Things Are Getting Strange

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...

The X-Files takes a hard left turn back to monster of the week goodness! Somehow we wound up discussing the sadly never arranged Fire vs D.P.O. face-off which would pit a recovered Cecil L'Ively against the still seemingly still-powered Darin Peter Oswald. As far as we know no one's tried this in any official release... Kim is pleased with unexpectedly accurate defibrillator depiction bu...

Look, we like Samantha here. Doesn't feel like Bill Mulder was exactly hugely invested in his daughter based on the implications Paper Clip sets up. But that's after The Blessing Way which has some great stuff for Scully, and some... screentime for Mulder. Questions about of how Mulder got out of a (for want of a better term) hermetically sealed room, for which Camoflauge Man (no, really...

The end of season 2! Anasazi seems to make clear that CSM is just in a perpetual state of lying. Not entirely sure you could even find out what he wants for breakfast. We're not completely convinced by the encryption on the Thinker's downloads - nor where this guy has been for most of the season after getting name-checked in One Breath . We also get to find out what our Twitter/Mastodon...

We're pretty sure people aren't too fond of Soft Light , but really it's a good episode with a great guest star in Tony Shaloub and exposes a whole other depth to the character of X otherwise not even hinted at. Sure, the science makes no sense, but this hasn't ever really stopped any other episode of The X-Files . Plus, this is the first episode written by Vince Gilligan who&a...

The Calusari is absolutely the nastiest episode to date but loses points because real life Calusari dance a lot more than the store-bought exorcists in this episode. Outside of Samantha, has The X-Files managed to cast a child actor who does not have the (oft-quoted) "cold, dead eyes of a killer"? Not so far. Then again, the child actor here is the same one from Conduit . The genesis of...

Død Kalm cannot really escape how it feels - an episode written to make use of a set. The set in question being the ship the production crew hired for Colony and End Game . Also it feels very much like another entrant of an Ice -style episode (see also: Darkness Falls and Fire Walker ) and associated in-fighting but less exciting than any of them. The other problem is it has a great knack in sugge...

Turns out you just can't trust aliens. Whether its multiple clones of your sister or the bounty hunter who can look like anyone. Everyone likes to insist Samantha is fine but they either have a vested interest in getting Mulder to do something or just don't care. End Game is a great follow-up to Colony though suffers a similar weakness of not being quite as energetic or thrilling as its...

While just blurting out "He's a ghost" at the start of The Sixth Sense would have somewhat undermined the final twist, its not at all clear why one character in Fresh Bones is unable to make a fairly fundamental quirk of Chester Bonaparte's existence clear to Mulder and Scully. Still, its nice to have X back even if his presence here is something of a surprise. We also find out...