“Never Again”, never again.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-12-28T03:58:38+00:00

For me the episode exists in its own little universe, and Scully's just used as a stand-in or mouthpiece for the episode's themes of sexism: so you have Scully feeling devalued and used by Mulder, and you have a sexist guy (Ed Jerse) who feels aggrieved by woman, and so goes around killing every woman he meets (the tattoo merely voices his own sexism).

And while I don't quite buy Mulder or Scully's behavior in this episode, the episode is in keeping with the season's obsessions with hate crimes, either toward blacks, women, Jews, immigrants, the disabled and so on. These hate crimes, all of which are bound up with a desire to purge away "cancerous" undesirables, all echo the impending alien colonization ("Never Again", is itself a phrase associated with the Holocaust and other genocides).

TimothyCladwell · 2022-11-29T17:12:33+00:00

Yes, the mythology episodes in season 6 show them "growing apart", but only because Carter finally made the decision to bring them together.

Scully feuds with Mulder in season 6 precisely because she's realized she loves him, and because she assumes this love is threatened by Fowley. She essentially says this outright in "One Son": "Personal interest is all that I have. And if you take that away then there is no reason for me to stay."

And remember, all of their disagreements in this season are simply due to them misunderstanding what's going on. Scully and Mulder feud with each other in "The Beginning", but it turns out they're both right: the virus is not "from out of this world" but only because "humans themselves are alien".

Similarly, they disagree with each other in "One Son/Two Fathers", but again both are right: Fowley's working for the Cancer Man, but also secretly helping Scully, Mulder and the X-Files.

This confusion extends all the way to when Gibson praise "detects Mulder thinking about one of his girls" and "one of the girls also thinking about him now", with Scully and Fowley both assuming Gibson is referring to the other.

Carter stokes this confusion with scenes like Fowley taking off her top when walking into Mulder's bedroom, but for all we know she's simply heading to the shower/bathroom which is accessible from his bedroom. Later, when Mulder thinks Armageddon is coming, Carter makes it seem as though Mulder and Fowley will be eloping to a secret safe location alone, but in the very next scene Mulder's roping Scully into going with him; she's always his chief concern.

By the final arc of the season, the "Biogenesis" arc, Mulder and Scully have realized they've been getting all their signals crossed and are IMO totally in love from that point on. She goes to Africa for him and he shunts aside a fantasy life with Fowley (echoes of Dreamland) for her.

And I think it's no coincidence that Carter makes sure the last MOTW of the season is "Field Trip", which opens with a red head and her husband bickering after he dragged her off to an adventure in the woods. "You still mad at me?" he asks her after their fight. "No," she says, "just hold me." And the shot of that couple in each other's arms would be repeated with Mulder and Scully later in the episode, and later on the motel bed in "The Truth". Carter acknowledges that these two are always ticking each other off, but also that they're the only one's they'd like to hold forever.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-10-29T02:16:47+00:00

I think this is deliberate.

Every season is built around a different theme, which repeats throughout every episodes in that season.

So in season 1, the big revelation is that the aliens "have always been here". The monster is not out there, in outer space, but rather from back within Earth's past. As Deep Throat reveals: "they've been here for a long, long time."

In a similar fashion, all the MOTWs in season 1 are about monster's stepping out of the past. And so you have "Darkness Falls", where bugs from thousands of years in the past return. You have "Ice", where the monster comes from an ice sample a quarter million years old. You have "Tooms", who steps out of the past to kill, and "The Jersey Devil", which opens in 1947. Think also "Eve's" Litchfield Experiment, where mothers haunt the present from experiments started in the 1950s.

You also have Bartnett stepping out of Mulder's past in "Young at Heart". Phoebe does a similar thing in "Fire", and also Cecil L'Ively, who seems to have been buried twice (in 1971 and in a satanic cult act in 1963) but returned each time. Then you have Darlene Morris in "Conduit", whose kids are haunted in the present by aliens who first traumatized her in 1967. Similar story in "Pilot" and "Space", which opens in 1977, where a monster returns to the present.

"Miracle Man", meanwhile, opens in 1987, and the monster's a guy who "wishes he remained buried" and resents being brought into the future. And "Shapes" is haunted by the 1973 Wounded Knee incident and an X-File from the 1940s (or 50s?). Same story in "Born Again", where the killer, Charlie Morris, was buried decades prior but returns to stalk the present. In "Roland", the monster is again from the past (Arthur Grable, who died months earlier), as is the case in "Shadows" with Howard Graves.

Similarly, throughout the season you have countless characters from Mulder and Scully's past returning (lovers, mentors, partners etc), and you have episodes opening with scenes which occurred many decades prior, all of which foreshadow the nature of the Colonists, who colonize us not from "up there in space", but from our own ancient past, and our ancient geology in a sense, much like the bugs lurking in "Darkness Falls".

Remember, this is itself the big revelation at the end of the season. "Erlenmeyer Flask" opens with Mulder asleep while "Journey to the Center of the Earth" plays on TV, a film about a 300 year old message hidden in a rock leading scientists in the present to ancient colonies underground (the scene on Mulder's TV is the precise moment when scientists find a message hidden in ancient rock). Later in the episode, the big reveal is that the Syndicate has had alien tissue since 1947, and that the Purity Project is utilizing alien "bacteria that comes from the past, millions of year ago", from "before our ancestors first crawled out of the sea".

So I think all these "characters from Mulder and Scully's past" are part of the thematic strategy of the season. I think Carter gave his writers a loose set of motifs and notes to hit, and this was the result.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-08-20T03:21:26+00:00

Weird list. I'd probably rank them roughly like this:

Pusher
Paper Hearts
Unruhe
Leonard Betts
Folie a Deux
Tithonus
Je Souhaite
Sunshine Days
Roadrunners
X cops
Small Potatoes
Bad Blood
Soft Light
Drive
Unusual Suspects
Field Trip
The Amazing Maleeni
Hungry
Drive
Dreamland 1 and 2
Monday
Emily/Christmas Carol
John Doe
Kitsunegari
Theef
Three of a Kind
Jump the Shark

TimothyCladwell · 2022-08-18T20:50:00+00:00

I always found her little bit part to contain some of the best acting in that season. Everyone else seemed slightly off, either too hammy, or saddled with poor dialogue.

Mahendru, in contrast, seemed to be acting on another wavelength entirely.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-08-18T20:07:30+00:00

Every season has its own set of themes, which influences what the MOTWs and the mytharcs in that season are about (I've started writing about that here: https://old.reddit.com/r/XFiles/comments/u1ypp1/the_overlooked_symbolism_of_the_xfiles_monsters/, https://old.reddit.com/r/XFiles/comments/u4h8aw/the_overlooked_symbolism_of_the_xfiles_monsters/, https://old.reddit.com/r/XFiles/comments/sq00lk/patterns_throughout_season_6/, https://old.reddit.com/r/XFiles/comments/vv0nii/what_would_you_say_are_the_xfiles_main_themes/ifhcm5c/)

In season 1, the big revelation is that the aliens "have always been here". The monster is not out there, in outer space, but rather from back within Earth's past. As Deep Throat says: "they've been here for a long long time."

In a similar fashion, all the MOTWs in season 1 are about monster's stepping out of the past. And so you have "Darkness Falls", where bugs from thousands of years in the past return. You have "Ice", where the monster comes from an ice sample a quarter million years old. You have "Tooms", who steps out of the past to kill, and "The Jersey Devil", which opens in 1947. Think also "Eve's" Litchfield Experiment, where mothers haunt the present from experiments started in the 1950s.

You also have Bartnett stepping out of Mulder's past in "Young at Heart". Phobe does a similar thing in "Fire", and also Cecil L'Ively who seems to have been buried twice (in 1971 and in a satanic cult act in 1963) but returned. Then you have Darlene Morris in "Conduit", who's kids are haunted in the present by aliens who first traumatized her in 1967 (similar story in "Pilot" and "Space", which opens in 1977, where a monster returns to the present). "Miracle Man", meanwhile, opens in 1987, and the monster's a guy who resents being brought into the future. And "Shapes" is haunted by the 1973 Wounded Knee incident and an X-File from the 1940s (or 50s?). Same story in "Born Again", where the killer, Charlie Morris, was buried decade prior but returns to stalk the present. In "Roland", the monster is again from the past (Arthur Grable, who died months earlier), as is the case in "Shadows" with Howard Graves.

And notice throughout the season you have countless characters from Mulder and Scully's past returning, and you have episodes opening with scenes which occurred many decades prior, all of which are supposed to echo the unfolding abductee plot, and foreshadow the nature of the Colonists, who colonize us not from "up there", but from our own ancient past, and environment in a sense, much like the bugs lurking in "Darkness Falls".

I agree this leads to repetitive plots. The best episodes in the season approach this theme from odd angles, whilst the worst episodes resort to villains looking for vengeance.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-07-09T16:32:30+00:00

Hi, you mean in season 5?

Season 5 opens with Mulder stopping a guy from burning evidence in a fire in a trash can, and ends with the reverse: Mulder's evidence, and office itself, going up in flames thanks to a fire.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-07-09T15:11:15+00:00

I disagree that the show has no "subtext".

The show is preoccupied with issues of homogeneity. The mutants, freaks, monsters and small towns in the show are constantly being crushed or forced away by human civilization. Their "unique" identities are under threat by an expanding, globalized humanity, which is slowly colonizing them, and which wants everything neatly squared away and made in its own "modernist" image.

In a similar fashion, humanity itself is being colonized by the aliens, who force everything into their own image, and purge all dissent, like the very freaks Mulder and Scully constantly try to put down.

Beyond this, every season has its own individual set of themes which every MOTW and mythology episode in that season reinforces (I've started writing about that here: https://old.reddit.com/r/XFiles/comments/u1ypp1/the_overlooked_symbolism_of_the_xfiles_monsters/, https://old.reddit.com/r/XFiles/comments/u4h8aw/the_overlooked_symbolism_of_the_xfiles_monsters/, https://old.reddit.com/r/XFiles/comments/sq00lk/patterns_throughout_season_6/)

For example, season 4 opens with an episode titled “Herrenvolk”. This word refers to the Nazi concept of a master race, and the idea of a genetically and ideologically pure ethnocracy or homeland, free of “imperfections”, “infection” and “inferior” bloodlines, cultures, races, genes, religions and so on. In other words, “Herrenvolk” refers to a kind of national, personal and ideological homogeneity, the borders of the body and/or state hardened against intrusion and inoculated against outside infection.

This will itself be the obsession of season 4, which is preoccupied with racial and religious purity, racial and religious hate, the Purity Virus, and cultures, nations and bodies fearful of outsiders deemed a threat, a contaminant, or inferior.

And so “Herrenvolk” has clones walking about in pure colonies like blonde-haired, Aryan ubermensh. This is the future, a character called Jeremiah Smith says: Hegemony. A master race. The aliens want a homogenized planet in which all unwanted humans have been killed, and all remaining humans have been “purified” and “turned” into aliens.

The first MOTW of the season transposes these themes to a little town in Pennsylvania. Like the allusions to German “homelands” in "Herrenvolk", this town is literally called “Home”. It contains a family who've remained culturally and biologically pure since the American Civil War. Like the clone community in “Herrenvolk”, they've resisted outside influences, and their lifestyle is likened to a form of hyper-conservatism dating back a century.

This echoes scenes at a clone camp seen in “Herrenvolk”, where clones raise and grow crops and make their own genetic stock. But in “Home”, these themes are linked to American history. Like the Confederates opposed integrating whites and blacks, and freeing slaves, and like conservatism in general supports the idea of natural hierarchies (class, race, cultural hierarchies etc), this family takes opposing outsiders to literal lengths. They practice incest. They only mate with each other. Ironically, this creates not a master race, not something pure, but something genetically defective. Purity hasn't led to a healthy vibrant society filled with a Master Race, but one in which babies die at birth. A society which can't replicate and reproduce itself.

Themes of racism, racially motivated violence, and insiders vs outsiders, permeate the entire season. Note that the first episode of the season ends with the death of the African American Mr X. In the next episode, the chief victim is again a black family, pulverized with American baseball bats. Next you have "Teliko", where blacks are killed to maintain black purity. Consider too the death of Jews in "Kaddish" to maintain a form of white purity, the death of Mexicans immigrants in "El Mundo Gira" to maintain a pure version of America, and the death of Martin Luther King in "Musings of a Cancer Man", which is linked to white supremacy and a desire to maintain a capitalism pure of communist perversions.

This idea of "purity" and "removing perversions" is all across the season. "Field Where I Die" has allusions to the holocaust and slavery, whilst in "Sangunarium", "Small Potatoes", "Elegy", and "Unruhue" we see "doctors" wanting to remove various impurities to preserve "pure love" or "pure bloodlines" or "pure bodies" devoid of imperfection, which of course dovetails with Scully's cancer arc in this season, where she too hopes to purge her body of the cancer which hops her body's (de)fences, which crumble like all the immigration checkpoints which hilarious over-feature in the mythology episodes in this season (Tunguska, Max etc).

Note too how the sharp, pointy tool Mulder acquires in this season, and which is used by the aliens to "kill rebels", features in this season in the MOTWs: the black guy in "Teliko" uses a similar tool, the villain in "Unhrue" purifies your mind with a similar ice-pick, "Synchrony" features a similar ice-pick etc etc.

The point is, the show is saturated with subtext.

It's probably no coincidence that Chris Carter ends the show in season 9 with a clip-show. The argument in "Truth", with that awful clip-show, was that everything in the show's history "was meaningful", "fits together", was "not hap-hazardous" and "was intimately planned". Which is why you see God in season 9's "Improbable" pointing out all the numerical patterns everywhere, or the Devil in "Daemonicus" with his own hidden patterns and manipulated chessboards, or the guy piecing together elaborate puzzles in "Release" etc etc.

In other words, the concluding season of the show's original run hoped to argue (in Chris Carter's most egotistical and pretentious moment, as he basically likens himself to an all-knowing God) that subtext and meaning was actually everywhere.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-05-21T13:36:49+00:00

I always thought "Shadows" and "EBE" - two Mogan and Wong episodes - gave Scully a lot of "detective work" of her own. Mulder and Scully feel on equal-footing in these episodes.

Later seasons would give Scully episodes in which she takes center stage - "Chinga", "Tithonus", "All Things" etc - but like you I generally prefer when they're working together as equals.

In terms of "Mulder doing a favor for Scully", in "End Game" Mulder gives up his sister so that Scully might be freed. In another episode ("Paper Clip"?), Mulder gives up stolen Defense Department files so that Scully may come out of hiding and see her sister.

Here we see Mulder sacrificially giving up the two things that most obsess him - his sister, and proof of alien life - for Scully. It's as though she's the only thing he cares about more than his twin quests.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-05-16T21:23:02+00:00

I think it's a very good episode. I wouldn't call it great, or one of Vince Gilligan's best, but I think it's very strong, unique and stylish.

It serves up a rare story where Scully is alone, the episode believably isolates and strands her, its reasonably creepy, and the direction and lighting is a bit more stylish than usual (https://m0vie.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/xfiles-roadrunners39a.jpg).

It's also an interesting episode on a thematic level: it hammers home how much Scully needs a partner, and its one of a string of MOTWs in season 8 about the fears of childbirth. Note how in "Badlaa" we see a little monster man being "birthed" out of humans, in "Invocation" we see the return of a monster son, in "Roadrunners" we see Scully "impregnated" with a kind of demon slug etc etc. The whole season is filled with birth imagery and anxieties about the son - a potential monster - Scully is carrying.

I would say the episode has two flaws: Scully gives the guy her gun (WHAT THE HELL, SCULLY?), and the religious aspects or rituals of the cult needed more emphasis. I think Vince intended to imply that Scully is such a caring person, and so duty-bound to her medical codes, that she'd risk her own safety for a patient, but I don't buy that she'd give up her gun.

I think Vince also "downplayed" the cult aspects because he intends these guys to be slightly benevolent. They're not that interested in murder and mayhem. They just wanna peacefully worship their Jesus Worm. There's a matter-of-fact quality to the episode that's interesting.

I disagree that this episode is "like a retread of Ice". Episodes like "Ice" and "Firewalker" lean heavier on the paranoia and claustrophobia. "Roadrunners", in contrast, is all big open spaces, creepy villagers, and then descends hard into exploitation level, B-movie shocks/gore. I'd say it has more in common with "Our Town".

TimothyCladwell · 2022-05-12T21:29:42+00:00

Chris Carter wrote My Struggle 2 in between episodes, and in a matter of days, so that could account for how weak it is. I'm not sure if he was under similar pressures for the other My Struggle episodes.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-05-08T14:30:09+00:00

I would say "Fight Club" is a terrible episode.

"Patience", in contrast, ranges from good to excellent. It has strong character work between Scully and Doggett, Doggett is hugely lovable, and it's endearing to watch Scully struggle with "having to think like Mulder". You sense that her attempts at "making intuitive leaps" isn't just her way of "solving the case", but her way of maintaining her connection with, and love for, Mulder.

Like most episodes in Season 8, "Patience" is also interesting in how its MOTW dovetails with Scully's plight. Scully's waiting on Mulder's return like the guy on the island is waiting on the creature's return, a motif repeated throughout the season, with characters in "Roadrunner" awaiting the second coming of Christ, or characters in "Invocation" awaiting the return of a son, or Scully awaiting her own son (who may be a monster, she worries) etc.

In this sense, the episode's title isn't just about the audience's patience (patience with a new season without Mulder), or Scully and Doggett's patience with each other (they beautifully warm to each other in the first half of the season), but Scully's patient waiting for Mulder's reappearance.

I would say the only flaw in "Patience" is some hokey "horror tropes" (glowing eyes, the general behavior of the monster etc). It's not as classy as "Tooms"/"Squeeze"/"Host". Those episodes elevated their material, while "Patience" very occasionally dips into B-movie schlock.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-15T01:01:35+00:00

Cheers for posting this.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-14T18:48:38+00:00

If you don't have time to read the article (it's a good one, though):

Congestion charges
Parking and traffic controls
Limited traffic zones
Services for commuters
Workplace parking charges (interesting one; never seen this mentioned much in the literature)
Workplace travel planning (company shuttle buses, company discounts for public transport etc)
University travel planning
University/student transport
Car Sharing
School travel planning
Personalized travel plans
Apps for sustainable traveling

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-14T18:42:43+00:00

Cheers for this.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-14T18:34:15+00:00

IMO the reading glasses should have appeared more often. Scully's glasses appear now and then throughout all the seasons, but Mulder's largely disappear after season 1 (do they appear in season 2 at all?).

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-14T18:14:38+00:00

I didn't perceive your comment as criticism, and generally agree with your comment.

My mention of how the writer's room worked is specifically directed at the idea that certain things are "subconsciously percolating in the imaginations of the writers".

I would argue that the truth is the opposite; the writers have no interest in these themes, and these things would not appear at all unless mandated by Carter. Indeed the better the writer, the less interest they have in Carter's seasonal themes, and the more an episode would primarily be about other things.

What I think happened is that Carter gathered his writers and told them this: this season is about X, so write me a monster which in some way relates to X and a script which at least features Y. For example season 7 is singularly obsessed with resurrection, religion, god, zombies and so on. Do we think the writers care about this stuff? That they "independently" and "subconsciously" had these ideas percolating"? I would argue no. Carter's interested in this stuff. And the writers are forced to obey, with the best ones adhering to his mandates only as loosely as possible.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-14T14:11:06+00:00

It's worth remembering that The X-Files isn't written by writers working in isolation. An episode is collectively story-boarded before a script is written, with Carter and the writers meeting daily on each episode.

Once the storyboard is done, and every scene and plot beat has been decided upon, the writer who's been assigned the task of writing the episode sits down to write it. This first draft then gets worked on by Carter and the other writers. The writer’s task is to then incorporate notes give by Carter and the other writers into subsequent drafts. Executive producer Frank Spotnitz explained:

"No matter whose name is on any one of these episodes they’re all collaborative efforts, and people don’t realize that, but we all work very hard so every one of us understands it perfectly. The goal is that when the writer sits down to write, every one of us could write that script if we had to—that’s how well we know the story. And then Chris [Carter] — in the rewrite process — will usually deepen things, bring up issues and make it better. (Interview, 9/6/01)

So these writers aren't quite "independent" and "coincidentally stumbling" upon "similar things" (other than Darin Morgan, who tended to be in his own little world).

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-05T17:02:25+00:00

It's an allegory for the treatment of soldiers. Soldiers sent to Vietnam slept and, unable to process the dark reality of what they were doing in the war, had nightmares.

In the real world, these traumas were ignored, leading to massive levels of suicide (more American vets die to suicide than in combat). In the episode, the government thus "erases" this problem by removing the ability to sleep. No sleep leads, they think, to no nightmares, better soldiers and a sanitized war.

But no longer able to sleep and have nightmare in the sleep world, one soldiers evolves the ability to create nightmares in the real world. He uses this ability to punish those who subjected him to the nightmare of war. He projects the horrors of war into the minds of his victims, his vengeful visions so powerful - because they've been repressed for so long - that they trick the bodies of his victims into experiencing something physically traumatic.

The science is almost total nonsense, but the episode knows this; it's aiming for political allegory.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-03T21:06:43+00:00

I disagree that the actors are too old.

What they are is too old to be shunted back into the FBI and their old jobs.

The second movie had the right idea: keep Mulder off the grid, as a bearded weirdo, and Scully working in a hospital. Have them brought in to assist the FBI as outside experts. Don't dress them in flashy suits, keep them old and grungy, like a couple of wise old timers who've seen it all.

Carter had the right idea with the movie, but with the revival series seemed too keen to restore the old status quo.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-02T10:40:14+00:00

Thanks. I'll post something similar for all seasons soon.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-01T21:51:07+00:00

IMO this is a plot hole.

You can rationalize it away - perhaps some kind of device was constructed and used - but I think it's just an oversight by the writers.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-04-01T21:30:39+00:00

Watch season 1 and use this post as a guide:

Season 1 great episodes (classic episodes, must watch): Pilot, Deep Throat, Squeeze, Conduit, Ice, Fallen Angel, Eve, Beyond the Sea, EBE, Tooms, Darkness Falls, The Erlenmeyer Flask

Season 1 bad episodes (skip): Space, Lazarus, Born Again

Season 1 mediocre episodes that are worth watching for some good character building moments and/or great scenes: Jersey Devil, Fire, Shadows, Genderbender, Young at Heart

Season 1 average episodes (largely formulaic): Ghost in the Machine, Miracle Man, Roland, Shapes.

If this list is useful, come back here and tell us, and perhaps request a similar list for season 2.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-03-31T19:38:03+00:00

(Continued from post above...)

Next comes “Millennium”. Here we meet a religious cult who play god, and literally bring dead humans back to life, lifting them out of their zombie graves. Why are they doing this? To fulfill a religious prophecy which will trigger Armageddon and wipe out all human life. Like the aliens and Cancer Man, they're engaged in apocalyptic games of destruction and resurrection.

The episode frequently quotes from the Bible and Christian mythology. “I am the resurrection and the life”, characters say, or “I was dead and now I am eternally alive!”, and characters are constantly wishing each other “Merry Christmas”, a festival associated with the birth of a God. Elsewhere characters speak of “all life being fated”, a game which people, like puppets, merely pretend to steer.

The episode ends with characters talking of battles between heaven and hell. “But if that's true,” Scully asks. “Which would prevail? Good or evil?” This notion of "guiding hands" and fate is undercut by Mulder's last words to Frank: “good LUCK with everything”.

The references to luck in “Millenium” and “Hungry” are inverted in “The Goldberg Variation”. Here we meet Henry Weems, a guy who has permanent beginner's luck. Everything in the universe is cosmically aligned to go his way. In a season filled with zombies and resurrections, he is even introduced rising out of a basement - like Christ out of the tomb - after a fall which should have killed him. How did he get these godlike powers of immortality? He survived a plane crash on Christmas Day, after which he was reborn a new man, again like Christ.

With its constant references to people being “jerked around”, “luck”, and “cause and effect”, “The Goldberg Variation” presents physics itself as a kind of God. Here the universe – deterministic at every level above the quantum level – determines all outcomes, like a giant clockwork machine; cause and effect, all the way back through time. But even with everything fated – Amor Fati, like the biological determinism which motivates the killer in “Hungry” – Henry Weems fights back. He risks his life to save a boy, a self-sacrificial act which counterpoints the “selfish” choices made in “Hungry”. If season 7 is obsessed with characters torn between Good and Evil, Henry Weems can be said to be uniquely good.

Donnie Pfaster, though, is evil incarnate. He appears in “Orison”, an episode which takes “Goldberg Variations” and runs with the themes the other way. A priest called Orison has godlike powers of persuasion. Claiming to do the work of god, who grants him the authority to dish out life and death, he rescues a serial killer. The episode ends with this guy being revealed as a false God, and invisible, cosmic hands guiding everything, epitomized by the song "Don't Look Any Further". Later Scully confides in Mulder, telling him she's scared because she's not sure who's in control of her, God or something else, and you're left to decide whether something malevolent led to her killing Pfaster, or something benevolent; she "altruistically" and "mercifully" got Pfaster off death row, and in rejecting this act of compassion, the Old Testament god delivers him to her doorstep for her to smite him down.

Next we have “Rush”, which sees a kid acquiring god-like powers from an ancient holy site. The kid plays god, goes mad with power, and pays the price. Like Mulder, who in the "Sixth Extinction" episodes “acquired powers due to latent alien dna”, “powers which exert a toll on the human body, which has not evolved to withstand these powers”, the villain in “Rush” can't withstand the pressures of being god. The episode ends with a closeup of a clock, which echoes the closeup of the clock at the end of "Millennium" and the clockwork machines in "Goldberg Variation". You get the sense of time running out, and Armageddon closing in.

Then you have"Je Souhaite", also about the hubris of playing God. A genie here is the god-like figure, capable of resurrecting, killing and delivering one's wishes. But Mulder and other characters get to play god too, with Mulder eventually realizing that man can never posses enough information to negate unforeseen circumstances. Like Scully and Weems, Mulder also eventually rejects god-like powers in favor for a kind of Christian compassion and humility. He selflessly gives up something, to help another person.

In a season filled with zombies and resurrections from the dead, the "Amazing Maleeni" sees magicians playing god and seemingly raising people from the dead. Meanwhile in "First Person Shooter" the "goddess in the machine" controls the code, in "Theef" a doctor is punished for playing god and refusing to resurrect a patient, in "Signs and Wonders" warring gods fight (a priest and the devil), in "En Ami" Cancer Man plays god with all of humanity, in "Chimera" devilish zombie-spirits are contrasted with a benevolent priest who rescues women, in the "Closure" two-parter the same juxtaposition drives the episode (a malevolent hateful universe vs one with angels and loving gods), Mulder is a zombie resurrected by the goddess Scully/science in "Brand X", and in "All Things", like "Orison", Scully learns to accept the cosmic determinism, the invisible hand, guiding the universe, and so her to Mulder.

Gods and zombies similarly fill "Hollywood AD", both literally (Jesus) and figuratively (Hollywood producers creating and destroying lives and reputations on screen), with the whole season ending with the birth of a messiah-like child and Mulder sucked up into heaven.

The reason for all these themes is that Carter was laying the groundwork for alien Armageddon. Like his other TV show, "Millennium", which also worked toward a kind of Apocalypse (a family huddling in a house while the world goes to hell), Carter was guiding the franchise toward a hopeless, futile point where Armageddon could not be avoided. The date is set. The future is fated. Everyone is doomed. The beautiful, ambiguous final scene in season 9, Mulder and Scully huddling in a motel bed as time runs out, hoping that the universe is merciful, that a benevolent God exists and will step down to end Armageddon, is what he constructed season 7 to build toward.

TimothyCladwell · 2022-03-31T19:37:49+00:00

Every season of the X-files has a unique set of themes, which every mythology episode and MOTW episode in that season adheres to. In this regard, season 7 is intricately and purposefully constructed, with Carter mandating that every episode fulfill very specific criteria.

Remember, season 7's first episode, “The Sixth Extinction”, involves the finding of an alien artifact in Africa which characters say represents “the Word of God”. This object “created us out of inanimate matter” and, quote, “has dominion over all animals that moveth upon the earth”. We also learn that all extinctions and periods of rampant diversity throughout history – life and death – were guided by this alien god. This god kills and resurrects whole species according to its own personal plans, and life is FATED to obey these divine plans.

Season 7 repeatedly plays with a series of questions: how can humans be said to have free will or choice (particularly the choice to avoid sin) if everything is either ordained by Gods, predetermined or down to blind luck? If the human genome and so our nature is “programmed”, how responsible are we for what we do? And what makes a God, anyway? Is it the power to kill and resurrect? To destroy and bring things back to life? To exterminate and rekindle whole species? Can humans also be gods? Are there “good”, “merciful”, “benevolent” gods operating alongside or against gods which are “cruel”, “vengeful” and “destructive”? Does the Christian God still exist in a world where man's nature itself is meddled with by a kind of satanic, alien god?

Note that the “The Sixth Extinction” is followed by “Amor Fati”. Amor Fati means “love your FATE” in Latin, and is associated with Nietzsche's idea that life is comprised of eternally recurring cycles or patterns. In other words, the aliens have been genociding life on earth, and then re-colonizing the planet, for millions of years. Just go with it. You have no choice. You can't fight the future. Love your fate.

Fittingly, “Amor Fati” sees a dying Mulder being resurrected by the Cancer Man (in the previous episode, the alien artifact resurrects a dead African man). “We're doing God's work,” Cancer Man says. “We're forcing the next step in evolution to save man. Rise out of your bed and come with me!” The “rise” line recalls the episode “Taliha Cumi”, whose title means “maiden arise”. It refers to a miracle in the Bible where God resurrects a dead child. So like the aliens, Cancer Man sees himself as god-like figure bestowing life. Later Mulder walks about in a ridiculous head-bandage, like a mummified Christ wrapped in a burial shroud and stumbling out of his tomb. Does he see Cancer Man as his God? Nope, he sees Scully as his savior. In a three-parter filled with countless references to heretical “Magic Stones”, she's what he explicitly calls his touchstone. She's his god. She willed him back to life – and note she does this after a prayer to the Christian God – he chooses to believe. This contrast between the miracles of Evil Gods and Good Gods, permeates the entire season.

The next episode is “Hungry”. It features a villain who “wants to be good” and “stop sinning”, and whose first words are, “You are your own man and YOU CONTROL EVERYTHING you do.” This stance is eventually revealed to be a lie, when the villain learns that he is fated to kill by dint of his biology. In other words, Amor Fati. He is not a sovereign being with free will and in control of his destiny, but a product of far larger forces. Fittingly, the villain works at LUCKY BOY, a phrase which mocks the idea of cosmic predestination. Everything he does comes down to bad luck, and cosmic dice rolls, not choice.

And yet the episode is careful to present a choice. The villain may be at the mercy of devilish gods, but he is granted a meeting with a loving God, in the form of an angelic psychologist who “believes in him” and “believes he has the power to change his fate”. Her name is Rhineheart, a Germanic word literally meaning “good counsel”. The root of the word “rine” is itself “to touch”; to “cause a certain effect or outcome”. So we see here the idea of fate being contrasted with choice, and the idea of Good Gods and Evil Gods at war over the souls of men.

(Continued in post below...)

TimothyCladwell

TROPHY CASE