millennium | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Millennium in Comics (“Immaculate” & “Mini-Series”)

Posted on September 7, 2021 by Darren

I’ve been really honoured to be a recurring guest on The Time is Now across its coverage of Millennium, a vastly underrated and under-appreciated television series. The podcast has finished its coverage of the show, but I was thrilled to join Tony Black for a discussion of the tie-in comic books published after the show finished up.

To be fair, it seems like Millennium only really came back as an extension of IDW’s management of the larger X-Files brand, as the publisher tried to figure out if the market would support an X-Files-adjacent comic book as hype built around the franchise’s return to television. Still, the results were interesting and worth discussing on their own merits, an effort to bring Frank Black and the Millennium Group into the twenty-first century.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Comics, Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: frank black, joe harris, millennium, podcast, the time is now, tony black | Leave a comment »

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 – Season 7, Episode 4 (“Millennium”)

Posted on July 31, 2021 by Darren

With The X-Cast moving on to coverage of the seventh season of The X-Files, and the episode Millennium fast approaching, it seemed like a good time to resurrect the Time is Now podcast. So I joined Kurt North to talk about the controversial episode.

Millennium is a very strange episode of television. It is designed to serve as a de facto series finale for Chris Carter’s Millennium while folding it into the mythology of The X-Files. However, it is an episode where two of the three credited writers have never worked on Millennium, and which builds to a climax of the mythology of Millennium which doesn’t really fit with anything that appeared on screen. However, it is also the episode that builds to the first on-screen kiss between Mulder and Scully, which creates an interesting tension in terms of the episode’s priorities.

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

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: frank black, kiss, kurt north, Lance Henriksen, millennium, the x-cast, the x-files, zombies | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 3, Episode 22 (“Goodbye to All That”)

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Darren

Last year, I was thrilled to spend a lot of time on The Time is Now discussing the second season of Millennium. Since the podcast has moved on to the third season, I have taken something of a step back as a guest. That said, I have been a bit more active in the second half of the third season. I was flattered to get an invitation to discuss the show’s final episode, Goodbye to All That, with host Kurt North and guest Chris Knowles.

The series finale of Millennium is a strange beast. It tries to do a lot, and doesn’t always accomplish what it attempts with particular grace or finesse. Still, it does represent an attempt to reconcile the show to itself, to bring the characters and the narrative to a place where something resembling closure is within reach. It doesn’t entirely work, but it is a valiant effort.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: chris knowles, conclusions, endings, frank black, goodbye to all that, kurt north, millennium, peter watts, serial killers | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 3, Episode 21 (“Via Dolorosa”)

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Darren

Last year, I was thrilled to spend a lot of time on The Time is Now discussing the second season of Millennium. Since the podcast has moved on to the third season, I have taken something of a step back as a guest. That said, I have been a bit more active in the second half of the third season. I was flattered to get an invitation to discuss the show’s penultimate episode, Via Dolorosa, with host Kurt North and guest Chris Knowles.

The series finale of Millennium is an episode that I’m admittedly divided on. It’s a two-parter that attempts to a staggering amount: to tell one last serial killer of the week story, to pull back and look at the bigger picture around these monsters, to wrap up the major character arcs for both the season and the show, and to serve as a satisfying conclusion to an uneven season and to a wildly disjointed series as a whole. It’s a lot to ask of a two parter, and Millennium certainly makes a valiant – if imperfect – effort.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: chris knowles, kurt north, millennium, Narrative, podcast, reflection, serial killers, show, Television, the time is now, violence | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 3, Episode 18 (“Bardo Thodol”)

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Darren

As with Saturn Dreaming of Mercury two episodes prior, there’s an appealing oddness to Bardo Thodol, which often feels like something of a waking dream. It is an episode that seems to exist as a collection of dream imagery combined and compressed into an episode of television. It’s an episode that I struggle to properly makes sense of which, which is undoubtedly part of the appeal.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: bardo thodol, buddhism, kurt north, millennium, podcast, the time is now | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 3, Episode 16 (“Saturn Dreaming of Mercury”)

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Darren

Last year, I was thrilled to spend a lot of time on The Time is Now discussing the second season of Millennium. Since the podcast has moved on to the third season, I have taken something of a step back as a guest. That said, I was flattered to get an invitation to discuss Saturn Dreaming of Mercury with host Kurt North.

To describe Saturn Dreaming of Mercury as a “strange” episode is something of an understatement. It’s an ambitious and thematically rich meditation on the idea of parenthood, and the responsibilities and fears that come with that, but framed through a lens close to abstract surrealism. It’s one of the most distinct and unusual episodes in the larger Ten Thirteen canon, even if I am not entirely sure that I can explain what exactly happens in it.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: childhood, Chip Johannessen, doubt, existential, fear, kurt north, millennium, parenting, the time is now | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 3, Episode 13 (“Antipas”)

Posted on February 8, 2021 by Darren

Last year, I was thrilled to spend a lot of time on The Time is Now discussing the second season of Millennium. Since the podcast has moved on to the third season, I have taken something of a step back as a guest. That said, I was flattered to get an invitation to discuss Antipas with guest host Tony Black.

Antipas is an interesting piece of television. It’s effectively a grabbag of the familiar horror movie tropes and clichés that writers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz love: it’s The Omen, Don’t Look Now, The Shining and a few others. It’s effectively a gigantic homage to the huge influences on Carter’s work with both Millennium and The X-Files, even if it doesn’t exactly cohere as a story in its own right.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: antipas, don't look now, lucy butler, millennium, podcast, the omen, the shining, the time is now, the x-files, tony black | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 3, Episode 12 (“The Sound of Snow”)

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Darren

Last year, I was thrilled to spend a lot of time on The Time is Now discussing the second season of Millennium. Since the podcast has moved on to the third season, I have taken something of a step back as a guest. That said, I was flattered to get an invitation to discuss The Sound of Snow with the fantastic Kurt North and the wonderful Chris Knowles.

The Sound of Snow my favourite episode of the third season of Millennium, serving as a nice epilogue to the second season finale The Fourth Horseman and The Time is Now. It is an episode that is largely about grief and moving on, about coming to terms with loss and about working through it. In some ways, it feels like a necessary story for the third season of Millennium as a whole, and it is only a shame that it takes half a season for the show to reach the point where it can tell this story.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: catherine black, chris knowles, death, frank black, grief, kurt north, millennium, podcast, the sound of snow, the time is now | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 3, Episode 10 (“Borrowed Time”)

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Darren

Last year, I was thrilled to spend a lot of time on The Time is Now discussing the second season of Millennium. Since the podcast has moved on to the third season, I have taken something of a step back as a guest. That said, I was flattered to get an invitation to discuss Borrowed Time with the fantastic Kurt North.

Borrowed Time marks an interesting point of transition for the third season of Millennium. It arguable marks the point at which the third season begins acknowledging the second season as something that actually happened and something that has to be explored – both thematically and literally. Borrowed Time kicks off a triptych of episodes that continues through Collateral Damage and into The Sound of Snow, which begin to unpack and work through the shadow of the second season in increasingly direct and literal ways.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.