I guess, is what's at the heart of the mythology in this episode. (And if it can engender this much discussion, maybe the themes are more on point than I realized). Questions still remain - as is ever the case when Chris Carter puts pen to paper. Who is in charge of this conspiracy? Besides the Cigarette Smoking Man, I mean - although his appearance raises even more questions. Like, how did he survive being incinerated to his very skeleton? He looks better now than he's looked since his surgery in Amor Fati, although he's never been as cool since he's had to smoke his cigarettes through a stoma. But if everything we thought we knew about the conspiracy - the Syndicate's plans, the aliens' agenda - is wrong, then there are a lot of contradictions that are going to need to be ironed out, unless we're being asked to ignore an awful lot of what this series has already laid out. Which I wouldn't be unwilling to do, but it would be helpful to know whether or not that's the case here. (And a brief reference to William would indicate that we're not completely jettisoning canon yet).

Anyway, I think the success of this episode will depend largely on how the rest of the miniseries plays out. And there's really not any other way that could be. The episode ends with the X-Files being re-opened (Skinner appears in a minor role that as yet may not do justice to the main credit he's nonetheless rightfully earned - otherwise, the opening credits sequence has been returned to the classic one, much to my relief), but in spite of the long passage of years, it doesn't feel as exciting (or as natural) as it did when it happened in Ascension, or at the end of Fight The Future. Anyway, it was a foregone conclusion, regardless, and as I mentioned above, I'm looking forward to seeing how this new series handles the monster-of-the-week episodes. (Me, looking forward to a Darin Morgan episode more than a mythology episode? My, how times have changed!).

Memorable quotes:

Mulder: We must ask ourselves: are they really a hoax? Are we truly alone, or are we being lied to?

(Great setup for the alien business, even if it doesn't feel as convincing as it did in the '90s - I'm not sure if it was the times, or just my youthful naiveté. Either way, the rest of this episode unfortunately undermines the pull of this opener by suggesting that the threat hanging over us is not in fact alien, but entirely human).

O'Malley: Do you miss it at all - the X-Files?
Scully: As a scientist, it was probably some of the most intense and challenging work I've ever done. I've never felt so alive.

Sveta: Who can I trust? They would call me a liar when they're the liars!

Mulder: Scully, listen to me. I've been misled - we've been misled. What if everything we've been led to believe in is a lie? What if there is no alien conspiracy?

(So, The X-Files was its own biggest conspiracy all along? I'd be more impressed if this ground hadn't already been tread in Gethsemane).

Mulder: You owe me some answers.
Skinner: Will you just...calm the hell down, Mulder - before we both get pissed off?

(Like old times).

Skinner: Since 9/11, this country's taken a big turn in a very strange direction.
Mulder: They police us, and spy on us, tell us that makes us safer. We've never been in more danger.

Informant: You weren't even close. Warring aliens lighting each other on fire, and other such nonsense.
Mulder: I was being cleverly manipulated.

(We were all being manipulated. Apparently. By Chris Carter).

Informant: Tell me something new.
Mulder: Alien technology being used against us. Not by aliens, not with aliens, but by a venal conspiracy of men against humanity.

Informant: The lies are so great, Mr. Mulder, the truth must be unassailable.

Informant: Roswell - that was a smokescreen.
Mulder: So I've been told.

(Between this and his reluctance to exterminate an alien pilot, I'd swear this guy is Deep Throat all over again. But without the magnetic presence of Jerry Hardin.)

Scully: I have seen this before. You're on fire, believing that you're on to some truth, that you can save the world.
Mulder: This will finally be their undoing.
Scully: It'll be your undoing, Mulder.

(If this wasn't The X-Files... Scully makes perhaps the most convincing argument yet, that Mulder's quest for truth is really just a symptom of madness. Tilting at windmills. As badly as we viewers want to believe in Mulder, all these years have passed and there is still no hard evidence. Even now, everything we thought we were sure of is evaporating into thin air. I'm almost convinced that the best true finale to this series would have Mulder realizing - or not, but the rest of us would - that there are no aliens, or conspiracies. That he's just insane. I know fans probably wouldn't like that, but I've always been fond of mindfuck endings).

Sveta: Why do such a thing and lie about it? Our own government?
Mulder: Your own government lies as a matter of course, as a matter of policy.

Scully: You can't say these things.
O'Malley: I'm gonna say them tomorrow.
Scully: It's fear-mongering, claptrap, isolationist, techno-paranoia so bogus, and dangerous, and stupid, that it borders on treason. Saying these things would be incredibly irresponsible.
Mulder: It's irresponsible not to say it.
Sveta: Especially if it's the truth.

(I'm not a fan of fear-mongering, but I'm a hard-line free-speecher, so my perspective is, crazy conspiracies like this should live or die by the evidence that supports them - or lack thereof. If Scully really wanted to dissuade them - even if she thought they were just paranoid delusions - she should have emphasized the danger over the "irresponsibility").

Mulder: Scully, are you ready for this?
Scully: I don't know there's a choice.

The X-Files - S9:E19/20 "The Truth"

[ S9:E18 "Sunshine Days" <<< Season 9 >>> I Want To Believe ]

Spoiler-free introduction: This is it - the series finale! The show has done its fair of share of two- (and even several three-) parters, but this is the first time it's aired a double episode all at once. It's billed as both episodes 19 and 20 of the season - which is consistent with counting episodes as 45 minute blocks of TV, but is responsible for some considerable confusion over whether the complete series contains 201 or 202 episodes. It really just depends on whether you consider the series finale to be one episode or two. It's like a double-stuffed Oreo - it's worth twice as much as one Oreo, but it's not actually two Oreos.

Anyway, to spare you the suspense, I'll tell you right now that I enjoyed the finale. It's got a few flaws, and as a two-part mythology episode, it's not as good as this series' best, but it has more of a classic feeling than anything in these last two (or three or four) seasons, and I think it works really well as a series finale, wrapping much of the show up, while still leaving room for further stories to be told, as in the planned movie franchise that never really got off the ground.

I'm a little bit surprised that this show basically copied Seinfeld's approach in putting the main characters on trial, in order to (sort of) do a clips show (especially given the lackluster response that Seinfeld's series finale received), but I actually think it works really well with this show (beyond the hokiness of the idea of putting "the truth" on trial) - and is a good framing device for tying together nine years of convoluted mythology about as well as any X-Phile could realistically hope for from Chris Carter.

Spoiler Warning: With that reader-friendly intro out of the way, the rest of this review will, as I'm sure you can imagine, contain massive spoilers. Proceed with caution.

The episode opens with a helicopter flying over some woods, and it instantaneously feels almost like a classic X-Files mythology episode (demonstrating what a different show this has become with Doggett and Reyes). No preface, just Mulder (and it's only been a year, but my, he looks like he aged a lot while on the run) in the midst of infiltrating a government facility, wherein he discovers this illustrious "date" for the alien takeover, that so much has been made of. And, believe it or not, it's the date of the Mayan Apocalypse!

Now, as kooky as the whole idea of the Mayan Apocalypse is (even more so now that it's behind us), I like the idea that the Mayans predicted the apocalypse not because they were prophets or whatever, but because they somehow figured out the aliens' plans (who have been around for a while, given that they were the original inhabitants of this planet) - a planned, deliberate apocalypse by an intelligent race. (Although it still begs the question of why they waited so long, and why they chose this particular date, not to mention all that talk about the progress of the Syndicate's experiments determining when colonization would begin. But we'll forget that).

Anyhow, Mulder is accosted by a Super Soldier we've seen before - Knowle Rohrer - and barely manages to shake him off, but is ultimately captured, and thrown into military prison. Being accused of murdering Knowle (despite that being impossible, what with him being indestructible), the military agrees to put Mulder on trial - albeit a military trial - with cooperation by the FBI. Allegedly, instead of just eliminating Mulder, they want to stamp out his crusade as well, by returning a guilty verdict. Knowing that the trial will be rigged, Mulder appoints Skinner - the only man he can trust - as his representative. Scully appeals to Kersh for help, but his hands are tied (by the Super Soldiers' involvement at the FBI), and so he once again has to play the part of the bad guy (I don't think I've warmed up to him really being a good guy yet).

Mulder sees this as a chance to finally prove what he's been investigating all these years, though it doesn't help that he still doesn't have any proof. He won't even reveal the secret he recently discovered, which would supposedly blow the case wide open (although I don't know how). Scully doesn't want Mulder to sacrifice his life for the truth, but he's already made up his mind, and you know how stubborn he can be. He's also seeing visions of dead people, apparently - making for the shocking appearance of Krycek. The Lone Gunmen also turn up, as does X. It's nice to see X again, after all these years, even if he only shows up to repeat his most disappointing legacy - leading Mulder to the useless Marita Covarrubias. I'm glad we get to see her again, though, if only to know what she's been up to. I was beginning to worry that they would just drop her character, and not even give her the honor of being killed off.

Even Gibson Praise shows up for a cameo appearance. Apparently, Mulder's been in New Mexico all (or most) of this time, protecting the mind-reading wunderkind. I could take or leave the character of Gibson Praise, but he's always been at his best reading the minds of this show's bureaucratic villains, and pointing out their hypocrisies. (Although, post-trial, if they're still trying to protect him, is it really smart bringing him into the FBI headquarters, when they know there's a replicant working on the inside?). Even Doggett and Reyes get their turn on the stand, and to my surprise, it's Reyes who gets the best moment of the whole trial. None if it is enough to exonerate Mulder, however, especially given that the verdict was a by-gone conclusion. But, though the X-Files division is shut down (for the third time) as collateral damage from Mulder's insubordination, his friends have a surprise in store for him - a daring prison breakout!

Mulder and Scully go on the run (together this time!), and, excitingly, Mulder's still got a trick up his sleeve. It's the Smoking Man - still alive! He's been hiding out in the old, Anasazi pueblos, and he's got a secret of his own to reveal. Something the Anasazi figured out years before - the aliens' kryptonite, which occurs naturally in the surrounding geological formations (it brought down the UFO in Roswell!). I can't tell you how relieved and excited I was to see the Smoking Man alive again at the end of the episode. It was perfect. Although, to be honest, his "earth-shattering" revelation fell a little flat. He doesn't survive the literally explosive climax, however - the episode makes a point of showing us his fiery skeleton so that we know for an absolute certainty that he really is truly dead this time. (Until the revival, that is).

All of this is just fantastic, but I'm kinda lukewarm about the episode's closing moments. It's the closest thing this episode has to that mushy "closure" I've been getting sick of (although, to its credit, it's only a small portion of the whole double-length episode). But the series ends with Mulder and Scully curled up in bed together, a clear demonstration of how much Chris Carter's original ideals have eroded over the years (for better or worse, depending on who you ask - I'm leaning toward worse). And their little discussion makes explicit what I've read was Chris Carter's interpretation of the central theme of the show about how the desire to believe in the paranormal is really just a variation on mankind's search for God. I think I would have preferred if that had remained no more than subtext, because I like Mulder better as an atheist.

And that's that! It should be very interesting to watch I Want To Believe again now, having watched the series through to the end for the first time. Stay tuned for a review of that coming next week!

Memorable quotes:

Military Guard: You're a guilty man. You entered a government facility illegally in search of nonexistent information. You failed in every respect!

General Suveg: This man Mulder has made a lot of enemies. He's a crusader, and a lot of people do not like the crusade.

Mulder: What's really on trial here is the truth.

Kersh: Is this all...leading anywhere?
Mulder: Yeah - the destruction of mankind.

Mulder: This is greater than you or me. This is about everything we've worked for for nine years, the truth that we both sacrificed so much to uncover and to expose.

Doggett: What's left for us on the X-Files?
Reyes: We came to this job to give it our best. It's the way we're gonna leave.
Mulder: It's not about how good you are. They control the game. They own it.
Doggett: Then let's shove it up their ass!

Reyes: What is the point of all of this? To destroy a man who seeks the truth, or to destroy the truth so no man can seek it? Either way, you lose.

(Surprisingly, it's Reyes who gets the standout moment of confrontation during the trial. And I love the look of admiration Mulder gives her after witnessing her little bout of righteous insubordination).

Mulder: A bullet between the eyes would have been preferable to this charade.

(Come on, Mulder, it wasn't that bad).

Mulder: The devil is just one man with a plan, but evil - true evil - is a collaboration of men.

Mulder: You may believe yourselves rid of your headache now. Maybe you are. But you've only done it by cutting off your own heads.

(There's a real tragedy in seeing mankind's best defender against the alien apocalypse defeated not by aliens, but by men).

Smoking Man: You damn me for my secrets, but you're afraid to speak the truth.

Scully: Mulder, you say that you've failed, but you only fail if you give up. And I know you - you can't give up.

The X-Files - S9:E16 "William"

[ S9:E15 "Jump The Shark" <<< Season 9 >>> S9:E17 "Release" ]

Spoiler Warning: This episode pretty much wraps up the remaining mythology threads from the last two seasons, in anticipation of the coming series finale, so expect major spoilers. Also, the best thing about this episode is the mystery of a certain character's identity, which will be spoiled herein.

Ever since Robert Patrick came on and breathed new life into this show, in the wake of David Duchovny's absence at the start of the eighth season, The X-Files has been rebuilding its mythology (to questionable results - these Super Soldiers, and the convoluted mystery surrounding Scully's baby). Now, with the show scheduled to finally go off the air once and for all, this episode is (presumably) tasked with killing off the new mythology, so as to wipe the slate clean for the series finale (which makes me wonder what they have planned for that). As happy as I am to see William finally go bye-bye, this is an at times ridiculous and frustrating episode, with a perhaps too clean resolution. It opens with a family considering their decision to adopt a child, with the twist that the child is baby William (cue nervous laughter). The rest of the episode explains how Scully comes to the decision to give her baby away.

A stranger attacks Doggett and attempts to steal some X-Files from the basement office, only to be caught in the act. He is badly burned over his entire body, and claims to have been sent by Mulder (still AWOL) to get back at the conspiracy that burned him in an early attempt to turn him into a Super Soldier (which he says the aliens - who have infiltrated the government, as we've already seen - are going to eventually do to the rest of the population, as part of their invasion (what a shame - I was looking forward to a fiery war zone like we saw in Amor Fati)). He gives the agents a false identity, but Doggett thinks that it might be Mulder himself. It's a patently ridiculous statement, but the episode devotes much of its emphasis to it - almost to the point of making you think it might be true. Not that this stranger acts anything like Mulder, or even looks like Mulder (even considering the burn scars) - but at this point in the series, I wouldn't put it past Chris Carter et al. to pull a stunt like that. It reeks of the shadowy doubles we've seen this season, and the half-assed flashbacks and Alien Bounty Hunters posing as Mulder in the last season.

But the weird thing is, David Duchovny was actually brought in to direct this episode. So he's actually there. At least, behind the camera. You'd think if it really was Mulder, they'd at least trot him out in a scene for the grand reveal. But, well, it's not Mulder. And the biggest giveaway is the fact that, in spite of the really good makeup job, it's not enough to conceal the identity of Chris Owens, who has played a certain character of some significance on this show before. That it's Jeffrey Spender pulling this ruse also leads to a DNA test that verifies, once and for all, that the Smoking Man (Spender's father) was indeed also Mulder's true father. Just like that. (You know, in spite of all the vain hinting going at least as far back as season 3's Talitha Cumi, I was pretty sure that wasn't going to turn out to be the case, in the end).

But that's not all. The whole alien invasion thing wraps up just as conveniently. Whether sent by Mulder or not, Spender maneuvers himself into Scully's home. There are some stupidly convenient writing decisions - like making the stranger get some sleep before talking, and having three agents in a house with a stranger leave the baby unsupervised (and I don't care if they think it is Mulder, he's still a stranger). Ultimately, Spender injects the baby with magnetite (presumably the same "kryptonite" we saw in action in the episode Trust No 1), which apparently removes the baby's special powers and makes him a completely normal baby - no messiah, no ability to be used by the alien invaders as some kind of leader or savior. Of course, the baby is still in danger, because of who he is (and who he was), so Scully chooses to give the baby away (I wonder how Mulder is going to feel about that, although I suppose he's voting with his absence), so that he can have a normal life (similar to a plot point that occurred in Angel, I recall).

And that's that. A lot of fans seem justly frustrated with this conclusion to the William arc, and I believe it's a symptom of the crappy mythology in this season. Personally, I'm not that invested in it to begin with, so the fact that the writers copped out to get rid of an inconvenient burden to a potential future film series (that never really materialized) - and the collateral damage done to Scully (and Mulder)'s character as a result - doesn't bother me on a visceral level. It's not a great episode, but then there haven't been very many of those this season. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for the series to end already. It's been in a coma for so long that I doubt I'll even be sad when it finally ends. I shed my tears (of frustration) back when Mulder "found" Samantha in season 7's Closure...

Um, who's watching the baby?

Memorable quotes:

Scully: That's ridiculous! It's absurd.
Doggett: Is it?

(Yes, Doggett, it is. It is).

The Breather: The conspiracy about the truth to keep aliens from the American public - all but destroyed a few years ago - has given rise to a new conspiracy in the government now, by men who are alien themselves.

Dr. Edwards: Your son is completely normal.
Reyes: That doesn't make sense.
Scully: No, I think it does. It makes perfect sense now.

(But feel free to elaborate).

Scully: I've seen my share of the hideous - of the disgusting, and the repellent - but you, sir, are the most perfect expression I will ever see...of all that is vile and hateful in life.
The Breather: That may well be, but for a moment, you believed it - that I was him.
Scully: I never believed it.
The Breather: You wanted to believe.

The X-Files - S9:E10 "Providence"

[ S9:E9 "Provenance" <<< Season 9 >>> S9:E11 "Audrey Pauley" ]

Spoiler Warning: This mythology episode picks up from last week's cliffhanger. Beware of spoilers.

The first three words spoken in this episode are "the Bible says" - so that kinda gives you an idea of what you're in for. I'm not super comfortable with all the religious symbolism, but to this episode's credit, it mostly plays toward the "aliens are God" angle that was characteristic of The Sixth Extinction mytharc. And that comes largely in the form of the UFO cult at the center of these two episodes. Now they've affixed a prophecy to William's existence, which states that he'll follow in his father's footsteps by stopping the alien invasion, unless his father is killed. Which is why the cult wants Mulder dead (so now Mulder is officially the father?), but suddenly isn't so sure he's already dead anymore (imagine that). In which case, this child is some miracle savior who will lead the alien race to victory (hang on - why, and since when do the aliens need a human messiah to lead them?). It's worth remembering that anything this cult says they believe in ought to be taken with a grain of salt. (Although, how many times has Chris Carter given us real answers in the form of dubious proclamations)?

So the cult actually wants the child alive - and, as I suspected, the man who tried to kill William in the last episode (the FBI agent who went undercover to infiltrate the cult) wanted to kill the baby to foil the cult's plans. Because, according to prophecy, letting the child live is equivalent to dooming the human race, provided Mulder is dead (is this all convoluted enough for you yet?) - not that Reyes will permit Scully to buy that party line. But even if they want the baby alive, that obviously doesn't mean Scully's just gonna let them take him. We learn a little bit more about the cult leader in this episode, in an opening sequence with some nice desert landscapes. He was a soldier in Iraq who had a vision of "angels from Heaven" (who were, of course, Super Soldiers) - "the true sons of God". This inspired him to start a cult so as to "deliver the message of the God who came before all other Gods". In other words, he's an alien sympathizer.

The episode begins with Doggett in a coma, following his accident in the last episode's cliffhanger, and A.D. Brad Follmer leading the investigation into the kidnapping of William. Scully doesn't trust him - justifiably - believing that there is a conspiracy within the FBI to wipe out everyone involved with the X-Files. There is a point at which it's hinted that Scully may be going too far in withholding evidence from the FBI because she's so invested in finding her baby, and doesn't trust anyone. But ultimately, her fears are well-founded (of course - this is The X-Files after all), although she may have some of the particulars wrong. For one thing, Skinner is inexplicably siding with the FBI this time, as if he spontaneously decided, "I've had enough of filling in Mulder's shoes, I want to be the guy with ambiguous loyalties again". On that note, A.D. Brad is shaping up to be an actual good guy, while Kersh is leaning toward the dark side once again (this is getting real hard to keep track of). The key note to take away is that there is a new threat of clear distinction - a Super Soldier within the FBI.

The whole God angle actually starts to get kinda interesting when Scully uses the artifact (before promptly losing it to her enemies) to cure the undercover FBI agent (who almost killed her son), and he reveals that the UFO cult leader was led to the discovery of the buried spacecraft (like the one in Biogenesis) by the voice of "God" (i.e., aliens), and that he believes the ship is a temple that houses the physical manifestation of God. Yeah, that sounds pretty cool to me. It takes William's proximity to get the spacecraft to activate, though, and when it goes flying up in the air, no one is left alive on the ground. Except William, that is. Which is disappointing, because I was really hoping that he'd be taken away on the ship so we wouldn't have to see him anymore.

Can you imagine if The X-Files had continued on for years after the ninth season, instead of being cancelled? They could have stretched out the back-and-forth possibilities of William's significance for years into the future! It would have been terrible. I wish the coming revival would just ignore the fact that the William thing ever happened, and rewind back to the pre-movie Mulder & Scully days. Alas... To wrap things up, Doggett magically wakes from his coma (after Reyes prays at an altar, and Scully cries over his bedside, with zero of the audience investment this show used to have when main characters spent whole episodes in hospital beds - sigh), claiming that he's hearing voices from God now, too. Fantastic. And he's the skeptic! I'll still say this is the best set of mythology episodes this season, but that's still not saying very much. And lord, am I getting exhausted, but this 200-day nonstop marathon is almost over. The end is in sight.

Memorable quotes:

Scully: You see a task force in there? I see a whitewash.

Langly: Access denied? Yeah, we'll see about that.

A.D. Brad: I've known you a long time, but this just seems, uh...a little traditional for you.
Reyes: Maybe when you're lost, you knock at the door with the porch light on.

(And that's a trick the church uses to lure vulnerable people in).

Cult Leader: If you wanna see the boy, you'll bring me the head of Fox Mulder.

(Wow, talk about an ultimatum).

The X-Files - S9:E9 "Provenance"

[ S9:E8 "Hellbound" <<< Season 9 >>> S9:E10 "Providence" ]

Spoiler Warning: Start of a myth two-parter (the last one!). Expect spoilers.

So, this episode ties in to the events of The Sixth Extinction from the beginning of the seventh season, and I'm starting to feel like this stupid William story line is trying to stick its fingers in everyone's pie, spoiling them all. It also makes it harder to cherry pick episodes to watch, which kind of annoys me, because the William story line is not good enough to warrant sitting through the whole thing. And yet it's the core of the show's last two seasons of mythology, so you can't avoid it without cutting the mythology out completely - which would be perfectly okay, except that you'd miss some critical character sendoffs. And this is the highest point the mythology has reached all season (not that that's saying much), undoubtedly raised by the inclusion of plot points from the Sixth Extinction arc, instead of relying so heavily on this Super Soldier rigmarole. Except that one wonders how any of this stuff is relevant, since in Essence/Existence, the miracle baby plot detoured into "the aliens are afraid of God" territory, which is incompatible with "the aliens are God". This show's mythology has always been inscrutable, but never has it been so damnably inconsistent.

On the plus side, putting William in clear and present danger has a positive effect on Scully's character for once, since instead of just being weepy, she goes into total badass mode, like some of her best moments from the past. Pity it doesn't last too long, though. The baby is apparently now the target of a Canadian UFO cult (who, in a shameless bid to weasel him into the plot somehow, claims that Mulder is already dead - puh-leeze), who have uncovered another spacecraft like the one Scully found in Biogenesis. (Lookit, everything's going to hell now that the government isn't around to cover these things up anymore - the Smoking Man must be rolling in his grave). Reyes, meanwhile, struggles to come to terms with the conclusion Scully grappled with previously - that all of mankind's religions come from aliens. They get a hold of another of those fragments and - lo and behold - it responds to William in a profound way. Scully thinks she might find answers to William's nature in those runes.

But in the meantime, the baby's life is in danger, so Scully hands him off to The Lone Gunmen (there's an idea for a spinoff - just kidding), and I'm kind of relieved, thinking that maybe William will go AWOL like Mulder for a while. Except that in the cliffhanger, a pursuer gets to them before they can disappear into the woodwork. (But not before hitting Doggett with a car). Honestly, it's very reminiscent of the chase in Existence, except that now William has been born. But if they want him so bad, why didn't they take him before? Or is it even the same people? There's no solid evidence that these pursuers are Super Soldiers, so one wonders what their game is. Guess I'll have to wait until next week to find out (or not, depending on Chris Carter's whim). I'll say that the mythology has definitely improved a bit with this episode, but I'm still struggling to feel very invested in how it's all going to turn out. Except that I hope William goes bye-bye by the end of it.

To be continued...

Memorable quotes:

A.D. Brad: You once worked on the X-Files.
Scully: Well, if this is an X-File, then why don't you ask somebody who's working on the X-Files?
A.D. Brad: 'Cause we're asking you.

Doggett: We're talkin' about...pieces of paper with marks on it.
Scully: They're not just marks, Agent Doggett. It's writing. Words.

(Noticing a pattern here? Like, inane dialogue? Yeah, me too).

Doggett: Dead man up and disappearing - happens every day, right? At least it does on the X-Files.

(I think this episode may have the record for most times the phrase "The X-Files" is uttered).

Mrs. Scully: Dana, God has given you a miracle. A child that wasn't supposed to be. Maybe it's not to question - just to be taken as a matter of faith.
Scully: Mom, I can't take this on faith. I need to know. I need to know if it's really God I have to thank.

(I'm with you on this one, Scully. Glad to see you're still a skeptic at heart).

Scully: I'll kill you! I'll kill you if you touch my baby!

(And don't you doubt it for a second).

Doggett: This man have any kind of a weapon?
Scully: A pillow...

The X-Files - S8:E21 "Existence"

[ S8:E20 "Essence" <<< Season 8 >>> S9:E1 "Nothing Important Happened Today" ]

Spoiler Warning: This is a season-ending mythology episode. Expect huge spoilers.

With Agent Reyes shipping Scully off to some remote village where Doggett was born to have her baby, Billy Miles rolls into the morgue in a box, adequately described by the autopsy specialist as "hamburger". Well, all except for a neat-looking metallic vertebra, which subsequently begins to regenerate. I guess "indestructible" wasn't an understatement. To be honest, I still think these Super Soldiers (which are finally described as such in this episode) are pretty cool, but it's definitely more akin to something out of a Terminator movie, than The X-Files. Apparently, Robert Patrick's appearance on the show had a subconscious (or maybe just conscious) effect on the writers.

Knowle is the one to provide further explanation in this episode - although, knowing that he's one of them, you can take what he says with a grain of salt. He pushes the military projects angle (which is a good idea if he wants to get Doggett the skeptic to believe him), saying that the chip the government put in Scully's neck triggered her pregnancy, with what he claims is the first organic version of the Super Soldier prototype. When Doggett lets Mulder know about Knowle, he's appropriately distrustful (surely remembering how Deep Throat used to jerk him around), but I don't know why he's so convinced that what Knowle says is a lie. I mean, Scully was taken by the government in a staged abduction, right? Even with the alien explanation, the government was still involved. Unless they're retconning that now, too...

Meanwhile, Reyes humorously imitates whale song, while Scully makes the obvious comparison between this character and her sister, Melissa. Again, Krycek has a few scenes where he demonstrates the real malice of his character, but that are once again marred by questionable plot developments. First, he's working with the Super Soldiers. Okay. But why does he suddenly want to kill Mulder now, after all that's happened? Mulder's known about a conspiracy infiltrating the FBI for years. That's not new. I just can't get Krycek's motivations. He claims to have wanted to see Mulder stop the alien invasion, but then why is he working with them? And if he's working with them, why does he want to kill the baby? The scene ends with Skinner shooting Krycek pretty definitively in the forehead, and though it's entirely warranted, given Krycek's stunt with the nanobots (you signed your own death warrant there, Krycek), I'm really sad to see him go.

But that's not even the thing that bugs me the most about this episode. For what it's worth, the conclusion is very exciting, and the scene where Scully finally delivers her baby in front of a crowd of emotionless human drones is terrifically creepy. And you gotta love Doggett telling Kersh off after discovering that he's working with the Super Soldiers, even if it does mean assigning Reyes to work with him on the X-Files (completing the ousting and replacement of Mulder and Scully). But when Mulder explained that he found Scully by following a light in the sky (even if it really was an alien beacon), I swear I vomited in my mouth just a little bit. Like, are they going to start singing Away In A Manger now? They didn't have to put that in - Mulder could have gotten the location from Skinner and Doggett - they clearly went out of the way to include it. So I guess they really are pushing the "second coming" angle.

Except the aliens didn't take the baby, after all. I thought they were afraid of it, but this episode positions it as another one of their experiments. Except maybe it's not. So, is it special, or not? And if so, how? Dammit, Chris Carter, I'm sick of being jerked around! And is it really Mulder's baby? Because that's what it looks like. In a season, we've gone from Mulder being abducted and Scully learning that she's pregnant, to Mulder and Scully kissing at home, while cradling their newborn son. It's definitely a warmer place to leave off a season (let alone the series). But, on the other hand, it's less the vibe I would expect from The X-Files. This was a surprisingly good season - considering the circumstances - but can they really stretch it out for another year?

Hold that door!

Memorable quotes:

Doggett: It can't be. It's impossible.
Mulder: Yeah, it can't be, but it is.

Knowle: Six years ago, Agent Scully was taken in a military operation staged as an abduction. They put a chip in the back of her neck to monitor her. It was also used to make her pregnant, with the first organic version of that same Super Soldier.

Game Warden: I've heard every excuse in the book, but this one's far too original.

Doggett: You ever stop to ask yourself? All the sacrifice, the blood spilled. You've given nearly a decade of your life. Where the hell is it all gonna end?
Mulder: I don't know. Maybe it doesn't.

(I feel like this is another one of those lines that expresses Chris Carter and David Duchovny's feelings).

Krycek: It's gonna take more bullets than you can ever fire to win this game. One bullet, and I can give you a thousand lives.

(Yeah, I don't know what this means. I'm having flashbacks to Mulder's "if those are my last words, I can do better").

Game Warden: This baby will be born.

Kersh: You investigate what I tell you.
Doggett: And you put me on the X-Files. That's what I'm investigatin'.

Mulder: What are you gonna call him?
Scully: William. After your father.
Mulder: Well, I don't know, he's got your coloring and your eyes, but he looks suspiciously like Assistant Director Skinner.

The X-Files - S8:E20 "Essence"

[ S8:E19 "Alone" <<< Season 8 >>> S8:E21 "Existence" ]

Spoiler Warning: You're no doubt used to this by now, but if there were spoilers before, we're into the two-part season finale now, so expect even bigger ones.

So far, this series has arranged its season-spanning mytharcs in such a way that there'd only ever been a single episode before the season cliffhanger, to be resolved in one or two episodes come the following season. This is, therefore, the first time that a season concludes with a two-parter before the break. It starts with Mulder waxing philosophical in voice-over - as in important mythology episodes of the past - this time about the miracle of birth. It also hints at the central question behind Scully's pregnancy: is it natural, or supernatural? While Scully's mother (whom we haven't seen very much of lately, but is as meddling as ever) throws her daughter a baby shower, Billy Miles - last seen being resurrected in Deadalive - is on the warpath, destroying anyone and anything connected to Scully's miraculous pregnancy.

About which we do finally get some answers in this episode. Apparently, it turns out that the doctors we were all afraid of (and which Billy Miles is systematically executing) were actually trying to protect Scully's baby - and not because it's an alien. Though they were almost certainly involved in experiments with alien babies (and it sounds like they were taking orders from the Syndicate back when it was still around), Scully's baby would seem to be something else entirely. But that's where things get a little hokey. I would have loved for Scully to have given birth to an alien baby. And I would have settled for her having Mulder's human baby. But I fear this series is laying on the religious imagery a little strong - what with Scully being a virgin mother and all. As much as I love it whenever Krycek pops up, he lays down some unsatisfying exposition in this episode.

It's cool that the aliens are trying to sabotage any and all efforts by mankind to survive the coming alien apocalypse. I even think this new form of enforcer - the alien pod people, who I predict are going to be the "Super Soldiers" fans often talk about when discussing this show's late-era mythology - are a neat idea. (Although, I don't like them better than the Alien Bounty Hunter, who - now that I think about it - was probably engaged in a similar objective in Colony/End Game). This is definitely a new phase for the mythology - more so than The Sixth Extinction (which never really went anywhere) ever proved to be. But Krycek spouts some of that "more human than human" crap when referring to Scully's baby, who is apparently going to be some kind of messiah. Which is why the aliens want to destroy it, since they're apparently not only religious now, but superstitious to boot. I don't want the aliens to be afraid of "a higher power". I liked it better when the aliens were the higher power!

I should have known something was wrong when it was Krycek coming to the rescue (and then Agent Reyes as their backup - lame!). Mulder seems to think that Scully's baby could somehow be proof that there's a God. Except, he's supposed to be an atheist. I don't see any good reason for him to backpedal now, just because some scientists have created a superbaby in a lab, and stuck it in a barren woman's womb. The conclusion/cliffhanger, which ends with Scully being spirited away to somewhere presumably safe from the replicants (but don't count on it), leaves much to be desired. Though Billy Miles ends up in a trash compactor, there's another replicant on the scene. But rather than the excitement of shouting, "oh my god, I can't believe it", I find myself frustrated, thinking, "what the hell is going on here?" This show has lots of potential - the alien menace, the usage of Krycek (who has remained a regular, if sporadic, character much longer than I remembered) - but I just don't know that I'm enjoying the direction the story is going in.

To be continued...

Memorable quotes:

Party-Goer: So many secrets, Margaret.
Mrs. Scully: What do you expect? My daughter works for the FBI.

Mulder: Pissing people off comes with the territory, Agent Doggett. It's part of working on the X-Files.

Doggett: You're ignorin' the fact that he bled red blood. Now, every single X-File I read - and I read 'em all, Mulder - what you call "aliens" bleed green. Right?
Mulder: Well, Billy Miles is a whole new deal.

Krycek: You can call 'em what you want - human replacements, alien replicants. They're virtually unstoppable.

(Super soldiers, perhaps? I'd like to know where Krycek gets all his information. Oh, that's right, he used to have the MJ files. He probably copied them and has been interpreting them piecemeal for the last five years).

Skinner: What do they want?
Krycek: They want to knock out any and all attempts by us to survive the final days. When they come back to retake the planet.

(Kinda begs the question - why did Krycek want to prevent the baby from coming to term before, but now he's all helping hands? Or one hand, at least. Is he for or against)?

Krycek: If I'm so full of crap, why all the precautions?
Skinner: Precisely because you are so full of crap, Krycek.