resolution | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 7, Episode 11 (“Closure”)

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Darren

The X-Cast is covering the seventh season of The X-Files. It’s an interesting and divisive season of the show, a season that seems to have been intended to serve as the end of the show’s run, but is now closer to the middle of the series’ run. Although the sixth season had wrapped up a lot of the mythology in Two Fathers and One Son, the seventh season still had some tidying up to do. I was thrilled to join Carl Sweeney and Chris Knowles for an episode doing some of that tidying up: Closure.

Samantha Mulder had haunted the show since the very beginning. In The Pilot and Conduit, Samantha’s mysterious disappearance was positioned as the reason for Mulder’s quest. Over the years, in episodes like Colony and End Game or Redux II, Samantha remained pivotal to the show’s central mythology. She was perhaps the biggest remaining plot thread as the show entered its seventh season. Closure is an attempt to wrap up that dangling plot thread, and to provide a satisfying answer once and for all to one of the show’s biggest remaining mysteries.

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

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: cigarette-smoking man, conspiracy, Fox Mulder, mulder, mystery, mythology, podcast, resolution, resolved, Samantha Mulder, the x-cast, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the “End of Evangelion” in “Thrice Upon a Time”…

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of the last of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a look at Hideaki Anno’s third draft of an ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The Rebuild of Evangelion is an interesting experiment. It is essentially a remake of the classic animated series split across four feature length movies. However, as the series unfolds, this reimagining branches further and further from the original run. It’s a fascinating piece of art, a creator essentially returning to a franchise that made them a legend within the industry, and reworking it from the ground up. Rebuild of Evangelion is a set of movies that exist entirely in conversation with what has come before, daring to ask what a happy ending might look like to this familiar story.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: buddhism, change, closure, end of evangelion, evolution, growth, hideaki anno, neon genesis evangelion, resolution, shinji, stories, storytelling | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Resolution (Review)

Posted on January 2, 2019 by Darren

Despite being positioned as a New Year’s Special and being the only episode of Doctor Who broadcast in 2019, Resolution functions as a season finale to the eleventh season.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. In terms of working relatively well, Resolution helps to compensate for the damp squib that was The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. It provides a sense of spectacle and threat that was sorely lacking from the last episode of the broadcast season. It also wraps up a number of thematic threads from the season and even provides a much more effective bookend to The Woman Who Fell to Earth than simply bringing back an underwhelming antagonist.

Calling the Dalek out.

However, there are also problems. Most obviously, the fact that Resolution functions as a slightly-delayed series finale makes The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos seem even more pointless. There was no need for The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos to serve as such a half-assed bookend to The Woman Who Fell to Earth, given Resolution would do a much better job. The storytelling real estate in The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos could easily have been given over to literally anything but the episode that was broadcast. That’s deeply frustrating.

There is another issue as well. Writing a New Year’s Special that also serves as a season finale is a risky move. The End of Time, Part II attempted this, and struggled to find the right balance, mostly be eschewing the holiday elements in favour of providing closure with the larger Davies Era as a whole. Resolution tries to strike a more effective balance between being an epic season finale and an episode that can be watched by the whole family after gorging on a massive dinner. This creates an internal tension that Resolution never quite resolves.

Digging deep.

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Chris Chibnall, doctor who, jodie whittaker, new year's day, resolution, Ryan, yaz | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – What You Leave Behind (Review)

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Darren

Ending a television series is always a daunting proposition, even with ten episodes allocated to that purpose.

There are very few “perfect” television finales, very few final episodes that perfectly encapsulate everything that made a television series great. Indeed, many popular television series end with underwhelming finales. Some are even retroactively tarnished by this legacy; The Finale for Seinfeld, Daybreak for Battlestar Galactica, The End for Lost. To its credit, the Star Trek franchise arguably has one perfect finale with All Good Things…, the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

A touching conclusion…

It might have been greedy to ask for two such perfect finales, especially in such close proximity to one another. What You Leave Behind is not a perfect finale by any measure. It is clumsy in places, it makes bad choices in others. The audience can feel the budgetary constraints on the production team at certain points, and the time constraints on the writing team at others. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine does not end with a “perfect” two-part episode. It ends in a messy fashion.

Still, even if What You Leave Behind is not a perfect television finale, it is a good one. What You Leave Behind doesn’t do everything that it could do, but it does everything that it needs to. While clumsiness and awkwardness hold the episode back from perfection, they exist in such a way as to add to its charm. What You Leave Behind captures the spirit of Deep Space Nine, in its successes and its failures. What You Leave Behind is a finale that speaks to the core essence of its show, to its best and its worst selves in the same breath.

The big goodbye.

The result is a finale that feels satisfying and earned, despite its narrative miscalculations. What You Leave Behind is true to Deep Space Nine, and focuses primarily on trying to pay off seven years of character threads and two years of story. Its gravest mistakes are inherited, the result of decisions made more than a year earlier in episodes like Waltz or The Reckoning that were allowed to fester and grow over the following thirty-odd episodes. Even in its failures, What You Leave Behind is trying to do right by its story.

There is a large gulf in quality between All Good Things… and What You Leave Behind. However, that gap is smaller than the space that separates What You Leave Behind from Turnabout Intruder, Endgame or These Are the Voyages… For all its issues, there is something heartbreaking in What You Leave Behind. There is a sense that this is truly the end of the line, that things have changed and the world keeps right on spinning.

We all need a little space…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: closure, conclusion, continuity, Emissary, ending, Ira Steven Behr, resolution, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, the dominion war, what you leave behind | 15 Comments »

The X-Files – Sunshine Days (Review)

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Darren

This December, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the ninth season of The X-Files.

Well, here’s hopin’ the TV stays off and he learns how to love the real world.

– Doggett stops just short of adding “… and that goes for you as well.”

The X-Files was always a more romantic show than it would readily admit.

The popular image of the show might be Mulder and Scully walking through darkness searching for a truth that may never be revealed or a hideous monster preying upon innocent victims. Chris Carter’s most successful work might be rooted in the dual betrayals of Watergate and Vietnam. The characters might stalk car parks late at night or explore the darkest corners of the urban landscape. Mulder and Scully might be abducted by forces beyond their control, and subjected to the cruel whims of uncaring fate. The show’s motto might be “trust no one.”

“Let’s call it a day…”

Nevertheless, that cynicism is offset with a deep-seated romance. “Trust no one” is one of the defining mantras of The X-Files, but there are other more optimistic catchphrases; “I want to believe” and “the truth is out there.” Optimism outvotes cynicism by a two-to-one majority. It is not quite a decisive victory, but it is something in this cynical and chaotic world. While Mulder and Scully might never actually find the truth which they so desperately seek, they did find one another. That is more than either could have hoped and than some people can claim.

Sunshine Days is a staggeringly romantic and optimistic piece of television. Indeed, it suggests that the cynicism of The X-Files was really just a practiced veneer. As the title suggests, Sunshine Days allows the central cast to smile more frequently over forty-five minutes than most have in the course of their entire run on the show. As with the rest of the show, Sunshine Days is rooted in the culture of the seventies. However, there is something quite heartwarming in how Vince Gilligan eschews All the President’s Men for The Brady Bunch.

Out of this world…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: brady bunch, ending, family, loneliness, memory, nostalgia, resolution, sunshine days, surrogate, Television, the x-files, vince gilligan, x-files | 13 Comments »

The X-Files – Requiem (Review)

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Darren

This September, 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.

As with a lot of the seventh season, Requiem is an oddity.

It is an episode that exists in a weird limbo state, carefully designed and calibrated so that it might serve two – if not three – very different purposes. Requiem was written and filmed at a point where nobody knew what was going to happen next. Requiem could have been either a season or a series finalé; it could have been the last episode of the seventh season, the last episode of the series before the launch of a movie franchise, or even just the last episode ever. That is a lot of weight to put on a single episode.

“X” marks the spot where it all began…

In essence, Requiem existed in a state of ambiguity and flux. It was never entirely sure what Requiem would be when Chris Carter wrote it or when Kim Manners directed it. Requiem had to be designed to be fluid and malleable; it had to support any context that might be heaped upon it in the editing suite or on broadcast. Stories like Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space” and Bad Blood had explored the blurred boundaries of reality and perception; Requiem is perhaps that idea applied to the show itself.

Chris Carter could tell you what happened in Requiem as it went through production. He could explain plot details and character motivation; he could outline the chain of events that bind Requiem together. However, it was impossible for anybody working on Requiem to actually assert what the episode was until three days before the episode aired. Until that point, Requiem was a shadow or a blur, just waiting for some larger context to bring it into proper focus.

Things are looking up…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: chris carter, cliffhanger, david duchovny, Fox, meaning, purpose, requiem, resolution, x-files | 16 Comments »

The X-Files – Two Fathers (Review)

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Darren

This July, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the sixth season of The X-Files and the third (and final) season of Millennium.

This is the end. I never thought I’d hear myself say those words after all these years. You put your life into something… build it, protect it… The end is as unimaginable as your own death or the death of your children. I could never have scripted the events that led us to this. None of us could. All the brilliant men… the secret that we kept so well. It happened simply, like this.

– the Cigarette-Smoking Man channels his inner Chris Carter