Summary
I found this an odd episode on first viewing and it actually stays sort of odd on repeat viewings. This episode seemed so full of beautiful imagery and cliched symbolism all at once. The boys did so well at showcasing a multi-dimensional Diana Fowley character on her exit from the show, but what they did to Kritschgau was unimaginative and flat to say the least. (This was really too bad considering what I thought last week.) All of a sudden this man is threatening Dana Scully's life?? It seemed much too early in the episode for such a throwaway line. I wonder if they did a lot of editing for time on this one, because I found that the end came up much too quickly and abruptly. What resulted was the idea that I should have found it all very emotional, but I wasn't reacting to it in that way. Even though the dialogue was some of the most eloquent ever spoken between the two of them, it was as though I couldn't find the right sense of reality to get lost in the moment.
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| Scully helps Mulder... we don't get to see how, but she does |
From not knowing whether the (fake or not fake) rubbing from the piece off the spacecraft had anything to do with the main alien conspiracy that we are familiar with, we are now definitely back at "first successful human/alien hybrid" status again. (How many "first successful hybrids" do we need to encounter before we can make some sort of progress against these alien beasties? I guess we don't know...) What we know from the past couple of eps is that the spacecraft not only has power, it is power. It had the power to revive — at least to a zombie level — a dead man. It revived dead fish out of water. But heck, we knew it had power from the teaser sequence of Biogenesis when a piece of it violently sliced itself into the very book that it supposedly "wrote". And now the whole ship is gone and I'm not sure anyone cares. What was the point of all that?
I'll tell you the paradox that I've gathered from it... these aliens — if it is indeed implied that the ones who have divined our entire history from start to finish are the same ones who want to take over the planet — are a) too smart to be so dumb as to need our assistance and cooperation, or b) too stupid to have been that smart to begin with. Talk about writing yourself into a corner.
When I originally followed the TXF mythology as the show aired, months passed between significant moments in the telling of the tale. Without recent memory to rely on, I viewed the plot holes as evidence that there had to be a number of different types of aliens involved (which didn't add to the believability). To this point of my rewatch, I am of the opinion that CC and his boys only meant to have one main species of aliens involved in the government conspiracy. (There are factions and variations within, like the ones who have rendered themselves faceless... pfft.) But this only leads to the mythology being all over the map, to put it mildly.
In this episode, CSM has some sort of surgery performed on him, in which material from Mulder's brain is transferred to him. (It's what we're told would happen; I'm not sure how successful the surgery was.) So using genetic brain material is now the latest and greatest way to be a successful human/alien hybrid. I get that; there are medical advances being made all the time regarding new and better ways to do things. "One on one" brain surgery still seems kind of extreme to me, but who knows how the aliens managed to achieve hybridization...? (And do we still want to be hybrids or do we want to have a vaccine against being hybridized?) After this procedure, is CSM now immune to the threat? Is Mulder? All good questions that I don't think the spaceship managed to answer, despite what Scully said last episode about it being the answer to every question that's ever been asked. (And don't even get me started on how the whole Navajo code-talking stuff is supposed to help.)
As a final thought, at least this time we got some semblance of security at the DoD, even though apparently someone can wander the building with just a keycard and make off with a groggy, naked man.
Best or Worst Moment
Loved the moments on the beach with the little boy, as evidenced by my fic, Reconnection. Appeals to the part of me who thinks that Mulder should get that simple moment in the sun of building "sandcastle" spaceships and not bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sure, he may not be the hub of the universe, but on certain days, it sure seems like he is!
Original Rating: * * *
Revised Rating: * * *
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