

āThe Beginningā (season 6, episode 1; originally aired 11/8/1998)
In which we mostly ignore a major motion picture even happened.
If you get into one of those intense, all-night-long fan arguments about when The X-Files started to lose its shit, a lot of people will claim season six was the beginning of the end. There are so many places where one could point to a shark jump (much as I hate that term) that itās almost too easy to pinpoint the slump beginning here. The show moved its production base from Vancouver to Los Angeles. It started doing lots of episodes seemingly designed to show off its new, sunny locales. The mythology had long ago ceased to make much sense to the layman. The series was still a big hit, but it was down ever so slightly from the season before (for the first time ever in its run). The movie was a hit, but it wasnāt the world-beater the studio needed to prove that, yes, this was going to be the next sci-fi franchise. Also, the show briefly became a comedy for several episodes in a row, and the fans nearly mutinied.
But I kinda like season six. I donāt think itās one of the seriesā very best years (those would be the second, third, and fourth seasons), but I think it easily sits on the same level as the first and fifth seasons. The mythology has mostly given upādespite a big, midseason two-parter that attempts to wrap everything upābut the standalones are as inventive and wickedly funny as theyāve always been. Yes, there are a few by-the-numbers monster-of-the-week episodes, but thatās inevitable in any season with a 22-episode order. No, this is the season where weāve got some grandly ambitious hours coming up, the season when the show is no longer content with making us question our government but, instead, wants us to start questioning the very limits of reality itself.
Before we can get to that, though, we have to get through yet another lackluster first episode.
I often like to scan the Internet after watching one of these episodes, to see what fans of the show thought of that episode at the time of air. Iām often amazed by how some episodesā reputations have been virtually unchanged since that time and how some have grown in reputation as the years have gone by (both āJose Chungās From Outer Spaceā and āBad Bloodā got āit was good, but it wasnāt that goodā reviews from a fair number of writers when they initially aired). Yet the idea that the series often did lackluster season premieres took hold early in its run and mostly held sway until the show ended. āLittle Green Menā is pretty great, Iāll grant you, but āThe Blessing Wayā? āHerrenvolkā? āReduxā? All are marred by by-the-numbers plotting and some questionable voiceovers. (Okay, I kinda like āHerrenvolk,ā but I get the sense Iām in the minority on that one.)
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āThe Beginningā isnāt a great episode of the show, but it works well enough that I donāt mind revisiting it. For one thing, the idea of a chest-bursting monster that erupts from within will always be terrifying, even if the series is mostly ripping it off from other sci-fi series (most notably Alien). For another, I still think the ending revelationāthat the hungry monster alien is just the pupal stage of the grey aliensāis pretty cool, if a touch predictable. It beggars belief that a being would evolve in such a way that it would have its larval stage as a virus, its pupal stage as a flesh-rending monster, and its adult stage as a sentient being, but thatās why itās called science fiction, I guess. I also think the monster attacks in the episode are stylish and ghoulish, and the series is clearly having a lot of fun with its new shooting location. This episode is set in Phoenix, and dammit, the producers are going to make everything look like Phoenix would actually look.
The big problem here is that the producers have to essentially close off the events of two separate storylines. The fifth-season finale, āThe End,ā had only tangential connections to the movie, and while the movie was somewhat close-ended, it left hovering the giant question of whether Scully would remember being infected with an alien virus, being taken to a spaceship buried beneath Antarctica, being cured by Mulder, then passing out on the ice beneath said ship rocketing toward the stars. Since this is a show that never met a reset button it couldnāt wait to hit, the answer to all of this is that Scully has only the vaguest of memories of what happened. On one level, this makes absolute sense. Scully was sick with a disease that was hollowing her out to be the incubator for an alien beast monster! Of course she was tired! On another level, itās incredibly frustrating to see her start harping about how the science doesnāt bear out what happened to her when thereās simply no logical explanation for it other than āaliens did it.ā
If youāll indulge me, thereās been a debate centered on the actions of another famous TV redhead in the past week, as some critics have questioned the actions of Joan Harris in last weekās episode of Mad Men. I wonāt spoil what happened, but suffice it to say that the actions of the episode required Joan to do something that made some critics question the string pulling by the writers on the way to the finale. (I liked the episode a lot and found the finale gutting, but even Iāll admit there was a lot of tap-dancing on the way there.) Iāve always thought of character development like this: Thereās a central point that is the core of that character. The central point doesnāt move (often because the actor will offer a consistent performance, at the very least). But thereās also a radius that goes outward toward the diameter of what that character is capable of. On a series like Mad Men, the radius is so long that every character seems to encompass about five or six different versions of themselves, while still remaining recognizably them. To me, the Joan of that episode was still Joan. To others, she wasnāt. The line had stretched so far that it snapped.
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Scully has the opposite problem in this episode. The writers have made her circle far too small. Because they need to maintain the āskeptic/believerā conceit, they need her to constantly be questioning things she probably would have just given up and admitted were real within the showās fiction ages ago. Itās one thing to have Scully say, āHey, Mulder, werewolves seem like a pretty crazy thing to believe in,ā but itās altogether another to have her continue to deny that thereās a completely ludicrous conspiracy to overthrow the Earth undertaken by aliens and the Syndicate. The writersā conceptions of Scully have become too limiting, and that hurts the character in these mythology episodes. (Sheās still her old self in the standalones, where everybody has more room to breathe.) When she starts rambling on about how the āscienceā doesnāt bear out what Mulder says, itās too easy to start rolling your eyes. Nobody is this narrow. Nobody has a radius this short. (That said, Gillian Anderson does some lovely work here, particularly as she tries to protect Gibson from the men who are trying to take him away.)
Yet as mentioned, āThe Beginningā mostly works. The foremost thing the series had to do in this episode was prove that it could still be recognizably itself while filming in Los Angeles, and I think it does so readily. Itās obvious the budget has been upped, as even the foot chases through murky locations (in this case, a nuclear power plant) have a handsomeness to them that indicates the kind of time and care that goes along with more money to spend per episode. The guest actors are strong, the showās supporting players are all present and accounted for, and if the mythology is totally ludicrous now (which it is), at least all involved are still dedicated to making it scary. The world conquest narrative has gone completely off the rails, but thereās still plenty of fun to be had with space monsters literally eating us from the inside out, that they might evolve into higher lifeforms in our nuclear power plant reactors.
I also like the idea that Mulder and Scully are finally coming under fire for all of the crazy trips theyāve taken and all of Mulderās wacky ideas about whatās really going on out there in the world. This is something the show has tiptoed up to before, without ever actually pursuing, and I think the series got some strong episodes out of this idea. This is actually a strong start, as it gives David Duchovny something to play in an episode where Mulder occasionally seems to be going through the motions. When the X-Files are taken from him, he looks suitably gutted, and when heās trying to imagine a world where he works for Kersh (James Pickens, Jr., doing solid work in a thankless role), itās like all the air has gone out of him. This is a great idea for a story arcānot least of which because it can mostly run along in the backgroundāand the show has some fun with it.
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That said, I canāt get out of this review without talking about the episodeās biggest change: Spender and Fowley are now working on the X-Files, and they mostly seem to be there to antagonize Mulder. Fowley as a character never really worked. She often just seemed to be there to do whatever the plot needed her to do, and the show spent too much time insisting she was this awful villain we all should be booing and hissing, making every action she took feel extra ridiculous. Spender was slightly betterāand the reveal that heās working for the Cigarette Smoking Man is telegraphed, but effectiveābut he still felt too much like a rote antagonist. The idea of other people working in that office is a very potent one, but the show went the easy route of making them new villains, rather than people who could be rattled by Mulderās search for the truth.
āThe Beginningā has so much to overcome that itās not a surprise to realize that it didnāt, not quite. Yet itās still a grimly effective little episode of television when it needs to be, even if it feels stitched together out of pieces of other, better episodes (Gibson realizing Scully is thinking of Frankenstein is a nice reference, in that sense). All the same, itās disquieting to realize that the episode is at its best when itās focused on the monster, not the man and woman chasing it. Thereās good stuff in āThe Beginning,ā but itās an episode more notable for its potential than anything else.
Grade: B
Stray observations:
- Of course the power plant worker is named Homer. Of course.
- That shot of the translucent skin on Sandyās hand in the teaser is eerily effective. I like how you can see the alien being growing inside of him.
- The āpreviously onā bit is pretty wild. How many other shows have had to incorporate knowledge from a movie into their catch-up montages?
- I praised the guest stars above, but I donāt think Mimi Rogers really does all that much to make Fowley work. Chris Owens, at least, is acting the shit out of Spender, even if what heās given is often ludicrous.
- I would really like to see a version of this story told from the point of view of the aliens and Syndicate. āSo you have to infect people with a virus to grow aliens inside of them, aliens that will eventually evolve into you?ā āHey, nobody said this was ideal! Weāve had to make do with what we had!ā
- The other big revelation: Everybody on Earth is apparently part alien. Why does every sci-fi series feel the need to make us part-the villain? (That said, I kind of like this reveal, though I donāt really like where the show goes with it.)
- I liked the joke about how the authorities blamed the deaths on a Native American, given both Chris Carter showsā penchant for going to the āmystical Native Americanā well.
- āA rattletrap tale of high adventure in the Antarctic.ā Man, I love that description.
- And once again, welcome to our coverage of The X-Files and Millennium! Zack and I will be alternating weeks for the next 22 weeks (taking holiday weekends off, most likely), until weāre through the sixth season of the former and the third season of the latter. After that, who knows, though weāre both committed to finishing out the run of this show (and maybe The Lone Gunmen while weāre at it).
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āThe Innocentsā (season 3, episode 1; originally aired 10/2/1998)
In which the Millennium Group is trying to kill a bunch of identical women in the most dramatic fashion possible, and wolves find bodies by smelling their tears
āThe Innocentsā isnāt a very good episode of TV. For the most part, this isnāt the fault of anybody who worked on it.
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I know, I know. Iām supposed to be mad when a showās producers choose to radically alter direction after a season I really likedāand I do think the second season of this show is a mad kind of genius. But I canāt blame Chris Carter for cleaning house and putting new people on this series. The show rapidly lost viewers in season two, and even if it had also done so throughout season one, Fox had put the series back on the air entirely because it owed Carterāthanks to the massive success of The X-Filesāand it made sense for him to get back to the more broad-based show that this series was in its first season. Yeah, I love serialized dramas about Biblical conspiracies carried out by groups that secretly run the world, culminating in the apocalypse, but I might be the only one.
So, sure. I can understand why Carter and his team radically changed course back toward what the show was in season one, even as they attempted to shake in just enough X-Files as seasoning to hope that showās flavor would boost this one back toward hit statusāor at least toward a place where its ratings werenāt so bad that it had to be canceled, thus giving Carter another series that could be sold into syndication. (As you might have noticed from the resounding lack of Millennium reruns, this didnāt work.) That, in and of itself, is a difficult shift to make. But when you add on top of that the fact that the series had viscerally depicted the end of the world in the previous season finale, expecting that it would be canceled, well, itās hard to imagine any way this episode of TV would be good. Thatās just too big of a cliffhanger to back out of without some sort of master plan, and if season two showrunners Glen Morgan and James Wong had had a plan, they werenāt telling anybody. āThe Innocentsā is a mess, but I find it hard to blame anybody involved in it for its problems.
If nothing else, the episode starts with an absolutely fantastic teaser. A woman sits on a plane, looking sick to her stomach. She looks over to a little girl, whoās coloring in a page of pictures of āthings that fly.ā She gets up to use the bathroom, where she pulls down a gun from a hidden compartment. She stares at it, unable to do what she must. Cut to a flight attendantāwho has the same eerie blue eyes as our mystery womanāwho sees the light for the smoke detector in the restroom go off. She heads to check on who it is, then abruptly reveals sheās in on the plot, too, as she picks up the gun and points it at the woman⦠before firing several rounds into the wall, creating holes in the planeās exterior, holes that rapidly depressurize the cabin, sucking our mystery woman into the nightās sky and causing the plane to crash. Never mind that faithful fans of the series must have been wondering just what happened to the end of the world. Thatās how you suck people into a story. (Oh, yes. The episode technically begins with an old woman with the same eerie blue eyes, who says, āIt has begun,ā because sheās on a show where you can say that as a line of dialogue.)
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While weāre being generous, Iād say the end of the episode is pretty great, too. There are these women with crazy blue eyes all over, and theyāre all clearly part of some experiment or cloning attempt gone wrong or something. Weāve discovered that the Millennium Group is trying to rub them out and that the deadly plague from the end of last season was a part of that (or something equally strange). Anyway, one of the women takes a little girl of the same bloodlineāthe last, it would seemāand Frank Black and new partner Emma give chase in their car. Thereās the inevitable accident, and the womanās car dangles over the edge of a bridge. But before Frank canĀ go and get her, she raises her hands from the steering wheel and lets the car plummet backward, crashing into the woods below. Itās both a pretty cool moment and one that shows just how far these women are willing to go to accomplish whatever their ultimate goal is.
The episode between those moments, though, is a mess. Itās designed to do a whole bunch of things, but it does none of them particularly well. It wants to get the show back to its roots with Frank as a cop who has weird visions, but it also wants to incorporate some of the conspiracy material from season two (though not the more complicated Biblical stuff). At the same time, it has a bit of an X-Files lite vibe that was clearly there to hopefully boost the show in the ratings. And while all of thatās going on, it has to resolve the story from the finale, as well as show how Frank and Jordan are getting along without Catherine anymore. Itās a muddled mess, but thereās probably no way it could have been anything else. The show veers so abruptly from storyline to storyline that none of them gets any room to breathe. Frank argues with his father-in-law about helping Jordan or has a psychiatric evaluation, and itās smushed right up next to Frank pontificating on how wolves smell tears. (This, in and of itself, feels much more like the first seasonās love of pushing everything into the grim by about 75 percent too much.) Thereās just too much going on in Michael Dugganās script.
In addition, our new character isnāt very interesting at all. Emma is presented less as a fascinating new person with her own take on the showās central ideas and more as the producers shrugging and saying, āWell, we need another regular cast member on this show.ā To be sure, Lance Henriksen needs some downtime now and then, and giving him someone to play off of can be a lot of fun. But Emmaāplayed by the generally enjoyable Klea Scottāis such a cipher here that itās hard to know what to make of her. Iām sure sheāll get some character development episodes in the weeks to come, but this episode forces her into the proceedings so transparently that I found myself wishing it had been a Frank-only hour. Then she could have signed on next week or in episode three (since these first two are a two-parter). Emmaās just a black hole that devours all viewer interest, and every time the camera turns to her, I start tuning out.
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Ultimately, there have been worse episodes of this show, and there have been episodes Iāve been less charitably inclined toward. This must have been a tough episode to make, and if the answers it givesāonly a handful of people died in that outbreak, not the entirety of humanity!ādonāt make a lot of sense, well, they were probably necessary, given the unexpected renewal. Thereās still room for the writers of this series to tell us stories about these people, but theyāre starting from a very weak position indeed with this episode. And yet I canāt help but wonder if that wasnāt inevitable, if there was simply no way this season wasnāt going to start roughly, thanks to all that had come before.
Grade: C
Stray observations:
- Iām having trouble thinking of series that retooled once, then retooled again, taking them in a direction back toward the original version of the show. Thoughts?
- Itās worth stating that Henriksen really nails the psychiatric evaluation bits. He looks believably crazy both when heās ranting and raving and when heās more buttoned down. This is a man whoās seen the world end and somehow survived to return to a world that didnāt end. (And come to think of it, having him patch in from some other reality might have been a more interesting development than what the show actually did.)
- I know he and Frank are on the outs, but I wonder if there was ever any thought given to making Peter Frankās partner in this season. While weāre speculating, does anybody know if Morgan and Wong have ever suggested what they might have done with the third season?
- The newspaper account of the plane crash has a subhead that seems to only care that 23 children died in the crash. Seems a bit odd.
- The title sequence has been redone yet again, but āWait. Worry. The time is near.ā is probably the least of the showās taglines.
- I did like the moment when Frank opened the coffins and found them empty. Itās nice to have a hero whoās not always right.
- This is the first time Iāve seen anything of Millenniumās third season. Let me knowāin very general termsāif Iāve got more to look forward to or if Emma ever becomes interesting.
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Next week: Zack hits the secret origins of Breaking Bad in āDrive,ā then finishes out a two-parter with āExegesis.ā