The X-Files | the m0vie blog

The X-Files – This is Not Happening (Review)

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

The eighth season of The X-Files is remarkable in a number of ways.

It accomplishes a lot of things, and does them in a very logical and linear way. The departure of David Duchovny at the end of the seventh season set an agenda for the season ahead, and gave the production team a very clear set of goals. The eighth season required more discipline and planning than any of the previous seven seasons, with less room for improvisation or error. If Chris Carter and his team were to succeed at bringing the eighth season to life, it would require even more care and discipline than the show usually required.

“Nooooo!”

One of the least discussed aspects of the eighth season is the care that the production team took to structure it. The eighth season of The X-Files is the most meticulously and carefully structured season of The X-Files, clearly adhering to an internal three act structure. The first seven or eight episodes (Within to Via Negativa or Per Manum) are all set-up. The next five (Surekill to Medusa) explored that new set-up. The final eight (This is Not Happening to Existence) closed out the plots and threads of the season, leaving the show in a very different place.

The decision to shift Per Manum around in the broadcast order changes things slightly, but there is still a sense that the eighth season was entering its end game in late February 2001. Positioned at the start of the season’s third act, This is Not Happening offers perhaps the bleakest cliffhanger and puts our heroes at their lowest possible point. Adhering to the classic three-act structure, This is Not Happening serves as the emotional climax of the season. With a five week gap between the broadcast of This is Not Happening and DeadAlive, this is one hell of a cliffhanger.

“Have you seen this devilishly handsome man?”

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: david duchovny, dissonance, frank spotnitz, gillian anderson, monica reyes, mulder, scully, the x-files, this is not happening, x-files | 2 Comments »

The X-Files – Per Manum (Review)

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

Per Manum marks a very serious shift in the eighth season of The X-Files.

It marks the point at which the show becomes more serialised and more tightly interwoven on an episode-to-episode basis than it had been at any point in the past. There are several “monster of the week” stories populating the final third of the eighth season (most obviously Vienen, Empedocles and Alone), but the last eight episodes of the season are more tightly interlocked than any other eight episodes of the show. Perhaps the closest comparison is to the opening nine episodes of the second season, but even the majority of those were stand-alones in a new status quo.

Things past…

With Per Manum, the show reengages with the two big central mysteries driving the mythology of the eighth season. The closing moments of Requiem featured the disappearance of Mulder and the revelation of Scully’s pregnancy, establishing them as a driving force for the future of the show. Of course, nobody knew what form that future would take when Requiem was written and filmed. However, it is interesting how little forward momentum the eighth season has on these plot points. Two-thirds of the way through the season, neither is closer to resolution.

Of course, that is not to suggest that the production team have forgotten about Scully’s pregnancy or Mulder’s disappearance. One of the stronger aspects of the eighth season is the way that these details are woven into the plots of episodes where they are not even explicitly acknowledged. Mulder’s disappearance informs Scully’s unspoken reluctance to trust Doggett in Roadrunners; Scully’s pregnancy explains her decision not to go into the subway tunnels with Doggett in Medusa. Still, there is no linear sense of progress by this point of the year.

Hold it there…

This is probably because these two plot threads cannot necessarily be explored in increments. Within and Without suggested that Mulder was being experimented upon from the comfort a spaceship; short of Scully and Doggett hijacking a space-shuttle, there is little they can do to affect his return but wait. Similarly, Scully’s pregnancy has a natural time limit imposed upon it; short of inducing labour, there is little she can do to affect the outcome but wait. As such, these are not the most dynamic plot points, but they work quite well in the context of the eighth season.

The first two thirds of the eighth season are spent waiting and anticipating, reflecting on strange absences and unexpected presences. The final third is spent rushing towards the finish line. Per Manum marks the transition point.

Don’t turn this into a competition, Doggett…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: assisted reproductive technologies, conservativism, conspiracy, fertility, mulder, mythology, scully, the x-files, x-files | 2 Comments »

The X-Files – Medusa (Review)

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

Medusa is an odd episode of the eighth season, precisely because of its normality.

Medusa was produced directly before This is Not Happening, the episode that marked the return of David Duchovny to the show as a regular; he would remain a regular for the rest of the season. When it came to the broadcast order of the season, the episodes were shuffled around slightly. Medusa aired directly before Per Manum, an episode which featured an appearance by David Duchovny in flashback. Whether the season is watched in broadcast or production order, David Duchovny’s name appears in the opening credits from the next episode until the end of the season.

“I want to take his face… off.”

Medusa marks the end of the short-lived “Scully and Doggett era” of The X-Files. This is the last point in the eighth season (and also the last point ever) that Doggett and Scully have a show to themselves. The ninth season introduces the characters of Monica Reyes and Walter Skinner to the opening credits. Of course, it is interesting to wonder whether there ever really was a “Scully and Doggett era.” Certainly, the eighth season took its time to let Scully and Doggett get comfortable with one another between Within and Via Negativa.

This puts Medusa in the very strange position of having to close out an “era” of the show that essentially spanned four episodes: Surekill, Salvage, Badlaa and Medusa. This is the eighth season’s last example of “business as usual”, which seems all the more unusual that business has only recent approached something resembling normality.

He’s practically just skin and bones…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: boston, doggett, frank spotnitz, medusa, pregnancy, subway, the x-files, timeline, trains, x-files | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – The Gift (Review)

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

Sweeps have arrived. And so has David Duchovny.

David Duchovny appeared in three of the four episodes of The X-Files broadcast in February 2001. (The fourth, Medusa, is very much the “blockbuster” episode of this stretch of the season, with a large budget and impressive scale.) This was very much a conscious choice on the part of the production team. Although Duchovny’s shooting schedule meant that the episodes were filmed across the season, the show made a choice to broadcast them all as part the February Sweeps.

He’s back…

Indeed, even the order of the episodes in question has been jumbled around. The Gift is the third broadcast episode of the eighth season to feature an appearance by David Duchovny; it was filmed before Badlaa, but broadcast after it so as to open the Sweeps season. However, Per Manum would be the fourth broadcast episode of the eighth season to feature an appearance by David Duchovny; not only was it filmed before The Gift, it was actually filmed between Via Negativa and Surekill.

There is a sense, looking at the differences between the production and broadcast orders of the eighth season, that the production team were well aware of just how big a deal the return of David Duchovny would be. In fact, the decision to broadcast The Gift before Per Manum seems like a very canny attempt to tease those viewers excited about the return of Mulder. The character is much more prominent in Per Manum, so it feels like the decision to air his smaller supporting role in The Gift earlier is an effort in building suspense and excitement.

“The name’s Doggett, John Doggett.”

The Gift doesn’t offer much in the way of advancement for the season’s on-going story arcs. Although the teaser is smart enough to build to the reveal of David Duchovny, the character only appears in quick flashes throughout the episode. Mulder has less than half-a-dozen lines over the course of the show’s forty-five minutes. He does not directly encounter (or engage with) Doggett or Scully, only appearing for a brief moment as a vision in the basement at the end of the episode. Fans eagerly anticipating Mulder’s return would undoubtedly be frustrated.

However, there is something almost endearing in the show’s playful teasing of its fanbase. It feels almost like the show getting comfortable with itself once again. Indeed, the structure of the episode – paralleling Mulder’s investigation with that of Doggett rather than intersecting them – seems to suggest that perhaps the show might be in good hands without the need to have Mulder literally validate his successor.

Now that’s branding…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: appropriation, arthurian legend, continuity, crossover, doggett, frank spotnitz, grail legend, mulder, Native American, political correctness, Slavery, the fisher king, the lone gunmen, the x-files | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Badlaa (Review)

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

Badlaa is a disturbing and unsettling piece of television.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about it might be the fact that this is the last truly memorable monster of the week.

“Well, this sure beats the way I got in.”

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: badlaa, belief, Bhopal, body horror, butt genie, butt-dwelling indian fakir, india, john shiban, plot holes, structure, the x-files, within, x-files, xenophobia | 9 Comments »

The X-Files – Salvage (Review)

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

Salvage is another mid-season “monster of the week” that doesn’t quite work.

As with Surekill, it is possible to imagine the interplay between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson elevating this episode had it been produced in the seventh season, as was originally planned. The Doggett and Scully pairing lacks that easy dynamic that made so many generic episodes flow so easily. That is not to say that Robert Patrick and Gillian Anderson don’t work well together, simply that they don’t replicate the once-in-a-lifetime chemistry that Randy Stone found with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

Testing his metal…

That said, Salvage has more severe problems than Badlaa or Medusa. In many respects, Salvage feels like a first season episode of the show that arrived seven years too late – in terms of tone, design and aesthetic. There is a clumsiness to the execution, an awkwardness to the presentation, that feels like the show has forgotten many of the lessons that it learned in its time on television. If it is fair to argue that the eighth season is as much the first season of a new show as the last season of the old one, Salvage is the most “first season” episode of the bunch.

Salvage has a host of interesting concepts and ideas, but it lacks the skill and confidence that the show would need to pull off a story like this. Salvage is one of the handful of season eight stories that would arguably have worked better in season seven, albeit only barely.

Scrap that…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: automation, body horror, economy, jeffrey bell, robots, salvage, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Surekill (Review)

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

And with Surekill, the eighth season of The X-Files hits a problem.

The eighth season of The X-Files starts out strong, doing a good job of introducing a new major character without forcing him down the audience’s throat and allowing viewers to come to terms with the idea of The X-Files without Mulder. Even if some of the episodes are not jaw-droppingly amazing, there is a novelty to the format and a genuine curiosity that makes the opening seven episodes of the season more intriguing and exciting than the show has been in quite some time.

A hole lot of trouble…

The eighth season also finishes strong. It is tempting to put this all upon the return of David Duchovny to the show, bringing a sense of stability to the series. That is definitely a factor, but discussions of the eighth season tend overlook how the final stretch of the year is the most serialised that the show (and the mythology) has ever been and ever will be. For one brief (roughly ten-episode) run, it seemed like The X-Files had burst into the twentieth century with a new-found purpose and joie de vivre.

Notably, this leaves something of a lull in the middle of the season, between the opening stretch and before the season begins gathering momentum. This is the point at which it feels like this grand experiment might not actually work out, after all. It is very much an attempt to do by-the-book “monster of the week” stories in the traditional style of The X-Files, now that Doggett has settled in. Unfortunately, this only has the effect of reinforcing that one of the key ingredients of a classic by-the-book “monster of the week” story is sorely missing. Doggett is no Mulder.

Throwing in the towel…

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The X-Files – Redrum (Review)

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

Redrum is perhaps notable as the highest concept episode of the eighth season of The X-Files, a character drama that unfolds backwards.

As a rule, the eight season is more conservative than the seasons around it. In terms of narrative, it may be the most conservative season of The X-Files since the show’s first year. Redrum is perhaps the season’s biggest formal experiment. While very few high-profile prime-time television shows would attempt to tell a story backwards, Redrum feels a lot less bold than something like Humbug, Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space”, Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man, The Post-Modern Prometheus, Bad Blood, Triangle, X-Cops or even Improbable.

A tangled web…

On paper, this should be a highlight of the season. Redrum features a guest performance from Joe Morton, receiving a coveted “special guest star” credit for his work. (Notably, Kim Greist did not earn a similar credit on Invocation.) The high-concept premise of the episode seems like it would make a great pitch for Sweeps, like X-Cops did only a year earlier. In fact, Redrum was produced as the first stand-alone episode of the season, priming it for the slot occupied by Drive and Hungry in earlier seasons.

There is a sense that the production team are wary of Redrum. The episode was pushed back from its production slot relatively deep into the season. It was with second-last episode of the eighth season to air before the Christmas break. The show attracted a relatively small amount of publicity, particularly as compared to the “where’s Mulder?” hype of that greeted the début of the season. There is a sense that Redrum would have garnered more attention only a year or two earlier.

“The teacup that I shattered did come together.”

It is easy to see why the production team were so wary of Redrum. The eighth season is a point of transition for The X-Files. The show is still reeling from the loss of David Duchovny; there is a sense that the show never moves past that. The agenda for the eighth season is to convince viewers that The X-Files is still a viable television show, even without the lead actor who helped to make it famous. While the show is smart enough not to downplay the change, the production team are keen to demonstrate the show can still do what it always did.

As such, the eighth season finds the show adopting a “back to basics” approach, harking back to many of the tropes that made The X-Files such a breakout hit in the first place. There is a lot more horror and mood in the eighth season, a lot more of the traditional scares. That means that Redrum ends up feeling very much like the odd episode out.

It’s all gone a bit Martha Wayne…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: class, doggett, identity, Joe Morton, john doggett, memento, memory, redrum, t2, the x-files, time travel, trauma, wells, x-files | 5 Comments »

The X-Files – Invocation (Review)

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

There is something rather strange about how the first six episodes of the eighth season approach Doggett as a character.

Despite the fact that he is one of the two leads on The X-Files, the series takes its time in getting around to him. Robert Patrick is effectively stepping into the shows of David Duchovny, but the early stretches of the eighth season seem quite unsure what to make of Special Agent John Doggett. Robert Patrick might appear in the opening credits, but there is a sense that the writing staff are not yet entirely comfortable with the character. Perhaps worried about alienating fans still grieving for Mulder, the show keeps a respectful distance from Doggett.

Good grief.

Within and Without introduced Doggett as the agent in charge of the hunt for Mulder. While Scully and Skinner were looking at Mulder as a potential victim, they frequently found themselves competing with Doggett’s decisions to paint Mulder as a potential suspect. Doggett was introduced in a surprisingly abrasive manner, literally (and clumsily) attempting to undermine the relationship between Mulder and Scully – perhaps a literal expression of fannish anxiety about the show’s new lead.

This is not to suggest that the show has been hostile (or even disinterested) towards Doggett. Both Patience and Roadrunners emphasise that Scully needs to learn to trust Doggett and that he really does have her best interests at heart. However, the show tends to look at Doggett as an object of curiousity. In the first six episodes of the season, the show tends to view Doggett from an outside perspective. He might play an active role in the narrative, but he is not really a viewpoint character.

Knife to see you…

The show generally approaches Doggett through the character of Scully. (In Redrum, it is Martin Wells.) Leaning heavily on Scully makes sense; the audience trusts Scully, so if she can trust Doggett then maybe they can as well. More than that, it offers a nice twist on the dynamic during the first season of the show. In The Pilot, Scully was introduced as a viewpoint character into the bizarre world of Fox Mulder. Seven years later, the audience is so accustomed to that bizarre world that she is the viewpoint character into the grounded world of John Doggett.

This decision to treat Scully as the viewpoint character gives Invocation a surreal tone. In many ways, Invocation is the show’s first real Doggett-centric story; it is the first time that the character gets to drive the central narrative instead of running in parallel, it is the first time that the show hints at a personal back story for Doggett beyond “generic law enforcement and armed forces experience.” However, it is all filtered through the lens of Dana Scully. It emphasises the fact that Doggett is a mystery, which seems strange given how straight-laced he seems.

“Luke, I was your father.”

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: chidlren, david amann, doggett, frank black, horror, invocation, john doggett, kim greist, millennium, neverland, Robert Patrick | 3 Comments »

The X-Files – Roadrunners (Review)

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

In case there was any doubt, Roadrunners proves that the eighth season of The X-Files means business.

In some ways, it seems remarkable that Roadrunners did not receive a warning about graphic content. The season would wait until Via Negativa before offering a viewer discretion advisory. Roadrunners is one of the most uncomfortable and unsettling episodes in the show’s nine-season run, one that cements the “back to basics” horror aesthetic of the eighth season as a whole. It was clear from the opening three episodes that the eighth season was intended as a return to the darkness of the first five seasons, but Roadrunners commits to the idea.

Off-road…

Roadrunners is a “back to basics” script in a number of ways, even beyond its very graphic horror stylings. It is a very good “small town” story, returning to the motif that populated many of the show’s early episodes. It is a story about an eccentric and isolate space in America, a place with its own unique character and its own rich history and traditions. It is a place that stands quite apart from the modern world, that might have looked the same at the turn of the twentieth century as it does at the start of the twenty-first.

Roadrunners could be seen as Vince Gilligan’s answer to Home, a similarly brutal (and unsettling) small-town tale.

“On to new business. Today’s mission is for all of you to go to the brain slug planet.”
“What are we going to do there?”
“Just walk around not wearing a helmet.”

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: body horror, faith, fundamentalism, john doggett, latter day saints, masculinity, mormons, old west, parasitic brain slug, religion, scully, small towns, the x-files, utah, vince gilligan, western, x-files | 4 Comments »