Episodes
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We swap from the bureaucratic FBI to a low-circulation newspaper office run by three familiar characters. Welcome to The Lone Gunmen. The one series spin-off of the popular trio into their own show!
Second time we're discussing an episode titled Pilot...
For the most part the series starts strong with a plot more Lone Gunmen like than The X-Files provided for quite a time. There's some Mission: Impossible, some unfortunate correct guessing at events that occurred less than a year from broadcast, and a whole new character whose presence we can't help but be suspicious of.
Bond, Jimmy Bond does not provide much comfort. A whole other new character introduced and set to be a main-stay according to the credits. A plot that seems decidedly non-Lone Gunmen. And a continued insistence on the group barely scraping buy with their funds.
We wind up talking about why Jimmy is here and real world blind sports versus how they are depicted in this episode.Support the show
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The X-Files could genuinely have ended with Existence. There's room for a future version of the series, but a lot of plot is resolved and the current alien threat is so nebulous. But Season 9 looms. But before that: The Lone Gunmen.
And before that: We get hung up on all the Biblical imagery in this episode, none of it subtle. Including the UFO/guiding star thing. We are increasingly unsure on how any of the conspiracy works or what this means, but the Sculder shippers are presumably very happy.
Still curious about who exactly William's father is...?
We also wrap up this season with best and worst episodes. And best villain.Support the show
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Missing episodes?
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Not to The Doors slightly sadly. That would be a bit too surreal. But certainly, closing and not even locking a door is enough to deter the new villainous version of that kid from the pilot episode of the series from attacking Doggett or killing Mulder. Useful stuff.
But before that Essence stuff, there's Alone:
Scully leaves the X-Files (the department) but remains in The X-Files (the show)! Doggett gets a new partner! Slightly inexplicably transferred from accountant to field agent. We like Layla in her first appearance here being the quintessential X-Files fan by asking awkward questions about the end of Fight the Future.
Then there's the start of our season closing conspiracy! And while the show-runners knew this wasn't the end of the series, it might have been. Or at least the start thereof.
We query Mulder's apparent ability to do what he wants, why Scully's child's sex and parentage is still in question, and other than audience fake-out, why does one character concoct such an underhanded way to feed Scully dietary supplements for her pregnancy.Support the show
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Its never bad to have an episode where Reyes shows up. Though Empedocles does stress this attitude. For the main plot, Reyes herself prompts all kinds of questions about her existence within the FBI and her complete non-crossing paths with the X-Files. For the subplots, we do have to increasingly stress the question no one wants to ask: just who is Scully's baby-father?
But that gets side-lined in favour of Doggett's tragic backstory. Alluded to back in Invocation and then ignored. Until now!
Vienen should be a fun time. Another Thing-style episode for The X-Files. And the black oil is back! We're just left with a lot of questions. Like what even does Mulder do now he's not on the X-Files... maybe? Why does he insist on poking the bear (Kersh)?
And why is Scully so often side-lined and shoved aside this season?Support the show
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So Krycek's back in Deadalive. What has he been doing? Did he tell anyone he killed CSM off last season? Why does he want Skinner to prevent Scully from giving birth? We get no answers.
But Mulder is definitely dead. Totally. 100%. Just pay no attention to him being first in the opening credits again.
We get very confused about why Theresa (the other abductee returned last episode) doesn't factor into events, also how this weirdo new alien scheme works and how Scully used to think Mulder had more friends.
The three words in Three Words are very much not what you would assume. We were expecting something along the lines of a famous scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Instead we got a movie tag line.
There are some very odd technology queries with how this episode plays out and how people are forced to go to various places for no entirely coherent reason. Mulder (shock, he's alive!) meeting Doggett goes badly and we surprise ourselves by not enjoying Mulder's return to the series proper. Possibly to do with the alleged legal strife running concurrent with the season.
At least the Lone Gunmen do Lone Gunmen stuff again! Even if Scully now insists on calling them "The Gunmen" which is kinda weird.Support the show
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It is hard not to question Scully's decision-making ability in Per Manum. Not least because she figures the best place to hide out while conspiratorial stuff is going on is with the army. Who have never, ever been involved with anything shady and conspiratorial.
We discuss how ultrasounds tend to look a tad on the alien-side of things no matter what one you look at, Scully's lack of questions at multiple points, our confusion over what the latest twist of the conspiracy even is, and why it is at the very least impolite to get Doggett out of bed at 3am to tell him nothing of value.
This is Not Happening is sadly not the return of Lord Kinbote. Nor are we sure the repetition of the phrase is well-handled. Or various character's inability to stealth effectively. The episode boasts one of the few doctors we can be sure is not in on the conspiracy given how inept he seems.
Still, with the aliens apparently dropping bodies off the back of their ships, is it perhaps time for a certain member of the cast to rejoin proceedings?Support the show
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We're back! After injury and illness, we return to watch Doggett die in The Gift!
It is perhaps not as big a spoiler as you might imagine given he's perfectly fine and in the rest of this season despite this slight complication. This is a weird episode though and features an entity which we are repeatedly told is a soul eater despite not acting anything like one.
A shame the episode starts well and has a really good setup that fails to pay off come the ending.
Medusa continues a sporadic trend of episodes where the sting doesn't really mesh with the later reveals and eventual solutions. We discuss who's authority wins between FBI and Deputy Transport Chief - and are not entirely convinced the episode has this right.
Still, its a fun episode. A bit Mimic and a bit Aliens but also very much like a season 1 episode.Support the show
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We watched Tetsuo the Iron Man ahead of Salvage this week. Mostly because Salvage is an admitted version of the film. The experience was illuminating but did underscore how strange the idea of doing this idea as an X-Files episode and all the parts Salvage left out. At least we got to see all the things that inspired Tetsuo and all the things it seemingly influenced after...
We also talk a fair amount about new film Alien: Romulus, but also pick at the parts of Salvage that are confusing. Like whose ashes were Ray's widow given? Why are Doggett's explanations not even close to Scully's alternate theories in past series?
At least its better than Badla, now a major contender for the worst episode of the series. We vainly attempt to make sense of the plot and struggle mightily with the villain's motivation for literally anything. The one crumb the episode provides doesn't actually seem to apply and we are left with nothing but dissatisfaction.
A real shame this is the last time we'll see Chuck in the series...Support the show
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The premise and intent behind Via Negativa is really neat and interesting! The actual episode starts really strongly and then loses its way somewhat spectacularly and is found exceptionally wanting. Very confusing and not in a fun what is reality kind of way the episode is probably going for.
We talk about Event Horizon a bit and how the episode seems to hand wave away the impossibility of the murder weapon, though at least we get a Doggett-Skinman team-up episode so that's fun.
We get high-brow literary with Surekill. Or at least note that Of Mice and Men was probably an influence on the episode and that a similar moment crops up in The Losers (go Petunias!).
Its an interesting episode where massively cool and useful powers are being used in a kind of rinky-dink money-laundering scheme but the stakes are still appreciable and effective. Though surely seeing through walls would result in something more like the video to Hey Boy, Hey Girl by the Chemical Brothers...Support the show
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That Doggett can go through the events of Invocation and come out the other side to dismiss anything happening in Redrum is nothing short of astonishing. Never did Scully get handed something so ardently impossible as the dark tale of child kidnap and apparent manifestation from beyond the grave. Fresh Bones was not this concrete with its impossible child.
We get into how Closure from last season does provoke a lot of awkward questions for how the dark, dark backstory for this episode is even able to occur - where are the damn fairies for this one? We also speculate if Doggett is psychic somehow given he hits on a near-miss to the guilty party really fast...
Also the child is terrifying.
Redrum is a thing that happened EARLIER.
We talk about the eclectic mix of other backwards productions; Seinfeld, Sealab 2021 and Memento, and note Redrum is a curio amongst them. Also the least helpful time-travel story as Martin Wells can't even muster the kind of evidence someone like Max in Life is Strange can come up with. Not that this is a slight on the episode at all!
We discuss how the episode was written and note that like Memento, the actual story is very straight-forward and simple, but the presentation is what makes it all work. And that maybe as per the stated dates, Scully should be like seven months pregnant.Support the show
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A decidedly odd start to Doggett's time on the X-Files. And we can't ignore that it would be more effective if Patience and Roadrunners was swapped in the episode order. And also that Patience feels a lot like a re-do of Squeeze just without actually re-watching Squeeze and apparently just working off the vague memories of the classic.
We compare the monster to Buffy special effects, dwell on the nature of the show's Bible and wonder about man-bat breeding colonies. And also admire how no one mentions a certain DC comics character once.
Roadrunners is a bit different to Vince Gilligan's normal ways. This is tense, dark, gory and scary. Reminiscent of Morgan and Wong's Ice but a very different setup and execution.
We can't avoid noticing Scully's tattoo from Never Again has vanished somewhere in the last few years and how unfortunate it is that she already needs a rescue.Support the show
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New season and new character! With Within we welcome John Doggett to The X-Files and indeed, the X-Files. Our new hardened skeptic to Scully's abruptly much more open-minded version of herself. Which does feel a little odd as it feels like seeing the UFO at the end of Requiem would be more of a trigger for this, but here we are.
Also Kersh is back!
We discuss how Scully remains difficult for many X-Files writers to cope with and the implausibility of various spaceships within Earth's (or Earth-like) atmosphere. Also how we are now awash in Mulder retcons.
Without never really gets around to the particular question of what Scully even thinks she can do if she can find the relevant UFO in Arizona. One-on-ones with the Alien Bounty Hunter or most of the aliens in series tends to go badly for a variety of reasons.
We're also bemused by Gibson Praise being relevant again and how its taken this long for anyone to actually contend with the existential nightmare of dealing with the Alien Bounty Hunter.Support the show
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Is it ever possible to have a story wherein a character is granted three wishes and for them to not screw up immediately? Je Souhaite certainly paints none of the would be wishees in especially good light.
Despite the inherent issues with humanity, the episode is a lot of fun. Scully gets to be giddy about autopsying an invisible man, while Mulder tries to rules-lawyer his way out of unwanted side-effects. As the penultimate episode of the season (and at one stage, possibly ever) its a fun time.
Requiem feels like an episode went missing somewhere. A lot has happened since we last checked in with Krycek and Marita apparently. We do get somewhat concerned about CSM's intention to rebuild his shadow syndicate with Krychek, Marita, Greta (his nurse), and a crashed UFO.
That no one can find. Despite this being relatively simple in, say, Fallen Angel or Nisei or Memoirs of a Cigarette Smoking Man... There's some inconsistencies shall we say. And despite what looks a lot like a crash, the accident was incredibly fortuitous for rounding up abductees...
We discuss the difference between Geiger and Giger counters, sum up the season, get into the best and worst episodes and look ahead to the strange new phase of the series.Support the show
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Not sure if the first episode to receive the treatment, but it turns out Mythbusters specifically took down one of the central premises of this episode as being effectively impossible. So, no you can't listen to the Aramaic version of I am the Walrus on that pot your aunt made...
Hollywood AD is a weird episode. Part religious struggle and part Hollywood wrecking the premise of The X-Files itself and reducing a Cardinal who cracks joke into a bizarre version of Cigarette Smoking Man in the form of the Cigarette Smoking Pontiff. We talk about Borges and Gary Shandling and how 20th Century Fox apparently liked making films on top of graveyards.
By the rules that bind us, we are not allowed to talk about Fight Club. At all.
Not that we especially want to. Kim strives to find a highlight in amongst one of the most universally derided entrants into the series and finds little. We talk inconsistent phenomenon, so many jokes not taken, and a theory about why this episode is like this.
But really, you're better off watching the film of the same name that has nothing to do with this mess.Support the show
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The enduring question we were left with all things was what happened? The answer seemingly was Carter and Spotnitz who did things to the episode and fundamentally changed a few things about the directorial debut of Gillian Anderson.
It is a shame as we would really like to like this episode but even now the details drift away. Except for a ship-baity start and deeply unsettling statues. And crop circles feels a really weird thing for Mulder to fixate on when he has actively talked to multiple aliens at this point and never thought to ask if they actually had anything to do with them.
(but given even nominally trust-worthy instances like the Alien Bounty Hunter lied to Mulder's face - for no reason - with regard to Samantha's whereabouts, not sure Mulder could have gotten a straight answer).
Brand X is clearly the superior product here. Even Jigsaw agrees. Tobin Bell is quite amazing in this episode coming well before astonishing success with a certain barbed wire infested series. Shame the stuff about insect eggs, the beetles in general are not... great for realism or coherency.
But who cares? Body horror and we get a supernatural excuse for the nastiness. And a... slightly confused smoking PSA.Support the show
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We are very much ignoring the future of En Ami. We know and we will get to it. Later.
For now, we have questions about extraneous other angels and the complete lack of Lord Kinbote. And that man really does not live up to the code-name 'Cobra'. Still, the CSM and Scully road-trip has its moments though we are bewildered by the end as to what the point of any of it was - and speculate things might have been quite different on the first draft.
Not quite an episode about nothing, but also not really the heist episode it could have been.
Chimera is one of those episodes we flat out did not remember before hand. Except for the ravens. As with First Person Shooter we are kind of left with a lot of questions as to why the supernatural stuff happened and why the monster is so inconsistent across the episode.
Also Scully does appear to have forgotten what an actual job at the FBI entails versus hanging around with Mulder. In any case, she's not in this one much. Sort of a reverse Chinga.Support the show
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If you are at all convinced by the advertising, the promotional gimmicks, the press interviews for First Person Shooter, we are here to tell you in no uncertain terms how bad this game is. That said, you likely already played it during the press embargo and know of its absurd difficulty spike, its complete lack of cohesion and rumoured risk of permanent physical injury, death or removal from this plane of existence.
We are not ultimately sure who is responsible for this mess. While William Gibson and Tom Maddox's names are on the episode, Chris Carter is listed as director and some of the... "choices" in this one are definitely because of him. We get into how bizarre the game is, how terrible it would be to play (especially in contrast to what was actively available at the time), and how the episode seems to spool out without really even a token explanation of how any of this is possible.
Theef is an episode we spend a long time speculating how it might have fulfilled its original brief if things had been different. So much so we have to keep insisting we really did enjoy this episode. It just has some weirdness and again, the stated intent doesn't come across.
At least its one of the grisliest episodes and boasts one of the scariest villains the series has had in ages. Shame its whole stance on folk medicine is hopelessly muddled.Support the show
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And thus we learn the final fate of Samantha Mulder!
Is it satisfying? No. Closure is very touching and quite beautiful and well acted. But as a capstone to a question that first appeared in the very first episode this is not what anyone wanted. We get into how this fails to make much sense with seven years of other conspiracy (we know the aliens habitually lie, but why bother to claim Samantha was alive back in End Game?) and why this is basically just Redux's solution with some extra steps.
Still, that's one answer down. For those keeping score: aliens are real, CSM fathered all the Mulder children, and Samantha was dead the entire time.
Not even sure if there is anything left to go. Other than whatever CSM was up to in The Sixth Extinction Part 2.
X-Cops on the other hand is the bizarre The X-Files/Cops mash-up and it works far better than it should. We get into how much it reminds us of Ghostwatch and how The Blair Witch Project near certainly had some influence on its presentation.
Also implies Mulder deals with the reveals of the previous episode by hunting werewolves in downtown LA.Support the show
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Content warning: mentions of animal abuse, implied incest, child death
Signs and Wonders is somewhat diminished when we learned about the various animal cruelties on set during the filming of this episode.
Getting past that, we are left with a succession of questions about what and why this episode happened. Its pretty fun though and we learn about how auditions were done for the episode and which members of the cast and crew were more than three blocks away whenever the snakes entered proceedings.
Some despairing at the theme of the episode but at least we had more fun than...
Sein und Zeit sounds like it should have something to do with Signs and Wonders. At a quick enough glance, you could be forgiven for thinking its the same title just in German. But no!
Sein und Zeit is hard to talk about for a number of reasons. Not least is the similarity to a real life murder case - and how much of it will hinge on next week's Closure given its hard to get away from the reveal that this episode serves to finally resolve what happened to Samantha.
We get hung up on all the other Samantha's variously pinballing through the series and what the implications of this episode seem to be leaning into. Kim offers the thoroughly entertaining idea that the episode is in fact a follow up to Folie a Deux and thus offers a much weirder take on procceedings.
Ultimately, its Paper Hearts again - an issue that doesn't initially hinder it too bad - aside from we've seen this already Chris, but then rapidly spirals into weird decisions as it sets up a cliffhanger.Support the show
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It is hard to watch Orison without immediately concluding that Scully is totally getting fired right after the climax of the episode. And yet - based on The Amazing Maleeni - somehow shooting an unarmed man, pointblank while he is being arrested by her partner is not enough.
Weird how it was Scully who'd finally wind up killing someone like this. Mulder kept trying but never managed it. Still, we are supposed to have some empathy given the man in question is Donnie Pfaster, once again determined to murder Scully. Just... None of this got setup or even hinted at as some deep psychological scarring for Scully.
We inevitably get into how this wasn't meant to be about Donnie Pfaster in the slightest, and the original (Millennium-esque) episode was changed into an unnecessary follow-up to Irresistible. At least there won't be another...
The Amazing Maleeni is a lot more fun, even if Kim does reveal a rather gaping plot-hole that renders the whole episode a little moot in the end. At least some of the magic is real - or at least performed by actual stage magicians.
We discuss other fictional magicians and implausible bank heists. And how Scully should wear a top-hat from now on.Support the show
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