ORBzine - X-Files TV Review
[Season 1
!Season 2
!Season 3
!Season 4
!Season 5
Fight The Future
!Season 6
!Season 7
!Season 8
!Season 9
I Want to Believe
!Season 10
!Season 11
]
X-Files
Chris Carter gives us an introduction to the TV show, listing both regular and recurring characters.
He also tells about Millennium , his other show. His analysis was that it was too focused.
Harsh Realm , Carter's third series, involved Virtual Reality. It only ran for 9 episodes, and the Network lost faith in it.
Carter announces his fourth series, an X-Files spin-off called The Lone Gunmen. It is light-hearted, a send-up of Mission Impossible.
David Duchovny ( Twin Peaks ) dropped out of the show mid- Season 7 , because he had other projects that he wanted to work on. Carter brought in a new character, played by Robert Patrick ( Terminator 2).
Carter is also working on a movie about a real-life story. It focuses on a man who can project his thoughts onto film.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 1]
Pilot Episode
Shown
Rookie FBI Agent Dr Dana Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is assigned to a little-known FBI unit called the X-Files. It is a Cold Case section, where a two-doctor team (a pathologist and a psychologist) investigate unsolved cases. Part Quincy, part Criminal Minds. On the face of it, this set the tone for the mainstream cop shows for the next few decades.
Scully's FBI superiors and a mysterious Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B Davis - Continuum ), want her to spy on her new partner, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ), and discredit his work. Mulder is a brilliant Behavioural Scientist but he is obsessed with the idea of Alien intervention. Scully prefers to find a logical explanation for everything.
Their first assignment is to Oregon, where young women are being killed mysteriously in the woods. Veteran TV actor Cliff De Young ( ) pops up as the local medical examiner and the main suspect.
CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ) lurks in the background at the bookend scenes. He gives the FBI Top Brass their orders, but never says anything on-screen. And at the end of the episode, he accesses a storage room in the basement of the Pentagon.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 2]
Deep Throat
Shown
Reviewed 22nd June 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is approached by a stranger (Jerry Hardin - Star Trek: TNG ) in a mens' room. The stranger is nicknamed Deep Throat after the Watergate informant, not the porn film. Lucky Mulder.
Mulder and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) go to Ellens AFB, an ersatz Area 51, to investigate the disappearance of a test-pilot. They meet Seth Green ( Buffy the Vampire Slayer ), who has shoulder-length red hair and a chin-pube goatee. The other familiar sight to SF fans is the amnesia drug from UFO.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 3]
Squeeze
Shown
Reviewed 6th July 2001 - Friday
Scully meets up with a friend of hers from the FBI Academy. He is a promotion-seeker named Coulton (a very young-looking Donal Logue - Vikings ). However, to get his next promotion he must solve an unsolvable case. People have been brutally murdered inside locked rooms. Well, with the prevalence of modern surveillance technology ALL mysteries are locked room ones. The only clue is a finger-print, elongated in an inhuman fashion. Mulder links it to a cold case - err, an X-File from the 1930s.
Doug Hutchison ( Green Mile ) guest-stars as possibly the coolest (and creepiest) of all X-Files characters, Eugene Victor Tooms.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 4]
Conduit
Shown
Reviewed 13th July 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) investigates a case that reminds him of his sister Samantha - a suspected alien abduction. A small hint of what the series would become is the NSA interference that Mulder and Scully face. The end scene shows Scully listening to a tape of Mulder's hypnotic regression.
Carrie Snodgrass plays the abducted boy's mother.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 5]
Jersey Devil
Shown
Reviewed 20th July 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) go to Atlantic City to investigate reports of a giant ape-man that has apparently attacked people ... We get to see glimpses of the statuesque Clare Stansfield , but that is about as exciting as it gets.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 6]
Ghost In The Machine
Shown
Reviewed 3rd August 2001 - Friday
The CEO of a top software corporation is electrocuted by a power surge in his own office. Blu Mankuma ( ) has a supporting role.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 7]
Ice
Shown
Reviewed 10th August 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) go to a research station in Alaska to investigate a mass suicide by the entire staff. Shades of The Thing ...
Everyone is a suspect. They include:
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 8]
Space
Shown
Reviewed 17th August 2001 - Friday
Our dynamic duo take a trip to NASA, where a news blackout and coverup have concealed sabotage by person or persons unknown. The next shuttle launch is successful, but once in orbit things start to go wrong. Can M&S find the saboteur and bring the shuttle safely back to Earth?
Luckily Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) wanted to be an astronaut when he was a kid, so he explains all the terminology (easy enough for a child to work out!) to Scully ( Gillian Anderson ), and us.
Are aliens somehow involved? Well, in the prologue we see the NASA boss-man (Ed Lauter - ) have a flashback to some kind of strange encounter
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 9]
Fallen Angel
Shown
Reviewed 24th August 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) investigates a UFO crash in a forest in the USA. The area has been sealed off by US Army troops commanded by Marshall Bell ( Total Recall ). However, the UFO's pilot (an invisible alien) is on the loose ...
The other main character is Max Pfennig, a long-haired hi-tech UFO watcher who seems a precursor of The Lone Gunmen . For long-term fans of the show there are yet more things to note. Mulder's boss is not Assistant Director Skinner, it is some guy called Sector Chief McGrath. We also get a tiny supporting role for Brent Stait, who is now Rev Bem in Gene Roddenbury's Andromeda
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 10]
Eve
Shown
Reviewed 31st August 2001 - Friday
The dynamic duo investigate a murder where the victim's jugular was punctured and four litres of blood removed. His daughter, aged about ten but still clutching a fluffy toy, gives Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) cause to believe that the people from the clouds did it.
The plot deepens as an identical murder is discovered on the other side of the country. Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin - Star Trek: TNG ) fills in the blanks by informing Mulder of a secret US Government experiment.
The story has a number of nice twists in it. At several stages the plot heads off in an unexpected direction, and keeps us guessing until late on what's actually happening. The killers are clever enough to outsmart Mulder. But will they get away with it?
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 11]
Fire
Shown
Reviewed 7th September 2001 - Friday
Mulder's ex-girlfriend, Amanda Pays , comes to town and requests his help on a case. She is a Special Branch Inspector in Scotland Yard, currently assigned to investigate a series of arson murders. The next one on the killer's hit-list has taken his family to Cape Cod, Massachussetts, which is quite convenient because it looks exactly like British Columbia where the show is filmed. Rent-a-villain Mark Sheppard ( Supernatural ) is the caretaker.
This is pretty much a Mulder-centric episode. We learn a bit about his background, and also that he has a phobia of fire.
This episode was originally shown out of sequence by the BBC, and given a special late-night slot. Not for any political reason, but because of the violent nature of the episode. This reviewer's only objection is the corniness of the show.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 13]
Beyond The Sea
Shown
Reviewed 14th September 2001 - Friday
Scully's father, Don Davis ( Twin Peaks ) dies. This alters her judgement, and in this episode SHE is the believer and Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is the skeptic.
Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif - Exorcist 3 ) is a serial killer on Death Row. He claims to have psychic powers that will allow him to help solve a kidnapping case ...
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 14]
Gender Bender
Shown
Reviewed 28th September 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are called in to investigate a suspicious death. A man died after having sex, the cause of death a heart attack brought on by super-human levels of pheremones. The killer ... was female before, but became male afterwards!
Mulder traces the deaths back to a small Amish type community called The Kindred. He and Scully head up to investigate, and uncover strange rituals in the barn.
The ending is neat enough, and just happens to allow the case to be wrapped up in time for the credits. In the climax, Mulder drops his gun - surprise, surprise.
This episode is of note because one of the prospective victims is played by Nicholas Lea ( Xtro 2 ), who plays a major recurring character in the next Season.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 15]
Lazarus
Shown
Reviewed 5th October 2001 - Friday
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is temporarily off X-Files duty, helping her ex-BF/ex-Instructor (yes, in training she shagged the teacher!) to stake out a bank heist. He has no partner of his own, never mind SWAT team backup, but that does not stop him. As a result, he and the armed robber both get shot.
When Scully's ex-Instructor is revived in hospital, he has the memories and personality of the dead robber. The only person who notices is Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ), who is assisting the follow-up investigation.
Of note, the robber's brother-in-law is played by Callum Keith Rennie ( BSG 2003 ).
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 16]
Young At Heart
Shown
Reviewed 12th October 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is called in by his ex-boss to investigate an armed robbery. The robber murdered the clerk and left a note threatening Mulder, the MO of the criminal in Mulder's first case. However, that criminal was arrested and later died in jail. For some reason, Mulder feels guilty about arresting the criminal instead of shooting him in the back. Now, in typical mediocre thriller fashion, the convict is back for revenge on the man who arrested him.
By strange co-incidence, there is an X-Files element to the case. While in prison, the convict was illegally experimented on by a mad doctor. Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin - Star Trek: TNG ) and Cancer Man (William B Davis - Continuum ) make appearances, intent on buying the medical secrets for Uncle Sam.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 16]
E.B.E.
Shown
Reviewed 19th October 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate reports of an EBE - an Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. They get deluged with lies and disinformation, even from Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin - Star Trek: TNG ). Their only trustworthy help is a trio of nerds who call themselves The Lone Gunmen .
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 18]
Miracle Man
Shown
Reviewed 26th October 2001 - Friday
The dynamic duo are called in to investigate a Christian faith-healer. However, this is not listed as an X-File - the local sheriff requested an investigator with a medical background, so the FBI assigned Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) to the case! However, by strange co-incidence Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) finds evidence of supernatural events.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 19]
Shapes
Shown
Reviewed 2nd November 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) go to a Native American Reservation. A strange beast has killed several people, but when it was shot the sheriff only found the body of a naked man.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 20]
Darkness Falls
Shown
Reviewed 9th November 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) go to a forest high in the mountains of the American Northwest. Some loggers have disappeared in mysterious circumstances ...
The storyline of this episode is quite similar to two other episodes, Firewalker and Ice. Like them, it sticks Mulder and Scully in a remote location (with some cannon-fodder) where they are menaced by an unseen entity.
This episode ends with a preview of the next episode. The best villain of the Season, Eugene Victor Tooms (Doug Hutchison - Green Mile ) is up for release. Cancer Man (William B Davis - Continuum ) uses the opportunity to get Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) to move Mulder from the X-Files. In other words, the best aspects of the first Season are being replaced by the things that made the show slide into a slow decline.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 21]
Tooms
Shown
Reviewed 16th November 2001 - Friday
Yes, Eugene Victor Tooms (Doug Hutchison - The Green Mile ) is up for release, apparently cured by Doctor Aaron Monte (Paul Ben-Victor - Invisible Man (1999) ). Yes, okay, so he is a century-old liver-eating mutant, but that is not a crime. And since the only witness against him is Spooky Mulder, what are his chances of getting out?
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 22]
Born Again
Shown
Reviewed 23rd November 2001 - Friday
An 8-year-old girl is somehow telepathically causing people to die mysteriously.
This script was written by Morgan & Wong, and has all the hallmarks of their work.
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 23]
Roland
Shown
Reviewed 30th November 2001 - Friday
A scientist is murdered in a wind tunnel at his laboratory. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) suspects the retarded Janitor, Roland (Zeljko Ivanek - Hannibal ).
X-Files [Season 1, Episode 24]
The Erhlrmeyer Flask
Shown
Reviewed 7th December 2001 - Friday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) gets a tip-off from Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin - Star Trek: TNG ). He investigates high-speed car chase, and uncovers a conspiracy. Anne DeSalvo pops up as a helpful scientist.
The ending is notable for a couple of reasons. The scene with Deep Throat seems to many to be the end of an era for the show, though in truth the era ended several episodes previously. His line, Trust no one, sets the tone for the next Season. The scene with CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ), on the other hand, imitates the end of the first episode and thus indicates the underlying conspiracy theory arc that has been present all along.
Season 2
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 1]
Little Green Men
Shown 16/Sep/94
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 2]
The Host
Shown 23/Sep/94
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has been reassigned to a boring surveillance job. Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) finds Mulder a juicy murder case, right in his speciality. However, Mulder does not bother to look at the facts of the case, even though it turns out to involve an unusual killer. No, Mulder blames Skinner loudly and publicly, despite this being unprofessional and immature. If Skinner had actually wanted to have Mulder permanently dismissed from the Agency, Mulder has given him exactly the excuse. However, it seems that Skinner is an unwilling minion of Cancer Man (William B Davis - Continuum ).
In all fairness to Mulder, the facts of the case seem unclear at first. A body is discovered in the sewers of Baltimore, but the cause of death of not yet determined. Mulder assumes it is a gangland body-dump, like in The Wire. This would not be a Federal case, so Mulder is within his rights to enquire further. Somehow Skinner knew that the case was more complicated, even before Scully conducted her autopsy on the victim. The only explanation is that someone got info from the Russian ship in the pre-credits sequence. Possibly it was under surveillance because of its links to Chernobyl. Which brings another point. This show may focus on Alien Abductions and Conspiracies as its main Myth Arc, but Chernobyl is the cause of at least one other case.
A sewer workman (Matthew Bennett - BSG 2003 ) is bitten and infected by an unknown parasite. It turns out to be a man-sized fluke-worm. Despite the killer not even being human, Skinner does not call Animal Control, the CDC or even a zoo. No, he has the thing put in a van and taken off to a Mental Health facility (like where Hannibal was kept - the Baltimore Psychiatric Hospital).
Skinner states that the X-Files have been closed. Since they are basically the Cold Case files of the FBI, so they must still exist. Mulder gets a mysterious phone call from Mr X (Steve Williams - Supernatural ). There is a plan to get the X-Files reinstated.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 3]
Blood
Shown 30/Sep/94
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) investigates people going on kill-crazy rampages in a small town in the USA named Franklin, Pennsylvania. One of the killers is the porno actress who later appeared in Space: Above and Beyond .
Edward Funsch (William Sanderson - Blade runner ), a man recently fired from his Post Office job, is under constant pressure from mysterious messages on every digital screen he sees. They are urging him to start a killing spree, just like the others. He is a ticking time-bomb, and Mulder must race against time to find him before he gives in. The title refers to the subject of his mental stress - a phobia of human blood.
Mr X (Steve Williams - Supernatural ) is involved in the cover-up. Yes, this is part of the loose story arc.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 4]
Sleepless
Shown 07/Oct/94
With Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) MIA, Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) gets a new partner ... Eager young Special Agent Alex Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ). But whose side is he really on?
Meanwhile, Tony Todd ( CandyMan ) kills people in their sleep. Sound familiar?
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 5]
Duane Barry (1)
Shown 14/Oct/94
Duane Barry (Steve Railsback - The Visitor ) breaks out of a Mental Health asylum and takes some people hostage. The FBI Special Agent in charge (CCH Pounder) brings in Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) as a negotiator. After all, he is a trained psychologist.
Mulder trades himself for some of the hostages, so he can better communicate with the subject. His new partner, eager young Special Agent Alex Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ), is stuck on the outside as a conduit to Scully ( Gillian Anderson ).
Duane has memories of being an alien abductee, and wants to get to a specific landing site - like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind .
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 6]
Ascension (2)
Shown 21/Oct/94
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 7]
3
Shown 04/Nov/94
A Trinity of vampiric serial-killers are in LA. The suspects include Justina Vail and David Duchovny's Real-Life Girl-Friend Perry Reeves .
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) goes solo and investigates alone. However, without Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) to cover his back he is at greater risk than ever. Yes, he still drops his gun in every fight.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 8]
One Breath
Shown 11/Nov/94
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is in hospital, in a comatose state. Well, her body is. Her mind is hanging out with her father, Don Davis ( Twin Peaks ). Her sister is a hippy who tries to cure her with a magical crystal. Her mother is a Catholic, but Scully herself has left a living will. She wanted to have life support switched off if she was braindead. Of course, suicide is a sin to Catholics - but Scully has always been a rationalist.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is obsessed with helping Scully, or at least getting even with the people behind the abduction. The Lone Gunmen are not much help - they would rather hang out on the Internet pointing out the scientific flaws in TV show Earth 2 . Skinner shows only a passing interest in Scully's fate, especially compared to his apparent best-buddy relationship with his minions in later Seasons.
Mr X (Steve Williams - Supernatural ) pops up as part of the cover-up. He offers Mulder a chance at revenge.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 9]
Firewalker
Shown 18/Nov/94
Scully's first job on her return to work is a field trip to a volcano. Much like X-Files [Season 1, Episode 7] Ice and X-Files [Season 1, Episode 20] Darkness Falls the duo get trapped in an isolated area and menaced by an unseen killer.
The vulcanologist in charge of the expedition (Bradley Whitford - West Wing) has decided to kill off his cow-orkers. The survivors, Shawnee Smith and Leland Orser ( Alien: Resurrection ), are sweaty and untrustworthy.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 10]
Red Museum
Shown 09/Dec/94
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate abductions of teenagers in a farm town. This seems reminiscent of the pilot episode, but this is not UFO-related.
The Conspiracy is behind a plot to poison the food supply. Scully recognises their field agent - he is the gunman who shot Deep Throat!
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 11]
Excelsis Dei
Shown 16/Dec/94
A nurse ( Teryl Rothery ) is sexually assaulted by an invisible man. The truth may involve astral projections caused by magic mushrooms.
The tension is increased when Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) might become the next victim.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 12]
Aubrey
Shown 06/Jan/95
Lt. Brian Tillman (Terry O'Quinn - Lost ) of Aubrey, Missouri has a murder on his hands that resembles one from the 1940s.
Luckily for Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ), this case allows him to scratch something off his bucket list - meeting a woman named B.J.!
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 13]
Irresistible
Shown 13/Jan/95
This is the first appearance of villain Donnie Pfaster (Nick Chinlund - Chronicles of Riddick ). He is a perverse necrophile with a death fetish.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are called to Minneapolis to investigate a case of graveyard mutilations. Mulder profiles the killer, and although the case is not UFO-related he decides to stay on it. The perpetrator seems to be escalating, and will soon switch to live victims.
Scully, despite being a veteran of a great many autopsies, is now queasy and nauseous. In all fairness it is not her stomach, or PTSD from her recent near-death experience. No, it is because she has visions of a demonic entity about to attack her. And yet, as we all know, she will eventually rationalise it all away.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 14]
Die Hand die Verletzt
Shown 27/Jan/95
The action is set in Milford Haven, New Hampshire. The Parent Teacher Council, run by Bulldog from Frasier, are the predictable bunch of conservative tight-wads. They also secretly carry on their own religion - not Puritanism, but the Witchcraft associated with Salem.
Some teenagers, including Laura Harris , go for a romantic walk in the woods together. Things turn nasty, and the story turns into something like Suspiria . Witchcraft, a murderer with Giallo-style black leather gloves ...
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) does some background research on the Internet, which used command-line interface because this was filmed in 1994. She discovers that the murder resembles one that was part of the Nazi blood-libel against the Jews. The point is that the unusual killings are used to justify witch-hunts, both metaphorical and literal, against oppressed communities. Next, she and Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) investigate a case of recovered memory syndrome and an allegation of ritual child abuse. These were hot topics in the mid-1990s, but were ultimately disproven.
one of the classic cliches of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's infamous line It was a dark and story night ... And like many other episodes of this show, that is exactly where the final episode of the show is set. Our heroes run around a darkened building, lit only by the light of their torches. In part this is to increase suspense, but it is also no doubt to conceal the cheapness of the sets and the regular re-use of interior layouts.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 15]
Fresh Bones
Shown 03/Feb/95
A soldier is killed in a car crash. He is a guard at military-run camp for refugees from Haiti. The FBI investigates, and Voodoo may be involved.
Everyone is a suspect. They include:
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 16]
Colony (1)
Shown 10/Feb/95
This is the first appearance of the shape-shifting Alien bounty-hunter (Brian Thompson - Terminator ).
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 17]
End Game (2)
Shown 17/Feb/95
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 18]
Fearful Symmetry
Shown 24/Feb/95
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 19]
Død Kalm
Shown 10/Mar/95
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 20]
Humbug
Shown 31/Mar/95
The most recent in a series of unsolved murders has happened in a remote town peopled mainly by sideshow performers - Freaks. For example, Vincent Schiavelli ( Tomorrow Never Dies ) has a siamese twin!
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) make themselves friendly to the locals - Scully even swallows a live cock-roach ... kinda ...
The main suspect is the Tahiti Mermaid, a mythical creature supposedly displayed by PT Barnum. Given the quantifiably unusual nature of this case, Scully should be less cynical and skeptical in future.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 21]
The Calusari
Shown 14/Apr/95
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 22]
F. Emasculata
Shown 28/Apr/95
Paul (John Pyper-Ferguson - Alphas ) is infected with a deadly parasite, and goes on the run. Marshal Tapia (Dean Norris - Under the Dome ) helps the FBI track him down.
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) gets Dr. Osbourne (Charles Martin Smith - The Untouchables ) to deliver some exposition. Meanwhile, Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) cannot go to Deep Throat for info on the Conspiracy so he goes straight to the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis - Continuum ).
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 23]
Soft Light
Shown 05/May/95
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate a series of Spontaneous Human Combustions.
Chester Banton (Tony Shaloub - Galaxy Quest ) was victim of a dark matter experiment in a particle accelerator.
Mulder asks Mr X (Steve Williams - Supernatural ) for help with the case.
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 24]
Our Town
Shown 12/May/95
A health inspector goes missing in Dudley, Arkansas. Mulder and Scully get the case, which Mulder is unable to link to alien abductions.
The town is home to a massive chicken-processing plant, owned by a man who is obsessed with cannibalistic tribes from New Guinea. Those tribes have suffered from a disease named Kuru, a prion-based disorder related to CJD (Mad Cow Disease). And strangely, some of the workers report strange headaches and halucinations.
Local law-enforcement, in the form of the town Sheriff, assists Mulder and Scully to the best of their ability. They manage to find a lot of evidence of criminality. This is strange - the villains could easily have destroyed the evidence, or co-opted the police into missing it in their search.
The dynamic duo split up at night in order to search seperate houses. Normally, Mulder is the one who drops his gun and has to be rescued by his partner. Will Scully actually end up as damsel-in-distress for a change?
X-Files [Season 2, Episode 25]
Anasazi (1)
Shown 19/May/95
The story starts on a Navajo Native American reservation at Two Grey Hills in New Mexico, USA. A young man discovers a mysterious body. His grandfather, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, is the stereotypical wise old man of colour who provides just enough exposition to create suspense.
In Delaware, a super-hacker accesses the super-secret MJ-12 files. He contacts the Lone Gunmen , who put him in touch with Mulder. Unfortunately Mulder is acting unusually stressed out - he even starts (and loses) a fight with Skinner.
Cancer Man is in charge of the cover-up. He pays a visit to Mulder's father (Peter Donat - ). Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) is also lurking around.
Scully tries to solve the mystery of the encrypted files. She discovers they are written in Navajo, by US military code-talkers like in the movie Wind Talkers. This leads up to a cliffhanger ending, with Mulder being hunted by Cancer Man in the New Mexico desert.
Season 3
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 1]
The Blessing Way (2)
Shown 22/Sep/95
Scully heads home to Washington DC. The conspiracy target her, because they suspect her of having the MJ-12 documents. She is suspended from the FBI, and forced to work there without pay.
Mulder is discovered in the desert, and the Navajo perform a healing ritual called The Blessing Way. This gives him visions of his father (Peter Donat - ) and Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin - Star Trek: TNG ).
Well-Manicured Man (John Neville - Baron Munchausen ) is in charge of the cover-up. He pays his respects at Mulder's father's funeral - they were old friends, working together with Deep Throat. He also warns Scully that she is in danger. Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) is still lurking around.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 2]
Paper Clip (3)
Shown 29/Sep/95
Mulder finds a poorly photoshopped photo from 1973 of his father with CSM and Deep Throat. They were standing alongside Victor Klemper (Walter Gotell - The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) ), a German scientist who spent World War Two performing medical experiments on human subjects. The US Government used the data to help astronauts survive in outer space. However, Mulder and Scully get judgemental about his previous work.
They follow the trail to a disused salt mine in rural West Virginia. It is used as a depository for millions of medical files. There is even one on Mulder's sister, and it may be related to her mysterious abduction. The records are from every American who got a smallpox vaccination, which means the entire baby boomer generation is on file. Klemper's speciality was creation of a master-race. The next step would be creating alien-human hybrids.
Albert (Floyd Westerman) goes to DC to help Scully's sister. The accidental shooting of the wrong woman has made CSM look amateurish, and his employers seem to be losing faith in his abilities. Even worse, they demand to see the computer tape they sent him to recover. Skinner has found the tape, but wants to force CSM to make a deal. Finally, CSM is under a lot of pressure and is about to crack. He needs a scapegoat, and Krychek is an easy patsy.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 3]
D.P.O.
Shown 06/Oct/95
Connerville, Johnston County, Oklahoma. Someone is using lightning as a lethal weapon. The suspects include Darren Peter Oswald (Giovanni Ribisi - The Gift ), a supernaturally gifted player of video games. His sidekick is Zero (Jack Black - Year One ).
Scully is suspicious because there are more lightning deaths in town than statistically probable. Mulder is suspicious because the victims are disproportionately young males.
DPO's superpower is about more than causing lightning. He can change the channel on a TV set without a remote control, and mess with the traffic lights at road intersections. He even melts Mulder's analogue 1990s cell-phone. However, he has no ambition to use his superpower. Instead, all he cares about is seducing his boss's wife Mrs Kiveat ( Karen Witter ).
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 4]
Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Shown 13/Oct/95
Someone is murdering Fortune Tellers in Minnesota. The FBI call in a special consultant - a Medium called The Stupendous Yappi. He is also a dial-a-psychic - a theme also explored in an episode of The Others by Morgan and Wong.
Clyde Bruckman (Peter Boyle - Species 2 ) enters the investigation as a witness. He can actually see the future, but only to predict peoples' deaths. This helps him in his day job as a Life Insurance salesman, but does him no good with regards to winning the lottery.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 5]
The List
Shown 20/Oct/95
A man is executed in the electric chair. If this sounds familiar it is because it is the plot of the horror movie Shocker , starring Mitch Pileggi (who plays FBI ADA Skinner in this show).
The list of guest-stars include:
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 6]
2Shy
Shown 03/Nov/95
In Cleveland, Ohio, a serial killer (Steven Weber - Helix: Season 2 ) is preying on lonely fat women. He selecting his victims through Lonely Hearts columns and the internet.
His MO and motive? He vomits stomach acid over them so he can digest their fatty tissue and digest it.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 7]
The Walk
Shown 10/Nov/95
The suspects include Rappo (Ian Tracey - Continuum ), a quadraplegic who lost his limbs when his tank got hit in the Gulf War.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 8]
Oubliette
Shown 17/Nov/95
In Washington State, USA, a 14-year-old girl (a very young-looking Jewel Staite ) is kidnapped by a man who locks her in a darkened room.
Meanwhile, a 30-year-old woman who suffered a similar ordeal appears to have a psychic link with the new victim.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 9]
Nisei (1)
Shown 24/Nov/95
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) discovers clues about the secret lab she was experimented in. She links it to some Japanese scientists aboard a train.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 10]
731 (2)
Shown 01/Dec/95
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) boards the train with the secret cargo aboard. Unfortunately the Conspiracy have a hitman aboard - the red-headed man (Stephen McHattie - The Dark ).
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 11]
Revelations
Shown 15/Dec/95
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are investigating a series of murders. The most recent victim is R Lee Ermey ( Space: Above And Beyond ). He and the others were are all stigmatics - they purported to have the Stigmata of Christ. Of course, as with all the religious episodes the roles are reversed. Mulder is the skeptic, Scully is the believer.
A young boy develops the stigmata, and then is abducted. The main suspect is the bald man from The Hills have Eyes (1977) . However, the boy is also being hunted by Simon Gates (Kenneth Welsh - Twin Peaks ).
When the case is over, Scully goes to make her first Catholic Confession in six years. Poor Mulder is left to fill in the paperwork concerning the villain's death, even though he was not actually present at the time. Scully feels she cannot share details with Mulder, which is doubly ironic because he always shares with her and she is always skeptical towards him.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 12]
War of the Coprophages
Shown 05/Jan/96
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) goes off on a solo adventure, investigating cockroach-related deaths in Miller's Grove, Massachusetts. His sidekick in the investigation is a scientist, Dr. Bambi Berenbaum ( Bobbie Phillips ), because Scully is at home shampooing her dog Queequeg.
This is the first appearance of the recurring Stoner (Tyler Labine - Reaper ). He later appears in X-Files [Season 3, Episode 22] Quagmire, as does Scully's pet dog.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 13]
Syzygy
Shown 26/Jan/96
A group of High Schoolers commemorate their dead friend. The quarterpounder (Ryan Reynolds - Green Lantern ) gives a lift home to a pair of teenage girls, one of whom is Lisa Robin Kelly . Next morning, there is another dead body ...
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) get called in to investigate the deaths. The local police detective believes it is a satanic cult. All the old cliches from the 1990s are debunked by Scully.
Everyone in the town starts to act unusually. There are over thirty-eight thousand residents, but they form a torch-burning mob as quickly as any small town would. Even Mulder and Scully are not immune, as their egos start to grate against each other.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 14]
Grotesque
Shown 02/Feb/96
A case is supposedly solved by Mulder's old teacher, Bill Patterson (Kurtwood smith - Robocop, Star Trek 6 ). Ironically, Smith also played an FBI profiler in Medium . He found a serial killer, who claimed to be possessed by a gargoyle that made him do the murders.
The problems begin when a copycat murderer starts. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is ordered to do follow-up work, and starts to obsess about the case. Is he just a really good profiler, or has he himself become possessed by the gargoyle?
The gargoyle is perched on the roof of George Washington University, Washington D.C.. Technically it is a grotesque, because a gargoyle is specifically a water-spout.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 15]
Piper Maru (1)
Shown 09/Feb/96
Some French sailors in the Pacific ocean locate a crashed World War Two P-51 Mustang. Unfortunately the diver gets infected with a parasitic alien oil.
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) visits a friend of her father, a US Naval officer who served in World War Two. By incredible coincidence, the officer's submarine was sent on a mission to locate the same planes. Luckily, since he knew Scully's father, he breaks all US Military secrecy laws and tells her the story.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) follows the salvage dealer that the French were working for. Unfortunately the French Government has sent their own MIBs do do some clean-up work.
Skinner continues the investigation into the death of Scully's sister. However, this just makes him a target for CSM's goons.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 16]
Apocrypha (2)
Shown 16/Feb/96
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has followed the salvage dealer to Hong Kong, and now has Alex Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) in custody. Strangely Krychek seems happy to be returned to US soil, despite the fact that Mulder has no jurisdiction in Hong Kong and the Cancer man will probably have a hit-squad waiting to kill him before he faces trial.
The alien oil can possess people, and much like the French hit-team it can pass through airport security checks unhindered. It is also radioactive, and prolonged exposure will damage everyone except the host.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 17]
Pusher
Shown 23/Feb/96
A man gets stalked by Roger R Cross ( Dark Matter ) and Steve Bacic ( Andromeda ). They are partners, and probably not of the sexual variety. Mostly of the FBI variety. Their target is codenamed Pusher, a freelance assassin. Unfortunately he seems to have a superpower, the power of hypnotic suggestion.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 18]
Teso Dos Bichos
Shown 08/Mar/96
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are summoned to Boston Museum, where a scientist has gone missing while working on the bones of a South American shamaness. Mulder thinks the disappearance has something to do with the mummy's curse.
This is like a made-for-TV version of The Relic , involving the steam tunnels under the Boston Museum instead of the coal tunnels under the Chicago Field Museum.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 19]
Hell Money
Shown 29/Mar/96
Chinatown, San Francisco. A recent immigrant from China is burned alive. Because this is the most recent in a series of deaths in different cities, it is a Federal case and it is given to Mulder. Luckily it turns out that the killings are tied to Chinese mythology and superstition.
Det. Glen Chao (BD Wong - Jurassic Park ) is local cop who helps the Feds. They uncover a gambling parlour run by The Hard Faced Man (James Hong - Big Trouble In Little China ). Participants stake body-parts. One victim is doing it in order to save his daughter ( Lucy Liu ), a cancer patient who needs expensive bone-marrow donations.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 20]
Jose Chung's From Outer Space
Shown 12/Apr/96
A tweenage couple get abducted by Aliens, who themselves are abducted by a big stop-motion monster. It turns out that this event is the subject of a book that Jose Chung, a famous author perhaps based on Whitley Streiber , has written on the subject. Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) tells him in flashback the events she saw, and the stories that were related to her. As a result, there are many conflicting versions of events, some of which are quite humourous indeed.
The official line, mouthed by the local FBI Boss (whose profanity is hilariously censored) is that the tweenagers were involved in a date-rape scenario. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) does not believe the date-rape story, and has the female victim hypnotised. This is not in accordance with FBI policy, but that is not the most jarring thing. The hypnotist is one of the deceased Fortune Tellers in X-Files [Season 3, Episode 4] Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose . On a similar note, The Stupendous Yappi himself makes a cameo appearance - although he survived that episode, so it is less of a surprise.
One of the accounts comes from a UFO conspiracy nerd wearing a Space: Above and Beyond t-shirt.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 21]
Avatar
Shown 26/Apr/96
Skinner has to sign his divorce agreement. However, after seventeen years of marriage he is stalling. Instead he goes to a hotel bar and tries to drink away his sorrows. A beautiful woman ( Amanda Tapping ) starts a conversation with him, and they end up in bed. Next morning, things take a turn for the worse.
The official investigation is handled by the Washington DC Police. However, Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) conducts the autopsy. This access allows Mulder the chance to run his own investigation. This includes interviewing Skinner's ex-wife ( Jennifer Hetrick ).
Scully thinks Skinner might be guilty. After all, it looks like he hired a hot bar-girl for the night so by Scully's standards he must be capable of murder. Also, he refuses to take a lie-detector test. This is in spite of the fact than an FBI Assistant Director would be well aware that lie detector tests are inadmissble in court and are only used as leverage on gullible suspects.
Although Skinner is not arrested, the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility/Conduct (their version of Internal Affairs) conducts a hearing as to his ability to do his job. Naturally they want Mulder to hand over all evidence he has gathered. This looks like a set-up by the Cigarette Smoking Man and his conspiracy.
Skinner has visions of a creepy old woman in a red coat, reminiscent of Don't Look Now (1970) . Mulder suspects this may have something to do with a Succubus. Apparently Skinner first saw her during a near-death experience during combat as a US marine in the Vietnam war - thirty-five years earlier.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 22]
Quagmire
Shown 03/May/96
Heuvelmans Lake, Blue Ridge Mountains, Georgia, USA. Men have started to go missing along the lake-shore. One of them is a Federal employee, working for the US Forestry Service, which gives Mulder an excuse to investigate the legend of the lake's monster.
Scully gets dragged along for the weekend. She brings along her pet dog, Queequeg - a reference to Moby Dick .
The local Sheriff is unhelpful, as always. Well, he only has four deputies to police a lake-shore that is forty-eight miles long.
This is the second appearance of the recurring Stoner (Tyler Labine - Reaper ). The story has a lot in common with Lake Placid (1999) , a monster movie which inserts an Ally McBeal type character into the mix.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 23]
Wetwired
Shown 10/May/96
Braddock Heights, Maryland. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate a spree killer. His doctor (a very young-looking, clean-shaven Colin Cunningham - Falling Skies ) claims it is due to drug abuse. However, it may have something to do with the stack of videotapes in his home.
Mr X (Steve Williams - Supernatural ) keeps a low profile. Cancer Man has worked out that someone is leaking info to Mulder.
X-Files [Season 3, Episode 24]
Talitha Cumi (1)
Shown 17/May/96
Season 4
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 1]
Herrenvolk (2)
Shown 04/Oct/96
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) wants to save Jeremiah Smith (Roy Thinnes - The Invaders ) from the Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson - The Terminator ).
This marks the first appearance of Marita Covarrubias ( Laurie Holden ).
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 2]
Home
Shown 11 Oct 96
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate the Bender family, a clan of inbred hillbillys in Pennsylvania.
Sheriff Tucker Smallwood ( Space: Above and Beyond ) and Deputy Sebastian Spence ( First Wave ) help out.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 3]
Teliko
Shown 18/Oct/96
Someone is killing off Black African men. It is the African version of Tooms - he can squeeze into tiny places, although he eats pituitary glands instead of livers.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) calls on Marita Covarrubias ( Laurie Holden ) for extra info. This is a dangerous step, using her as an informant in a non-MythArc case. After all, every time he contacts her he risks exposing her to the Conspiracy.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 4]
Unruhe
Shown 27/Oct/96
A woman gets abducted in north Michigan. Mulder suspects the abductor was a psychic with the power to mentally imprint images in undeveloped photographs. He goes back the FBI HQ in Washington DC in order to get the photo professionally examined.
Scully stays in Michigan to look for suspects. The main suspect is Gerry Schnauz (Pruitt Taylor Vince - Heroes Reborn ). Of course, when Mulder gets a good image of the abductor he does not bother to fax her a copy of it, or even to give her a description of it over the phone.
Like many villains in this show, the killer develops an obsession with Scully. She gets abducted yet again, and Mulder has to go save her. Luckily she took German lessons in College, so she can talk to him in his favourite language.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 5]
The Field Where I Died
Shown 03/Nov/96
Temple of the Seven Stars, Apison, Tennessee. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) help the ATF raid a compound run by religious zealots. They manage to stop the leader (Michael Massee - Gaines from 24) and his six wives from drinking the kool-aid. However, they do not have enough evidence to keep them in jail ...
Luckily, one of the wives is played by Kristen Cloke . Since she was one of the stars of Space: Above and Beyond she is bound to play an important guest character. It turns out she has multiple personalites and US civil war memories, and may have been involved with Mulder in a previous life.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 6]
Sanguinarium
Shown 10/Nov/96
Greenwood Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois. A plastic surgeon goes insane. Mulder suspects the man was subject to some kind of possession. Witchcraft gets the blame.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 7]
Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man
Shown 17/Nov/96
The Lone Gunmen have a file on CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ). Cancer Man listens in as the Lone Gunmen brief Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ). Apparently they have discovered his personal history ...
The main body of the episode consists of stories supposedly from his past. The first two stories involve the young Cancer Man (played by Chris Owens, the actor who later plays Jeffery Spender) framing USMC goon Lee Harvey Oswald (Morgan Weisser - Space: Above and Beyond ) and James Earl Ray (Connor Trineer - Star Trek: Enterprise ) for the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King. In 1963 he was a US Army captain, and a non-smoker. Mulder Snr was his bunk-mate in the barracks, which explains how they knew each other. Of course, this disregards the previous stories of them working together in the 1940s, such as X-Files [Season 3, Episode 15] Piper Maru (1).
The we move to the middle-aged CSM as he and Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin - Star Trek: TNG ) execute a captured EBE. CSM is unwilling to do it, stating that he has never killed anyone. Deep Throat, apparently an operative of equal rank in the conspiracy, takes this statement at face value. Since the first part of the episode shows CSM as the trigger-man in several US Government assassinations, the two stories are mutually incompatible.
Finally, the X-Files team is set up and Cancer Man considers resigning. The biggest revelation is that CSM writes thrillers in his spare time. This leads on to a wonderful Life is like a box of chocolates monologue!
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 8]
Tunguska (1)
Shown 24/Nov/96
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) help the BAFT SWAT team ambush some militia types. They also run into an old acquaintance, previously left for dead but now back to guest-star in a double episode.
The convoluted plotline involves the CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ) and the Black Oil. Apparently it landed in Siberia in the Tunguska meterorite. Therefore, Mulder must go to Russia and examine the site for himself.
Mulder investigates the Black oil.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 9]
Terma (2)
Shown 01/Dec/96
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is in a prison camp in Siberia, being used as a slave labourer and as a test subject. The Russians are mining the Black Oil, and testing in on the prisoners!
Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) is also in the camp. He claims to be a fellow prisoner - is he trustworthy?
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) holds the fort down in Washington DC, as a US Government committee awaits Mulder to present himself.
Can Mulder get home in time to tie up all the loose ends? Can we make any sense of this plot at all? Will this show never die, even though it ran out of steam years ago?
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 10]
Paper Hearts
Shown 15/Dec/96
Mulder has a recurring dream about Bosher's Run park, Manassas, Virginia. He gets an FBI CSI team to dig there at 5am on a sunday morning ... and they find a skeleton where he expected to find a body. Then he interferes with the crime scene, even though Scully and the CSIs tell him not to.
The burial matches the Modus Operandi attributed to convicted child-killer John Lee Roche (Tom Noonan - 12 Monkeys ). Now it seems he may have kidnapped Mulder's sister too.
Mulder takes Roche on a two-man trip to look at a crime scene. No backup from Scully or Skinner. Roche remarks that 1973 was a more trusting time, when people in suburban USA did not lock their front doors. To a modern, post-911 audience the idea of a law enforcement officer carrying a loaded pistol in their holster aboard a civilian airliner is also the height of misplaced trust.
The suspect and the pistol go missing. Luckily Mulder still has his throw-down piece in an ankle holster. Also, Skinner is an extremely forgiving boss when one considers Mulder's repeated misdemeanours in this episode which lead up to a kidnapping and a fatality. If Cancer Man still wanted to get Mulder fired for incompetence there would be no need for a frame-up.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 11]
El Mundo Gira
Shown 12/Jan/97
One of the great advantages of moving the show from Vancouver to Los Angeles is that they can set stories in more southerly areas. Like the Mexican border, for example.
A mexican immigrant woman dies in mysterious circumstances. Her brother-in-law is arrested, and the dynamic duo investigate.
The Fresno County sheriff (Reuben Blades - Fear The Walking Dead ) calls in the FBI to investigate yellow rain that killed a woman. They encounter a deadly fungus among the illegal immigrant population. Are Chupacabras to blame?
The superstitious immigrants claim that the suspect is El Chupacabra - which Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) once jokingly referred to as that Mexican goat-sucker thing.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 12]
Leonard Betts
Shown 26/Jan/97
A paramedic is decapitated in a RTA. Later, his headless corpse walks out of the morgue. Previously we had a fat-sucker ( X-Files [Season 3, Episode 6] 2Shy ), this time we have a cancer-eater!
The problem with this story is, beyond corpse-stealing and lying in a job application, there is no real crime for the FBI to investigate here. Worse, their meddling forces the man they are hunting, a man who has committed no serious crime, to attempt several murders! The poor guy just wants to avoid being dissected by MIBs. After all, the cigarette-smoking man (William B Davis - Continuum ) would love to get his hands on someone who can detect cancer!
Arc-wise, we discover that Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) may have cancer!
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 13]
Never Again
Shown 2 Feb 97
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is sent on compulsory vacation - he makes a spiritual pilgrimage to Graceland. Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) goes off on a solo mission again. She goes to Pennsylvania, investigating the Russian Mafia, and keeps a Russian hoodlum under surveillance.
An embittered divorcee (Rodney Rowland - Space: Above and Beyond ) gets a tattoo named Betty, coloured with ergotamine dye. This causes him to halucinate that Jodie Foster 's voice is telling him to kill people!
Scully meets him and opens her heart. The result? A damp squib of an episode.
Scully kicks ass! It used to be that Mulder always dropped his gun. Now, the villains corner Scully alone, and she takes them out single-handed!
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 14]
Memento Mori
Shown 09/Feb/97
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) discovers she has brain cancer. She contacts the UFO Abductee group she met in a previous episode. Only one of them remains alive - the rest have died from their cancer. But there may be a cure.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) attempts to uncover a conspiracy. He enlists The Lone Gunmen to help. Langley and Frohike end up stuck in a communications tunnel where they can monitor and control the building's systems. This is basically what Barney did in the original Mission Impossible . Meanwhile, Mulder takes Byers with him as part of the infiltration team.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 15]
Kaddish
Shown 16/Feb/97
A skinhead gang are targeted for murder in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC. Has their Jewish victim risen from the grave to avenge himself?
It turns out that there is a white supremacist movement that has updated 1930s-style anti-semitic propaganda to include the theory that AIDS is a Jewish plot. This is not so different from conspiracy theories in 2020 that encouraged racism against Chinese people for Covid-19.
Mulder finally discovers the legend of the Gollem. This should have been his first idea.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 16]
Unrequited
Shown 23/Feb/97
The Invisible Man is a Vietnam veteran. He starts to kill off US generals, in revenge for a Pentagon cleanup.
Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ), Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are assigned to protect a US Army General. The assassin is a Vietnam-era MIA, who can disappear as if he turns invisible!
It is ironic that Mulder is hunting a man who, like himself, is a victim of a US Government conspiracy seeking to reveal The Truth (tm).
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 17]
Tempus Fugit (1)
Shown 16/Mar/97
Max Pfennig (the UFO fanatic from X-Files [Season 1, Episode 9] Fallen Angel ) is on a passenger jet that mysteriously crashes. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate the cover-up, because UFOs are linked to it. Joe Spano (an FBI Agent in N.C.I.S.) is the air crash investigator.
This is Part 1 of 2 ...
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 18]
Max (2)
Shown 23/Mar/97
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has Max Pfennig's trailer, full of all his UFOlogy stuff. This is just the kind of thing The Lone Gunmen would love to get their hands on. Will he give it to them, so it can be used in future Story Arc episodes?
Mulder finds the evidence that the villains are looking for. He uses his FBI credentials to take it (and his pistol) aboard a plane home. This was before 9/11, of course. However, Mulder fails to see that he is replicating the events leading up to Pfennig's disappearance.
The unanswered question at the end of the episode is ... do the aliens keep some of the people they abduct? And since there must be a complete passenger manifest of the flight, how will Scully explain away the missing persons case?
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 19]
Synchrony
Shown 13/Apr/97
An old man predicts someone's death before it happens. Is he a time-traveller, sent back to save lives? Or does he have a more sinister agenda? Soon the bodies start to mount up.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 20]
Small Potatoes
Shown 20/Apr/97
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully investigate a cluster of pregnancies where the babies all have tails. They discover that the father is a shape-changer (with elasticised muscles under his skin) who inherited his superpower from his father - a Carnie, like in X-Files [Season 2, Episode 20] Humbug.
The suspect wants to live a more fulfilling life by becoming a different person and stepping into that person's lifestyle. To that end, he poses as Mulder.
The irony, as pointed out by the show, is that Mulder's life is not that great. His job is tiring and stressful, and the nearest thing to a social life he has is a porn addiction and a standing invitation to hang out with The Lone Gunmen .
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 21]
Zero Sum
Shown 27/Apr/97
CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ) gets Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) to cover up a suspicious death. However, things spiral out of control for the Assistant Director. He finds himself framed for murder, like someone in a Hitchcock film. Yes, this is a classic Film Noir storyline - a crime happens, the protagonist is implicated.
Ironically, the cover-up would have been successful until the murder brought unnecessary attention to it. Can Skinner outwit Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks )? And if not, will the ultra-paranoid Mulder trust the duplicitous Skinner or turn him in to get closer to The Truth (tm).
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is in hospital with brain cancer. CSM promised to heal her. Can he? Will he?
One other question. In a previous ep, Skinner lived 19 floors up in a hi-rise apartment block. Now he is in apartment 1708, where Mulder feels free to come and go as he pleases. And also, why did CSM give Skinner his private landline number? At least this explains how Skinner found out where CSM's dingy flat is.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 22]
Elegy
Shown 04/May/97
A serial killer is killing young women in Washington DC. Despite the city's population being mostly Africa-American, the victims, witnesses, suspects and police are all mighty white. This reflects the population of Vancouver, where the show was filmed, although the casting director could still have made more of an effort.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate, even though this is a City Cop case not a Federal one. The reason for their intereference is because Ghosts of the murder victims were seen nearby. The police did not bother to follow leads or canvas for witnesses, because if they did this basic police-work (presented as a stroke of genius by Mulder) they would have linked all the victims to an autistic man.
Scully has a nosebleed, pehaps an early indicator that her brain tumour is getting worse. Even more stressful for her, she actually sees one of the ghosts. This is not the first ghost she has seen - she saw her father's in X-Files [Season 1, Episode 13] Beyond The Sea . As we later learn in other episodes, she is actually quite a religious person which is at odds wth her skeptical, scientific persona. This means that of all the phenomena that she might encounter on this show, ghosts are the ones she might most easily accept because her religion teaches belief in the soul's life after death. However, she is still reluctant to believe in this particular ghost because it is a death omen that is visible only to those who are about to die. Yes, her real reluctance is to face her own mortality.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 23]
Demons
Shown 11/May/97
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has a flashback to his childhood. Then he wakes up in a motel near his family home in Rhode Island, covered in someone else's blood. Worse, he has no memory of the previous few days. Yes, just like Skinner two episodes ago he finds himself framed for murder. Once again this is a classic Film Noir storyline - a crime happens, the protagonist is implicated.
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) helps Mulder work out what happened. Jay Acavone is the unsympathetic Police Detective assigned to the case.
X-Files [Season 4, Episode 24]
Gethsemane (1)
Shown 18/May/97
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) testifies to an official committee about an X-Files case. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is unable to make it for unspecified reasons, which leaves us to assume something bad happened to him.
The main story is told in flashback. Ice samples from the Yukon mountains indicate a possible ancient EBE.
Season 5
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 1]
Redux (2)
Shown 02 Nov 97
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 2]
Redux II (3)
Shown 09 Nov 97
X-Files, The [Season 5, Episode 3]
Unusual Suspects
Shown 16 Nov 97
It is 1989, and a trio of nerds are running stalls at a technology Con in Baltimore. They are asked for help by a paranoid babe named Suzanne Modesky who claims her psychotic ex-BF is after her. He turns out to be ... a FBI agent named Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks )!
Yes, this is the story of how The Lone Gunmen met up. Because it is set so long ago (almost a decade before it was filmed) it is notable for the use of unbelievably old-fashioned technology like Mulder's outdated moble phone. Watch out for the interrogation scene, which gives a great cameo to a familiar actor ... And also positions this show and its spin-offs in The Tommy Westphal Universe.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 4]
Detour
Shown 23 Nov 97
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are en route to a team-building course with another M/F pair of FBI agents. One would think that after four years of covering each others' asses, Skinner would trust them to be above such things. Luckily, Mulder discovers a missing persons case in a small town en route. People have gone missing in the woods. Mulder not only solves the Mothman sightings of the 1970s, but also links it to Ponce De Leon and the Fountain of Youth.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 5]
The Post-Modern Prometheus
Shown 30 Nov 97
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) go to a small town where lonely housewives wake up pregnant by a human mutant. If this sounds familiar, it is because it was the basis for the episode X-Files [Season 4, Episode 20] Small Potatoes , although the mutant looks a lot more like one of the inbred Bender clan from X-Files [Season 4, Episode 2] Home .
This time the suspect is The Great Mutato - yes, even the name is reminiscent of Potato. Mutato is obsessed with the singer Cher - after all, she was the mother of the deformed kid in the movie Mask.
This was shot in monochrome, a reference to the old Frankenstein movies created by Universal Studios in the 1930s. All this becomes even more relevant when Mulder and Scully follow Mutato's trail back to the local geneticist - a mad scientist named Doctor Polidari!
This episode is a pre-modern artefact in its own right. Made in the pre-Social network era, the local yokels' only opportunity for celebrity status is if they get to appear as guests on the Jerry Springer Show!
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 6]
Christmas Carol (1)
Shown 07 Dec 97
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) visits her family for Xmas holidays. However, she cannot leave her work behind her. She gets a mysterious phone call, and follows the clues to discover that a young girl named Emily who lives nearby is the spitting image of Scully's sister.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 7]
Emily (2)
Shown 14 Dec 97
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) investigates the mysterious doctor who treated Emily. Is he a front-man for the cloning conspiracy? We discover that he is linked to the alien bounty hunters, complete with face-changing and stabbing people in the back of the neck. He may even be one of them, which makes no sense as the story unfolds.
X-Files, The [Season 5, Episode 8]
Kitsunegari
Shown
Reviewed 22nd October 2001 - Monday
This sees the return of the hitman from X-Files [Season 3, Episode 17] Pusher . He manages to escape from prison, where Ty Olssen ( Supernatural ) is one of the guards.
The people responsible for Pusher's arrest commit suicide one by one in spectacular fashion. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is on his list ...
X-Files, The [Season 5, Episode 9]
Schizogeny
Shown
Reviewed 29th October 2001 - Monday
It was a dark and stormy night, and a teenager's brutish stepfather is sucked into the mud of an orchard. The teenage lad is Scully's suspect, though Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) thinks he is innocent. Other suspects include his girlfriend ( Katherine Isabelle ) and the babelicious shrink.
This episode is very dark, and that is not just an assessment of the subject matter. Most of the action takes place at night, be it in an unlit forest or in a house with the lights switched off. Either way, it is very difficult to make out what is happening. This does not make the episode noir or moody, it just makes it hard to work out what is going on.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 10]
Chinga
Shown
Reviewed 12th November 2001 - Monday
Typical of the show's horrible tendency to trendiness, it was written by Stephen King and Chris Carter.
A young girl and her dolly are psychically terrorizing a small town in Maine. By strange coincidence, Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is on vacation there. We get to see our favourite redhead in a nice white tee-shirt (and in the bath), which more than makes up for the fact that Mulder's only appearances are brief phone-chat scenes. Without Scully around, Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has nothing better to do than watch World's Deadliest Swarms (which may actually be one of his porn videos). Oddly enough, while Mulder proposes scientific explanations it is Scully who is willing to believe in extreme possibilities.
With regards to the storyline, however ... The Simpsons did it so much better!
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 11]
Kill Switch
Shown
Reviewed 19th November 2001 - Monday
Typical of the show's horrible tendency to trendiness, it was written by William Gibson and Chris Carter. While mildly entertaining it is little more than the standard conspiracy bunkum.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate a shootout between some US Federal Marshalls and a bunch of different drugs gangs. By incredible coincidence, the only civilian killed in the crossfire was a computer genius who had been reported missing in the 1970s. Kristen Lehman is supposed to be some kind of Goth chick, as imagined by someone who presumably had never seen a goth before. She is a super-hacker whose skills surpass those of The Lone Gunmen . But is she good enough to defeat an artificial intelligence that has seized control of the US Department of Defence's orbital weapons satellites?
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 12]
Bad Blood
Shown 22 Feb 98
This starts with a young man running from a crazed killer. However, as always with this show things are not quite what they appear. This is a bookened sequence, and Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) relates the story in flashback to Skinner. Naturally, skeptical Scully points out that the best bits are Mulder's embellishments, making him an untruthful (if entertaining) narrator.
The dynamic duo visit a small town in rural USA to investigate a murder. Scully develops an interest in the local Sheriff (Luke Wilson - Charlie's Angels ). However, it is her autopsy results that actually solve the case. Predictably, this happens at just the right moment to be dramatic.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 13]
Patient X (1)
Shown 01 Mar 98
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has lost his faith in the mysteries of the unknown. However, the shrink who recovered Mulder's memories of Samantha's abduction introduces him to a UFO abductee, Cassandra Spender ( Veronica Cartwright ). Her story is convincing, but there is a problem. Her son, Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens - ), is an FBI Agent who disapproves of Mulder's interest in his mother's abductions.
Marita Covarrubias ( Laurie Holden ) uses her United Nations cover to investigate a mysterious massacre in Khazakstan. Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) pops up, apparently working for the Russian security service. But who are they really working for?
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 14]
The Red and the Black (2)
Shown 08 Mar 98
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) has survived the massacre, but her memory has been wiped. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) takes her to his psychiatrist to recover her memories.
Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) is around to deliver some exposition. The aliens are in a civil war. The main group, the Colonists, have spread the Black Oil and wish to invade Earth. A new group, the Rebels, have stitched their own eyes and mouths shut (the only defence against the Black Oil) and are massacring the humans.
The Conspiracy is at a major disadvantage. Cancer man is no longer doing their field-work for them. His fate is explained at the end of the episode, but of course this asks more questions than it answers. However, at least we find out why Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens - ) looks just like the young Cancer man in X-Files [Season 4, Episode 7] Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 15]
Travelers
Shown 29 Mar 98
This story starts back in 1990, so Scully does not actually appear in the episode. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) visited former FBI Agent Arthur Dales (Darren McGavin - Nightstalker ), the man who started the X-Files unit. He may have info on a strange murder case. Worse, Mulder's father (later revealed to be an associate of CSM during the Cold War) may have been involved in HUAC ... and worse.
The main story is told in flashback to the 1950s. The young FBI Agent (Fredric Lehne - Supernatural ) uncovered a conspiracy and some mysterious murders. A man (Garrett Dillahunt - Sarah Connor Chronicles ) was converted into a fat-sucker like in X-Files [Season 3, Episode 6] 2Shy by Nazi war criminals working for the US Government. Roy Cohen and the anti-Communist witch-hunters were involved in the coverup.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 16]
Mind's Eye
Shown 19 Apr 98
Wilmington, Delaware. Police Detective Pennock (Blu Mankuma - ) thinks a blind woman ( Lili Taylor ) killed a drug-dealer, so he calls in Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully to help prove she did it. It turns out that she can see through the eyes of the real killer, like in Eyes of Laura Mars .
It was previously shown in X-Files [Season 2, Episode 12] Aubrey that a mental bond can be hereditary. However, what sets this episode apart is the amazing performance by Lili Taylor.
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 17]
All Souls
Shown 26th April 1998
Reviewed 17th October 2005 - Monday
This is a Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) episode - Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) appears for an obligatory five seconds, but Gillian Anderson carries the entire show magnificently.
Scully is called in by her local Catholic priest in Alexandria, Virginia. A crippled teenage girl died mysteriously, possibly struck by lightning. But as she investigates, Scully discovers disturbing supernatural explanations for what is going on. Since she is still recovering from the death of her daughter, she is especially vulnerable.
It is nice to see Scully get to do lots of investigating. Mulder is there for backup work, and also to promote a scientific answer to things. Even the Catholic church dismisses the supernatural explanations - they do not officially acknowledge those particular books, you see. If the superstition was Vatican-recognised, of course, then things would be different!
Strangely, Mulder does not mention Alien Abduction or anything like that. Maybe he is losing his touch!
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 18]
The Pine Bluff Variant
Shown 3rd May 1998
Reviewed
This episode is unique insofar as there is no supernatural aspect, and the conspiracy theory has nothing to do with the mundane story arc Carter has carved out of his series' huge pile of loose ends. How you feel about this episode depends on how you feel about Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) - what the hell, the series has always been character-driven, but this is ridiculous.
Mulder goes undercover in a group of anti-Government radicals led by Daniel Von Bargen (Malcolm in the Middle). They recruited him because they heard him deliver an anti-Government lecture at a UFO conference.
Skinner is now accepting orders from a new boss, the US Attorney (Holling Manners - Angel ). A pity that the conspiracy did not turn out to involve Wolfram and Hart!
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 19]
Folie A Deux
Shown 10th May 1998
Reviewed 18th October 2005 - Tuesday
A madman thinks giant bugs are turning people into zombies - hmm, that explains David Duchovny ...
A stressed-out telemarketing worker (Brian Markinson - Caprica ) in Oakbrook, Illinois, thinks his boss is a giant insect that turns people into zombies. Of course, he is the only one who can see this. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ), equally stressed-out, is sent to investigate. He resents the assignment, even though it is part of his job both as an FBI Agent and a specialist in the unnatural.
The FBI are remarkably inept in this ep. The local field agent is Roger R Cross ( Dark Matter ), obviously promoted since he was a SWAT team commander in X-Files [Season 3, Episode 17] Pusher and replaced by his former partner Steve Bacic ( Andromeda ). He phones Mulder's mobile number when he KNOWS it will expose Mulder to a dangerous gunman. Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) barely responds to the many predicaments Mulder ends up in - she is not shocked when he is probably been killed, and does not attempt to get proof to whether he is delusional or correct. And Mulder, supposedly a psychology expert, refers to Stockholm Syndrome as Helsinki Syndrome!
X-Files [Season 5, Episode 20 - finale]
The End
Shown 17th May 1998
This episode is so called not just because it is the final episode of Season 5, but because it was the final episode filmed in Vancouver. All the regular characters get a look in. A hit-team looking for CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ) turns out to be Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) looking to bring him back to the fold, along with Well-Manicured Man (John Neville - Baron Munchausen ).
A Russian gets shot in Vancouver, Canada. The assassin is an American citizen, so somehow he gets extradited to the USA and the FBI take over the investigation. Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens - ) is put in charge of the case. Mulder realises that the intended target was a young boy, Gibson Praise, who can apparently read minds or predict the future.
Yet another of Mulder's ex-girlfriends makes an appearance; in X-Files [Season 1, Episode 11] Fire it was Scotland Yard Inspector Amanda Pays , now it is FBI Special Agent Diana Fowley ( Mimi Rogers ).
Like Babylon 5 , the ending is somewhat downbeat; however, with X-Files it was done as a deliberate lead-on to the 1998 X-Files: the Movie.
X-Files: Fight The Future (1998)
This is the long-awaited X-Files: the Movie. Two things (other than the budget) set this apart from the average TV episode. Firstly, it kills off several recurring characters. Secondly, Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully almost kiss ... Other than that, it is business as usual.
The action starts in North Texas, USA. A young boy named Stevie (Lucas Black - American Gothic ) explores a cave. Unlike the one in The Goonies , this one contains an alien that gestated from a cave-man thirty-five thousand years ago. A scientist named Bronschweig (Jeffrey Demunn - Walking Dead ) tries to cover it up on behalf of Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis - ), but it all goes badly wrong.
The X-Files, AKA the Cold Case unit of the Violent Crimes Division, have been closed. Mulder and Scully now work in the Counter-Terrorism Division. They investigate a bomb threat in Dallas, Texas, under the direction of their new boss Michaud (Terry O'Quinn - Millennium ). By incredible coincidence, this bombing is CSM's cover-up strategy. The dynamic duo jet back and forth between hearings with FBI overseer Cassiday ( Blythe Danner ) in Washington DC and Mulder's investigations in North Texas.
There are a few references to other films. Mulder urinates on a poster of Independence Day , a mid-1990s alien invasion story that came out shortly before this film did. Later, the heroes are chased through a cornfield by helicopters in a scene that mimics a classic chase in North By Northwest. And just in case the audience are not smart enough to get the reference, Mulder was watching that clip on his television in an earlier scene.
CSM reveals the truth to Well-Manicured Man (John Neville - Baron Munchausen ). The black oil has mutated, and the aliens seem to have double-crossed their human allies. It seems that a crazy conspiracy theorist named Kurtzweil (Martin Landau - Ed Wood ) was right all along. But for the audience to feel the black oil is a threat, it must infect a character that we care about. And since the alien conspiracy is Mulder's storyline, that leaves FBI Special Agent Dana Scully as the damsel in distress. The Lone Gunmen get involved briefly, but Mulder's best help comes from an unexpected source.
Season 6
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 1]
The Beginning
Shown 08 Nov 98
Season 6 takes off where Season 5 ended. The events of the movie are more or less swept under the carpet; nobody believes what happened at the south pole, so Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully are interrogated by a committee led by Wendie Malick . The good news is, Mulder believes that info can be recovered from many of the burned files. This is a nice way of ignoring the catestrophic ending of the previous Season. However, the FBI should have invested in digital backups rather than just have a stack of paper files and no disaster recovery plan.
The bad news is, Mulder and Scully get replaced in the new X-Files Dept by Agent Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens - ) and Diana Fowley ( Mimi Rogers ), just recovered from Season 5's gunshot wound. Mulder despises Spender, who he knows to be linked to CSM. Scully is mistrustful of Fowley, who she suspects of manipulating Mulder.
An accident at the Shadow Conspiracy's Arizona base infects a worker with the Bee virus, and spawns an Alien monster. CSM takes Gibson, the psychic boy he kidnapped when he shot Ms Rogers, and searches for the beast.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 2]
Drive
Shown 15 Nov 98
This starts with a high-speed chase; cop cars, helicopters and roadblocks involved in a 90-mile pursuit over ... a stolen car?! Jesus, what a waste of police resources. Are there no more serious crimes in the USA any more?
Mouldy & Skull are on BATF duty, investigating farmers who want to buy Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser (as used in ANFO explosives). Once they learn of the car chase, and its conclusion (spontaneously exploding human heads) they disobey orders and head off to investigate. In all fairness, this is technically not an X-File because they are not working on an unsolved cold case.
The guest star is Bryan Cranston ( Total Recall (2012) ), and this is the role that won him the serious dramatic lead in Breaking Bad.
The Sheriff is the NASA boss from Extant .
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 3]
Triangle
Shown 22 Nov 98
This week the cast is on location, with Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) on a 1939 passenger ship and Scully in FBI HQ. As a result, the episode visually looks great; lots of steadicam work, and it is shown in widescreen. The lighting is excellent too, and the look of the episode is cinema-quality. Showrunner Chris Carter personally wrote and directed the episode, so this is one of the show's key episodes.
The Lone Gunmen walk into FBI HQ with visitor badges. Mulder has gone MIA in the Bermuda triangle, and needs to be rescued. Scully asks Agent Spender for help, but he still works for Kersh and CSM. Scully kisses Skinner, and Mulder kisses one of the Scullys.
Mulder is on the Queen Anne, a British passenger liner that disappeared in 1939. It turns out that they were boarded by German soldiers. Trevor Goddard ( Deep Rising ) puts on a Mockney accent to play one of the ship's crew.
As ever with this show, there are lots of inaccuracies and discrepancies, with no real explanation or logic. For example, CSM, Spender and Skinner all pop up in German uniforms. The only logical explanation for the script is that Mulder fantasised the entire 1939 part. This show disappeared up itself so many years ago it is not even worth talking about it.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 4]
Dreamland (1)
Shown 29 Nov 98
This is a double-episode, an oddity insofar as it is not linked to the usual X-Files conspiracy guff. The show starts with a dose of vintage Season One hokum; M & S drive down a highway near Area 51 at midnight, to meet a secret unknown contact. They are stopped by security troops commanded by a cigarette-smoking man (Michael McKean - Smallville ) who looks suspiciously like the late, great J.T. Walsh in Dark Skies . Just then a UFO overflies them, and Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and the Walsh lookalike swop bodies. Scully and the new Mulder get back in the car and drive off.
The new Mulder is a vast improvement, and starts to get himself a life! The thing is, as he puts it himself, you think it's fun being a MIB? You cannot imagine the paperwork! Compared to that, being a Fed is a doddle; he spends all day playing computer golf, kissing the Assistant Director's ass and seducing the AD's secretary!
Even worse, the producers show how desperate they are for ratings by trying to revive the UST (Unrestrained Sexual Tension) that disappeared five years previously. The brother-sister relationship is being undermined, starting with Mulder's fantasy (ie last episode) and climaxing in episode 3 of Season 7 (the Millennium episode, shown in USA November 1999, due out in UK via ORB-store.com video release soon, more than likely).
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 5]
Dreamland (2)
Shown 06 Dec 98
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has assumed the body of a MIB named Morris Fletcher (Michael McKean - Smallville ). He takes advantage of his position to investigate further. However, instead of answers all he discovers is more questions.
Will Scully work out that the man she is working with is not Mulder? After all, she must remember how she was previously deceived in X-Files [Season 4, Episode 20] Small Potatoes .
The end? Well, Mulder and Scully get Missing time (ie memory loss) of the events of the episode. The changes made to their homes and office remain, however - which raises the question, since Scully lost her job during the episode, will she no longer be a Fed in further episodes?
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 6]
How the Ghosts Stole Christmas
Shown 13 Dec 98
The case of the week is a haunted house - on Xmas eve, where two lovers carried out a suicide pact. The intrepid duo find themselves locked in the house, where they discover a pair of corpses under the floorboards. The thing is, the corpses are their exact doubles (down to clothes and hairstyles)!
They get separated, which is when TV illusion triumphs over logic, and things get confusing (as ever). They meet a pair of middle-aged folk who seem to know M&S better than they know themselves. The ghosts try to make M&S reenact the suicide pact; in this reviewer's opinion it is yet another attempt to revive the series' UST. Bleugh!
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 7]
Terms of Endearment
Shown 03 Jan 99
Guest-star Bruce Campbell ( Evil Dead ) lives in Hollins, Virginia. He is husband to a woman whose unborn mutant child is apparently stolen by a demon. And since BC is the biggest star in the show, you can bet he is central to the plot.
He never realises that his lady-love is more intelligent and mature than he thinks ... And something really f*cked up has happened to his hair!
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 8]
The Rain King
Shown 10 Jan 99
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully fly out to Kronor, Kansas - a drought-ridden desert town with a history of extreme weather. It appears that a local businessman, the rain king (Clayton Rohner - G Versus E ), can control the weather. Naturally Scully is skeptical - despite the fact that she witnessed D.P.O. control lightning in the episode named after him several seasons ago!
There is yet more UST doo-doo; first the Mayor thinks Scully is Mulder's wife, and then they are mistaken for a married couple who won a romantic getaway competition. Things get worse when the TV weatherman asks Mulder to help him woo Sheila, the woman he loved since High School who only thinks of him as a friend. Unfortunately, Sheila takes a liking to Mulder instead!
Scully takes the woman aside, and explains that while Mulder and Scully were just good friends, Sheila and the weatherman belong together. The best relationships are the ones rooted in friendship.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 9]
S.R. 819
Shown 17 Jan 99
Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) is poisoned by persons unknown. He has twenty-hour hours to hunt down the conspiracy and get the antidote.
It turns out that Mulder has yet another secret source of info. This one is a US Senator, but he is played by the leader of the Mountain Men in The 100 so he not entirely trustworthy. He is linked to a Senate Bill, S.R. 819, that is linked to Skinner's poisoning. Does the Conspiracy want to pass the Bill, or stop it?
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 10]
Tithonus
Shown 24 Jan 99
Geoffrey Lewis (Clint Eastwood's sidekick in Any Which Way But Loose) plays a crime-scene photographer in New York City. He takes photos of murder victims as the crime is being committed.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully are on Background Check duty when Scully is pulled and transferred to investigate Lewis. Yes, Kersh assigns her to what is basically an X-File rather than get Fowley and Spender to do it.
Mulder does the backup work for Scully, and phones her up every time he finds something useful.
The conclusion is part of Scully's overall story arc, as alluded to in X-Files [Season 3, Episode 4] Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose .
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 11]
Two Fathers (1)
Shown 07 Feb 99
This is a double-episode story that deals with the X-Files MythArc, if it can be called one. The first episode is narrated by CSM (the villain, Cigarette-Smoking Man) to an unseen accomplice.
A surgical room in a rail carriage in Virginia (like the one Scully was abducted and taken to) is attacked by the alien Rebels. The only survivor is Cassandra Spender ( Veronica Cartwright ) who was abducted last season. Agent Spender passes on her request for help from Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ), who is reluctant to get involved. Rightly so - Spender is still working with his father, CSM.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 12]
One Son (2)
Shown 14 Feb 99
Towards the end of the second episode the plot is revealed, and most of the loose ends are tied up. Mulder discovers what happened to Marita Covarrubias ( Laurie Holden ), and CSM monologues him with the Conspiracy's secret plan.
There are still a few (shape-changing aliens, anyone?), but after six years and one movie we are so glad to finally get to grips with the damn thing that nobody cares enough to complain!
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 13]
Agua Mala
Shown 21 Feb 99
There is a hurricane in Florida, and a family trapped in their home are menaced by an unseen sea-monster.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) gets a call from their next-door neighbour, an ex-Fed who used to work on the X-Files. Yes, this is FBI Agent Arthur Dales (Darren McGavin - Nightstalker ) again, last seen in X-Files [Season 5, Episode 15] Travelers .
Mulder discovers some weird sticky mucus, and there is a jump-scare involving a close-up of a cat. Both homages to the Alien movie series, although Mulder does not even mention the possibility of it being ectoplasm like in Ghostbusters .
The dynamic duo end up trapped in a building with a monster and some civilians, including a pregnant woman. Slias Weir Mitchell ( Grimm ) pops up.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 14]
Monday
Shown 28 Feb 99
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully are trapped in a bank by Ed from Northern Exposure, who blows everyone up. After the credits roll, Mulder wakes up in a leaky waterbed. It must be the one he got in X-Files [Season 6, Episode 5] Dreamland (2) - he claims no knowledge of how it got there.
Mulder and Scully attend a meeting hosted by Skinner - not Kersh, their boss. Wayne Alexander ( Babylon 5 ) is the one giving the briefing. The FBI are having trouble with their estimates of future crime statistics. Ed the robber's girlfriend, in comparison, appears to be re-living the day repeatedly.
This Groundhog Day concept has been used many times before, even in BBCNI sitcom Give My Head Peace. This time, however, although Mulder and Scully remain unaware of their fate there are slight differences in their actions each time.
As a side note, Scully may be a Doctor of Medicine, but her ability to save a wounded casualty is limited at best.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 15]
Arcadia
Shown 07 Mar 99
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully are finally taken off the scut-work roster. Presumably they were reassigned to the X-Files after the events of X-Files [Season 6, Episode 12] One Son (2). They go undercover in suburbia in San Diego County, California, to investigate a series of disappearances. Mulder complains it is not a proper X-File. Well, it may or not be an ALIEN abduction but it is not linked to any of the cold cases in the basement.
The inmates - oops, residents - of the gated community are very tight-laced. Scully fits in very well, but Mulder does everything he can to stand out. The residents' rules are all about appearances - presumably the monster that attacks transgressors is incredibly shallow.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 16]
Alpha
Shown 14 Mar 99
Crewmen go missing aboard a Chinese freighter in the Pacific ocean. When it docks in San Pedro, California, they are found bitten to death. The creature responsible is apparently a chinese dog, of a breed that was supposed to be extinct 150 years ago. The dog was shipped over by Cryptozoologist Andrew J. Robinson (Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 ).
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has a source - a local canine expert he met on-line. She and Mulder supposedly have Chemistry together, and Scully gets jealous.
In an unintentional Scooby-Doo reference, Mulder tells his partner You get a biscuit, Scully.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 17]
Trevor
Shown 21 Mar 99
A prison farm in Jasper County, Mississippi, is hit by a tornado - after the Guard Captain ordered a prisoner to be locked in the hole. When the storm is over the prisoner is missing believed dead, and the Captain is dead believed from spontaneous human combustion.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully end up in pursuit of Wilson "Pinker" Rawls (John Diehl - Jurassic Park III ), a notoriously violent and dangerous criminal who has the ability to pass through solid objects. His target is his ex-girlfriend ( Catherine Dent ).
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 18]
Milagro
Shown 18 Apr 99
The dynamic duo investigate a series of murders where the victim's heart is removed without any external wound on the body. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) recognises this as being a case of Psychic Surgery, while Scully simply refuse to admit he is correct.
Scully is stalked by Mulder's neighbour, a novelist who predicts things and writes about them before they happen. He is basically a super-profiler, which he illustrates by sending Scully a Milagro (Spanish miracle medallion) and predicting she will go to the local Catholic chapel. In all fairness, this mathematical profiling technique is how Clyde Bruckman claimed to have developed his powers. Mulder does not believe anyone could be a better profiler than himself, and starts to stalk the stalker! He also reminds us that once upon a time the term Secret Admirer was used.
The writer makes a few miscalculations. He later admits that Scully could not fall in love because she is already in love.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 19]
The Unnatural
Shown 25 Apr 99
1947, Roswell New Mexico. A desegregated baseball game (involving a Negro League team called the Roswell Greys) is interrupted by the KKK. However, the Klan includes a REAL Grey!
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) meets with an old man (M. Emmet Walsh - ), the brother of Darren McGavin's character. While McGavin's character was a Fed (and started the X-Files), his brother was a Roswell cop (Frederic Lehne - Supernatural ). He was assigned to protect one of the Negro League players (Jesse L Martin - The Flash ).
The Negro League Player has a secret; his skill at baseball has an extra-terrestrial origin. Walsh discovers the secret, and the two develop a close bond. However, the shape-shifting Alien bounty-hunter (Brian Thompson - Terminator ) is closing in.
Mulder flirts with Scully, somewhat out of character; he teaches her to play baseball by putting his arms around her and whispering into her ear.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 20]
Three of a Kind
Shown 2 May 99
The episode starts with the narrator saying how he dreamt that John F. Kennedy had never been killed ( X-Files [Season 4, Episode 7] Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man ) and that US citizens could still trust elected officials, never having been betrayed by them. It is revealed that the narrator is one of the Lone Gunmen.
The Lone Gunmen stake out a poker game of delegates to Defcon, a convention in Las Vegas run by the USA's Military-Industrial Complex. However, they are being staked out by a DOD black-ops agent.
Byers is still obsessed with Suzanne Modesky, who he met at a Con in Baltimore 10 years previously. Yes, this is a sequel to the flashback episode from the previous Season, X-Files, The [Season 5, Episode 3] Unusual Suspects which showed how the Lone Gunmen met up.
The Lone Gunmen call in Scully to help investigate - Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is nowhere to be seen. However, they have other helpers available. Fellow nerd John Billingsly ( Enterprise ) tags along. There are a bunch of other Conspiracy-Theorist nerds spying on the Con. It turns out that for R&R they play Dungeons & Dragons ... for money!
The Government Conspiracy involves instruments of oppression such as brainwashing and assassination. Also, as a side note, Morris Fletcher the MIB (Michael McKean - Smallville ) pops up. He is the JT Walsh lookalike from the Season's Body-swop episode, X-Files [Season 6, Episode 4] Dreamland (1) who turns up and tries to seduce Scully again.
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 21]
Field Trip
Shown 09 May 99
The dynamic duo investigate a double homicide near Brown Mountain, in Boone County, North Carolina. For some reason they are working for Assistant Director Skinner again. Both agents continue their investigations seperately.
Scully's autopsy indicates the killer was a carnivorous plant. The local pathologist (Jim Beaver - Supernatural ) helps her out.
Mulder's investigations indicate that the murders were faked by aliens, so they could abduct humans without raising suspicion. He encounters the female victim ( Robin Lively ) and her husband.
There are strong overtones of Phil K. Dick . This is one of the few episodes where the pair seem to be in serious jeopardy.
Trivia note - Mulder's apartment is number 42!
X-Files [Season 6, Episode 22]
Biogenesis (1)
Shown 16 May 99
The episode starts with Scully giving a voice-over on the nature of evolution and extinction, wondering what will preclude the next great extinction. On-screen we are shown the discovery of an ancient artefact on a beach in Ivory Coast, West Africa.
An African professor examines the artefact, and discovers it has a mind of its own. He takes it to the USA to share notes with a colleague there, but he is murdered and the artefact is stolen. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully are assigned to solve the murder and recover the artefact.
Scully reminds Mulder that the conspiracy has been solved,
its experiments uncovered and its members killed.
ScullyWhat more could you want?
MulderMy sister.
Mulder gets a strange ringing in his ears every time he sees a wax rubbing of the artefact. It turns out the writing is Navajo, the words are untranslatable gibberish. They employ the code-talker from Season 2, who is unfortunately dying of cancer. No wonder - the artefact is radioactive (with a form of radiation only found outside Earth's solar system)!
CSM is back in business, with a new gang of conspirators. Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) pops up, in league with Skinner for some unexplained reason. Mimi Rogers is back as well, untrustworthy as ever, and Scully shoots some bitchy glares at her because Mulder got help from Rogers.
At the end of the episode, Mulder is in psychiatric care and Scully is chasing clues in the Ivory Coast! This story will be concluded in Season 7 of X-Files, to be shown in 2001!!!
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 1]
The Sixth Extinction (2)
Shown 07 Nov 99
Reviewed 15th November 2000
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is in a rubber room, with CSM's grimy paws extended ready to crush him. Mimi Rogers is back, as the duplicitous FBI Agent. Luckily Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) is on hand to save him, with the help of a CIA Remote Viewer from an episode a couple of years ago.
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is in Ivory Coast, trying to decode the engravings on the UFO's skin to help save Mulder and solve the mysteries of ... the X-Files. The message includes passages from the Koran and a complete human genome. However, there are problems with the excavation: the site is subject to the Biblical plagues of Egypt. She also has to deal with a psychotic John Lithgow lookalike!
To be continued ...
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 2]
The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati (3)
Shown 14 Nov 99
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is removed from hospital by CSM. He wakes up living a perfect life in the suburbs, with Diana Fowley ( Mimi Rogers ) to keep him company. His sister Samantha is now grown-up, because CSM adopted her. Which parts of this are real and which are hallucinations?
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) and Skinner try to save Mulder.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 3]
Hungry
Shown 21st Nov 1999
Reviewed 29th November 2000
The story is about a brain-eating mutant who works in a burger bar in Costa Mesa, California. It is shown from his POV, too - Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are only supporting characters this time.
While dodging the ever-suspicious Mulder, the protagonist is harrassed by cow-orker Mark Pellegrino ( Supernatural ). However, he finds a supportive ear in the form of his psychiatrist ( Judith Hoag ).
Why Mulder and Scully flew three thousand miles from DC to LA just to investigate a single murder, no matter how unusual, is not explained. They mention the body was found in a reservoir, and if that was on Federal land then they might have jurisdiction. But since the killer's modus operandi apparently does not match anything in any of the cold case files, it is more likely that the local City or County Police Department would handle the case.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 4]
Millennium
Shown 28th Nov 1999
Reviewed 6th December 2000
A Necromancer raises a zombie in Tallahassee, Florida. His plan is to gather four zombies so he can bring about the end of the world. His deadline is New Year's 1999/2000, although the episode was shown in Autumn 1999 in the USA. Yes, this is the Millenium episode, the long-awaited crossover with a certain other Chris Carter TV show.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully get called in because the walking dead is a former FBI agent, and it looks like he clawed his way out of the coffin. They team up with Frank Black (Lance Hendricksen - Aliens ) in order to prevent the apocalypse. Unfortunately he is in a mental health ward in Virginia, under the care of nurse Octavia L. Spencer ( Hidden Figures, The Shack ).
Black delivers a profile of the Necromancer, the kind of exposition that is usually left to Mulder. Despite knowing where the Necromancer will go next, the Feds decide to split up. This needlessly ups the jeopardy, and also allows Frank Black to travel between locations much faster than the Feds do.
This is the episode that features the infamous kiss. Luckily they manage to cover up for the complete lack of chemistry between the characters by making it a lucky New Year celebrations kiss.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 5]
Rush
Shown 5th Dec 1999
Reviewed 13th December 2000
Smalltown USA, AKA Pittsfield Virginia, and a Sheriff's Deputy is murdered by an unknown assailant. The only witness, a local teenager, is also the only suspect. However, Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) suspects that the sheriff's teenage son has the power to run at an amazingly high speed.
Nicki Aycox plays a teenage girl. Ten years later she played a different role in X-Files: I Want To Believe .
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 6]
The Goldberg Variation
Shown 12th Dec 1999
Reviewed 7th January 2001 - Sunday
This episode makes quite a few homages to the US TV show Strange Luck . It features a character who survived a plane crash, and ever since then had amazingly good luck. Some might even say ... Strange Luck ! However, every time he has good luck, someone else gets some bad luck ...
The guest-star is Willie Garson ( Stargate SG-1 ). Mulder and Scully are called in to help the Organised Crime task force, after Willie incurred the wrath of a Chicago mobster who then had him thrown off the roof of the skyscraper. Strangely the Library Tower is visible in the background, which is a dead giveaway that the scene was shot in Los Angeles.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 7]
Orison
Shown 9th January 2000
Reviewed 14th January 2001 - Sunday
This sees the return of Season 2 (ep 2.13 Irresistable) villain Donnie Pfaster (Nick Chindlund - Chronicles of Riddick ), a living incarnation of evil who wants Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) as his next victim. He busts out of jail with the help of a mysterious pastor named Orison (Scott Wilson, AKA Hershell the Preacher in The Walking Dead ), and Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has to track them both down before it is too late.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 8]
The Amazing Maleeni
Shown 16th January 2000
Reviewed 21st January 2001 - Sunday
Skullder & Mulley investigate a pair of Magicians in Santa Monica, California. One, played by real-life card trickster Ricky Jay (the ugly fat beardy guy in Tomorrow Never Dies ), loses his head in the pre-title sequence. Nice plot, worthy of Mission Impossible.
This is only an X-File because of the unusual nature of the victim's death in the pre-credits sequence. The answer, however, is not of a supernatural origin. Therefore like X-Files [Season 5, Episode 18] The Pine Bluff Variant this is actually one of the few episodes that would also work in a mainstream police procedural show.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 9]
Signs and Wonders
Shown 23rd January 2000
Reviewed 28th January 2001 - Sunday
In smalltown USA, people are being bitten to death by snakes that appear and disappear as if by magic. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate, and uncover a conflict between a Fundamentalist Christian and a Ned Flanders type ...
This is the second religious (Xian) episode of the last three, coming only two after X-Files [Season 7, Episode 7] Orison . Scully's religious dogma was strong when she faced Donnie Pfaster, but she seems less concerned about it now.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 10]
Sein Unt Zeit [Part 1]
Shown 6th February 2000
Reviewed 11th February 2001 - Sunday
A young child disappears, and the parents (including rent-a-villain Mark Rolston - Supernatural ) are in the frame for it. This is a heavy-handed pastiche of the Jon Benet Ramsey case. However, Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) thinks a supernatural force kidnapped the child instead.
Kim Darby (True Grit (1969)) gets a cameo as a woman falsely accused of killing her own son.
It turns out that a serial child-abductor may be responsible for the missing kids. He may also have taken Mulder's sister Samantha, back in 1973.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 11]
Closure: Sein Unt Zeit [Part 2]
Shown 13th February 2000
Reviewed 18th February 2001 - Sunday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) have arrested the kiddie-fiddler, but Mulder's sister remains missing. A friendly psychic named Harold Piller (Anthony Heald - Silence of the Lambs ) offers to help out.
Cancer Man (William B Davis - Continuum ) pops up, and we finally discover what happened to Samantha Mulder. Kind of.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 12]
X-Cops
Shown 20th February 2000
Reviewed 25th February 2001 - Sunday
The live-action police documentary show, Cops, encounters a mysterious beastie in Los Angeles. They also encounter a couple of FBI agents, Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ), in pursuit of a creature that apparently feeds off fear.
This is yet another attempt to bring originality into the show by changing the episode format. It is somewhat refreshing, even in part reminiscent of Blair Witch Project . However, the ending is a bit of a let-down.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 13]
First Person Shooter
Shown 27th February 2000
Reviewed March 2001 - Sunday
At last, the second William Gibson script. And no, it is not much better than his other one. It starts in a futuristic battleground, where one of the heavily-armed combatants is slain by a babelicious woman ( Krista Allen ) in a stereotypical video-game skimpy bondage dominatrix costume. I am Matreya, she says. This is my game. The battleground is a holographic projection, but the man is really dead.
Just like the other Gibson episode (and a Season One X-File) the story is based around the inadvertent creation of an Artificial Intelligence that proceeds to kill a lot of people. Unlike those episodes, this one involves The Lone Gunmen - but only because of their programming skills, not a conspiracy angle. They call in the world's best First Person Shooter player - Daryl Musashi. This is a blatant reference to Musashi, the greatest Samurai in history. Naturally, Matreya uses a sword to take him on.
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) cannot believe that an AI can kill a man by wielding a soft-light projection (as opposed to Trek-style force-fields). And frankly, this reviewer cannot believe it either. X-Files being what it is, this episode gets even worse.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) goes head-to-head with the killer babe. Somehow he disappears from the hologram room into the game, and Scully has to rescue him. Lucky for him that, unlike her earlier victims (who are killed on sight) the babe instead of shooting him merely confounds him with back-flips.
The real selling point of the episode is not the story but the babe (duh!), Krista Allen. She is unbelievably good-looking, on par with Charisma Carpenter and Hudson Leick ! In a scene inspired by Basic Instinct, Mulder and Scully even meet the model who was body-scanned for the character. Her name is Jade Blue Afterglow ... hmm.
The other guest-star is Constance Zimmer, almost unrecognisable except for her never-changing haircut. Yes, despite being filled with male stereotypes this episode is not a sausage fest. Scully, in a fit of female entitlement, tells a male character no fair, picking on a girl at exactly the same moment Mulder is getting beaten to death by the female antagonist. Later we discover that despite Scully's evoking of female privilege, the only one tough enough to fight an unkillable female villain is Scully herself!
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 14]
Theef
Shown 12 Mar 00
Reviewed
Mulder and Scully investigate an unlikely suicide in San Francisco, California.
Billy Drago ( Vamp ) uses black Magic to hex the family of Dr James Morrison ( Space: Above and Beyond ). It is Morrison who does most of the investigation.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 15]
En Ami
Shown March 2000
Reviewed March 2001 - Sunday
A young boy has cancer, but his fundamentalist parents will not let him have medical attention. However, his cancer is cured by Angels who put a microchip in the back of his neck.
Cancer Man (William B Davis - Continuum ) offers Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) the cure to Cancer - if she helps him. He wants to obtain some priceless medical data ... but can he be trusted? This episode was written by Davis himself, and beautifully fleshes out his character.
The high points of the episode? Scully flashes her cleavage a couple of times (she is beautifully fleshed out as well - hey, I had to say it!). Otherwise, unless you are a big fan of Cancer Man you will be pretty bored.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 16]
Chimera
Shown March 2000
Reviewed March 2001 - Sunday
Last week was Scully-centric, so this week we get to concentrate of Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ). Poor Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) gets about three lines of dialogue while stuck on a dead-end stakeout. She is watching for a woman who may be abducting sex workers, and can disappear in a room full of people. It sounds a lot like the episode X-Files [Season 1, Episode 14] Gender Bender , but nobody makes that connection.
Mulder, OTOH, is called back to HQ by Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) and sent on a special mission in Vermont. The wife of a Federal Judge disappeared in mysterious circumstances - a raven appeared, a mirror in the room smashed, and the woman was gone without a trace.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 17]
All Things
Shown March 2000
Reviewed 1st April 2001 - Sunday
This is a Scully-centric episode, written and directed by Gillian Anderson .
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) goes off to England for the weekend to investigate crop circles. Scully points out that this is not even remotely FBI-related, and stays in the USA to finish paperwork an autopsy. Mulder keeps phoning her about his ingestigation, even though it would make much more sense for him just to ask the Lone Gunmen for help.
At the hospital, Scully encounters an old flame - a married man she had an affair with while he was her teacher in Medical school. That was before she had an affair with one of her teacher's at the FBI Academy (see X-Files [Season 1, Episode 15] Lazarus for details).
Stacey Haiduk guest-stars as the dying man's daughter. She is unhappy with her father's relationship with Scully, and small wonder - the two women are the same age!
Scully has always been a skeptic, which she has balanced with her Roman Catholic upbringing. However, now she considers the benefits of alternative medicine.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 18]
Brand X
Shown March 2000
Reviewed 15th April 2001 - Sunday
Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) guards a Federal Witness in Winston-Salem, South Carolina, but the man is discovered dead with his lips chewed away. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) suspects it was done by a swarm of tobacco beetles. Yes, after the terrible movie The Insider we get another anti-smoking, anti-Tobacco Industry effort. This time the cigarette manufacturer in the sights is Morleys - yes, Cancer Man's favourite brand.
Tobin Bell ( Saw ) guest-stars as the mysterious Patient X.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 19]
Hollywood A.D.
Shown April 2000
Reviewed 22nd April 2001 - Sunday
This episode was written and directed by David Duchovny. It is very light-hearted, which makes a good contrast with the Gillian Anderson effort two episodes ago.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is ordered to let Skinner's pal, a movie screenwriter, tag along on the investigation. The resulting movie features Duchovny's real-life then-wife, Tea Leoni , and mutual friend Garry Shandling as themselves.
The X-File is an investigation into a bomb explosion in the crypt of a Catholic Cathederal. The suspect in the bombing is also suspected of forging ancient documents such as the Gospel of Mary Magdelene. The Cardinal (Harris Yulin - Head of the Watchers' Council in Buffy ) is also a suspect. However, despite the somewhat grim nature of the crime the whole thing proceeds in comedic tone, with Scully having either divine visions or unexplained halucinations.
It might seem unprofessional for Assistant Director Skinner to compromise an active investigation, especially one so sensitive as to involve terrorism and a major international religion. However, he did not do it for free. Not only is his character in the movie played by Richard Gere, but he gets an Assistant Producer credit ... AND an all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood to visit the set and see the premiere. Wow, this actually smacks of corruption.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 20]
Fight Club
Shown 7 May 2000
Reviewed
Kansas City. There are a couple of Doppelgangers who both look just like Kathy Griffin from Suddenly Susan. Even Mormons who meet them start to fight. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) have look-alikes who get into a fist-fight.
Gene Lebell and Randall Tex Cobb also guest-star.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 21]
Je Souhaite
Shown 14 May 2000
Reviewed
A couple of rednecks discover a genie. One of the lucky so-and-sos is Marshall from Alias , although he not as intelligent as his alter-ego.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) gets three wishes. The genie gives him fair notice that magic comes at a price (like in Once Upon A Time ), but he still gives it a try.
X-Files [Season 7, Episode 22]
Requiem
Shown
Reviewed 21 May 00
Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) is in a Tunisian prison, because he tried to double-cross Cancer Man. His ex-lover Marita Covarrubias ( Laurie Holden ), who he had left for dead, bails him out. Even though they both betrayed Cancer Man, they are all he has left to work with. Ever since Scully told Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) that Diana Fowley had been mysteriously murdered, the old man has had no minions left to do his bidding. He plans to start up his Conspiracy again, but he needs field agents who can locate a crashed alien spaceship for him.
Mulder and Scully go to the small town in Oregon, USA where the first episode took place. There is a cluster of UFO abductees there, including Eddie Kaye Griffiths (American Pie), and someone is re-abducting them. The shape-shifting alien bounty-hunter (Brian Thompson - Terminator ) is in town. In fact, it was his ship that crashed. Can Mulder find the crashed ship before it repairs and takes off with the abductees?
This is the final episode with Fox Mulder as a regular character. Since the whole show is based around his search for his sister, the story had long since run out of steam. However, since Duchovny's contract had expired he decided to move on to better things. The showrunners managed to keep the show going for another few years, with a new cast but without better stories. And what of Cancer Man's climactic scene? Much like the film Fifth Element , there is a complete lack of direct conflict or confrontation between the protagonist and his primary antagonist. As a result, the episode itself is unsatisfying and utterly pointless.
Season 8
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 1]
Within (1)
Shown 05 Nov 00
Reviewed 3rd March 2002 - Sunday
We start with a flashback to a previous episode this reviewer somehow missed. Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) was declared barren (and pregnant!) while Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) was declared missing (possibly abducted by aliens ... again).
The X-Files offices are being torn apart by Kersh's men. Yes, Kersh has been promoted and now outranks Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ). Kersh's man John Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) is now leading the manhunt for Mulder. Scully and Skinner are under suspicion ...
The emotive music is quite irritating, another sign of how self-indulgent the show has become. The element of mystery, even the paranoid conspiracies, have all been replaced by ... bleugh!
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 2]
Without (2)
Shown 12 Nov 00
Reviewed 8th December 2001 - Saturday
New guy Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2 ), actually in the title credits, is in pursuit of David Duchovney. Yes, this is the start of Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) being written out of the show. However, there is a good side to DD forcing the show to move to Los Angeles: they can now shoot on locations which do not look like Canada! The action here is set in the desert, and brings to mind the X-Files movie!
The shapechanging Alien bounty-hunter (Brian Thompson - Terminator ) is after the mind-reading boy, Gibson. Doggett is the skeptic, while Scully (looking great in a white t-shirt) is now the believer!
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 3]
Patience
Shown 19 Nov 00
Reviewed 15th December 2001 - Saturday
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is no longer in the regular cast list. New guy Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2 ), actually in the title credits, joins Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) in pursuit of a murderous man-bat in Burley, Idaho.
Doggett claims to have read all the unsolved cases in the X-Files store. This does not mean every cold case the FBI has ever created. It only means the ones that were recovered from incineration, as alluded to by Mulder in X-Files [Season 6, Episode 1] The Beginning .
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 4]
Roadrunners
Shown 26 Nov 00
Reviewed 5th January 2002 - Saturday
Utah, and a hitch-hiker is brutally murdered by a bus full of crazy folks. Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) heads along to investigate, because the victim had an inexplicable medical condition. However, she gets trapped in a small town full of the aforementioned crazy folks.
Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) is back in the office, checking the files for cold cases that match it. He coordinates with the local sheriff (Conor O'Farrell - Dark Skies ).
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 5]
Invocation
Shown 03 Dec 00
Reviewed 12th January 2002 - Saturday
A seven-year-old boy disappears from a packed playground in Dexter, Oklahoma. Ten years later and the mother ( Kim Greist ) has aged terribly, but the kid has returned and he has not aged a day! The X-Files team investigate - Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is an MD and Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) has experience in child-abuse and abduction cases.
The sheriff makes sure it is the same child by checking the fingerprints. Odd that a seven-year-old should have a criminal record. Something is strange about the kid. He will not say a word, and the family dog thinks he is a threat. Even his not-so-kid brother Josh suspects something is up.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 6]
Redrum
Shown 10 Dec 00
Reviewed 19th January 2002 - Saturday
Unusually for this show, the episode centres around the Guest Star (Joe Morton - Terminator 2 ). He wakes up in jail in Baltimore, Maryland, with no idea how he got there and a week missing from his life. Every day he wakes up on the previous day. Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) are peripheral characters, only involved because Morton and Doggett are old friends.
In jail, Morton falls foul of Danny Trejo ( From Dusk Til Dawn ). Luckily, his lawyer ( Bellamy Young ) thinks she can get him bailed - or at least transferred. Unfortunately the transfer will to take place in a secure yard, but in an open street full of reporters and vengeful relatives)
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 7]
Via Negativa
Shown 17 Dec 00
Reviewed 26th January 2002 - Saturday
Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) and Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) investigate the murders of members of a Cult in Pittsburgh. It is a Federal case because one of the victims is the FBI Agent who was keeping the Cult under surveillance. Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is away on medical leave or something. However, she arranges for Doggett to meet The Lone Gunmen .
The victims have axe wounds to the skull, but they are in inaccessible postions - how the killer got to them is unknown. The leader of the Cult, Keith Sjarabaka (Holtz in Angel [Season 3] ), may have the ability to enter peoples' dreams ...
Doggett and Skinner interview one of the suspect's associates - Grant Heslov ( True Lies ). Wayne Alexander ( Babylon 5 ) is one of the senior agents working the case.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 8]
Surekill
Shown 07 Jan 01
Reviewed 2nd February 2002 - Saturday
A man dies in mysterious circumstances while in police custody in Worcester, Massachusetts. Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) and Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) investigate, because apparently the killer can see through brick walls.
Meanwhile, sinister things are afoot in an Exterminator's office.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 9]
Salvage
Shown 14 Jan 01
Reviewed 9th February 2002 - Saturday
Muncie, Indiana. A man drives home from the funeral of his friend (Wayne Alexander Williams - Prison Break), who died of Gulf War Syndrome. However, it turns out the deceased is not dead - merely indestructable and on a kill-crazy rampage. The hit list includes Ayre Gross ( ).
This episode is something of an in-joke. The killer is made out of smart-metal and can reform himself from a damaged state. The investigator is ... Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 !
In a story like this, one can hardly expect the laws of physics to be obeyed. However, while suspension of disbelief may cover the big things (like a man made of metal) it should not be necessary for the little things. The first kill scene involves a car that is travelling at least forty miles per hour, while skidding to a halt after the brakes have been slammed on. This means it must have been travelling at eighty miles per hour, although how it accellerated to such a speed in a suburban driveway is not explained.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 10]
Badlaa
Shown 21 Jan 01
Reviewed 12th May 2002 - Sunday
An extremely fat man is discovered dead in his hotel room. Something has been forcibly extracted from his body.
This ties in with a mysterious shrivelled midget (Deep Roy - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ) from the Indian subcontinent.
The villain, who weighs thirty pounds, wears a four-hundred-pound man like a meat suit. Yes, while wearing a victim whose dead weight is so much that Scully says it took three strong men to get the corpse onto her autopsy table he physically walked from one airplane to another in Paris airport. It turns out that all this was unnecessary, because the killer also has the power of hypnotism which allows him to create a holographic image of anyone he wants to look like and then leave that image in a room for hours while he himself is elsewhere.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 11]
The Gift
Shown 04 Feb 01
Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) continues his search for Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ). He discovers that Mulder falsified an investigation report, so he follows up Mulder's investigation with one of his own. Since Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) also signed the false reports, she is excluded from the investigation (and the episode).
However, Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) and The Lone Gunmen are on-hand to help Agent Dogbert.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 12]
Medusa
Shown 11 Feb 01
A plain-clothes cop is murdered by supernatural means on a Boston subway train. Doggett and Scully are called in to investigate because the local man in charge (Ken Jenkins - Scrubs) wants the subway back in operation ASAP. After all, if the subway is shut down indefinitely then the city of Boston is practically incapacitated. They have five hours to catch the killer before the subway is reactivated again.
Doggett joins a SWAT unit that explores the subway tunnel in search of the killer. Vyto Rugginis ( Body Snatchers (2014) ), Brent Sexton ( Birds of Prey ) and Penny Johnson make up the numbers. Scully stays in the control room and talks to them on the radio - like in Aliens .
Doggett is under stress because he is stuck in a confined space with irritating cow-orkers. Likewise, Scuffy is trapped in an office with Bob Kelso reminding her of the countdown every five minutes. If Kelso had genuinely wanted to solve the mystery quickly he would have sent more than four people into the tunnel! He could have teams move in from each end, so they could clear the space in half the time. Unless he has something to hide ...
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 13]
Per Manum
Shown 18 Feb 01
Reviewed 2nd March 2002 - Saturday
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) and Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) investigate a case where doctors are apparently harvesting human babies with alien DNA. For Scully this is a bit close to home - one of the doctors under here suspicion is her gynecologist!
Scully has lots of emotive flashbacks of Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ).
Doggett calls for help from an old Marine Corps buddy, Knowle Rohrer (Adam Baldwin - Firefly ). Rohrer is now a high-level US Government operative, who has access to classified intelligence. It turns out that a key witness, Jay Haskell (Jay Acavone - Stargate SG-1 ) was in the USMC too - but was recorded as being dead.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 14]
This is not happening
Shown 25 Feb 01
Reviewed 23rd June 2002 - Sunday
Alien abductees are being dumped in the desert. Doggett gets Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) and Skinner to come along and help out. Will Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) be among the returned?
Dogbert also calls in a former colleague of his, Agent Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ). She is a specialist in ritualistic crimes, and writes the abductions off as Cult-related (rather than Occult related, as it were). She blames a local UFO Cultist named Absalom (Judson Scott - V: The Series ). However, just because Absalom is paranoid about aliens does not mean that they are not out to abduct people.
Jeremiah Smith (Roy Thinnes - The Invaders ) is also on hand, healing abductees including Eddie Kaye Griffiths (American Pie).
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 15]
DeadAlive [Fight The Future Part II]
Shown 01 Apr 01
Reviewed 23rd March 2002 - Saturday
Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) gets offered a transfer by Director Kersh. However, Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is heavily pregnant. When she leaves to take her maternity leave in a few weeks time, Kersh will take the opportunity to close the X-Files again.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has been discovered, apparently dead for days. Yes, he seems well into decomposition. Luckily nobody conducts an autopsy on him, even though that is standard procedure (hence Scully's job). He ends up in hospital, but his condition is getting worse. A fellow alien abductee named Billy Miles takes a turn for the worse, becoming an inhuman killing machine. Will Mulder turn out the same way?
Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) visits Absalom (Judson Scott - V: The Series ) in prison for some Silence of the Lambs type exposition.
Krychek (Nicholas Lea - Xtro 2 ) pops up to offer hope to Skinner. It turns out that Mulder's father developed a vaccine against the alien plague, and presumably it is that very plague that has caused Mulder's condition. But can Krychek be trusted?
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 16]
Three Words
Shown 08 Apr 01
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) was believed dead, but somehow got resurrected. Scully visits him in hospital, and we see her own bump is now very noticeable. When she asks him how he feels he replies Like Austin Powers , which is a bit of a reference because his former partner Diana Fowley ( Mimi Rogers ) was a dead lookalike for a certain character in that movie!
Absalom (Judson Scott - V: The Series ) is a healer who wants Doggett's help to uncover the conspiracy. First he has to escape from federal prison, then abduct Doggett and infiltrate the US Census Bureau's file server warehouse.
Mulder and The Lone Gunmen are also eager to uncover the new conspiracy. Doggett calls for help from an old military buddy, Knowle Rohrer (Adam Baldwin - Firefly ), previously introduced in X-Files [Season 8, Episode 13] Per Manum . We are in familiar territory, as this show has a long history of untrustworthy intelligence sources. There is one way to tell if someone is part of the new alien conspiracy. They have a nipple on the back of their necks, perhaps a reference to Space: Above And Beyond .
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 17]
Empedocles
Shown 15 Apr 01
A man goes on a shooting spree in his workplace in New Orleans. The local police detective (Ron Canada - Star Trek: DS9 ) suspects satanic involvement because the killer owned a Marilyn Manson CD. This may seem a bit of a stretch, but a man was executed in Texas in part on a psychiatrist's testimony of psychosis based on the suspect having an Iron Maiden poster on his wall.
Agent Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ) investigates, and links the killings to a previous case. Not X-Files [Season 5, Episode 19] Folie A Deux , but the abduction of Doggett's son while he was in the NYPD.
One of the guest-stars gets injured and ends up in the same hospital as Scully. This is a hell of a coincidence. Luckily Doctor Denise Crosby is on duty in the Intensive Care Unit.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 18]
Vienen
Shown 22 Apr 01
The Black Oil is back again. It infects people aboard an oil rig a hundred and fifty miles south of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. Doggett thinks the case is not worth investigating, but Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) oversteps his own official limits and interferes. To avoid a diplomatic incident, Kersh must order an investigation.
Kersh sends his best man - Doggett. Mulder decides to gatecrash, completely in defiance of orders. Together the bickering mismatched duo work out that Drill Foreman MC Gainey ( Lost ) has something to hide. However, soon all communication with the mainland is lost. Just like in the good old days, our heroes are trapped in a confined environment with no idea of who is infected.
Scully is stuck on dry land, autopsying the radiation victim. Probably not a good idea, since she is pregnant. However, her main job is helping Skinner to convince an Oil Company executive (Miguel Sandoval - Medium ) to quarantine the oil rig.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 19]
Alone
Shown 06 May 01
Reviewed 20th April 2002 - Saturday
With Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) on maternity leave and Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) fired from the FBI, Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) is left to run the X-Files. He is given a rookie babe named Leyla Harrison ( Jolie Jenkins ) to help him. She has no field experience, but she processed Mulder's travel expenses and has read all his X-Files case reports.
The case is a murder, and it becomes apparent that the killer was inhuman. Doggett and his partner get attacked, trapped and blinded. They must somehow kill the beast before it kills them. We know Doggett will probably be okay, but his partner is a guest-star so she is in actual jeopardy.
This harks back to the classic episodes from the show's heyday. In fact, Doggett's new partner mentions a few of them. Unfortunately all this really does is remind us of how far downhill this show has gone.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 20]
Essense
Shown 13 May 01
Reviewed 27th April 2002 - Saturday
Reviewed 17th June 2002 - Monday
An alien hit-man is after Scully ( Gillian Anderson ), intending to kill her before she can give birth. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) are around to protect her, along with Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) and his new partner. An old acquaintance turns up to fill them in on the details ...
Scully is approaching labour. Her mother calls in a midwife ( Frances Fisher ). Also, there is a helpful maternity doctor ( Denise Crosby ).
Evil scientists are plotting to create clone babies with alien DNA. However, someone is killing them off.
X-Files [Season 8, Episode 21]
Existence
Shown 20 May 01
Reviewed 5th May 2002 - Sunday
Reviewed 17th June 2002 - Monday
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) is sent off to give birth, guarded by FBI Agent Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ). Scully is finally due to give birth. However, a strange group want to steal the baby. Also ... will it look like A.D. Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker )?
Meanwhile, an unkillable metal man is on the loose, trying to find anyone who can lead him to the mother and child. But unlike Terminator 2 , this time Robert Patrick is one of the good guys. And he has Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Skinner to back him up.
This is the last show in the Season, and one of the most irritating episodes ever. A major recurring character is killed off in an incredibly disappointing way, and the final scene is truly atrocious.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 1-2]
Nothing Important Happened Today
Shown 18 Nov 01
Reviewed 11 Nov 2001
Reviewed 20th June 2002 - Thursday
The first episode of the season starts with sexy guest-star Lucy Lawless . We then move onto the opening credits. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is nowhere in sight, while FBI Agent Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ) and Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Knight Rider 2000 ) are both there. Yes, we have half the FBI as regular cast members, while the original hero is missing.
Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) wants to investigate FBI corruption and the conspiracy that Deputy Director Kersh is involved in. He needs Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) to testify, but Mulder has disappeared!
Eventually Doggett gets on to the X-File investigation - Lucy Lawless is killing people off. By some strange coincidence Doggett himself knows her!
Agent Doggett is under investigation himself by Agent Reyes' ex (Cary Elwes - Princess Bride ).
The Lone Gunmen pop up to help out. This episode takes place just after the end of their spin-off TV show, so at least it gives partial closure to the cliff-hanger.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 2]
Nothing Important Happened Today (Part 2)
Shown 18 Nov 01
The villains' secret goal this week is to poison the US drinking-water supply with a substance that will mutate people into alien-human hybrids. Or something. Anyway, as a side note Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) has been informed that Scully's baby is an alien super-soldier in the making. Worse, Scully witnesses the child perform telekinesis ...
This episode was dedicated to Chad Keller, whose date of death is given as 11th September 2001. This kind of puts things in perspective, and emphasises why this was the final Season for the next decade and a half. The mood of American society made a fast swing to uber-patriotism, which meant that a show about Government corruption would lose popularity. Also, the fact that the show had jumped the shark and become a virtual spin-off with only the name remaining did not help.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 3]
Daemonicus
Shown 02 Dec 01
Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) and Reyes attend a staged murder scene in West Virginia, where the killer has left the word Daemonicus at the scene. Doggett states that the case does not even approach being an X-File, so it makes this reviewer wonder why they were given the call. Reyes is a specialist in ritualistic homicides, but surely there are other experts who could have been assigned to the case.
Scully has been reassigned to the FBI Academy as a forensic investigator. The students have heard of the Cold Case Squad - oops, the X-Files - and one asks facetiously if she has ever staked a vampire. Of course she cannot say yes - in both vampire episodes it was Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) who did the work.
Reyes knows there is something different about the case, because unlike every other crime scene she has attended she somehow felt the presence of evil there. Nice to know. The case becomes even creepier when they link the crime to an escaped mental patient. They interview another mental patient - Mister Kobol (James Remar - Shannara Chronicles ). Since he was the father in Dexter he might try to do a Silence of the Lambs on our heroes ... or he might vomit pea soup like in The Exorcist .
This story is set-up for a sequel, but Kobold never makes a re-appearance.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 4]
4-D
Shown 09 Dec 01
Reyes and Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ), under command of Brad Volker (Cary Elwes - Princess Bride ) are running surveillance on a suspected serial killer. Unfortunately the killer has a super-power, which he uses on our heroes.
With Doggett crippled, apparently by a bullet from Reyes' pistol, Brad Volker is put in charge of the investigation. Yet again he leaves himself open to the charge of a conflict of interest.
The purpose of the episode seems to be to illustrate how Reyes cares much more about her cow-orker Doggett than she does about her ex-lover, Volker.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 5]
Lord of the Flies
Shown 16 Dec 01
This starts with some found footage as we watch some High School kids do stunt-work to submit to a TV show called Dumbass. It also includes the reluctant participation of his girlfriend Natalie ( Samaire Armstrong ). As always with this show, someone winds up dead. The local pathologist (Erick Avari - ) refuses to get involved, so Dogget and Reyes call in Scully for help.
As always, the trail leads to the school outcast (Hank Harris - Once Upon A Time Season 6 ). The only thing that sets him apart from the usual stereotype is that his mother ( Jane Lynch ) is the school's headmistress. This seems to be a cross-over between two Ryan Murphy shows - Popular and Glee.
In the previous insect episode, X-Files [Season 3, Episode 12] War of the Coprophages , Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) got to interact with a sexy female insect-ologist ( Bobbie Phillips ). Now Scully gets a flirty male scientist named Doctor Rocky (Michael Wiseman - ), although she refuses to flirt back with him.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 6]
Trust No 1
Shown 06 Jan 02
Scully has been secretly keeping in touch with Mulder by email. Now she plans to meet up with him. A mysterious MIB (Terry O'Quinn - Lost ) is hanging around. He may look just like O'Quinn's other characters in this universe, including his recurring role in the spin-off show Millennium , but nobody seems to recognise him.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 7]
John Doe
Shown 13 Jan 02
Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) wakes up with amnesia. He is in Mexico, but he speaks almost no Spanish so he has serious problems. The locals are corrupt, so he has a lot of problems.
This is not really an X-Files case. The original investigation was into the disappearance of a bank manager who was suspected of laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel. However, as a tacked-on coincidence it turns out that instead of murdering witnesses the Cartel uses a telepath to mind-wipe its victims.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 8]
Hellbound
Shown 27 Jan 02
An ex-convict is found skinned alive. What makes it an X-File for Reyes is that the victim had a premonition of his death. Scully does some digging, and discovers unsolved an case from 1960. Yes, that is is what REALLY makes it an X-File - it is part of a series of unsolved crimes.
As the bodies pile up, the local cops do not seem to care. Reyes has nightmares about the case. She has a theory that the killings are a cycle, and that the victims are regularly reincarnated and then killed all over again.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 9]
Provenance (1)
Shown 03 Mar 02
A motorcyclist (Neal McDonagh – Captain America: The First Avenger ) tries to cross the Canadian border into the USA. Luckily the US Border Patrol is nearby. Rather than risk allowing yet another Canadian into the USA, stealing jobs from hard-working Hollywood actors, they indulge in a risky and potentially deadly high-speed cross-country pursuit.
Scully gets interrogated by Director Kersh, with both Assistant Directors Skinner and Volker in attendance. They refuse to let her know what is going on, and conduct their investigation into an X-Files type case without involving anyone from the actual X-Files investigative team.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 10]
Providence (2)
Shown 10 Mar 02
Scully's baby has been abducted by the UFO Cult.
Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) has been hospitalised, and is in a coma. Reyes shows concern for him, like in X-Files [Season 9, Episode 4] 4-D.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 11]
Audrey Pauley
Shown 17 Mar 02
Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ) is in a coma. She wakes up in Dead-land ...
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 12]
Underneath
Shown 31 Mar 02
When Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) was a uniformed police officer he arrested a man he found at the scene of a crime. Thirteen years later the suspect has been exhonorated by DNA evidence. However, Doggett is obsessed with having the suspect sent back to prison.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 13]
Improbable
Shown 07 Apr 02
Burt Reynolds ( Deliverance ) travels the USA, doing mathematical tricks. He seems to be following a serial killer. This is reminiscent of an old episode of The Others by Morgan and Wong. The use of numerology and the idea of predicting the future through maths is reminiscent of X-Files [Season 3, Episode 4] Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose .
Reyes uses numerology to detect links between a series of murders.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 14]
Scary Monsters
Shown 14 Apr 02
Leyla Harrison ( Jolie Jenkins ) delivers a new case to Agent Scully. Scully is now stuck as a forensics lecturer at the FBI academy, so Leyla joins Doggett (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, From Dusk Til Dawn 2 ) and Reyes in the field instead.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 15]
Jump The Shark
Shown 21 Apr 02
The Lone Gunmen team up with the MIB, Morris Fletcher (Michael McKean - Smallville ). It seems that Eve ( Zuhleika Robinson ) is going on a kill-crazy rampage.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 16]
William
Shown 28 Apr 02
This episode was written by David Duchovny.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 17]
Release
Shown 05 May 02
An African-American FBI cadet seems to know too much about a serial killer. Does he know what happened to Doggett's son?
Agent Reyes' ex (Cary Elwes - Princess Bride ) is suspected of corruption.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 18]
Sunshine Days
Shown 12 May 02
David Faustino (Married With Children) and his drunken buddy try to break into the Brady Bunch house. Bad mistake.
Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) guest-stars.
X-Files [Season 9, Episode 19-20]
The Truth (1-2)
Shown 19 May 02
This is the final two-parter. Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) infiltrates an MIB base to get info. He kills Noel Rourke (Adam Baldwin - Firefly ) - an unkillable super-soldier. Unfortunately, even though Rourke cannot actually be killed, Mulder is still charged with murder and threatened with the death penalty.
Part one is Mulder's trial. Every guest-star appears as a witness.
Part two is a race to find The Truth (tm). William Devane ( Stargate SG-1 ) guest-stars as a USMC officer.
X-Files: I Want To Believe
This film follows not only ten years worth of TV episodes (not counting TWO spin-off shows)
but also a feature film released about ten years ago.
The first movie was linked directly to the TV show.
It played an important part in the overall story arc of the Alien conspiracy.
This movie, however, owes very little to the show.
It is a dark, gloomy,
depressing little drama that probably started as a script for
Millennium
. Yes, the Morgan & Wong touch of genius has long fled,
to the success stories of the
Final Destination
series and Jet Li's
The One.
Women (including Nicki Aycox ) are being abducted by Callum Keith Rennie (once a good guy in Due South , now relegated to guest-starring as villains in shows like Battlestar Galactica (2003) ). A paedophile priest (Billy Connolly - The Debt Collector) has psychic visions of the victims. FBI Agent Amanda Peet is dubious, but since one of the victims is a fellow FBI Agent she exhausts all leads. This includes getting Dr Scully (now a paediatrician at a Catholic Church hospital) to offer Fox Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) a full Pardon (or at the very least, a temporary reprieve). This opens up so many plot holes it is barely worth counting them. Wasn't Mulder an escapee from Death Row, awaiting execution for the murder of a super-soldier? And at least the Alien Conspiracies have all been destroyed, it seems. But if Mulder and Scully miss their adopted-out child so much, why do they not just have a new one?
X-Files [Season 10, Episode 0]
Re-Opened (22 min)
Shown 28 Dec 15
This is basically an extended trailer, with lots of clips of the new Season. There are also a handful of brief interview snippets with the main cast members, and a few crew members. Everyone says how great it is to be back doing the show again. In other words, just positive publicity for Season Ten.
X-Files [Season 10, Episode 1]
My Struggle
Shown 24 Jan 16
It has been fourteen years since Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) left the Bureau. Scully is a plastic surgeon, putting ears on children born without them. Mulder is a depressed loner. Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) gives them a call. In the last dozen years he has still not been promoted - in fact, he has been an Assistant Director for a quarter of a century. The only change is that he has been included in the opening credits as a regular for the first time. Also, the X-Files office has been trashed and the Cold Case files removed, hidden or destroyed.
Tad O'Malley (Joel O'Hale - Spy Kids 4 ) is a rightwing conspiracy theorist - he is basically Mulder with his own online TV show. Among other things, he wants to expose 9/11 as a false flag operation. This is especially ironic, since The Lone Gunmen actually predicted it in a never-repeated episode. O'Malley offers Mulder and Scully a couple of leads on the aliens. One is a young abductee woman who claims to have alien DNA. The other is a secret flying machine that uses zero-point energy and physical invisibility.
Mulder has a new informant, an old man with a white beard. It turns out that the warring aliens setting each other on fire storyline was all a smokescreen created by a conspiracy. After all, the US Government has increased oppression of American citizens since 9/11.
X-Files [Season 10, Episode 2]
Founder's Mutation
Shown 25 Jan 16
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate the unexplained suicide of a scientist at a biotech lab. He was trying to download info regarding the Founder's Mutation, but this is so highly classified the FBI are denied access to it. The MIBs in charge of the cover-up are Chief Tyroll ( BattleStar Galactica 2003 ) and Ryan Robbins ( Continuum ).
Mulder goes to meet one of the dead man's friends. He finds him in a bar where burly-looking men keep an eye on strangers like Mulder. The contact will only speak to Mulder in private in the rear entry.
However, Scully has an actual lead on the case. By incredible coincidence, the biotech lab's Founder also has links to the hospital Scully works at. This gives her a form of access to the Founder. The biotech lab specialised in genetically mutated humans - like the sideshow freaks that populate many Morgan and Wong episodes. It turns out that the Founder experimented on mutated children to work out how to make a super-soldier. He experimented on his own pregnant wife, and sixteen years later his teenage son is back for revenge. This is all quite reminiscent of Scanners , and we all know what that film involved. Exploding head time!
Because of the parenthood-related theme of the episode, Mulder and Scully fantasise about how things would have turned out if they had not given their son up for adoption. It turns out that the scenarios they develop generally have negative endings. In other words, they have to accept the boy is better off without them.
X-Files [Season 10, Episode 3]
Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster
Shown 01 Feb 16
The title is an homage to Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman , and sets the tone for this light-hearted episode.
The recurring Stoner (Tyler Labine - Invasion ) and his girlfriend (first seen in X-Files [Season 3, Episode 12] War of the Coprophages ) are out in the woods, getting high on recreational substances, when they discover a man-sized lizard ... and some human bodies!
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) investigate the half-dozen bodies. There are no other law enforcement officers in sight, except for a South Asian guy who is the Animal Control person. Even Mulder accepts that the killer is probably a mountain lion or a pack of grey wolves. You see, Mulder has lost his faith in the inexplicable, since now that everyone has a camera in their cell-phone they can easily debunk monster myths online. He even has a new camera app on his own cell-phone.
The local motel that Mulder and Scully stay in has lots of taxidermied animals, and as we all know so did the Bates Motel in Psycho . The manager is the hypnotist who appeared in Jose Chung's From Outer Space , who was also a murdered fortune teller in Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose . And for some reason, a strange man with a New Zealand accent (stand-up comedian Rhys Darby - What We Do In The Shadows (2014) ) is lurking around.
Mulder's confrontation with the were-monster is the high point not only of the episode itself, but of the show so far. Seriously, we are ten Seasons in and yet the show still delivers!
X-Files [Season 10, Episode 4]
Home Again
Shown 08 Feb 16
Philadelphia councilman Alessandro Juliani ( Battlestar Galactica 2003 ) is moving homeless people out of his pre-gentrification district to a derelict hospital nearby. However, a rival politician does not want the homeless shelter near a school - Not In My Back Yard! Unfortunately, a strange giant of a man starts bumping them off one at a time.
Philly PD call in Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ). Mulder discovers clues that the killer is a nonhuman, which should not come as a shock since he previously faced a golem many years ago. Someone imagined a monster that would act out his or her violent fantasies.
Meanwhile, Scully has personal problems to deal with. Her mother has had a heart attack, and is seriously ill in hospital. Dana's sister is never mentioned, but it is revealed she has two brothers - William and Charles. This whole soap opera subplot is intended to remind Mulder and Scully of the child that they put up for adoption. Just like in X-Files [Season 10, Episode 2] Founder's Mutation, so we can assume this is the main theme of the Season. Also, it is an ironic counterpoint to the creation of the golem, which was birthed from mind and emotion rather than womb and flesh.
X-Files [Season 10, Episode 5]
Babylon
Shown 15 Feb 16
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) meet their counterparts - Miller (Robbie Amell - Tomorrow People (2013) ) and Einstein. The duplicates, several decades younger than the originals, are working on a counter-terrorism case in Texas.
Scully teams up with Miller to find a scientific way to communicate with a comatose patient.
Mulder teams up with Einstein. His plan is to consume some prescription narcotics and then use psychic communication to interrogate the suspect. This leads on to an incredibly surreal scene, and the Lone Gunmen make a surprise appearance!
X-Files [Season 10, Episode 6]
My Struggle II
Shown 22 Feb 16
Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) teams up with her counterpart from the previous episode, Agent Einstein. The US population is coming down with a variety of unusual ailments. Tad O'Malley (Joel O'Hale - Spy Kids 4 ) blames alien DNA infecting humans. The reality is far worse. The smallpox vaccinations, uncovered as a conspiracy plot in the original seasons, has now been retrofitted to have included an infection of a remote-activated HIV-type virus. Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ) pops up to help Scully.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) has gone MIA. It turns out he is hunting down the CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ). The conspiracy has been rebooted somewhat. As CSM is the last surviving member of the original MythArc conspiracy, and the rival conspiracy of the final three seasons seems to have disappeared, he is the Big Bad of all time. The old masterplan of creating human extinction is underway, presumably to allow the Greys to colonise the Earth.
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 1]
My Struggle III
Shown 3rd January 2018
CSM (William B Davis - Continuum ) is back in business. He wants Scully's child, which was apparently given to Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens - ) so he could put it up for adoption. This appears to be a case of retroactive continuity, but this show has never been great on continuity anyway.
CSM has Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ) on his side. They try to recruit Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) so they can get Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) on their side.
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) is approached by Erika Price ( Barbara Hershey ), who is the new leader of the Alien Conspiracy. Cancer Man has turned against them, so they need Mulder to kill his own father.
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 2]
This
Shown 10 Jan 18
Mulder (David Duchovny - Twin Peaks ) and Scully ( Gillian Anderson ) get an emergency call from Langley from The Lone Gunmen . Just in time, because it turns out that they have been targeted by a Military Contractor that recruits Russian Special Forces.
Skinner (Mitch Pileggi - Shocker ) pops up long enough to give some exposition. In the original series there was only one evil conspiracy. Now there are seventeen, all with access to the X-Files info. Yes, after the show ended in 2004 the FBI had their cold cases digitised and put on a secure server to share with other agencies, both domestic and foreign. We also learn that Scully calls her boss by his first name (Walter) and her lover by his surname (Mulder). Among other things, this illustrates how silly it is to use two names that sound quite similar to each other.
The clues lead, via the grave of Deep Throat, to Dr Karah Hamby ( Sandrine Holt ). She provides yet more exposition. Erika Price ( Barbara Hershey ) and her conspiracy have uploaded the personalities of top dead scientists into The Matrix , where they use their scientific know-how to invent the technology that will allow colonisation of outer space. All Mulder and Scully have to do now is destroy the Matrix!
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 3]
Plus One
Shown 17 Jan 18
Mulder and Scully get called in to solve the case of a man hospitalised by his own doppelganger.
As always, the heroes get targeted by the killer. This increases the tension, and creates a race-against-time scenario.
Mulder and scully may have seperate motel rooms, but they have started spending a lot of time in each others' room. It looks like their relationship is hotting up again.
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 4]
The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat
Shown 24 Jan 18
Someone sends Mulder his secret meet-up signal. The signaller turns out to be a conspiracy theorist named Reg who has the most incredible theory of all. He claims that a mad scientist named Doctor They is manipulating peoples' memories in order to rewrite history. And as he wants everyone believe Orson Welles said, he who controls the past controls the future.
Reg explains that he was the original founder of the X-Files. In a sequence that rivals anything in this show, we get a seriews of classic slips from the whow with him inserted.
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 5]
Ghouli
Shown 31 Jan 18
Norfolk, Virginia. A couple of teenage girls go looking for Ghouli, a monster from a creepy-pasta story. Each one hallucinates that the other is the monster. And unlike most girls, they both decide to attack rather than run away.
Scully has a dream that seems connected to the case. She and Mulder pay the town a visit. The local FBI Special Agent-In-Charge (Louis Ferreira - Stargate: Universe ) is helpful, but some Men in Black with Department of Defence credentials are less so.
It turns out that the two girls were both dating a teenage boy. He may have a super-power, the ability to telepathically imprint on a person's mind. Mulder deduces that the boy was adopted, and that he was experimented on with injections of alien DNA. Is this Scully's son William?
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 6]
Kitten
Shown 07 Feb 18
It turns out that Skinner's Marine Corps service was in Vietnam. Back in those days, his best buddy Kitten (Haley Joel Osment - Sixth Sense ) was a fugazi psycho.
Back in the present day, Skinner goes missing. Kersh puts Mulder and Scully in charge of finding him. They trace a severed ear to Mud Lick, Kentucky. It turns out there are some other Vietnam veterans living in the area too, and one of them may be killing people in the woods. Worse, the killer may be Skinner himself.
Kitten's son is also played by Haley Joel Osment. As the biggest star in the episode, what are the chances that he is central to the plot?
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 7]
Rm9sbG93ZXJz
Shown 28 Feb 18
Twenty years ago, the show did another episode about a rogue AI. That one was written by William Gibson , the novelist famous for creating the cyberpunk genre. This episode was written by Kristen Cloke , an actress best known for fighting rogue AIs in Space: Above and Beyond . She went on to marry James Morgan, the X-Files scribe who directed this episode.
Mulder and Scully have a meal at a sushi restuarant. They are the only ones there - even the staff are robotic. Yes, it is run by an Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately, for some reason it objects when Mulder does not leave a tip. Perhaps it should insist on receiving minimum wage instead.
Mulder's Sat-Nav is hacked, and it tells him You have reached your Final Destination . This is a reference to the film that Cloke and Morgan worked on together. Notably, it featured convoluted systems that endangers the characters. This storyline is not entirely dissimilar.
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 8]
Familiar
Shown 07 Mar 18
Eastwood, Connecticut. A mother ( Sharon Taylor ) has her son mysteriously abducted. A Deputy (Roger R Cross - Continuum ) discovers the boy's remains.
The locals think the boy was killed by a Coy-Wolf, a coyote-wolf hybrid. Scully steps into Mulder's shoes, first by challenging the orthodox explanation and then by delivering a psychological profile of a potential suspect. Meanwhile, Mulder thinks it is a hell-hound and that it has something to do with the gate of hell. After all, there was a witch-burning in the area in the Puritan era.
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 9]
Nothing Lasts Forever
Shown 14 Mar 18
Fort Henry, The Bronx, New York City. Some creepy men dressed like surgeons extract organs from a dead body. They are interrupted by a tweenage girl who thinks she is Buffy The Vampire Slayer , only with more brutality and gritty realism.
Mulder and Scully turn up uninvited, even though they cannot link the murders to a cold case in the X-Files. Mulder profiles the killer as being a religious fundamentalist who thinks they are slaying vampires. Ironically, Scully is a practising Catholic so she believes in the same wizardry as the killer. However, she still chides Mulder for his knowledge of Xian lore.
The victims are members of a strange Cult. Somehow they can extend the human lifespan by consuming nutrients from human bodies. If this was linked to a previous episode, which it is not, it would not be one of the vampire ones. Instead it would be the Midwest cannibalism one.
X-Files [Season 11, Episode 10]
My Struggle IV
Shown 21 Mar 18
Mulder has been helping Tad O'Malley (Joel O'Hale - Spy Kids 4 ). Unfortunately being a named source on a TV show is not low-key, so Director Kersh finds out and has the X-Files disbanded.
Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish ) leaks Mulder some info about his son's location. However, she is still working with Cancer Man so there is a chance it could be disinformation. Mulder does not care, he goes off on a rampage like Liam Neeson in Taken and wipes out a lot of gun-toting security men.
William is being chased by two or three different groups of villains. However, it turns out that he has a telekinetic skill that makes Revok in Scanners look like a child in comparison.
The climax is a bloodthirsty shoot-out in a warehouse that leaves a bunch or recurring characters written off as presumed dead. Grim, depressing and ultimately soulless.