Things Are Getting Strange

Content warning for The Post-Modern Prometheus - discussion of sexual assault Content warning for Christmas Carol - discussion of suicide It's The X-Files Christmas special! Sort of. First off, we have to go read a well-regarded comic we are... less than happy with. The Post-Modern Prometheus is often cited as one of the series' best episodes, but we can't really get past the centra...

The X-Files takes a trip back to 1989 and the formation of the Lone Gunmen. Also plausibly how Mulder's interest in aliens originated too. We talk the big questions. Like who's Kung fu is best and how does Suzanne find that hotel room? But in all seriousness, the Usual Suspects acts as a great pilot for a Lone Gunmen spin-off that does eventually happen. But as we rapidly figure out, thi...

The answer of how Mulder's dead body can be identified in Gethsemane and this not be David Duchovny leaving the series turns out to involve literal murder. And both Redux and Redux II don't spend much time at all grappling with the little detail of Mulder totally killing someone (which is not the first time) and then blasting said someone's face off with a shotgun. But hey, what&apo...

Content warning - depictions and discussions of suicide Ketamine is a very different substance to whatever Herbert West uses in Re-Animator . But The X-Files seems to quite look how Dr. West's stuff looks so Mulder gets injected with it in this episode. Revelations of a sort from Mulder's past! Can we trust anything we see given the peculiar way the memory is uncovered and how it kind of...

Content warning for Elegy - depictions of autism Welcome to the Skinner show! In this week's episode - Zero Sum - Skinner is embroiled in the shadowy cover-up while Mulder is almost one step ahead of him in a surprising twist to the norm. There's some good and bad insect accuracy in this episode and we get into Marita's nature as Mulder's contact once again. Also why are the Sy...

Content warning for Small Potatoes - discussions of sexual assault A glimpse of the future! Or at least there was a future for the time-travel episode of The X-Files for the character to arrive back from. We get into how Scully doesn't seem to be right given the episode clearly has the future not being static. So maybe we can avoid the dystopian lack of hope that apparently has now gripped th...

Is this Scully's  worst birthday ever? A surprise rendition of Happy Birthday, an Apollo 11 key-chain, Mulder suggesting a plane crash is due to a UFO and then a visit to the actual crash site to look for survivors. Far be in from me to suggest this is not her ideal way to spend her birthday, but Scully doesn't looked entirely thrilled in Tempus Fugit . Not that her birthday really facto...

Content Warning: discussions of anti-semitism Come to New York! See none of the famous landmarks! I guess Kaddish is set in Queens, but still... We talk about how one dresses golems (and Umbrella-corporation projects) and how Scully's ongoing storyline doesn't seem to impact this episode at all. And that's it for this week. Next week- Oh wait. Unrequited . Always forget this one. It...

Never Again provokes the unexpected question: did Morgan and Wong really not like returning to The X-Files after Space: Above and Beyond ? Inevitably this episode also sparks some more consideration of Sculder shipping and the seeming increasing importance of episode ordering for how events play off each other. That said, this is also the talking tattoo episode. Memento Mori is much better, linkin...

It was, perhaps, inevitable that The X-Files would do an episode on the chupacabra at one point. Only, El Mundo Gira isn't really about the chupacabra. Its not really a telenovela either - not outright weird or dramatic enough! We wind up contrasting the episode oddly to F. Emasculata and Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' for previous examples of some of the episode's narrat...

Terma somewhat disappointed after such a strong opener in Tunguska . We're not sure if the writers quite understand how vaccines work (like at all). Nor are we sure how and when and especially how Krycek can be some cunning master manipulator and still wind up losing an arm in a hilariously unconvincing sequence. Maybe Mulder's been reading the script. Or maybe he's psychic. He kind...

The shocking truth about Cancer Man's past and how he killed significant people! Or Cancer Man's thinly veiled autobiography passed off as fiction? You decide with regards to Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man . We note how the episode is both plausible as backstory for the nemesis figure within the series, but also how it largely steers around most of the detail relating back to the mai...

Content Warnings - themes of abuse against women and children, gore, fear of doctors/medical procedures. The Field Where I Died is a very polarising episode in the fandom. As such we get into why and the arguments from both sides - and its all connected back to whatever stance you might hold on the Sculder ship. We navigate some inconsistent hypnosis and some curious historical goofs in an episode...

Content warning - potential racial insensitivity, discussions centred around lobotomy. In both episodes! We're not sure Howard Gordon was really the right person to pen Teliko . Also odd how its similarity to Squeeze seems to escape both Mulder and Scully's attention. Definitely not one of the series' better vampires all things considered. Still, for the Sculder shippers, their bond...

Content Warning for Home - Abuse, incest, infant death are all fundamental aspects of the episode plot. There are no easy answers for Mulder in Herrenvolk . The conspiracy does shift forward with some interesting reveals, but Jeremiah Smith does seem to correspond to the typical alien response to Mulder (ie, lying) regarding Samantha. Somehow Kim gets away with saying 'Deadly Bee Weapon'...

Wetwired feels a whole lot like a re-do of Blood (from Season 2) with a bit of Ghost in the Shell eye-hacking on top. Not that it is anime-style eye-hacking. We discuss Mulder's strange inability to emphasise with Scully's paranoid turn in this episode as well as how knowing Dutch could give the game away right at the start. Talitha Cumi is the big season ender with Biblical overtones. Q...

Content warning - Animal Death in Quagmire The first of this week's episodes doesn't involve war in Ba Sing Se. Or Unobtainium on other planets. Instead we get a weird hybrid monster of the week/conspiracy episode where the forces of the supernatural help Skinner in perhaps the least helpful way. This is Avatar apparently. We discuss the curious merits of framing Skinner and getting him...

We would (quite seriously) love to see James Hong be cast as a CSM equivalent or just be a member of the syndicate in general, but in the likely absence of that, we will take his fantastic turn as the Hard Faced Man in Hell Money . Which features a good number of actors who have also been in Mulan. We discuss the episode's kind of back-door pilot feel and why the body-part lottery supernatura...

Pusher is that rare thing - an episode Nick is unable to find much of a fault with at first.  Blackly comedic and engaging, this cat and mouse encounter between Mulder and the titular Pusher is so good. We do get into Mulder's pretty incredibly specific knowledge of the Japanese language and how this episode might have damaged whatever burgeoning relationship Mulder and Scully have been build...

Time for a new alien species! Piper Maru brings us the very sinister, very dangerous Black Oil. Whether the alien in truth or - as Mulder conjectures - a medium for transference, its still damned cool as a new threat. Anyone, anywhere might be infected! Though just watching their eyes for a bit tends to give them away. And, you know, that the Black Oil is perhaps one of the worst stealth operative...

... The X-Files also stares back into you! Aside from a few fun moments (and pre-fame Ryan Reynolds), Syzygy has little to recommend it. Mulder and Scully are out of character and kinda annoying and increasingly unprofessional. Still! It oddly provided the origin point of the Keystone Cops footage we found in our Let's Play of The X-Files Game ( part 1 available on Patreon) . We get to talk a...

Wherein Kim is very keen on Bambi Berenbaum's bug talk in War of the Coprophages . But that's after Revelations which seeks to invert the usual Mulder and Scully dynamic by making Mulder staunchly sceptical and Scully open to less scientific conclusions. I only wish Scully applied her new-found beliefs to every other episode going forward. Also; tip for demons/agents of evil/other nefari...

...and you too could own a.... lacklustre alien autopsy video. Nisei starts with what looks an awful lot like an alien autopsy on a train and ends with Mulder leaping onto a completely different train. Which may or may not contain... something. We get quite taken with the "red-haired man" as he is known, though according to one DVD somewhere, he does have a name.  The episode is pretty e...

Content warning: Both episodes contain depictions and discussions of suicide. The Walk contains child death and Oubliette contains depictions of mental illness. Listener discretion is advised. And we're back. The Walk is basically Excelsis Dei version 2 but much less skin-crawlingly gross and with a more compelling villain. Who has way more scruples than the elderly patients in the former epi...

Content warning for 2Shy - stalking, emotional manipulation of women We continue the monster of the week portion of Season 3! The List is a killer ghost plot for whom the supernatural menace is less impressive than the one in Shadows . In one sense this is to heighten ambiguity of just how supernatural the episode is (until the ending sting anyway). In another, why Neech is bothering with smotheri...