Things Are Getting Strange

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...

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)...

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-lin...

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&apo...

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 que...

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 sta...

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 am...

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 mur...

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...

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, dwe...

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...

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...

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 it...

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 c...

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 th...

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...

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 wa...

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...

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...

At this point, it is quite impossible to talk about Rush without also mentioning Chronicle. And we can't! We get into how similar the two instances are and how they diverge quite wildly. We talk about the villain's lack of imagination, the welcome reappearance of Chuck, and how Mulder doesn't get really obsessed with the impossible shot pulled off in the climax. Definitely puts the...

Mulder may often feel like a jerk, but Hungry kinda paints him as a predator playing with his food as he takes his sweet time doing anything about poor old Rob in this episode. If Mulder was a bit quicker than likely three people might still be alive... Still, this is a monster-eyed view of The X-Files and pretty good. We get into the contrast to Terms of Endearment and how Rob might be a proto-Wa...

Taking a brief break from Season 7, we try to give an overview of the first X-Files game - The X-Files Game . We get into FMV games as a whole and the specific drawbacks in general and here specifically. There's not a lot of Mulder and Scully in this game, but you can die in a bewildering and often funny succession of odd occasions. We try to make sense of the plot and end up concluding you&a...

While it might be a metaphor for the loss of the "truth" in The Sixth Extinction ,  it is impossible not to interpret the order of events wherein Dr. Barnes kills a man, that man comes back to life and kills Dr. Barnes, and later when events return to the same beach, the entire UFO is now missing as Grand Theft Spaceship. By zombie. Quite how Scully will cope with standing on and studyin...

This then is the end of The X-Files . No. Really. Fine . The point is we can't actually be sure that anything that happens after Field Trip in fact happens in series. It could all be a fungal hallucination as Mulder and Scully are dissolved in yellow goo in an underground cave. Something of a dramatically bleak ending but hard to argue against. (Though in reality, we know the universe resets...

Nick has to insist quite a lot that he likes this episode though is not sold on baseball. Which it very much what The Unnatural is all about. A love letter to baseball that's also an X-Files episode that's also a lovely monster of the week episode that's also (sort of) a conspiracy episode and also makes a bit more sense of how the aliens work. Nothing short of amazing really. We di...