donnie pfaster | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 7, Episode 7 (“Orison”)

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Darren

With The X-Cast moving on to coverage of the seventh season of The X-Files, and the legacy of Millennium lingering on, I was thrilled to be invited back on to talk about the episode Orison, which feels in many ways like Millennium folding back into The X-Files – it marks the first X-Files script from former Millennium showrunner Chip Johannessen and the return of the serial killer (“death fetishist”) Donny Pfaster.

Orison marks one of the rare times that The X-Files has returned to a pre-existing monster outside of the mythology; the only other major examples are the first season episode Tooms and the fifth season episode Kitsunegari. However, what’s particularly striking about Orison is that Donnie Pfaster is just one facet of an episode that has a lot going. In many ways, it feels like a companion piece to Johannessen’s third season scripts for Millennium, episodes like Saturn Dreaming of Mercury and Bardo Thodol.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: donnie pfaster, kurt north, millennium, orison, serial killers, the time is now, the x-cast, the x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch – Episode #75 (Orison/The Amazing Maleeni)

Posted on December 10, 2017 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be a part of The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch, a daily snippet podcast rewatching the entirety of The X-Files between now and the launch of the new season. It is something of a spin-off of The X-Cast, a great X-Files podcast run by the charming Tony Black. Tony has assembled a fantastic array of guests and hosts to go through The X-Files episode-by-episodes. With the new season announced to be starting in early January, Tony’s doing two episodes of the podcast per day, so buckle up. We’re almost there at this point, approaching the end of the Duchovny era of the show.

My first appearance of the somewhat uneven seventh season teams me up with the wonderful Clara Cook once again. We’re discussing two rather distinct episodes of the season, Orison and The Amazing Maleeni. Two very different episodes, both in terms of tone and in terms of quality. Enjoy!

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: clara cook, donnie pfaster, irresistible, magic, orison, ricky jay, the maazing maleeni, the x-cast, The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch, the x-files | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Orison (Review)

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

The X-Files has generally avoided sequels.

There are exceptions, of course. Eugene Victor Tooms appeared twice in the first season, bookending the show’s first year in Squeeze and Tooms. The character of Robert Patrick Modell resurfaced in Kitsunegari, two years after his debut in Pusher. In a way, the mythology could be read as a series of sequels and inter-related plots, with the show lacking the sort of truly overarching design that would identify it as a single story that had been serialised. Still, The X-Files has been reluctant to resurrect old monsters, perhaps acknowledging the law of diminishing returns.

Here’s Donnie!

So Orison is something of an oddity. It marks the second and final appearance of Donnie Pfaster, the demonic Ted Bundy type who made such an impression in Irresistible. Much like Robert Patick Modell or Eugene Victor Tooms, Donnie Pfaster was popular enough the bringing him back made a certain amount of sense; if the show had to do a “sequel” episode, Donnie was as good a candidate as any. Meanwhile, Flukeman waits by the phone. However, the question remains: why?

What is the point of bringing back Donnie? What didn’t the show do last time that it would do this time? It’s a very basic, very fundamental question. Unfortunately, Orison does not have much of an answer.

Finger food…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Brain, Chip Johannessen, donnie pfaster, faith, god, irresistible, millennium, mulder, murder, necrophilia, nick chinlund, oxygen, religion, scully, the x-files, trepanning, x-files | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Irresistible (Review)

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

Irresistible is a fascinating piece of television and arguably one of the most iconic and important episodes of The X-Files ever broadcast.

It’s also very, very good.