Last time on Michael's blog:
Recently Channel 5 in the UK nabbed the rights to put 90s SF classic The X-Files for their On Demand collection. To celebrate, one of their off-shoot channels, Five Action, have been repeating the series from The Pilot onwards. My mum (and dad, and grandparents) were huge X-Files fans at the time, and me and Cat watched a bunch of them. Too many, in fact, as Eugene Victor Tooms was a bit too much for my 8 year old mind. Some my parents deemed too scary, some I saw trailers and ran a mile, so overall I've only seen about half the first few seasons and from Season 4 or so onwards it's a blur.
Well, if it is on TV...
I've now seen the entire second Series of The X-Files, and it seems the only done thing to do is to the rank the episodes. While Season 1 was a season of varied contrasts, Season 2 was more a case of some extreme highs and a lot of lows.
Still, we all know if I write any more preamble, we'll be here till Hogmanay, so without further delay:
#23 Excelsis Dei
"Excelsis Dei" - Absolute tosh. Manages to be misogynistic, racist, and even ageist. Just bottom of the barrel awful.
(This is the one where the female nurse is attacked by the astral projection of a vile old man she looks after, aided by the magic mushrooms an illegal immigrant has been giving the patients.)
#22 3
"3" - Rubbish vampire stuff. Mulder falls for a cosplay vampire goth girl who gets involved in murders. Also one of the killers goes on fire in sunlight. Dreary portentous bollocks. Some nice camera shots though.
#21 Fearful Symmetry
"Fearful Symmetry" - An invisible elephant wrecks havoc, becomes visible, then dies as kids cry about it. That's the cold opening. Then the rest is, frankly, absolute bollocks about aliens making zoo animals invisible and a gorilla tries to give Mulder hot tips about aliens through sign language. What even is this? The gorilla dies too.
#20 Blood
"Blood" - The messages appearing on electronic devices one. We spend a long time with one guy so he can be the climax mad man/villain, but this is another story which spends a long time spinning its wheels on a simple idea.
#19 The Host
"The Host" - I never watched this one when I was a kid because the trailer on BBC scared me too much. Watching it as a middle aged adult, it's really, really... rubbish. The makeup job on the Flukeman is properly grotesque, and it has some icky set pieces like the man choking up a flukeworm in the shower, but this is one story where the implied story in a child's imagination was much stronger than what we get. The cold opening scene was one of the best things in it, although I do like Skinner and Mulder discussing how you actually prosecute a mutant worm for murder. And Skinner saying he wasn't laughing because he "did all his laughing" before he had four important meetings on that very subject!
#18 Firewalker
"Firewalker" - Throats exploding is a bit icky. The dangerous scientist red herring is Josh from The West Wing. Tries to be Ice, with volcanoes. Bit dull.
#17 Duane Barry/Ascension
"Duane Barry"/"Ascension" - Oh look, a two parter. A former FBI agent/alien abductee takes a bunch of hostages. As one of the FBI's sharpest mindhunters, Mulder is called in to help, and is immediately scoffed at by the FBI agents there. You know, the guys who asked him for his expertise. Scully becomes convinced Barry is a con man, which makes it a personal blow to her when he kidnaps her and has her abducted by aliens. Apparently FOX executives suggested firing Gillian Anderson as she was about to give birth, they really had a thing against female leads in their shows. Some FOX executive had argued that Anderson was not attractive enough to be a TV lead. Spoiler alert, Gillian Anderson is nearly sixty in 2026, and still a worldwide heartthrob! Krychek gets to go full evil because the plot requires, Duane Barry is interesting enough while he lasts (not long), and X shows up.
#16 Colony/End Game
"Colony"/"End Game" - On the bright side, the Bounty Hunter is a great new addition to the mythos, an unstoppable shape shifting killer. On the downside, the Samantha stuff is designed to deliberately grab at your emotions and gets another psyche! payoff. Mulder's Dad is a complete monster though.
#15 Dod Kalm
"Dod Kalm" - I remembered this being a good one, and the conceit of the people aging rapidly to death on the Arctic Ocean is a good one, but it struggles to last the pace of the full episode. And just like Darkness Falls, Mulder and Scully are defeated but saved by government medical teams off screen! (Also the water ages you but not all the water, just some water, and not everything in the water. It gets a bit confused.)
#14 Red Museum
"Red Museum" - Liked the twist that the secret religious cult were actually just harmless nutters and actually help save the kids in the end. Also, Deep Throat's killer, casually murdered by a civilian he has pissed off. But this is all over the place: teen abductions, plane crashes, conspiracies, cows, religion and a bit of a mess. Also I'm not keen on the increased conspiracy theories about vaccines.
#13 Little Green Men
"Little Green Men" - A story which is less about UFOs and more about Fox Mulder moping when he's not allowed to investigate weird stuff. So he meets up with Senator Richard Matheson (I see what you did there, Chris Carter) and sods off to find proof of alien existence from the Jupiter II probe. Meanwhile Scully worries about him, worries some more and finally saves him from government hitmen. The best stuff is depressed Mulder early on (and his references to Deep Throat's Arlington funeral), but it doesn't hold a whole episode.
#12 Our Town
“Our Town” – Our Town is dragging me down, is dragging me down, down, down. No, sorry, it’s the river that is dragged, and where we find the victims. Well, the town folk of Dudley are pretenders to the throne... of immortality. Ok, enough Beautiful South, as Deacon Blue once didn’t write, I wouldn’t want to eat you. I know, its our, not your, but the gags had set themselves up. I blame this episode both for scaring me as an eight year old (I tried to get my parents to turn the episode off) and for my above average knowledge of Cruetzfeld-Jacob Disease! Once again I’m not keen on Scully being the damsel in distress yet again. For ancient cannibals, these townfolk aren't very intelligent.
#11 The Calusari
"The Calusari" - I remember being scared by this one as a kid. The cold opening, where a ghost leads a toddler to its death, is still genuinely chilling on every level. The idea that the entire thing is a cover up of child abuse is equally chilling. There's some nice set pieces. The acting is almost universally goofy, and once the Calusari show up to do their exorcism, it's all gone to Goofy Town USA, but there's enough good in the flab here.
#10 Die Hand Die Verletzt
"Die Hand Die Verletzt" - Where's my devil worship episode? I had a devil worship episode here. SOMEONE STOLE MY EPISODE! THIS STINKS! THIS IS TOTAL BS! THIS IS... oh here it is. Yes, its the one with well known gay rights activist and actor Dan Butler, better known to the world as Frasier Crane's rowdy colleague Bulldog. Here he is, as a PTA organiser turned black magic cult leader. That casting is hilarious, and there's a strong sense of black humour running through this episode. And then a snake appears, and I had to fast forward a chunk of the story. Apparently Chris Carter was amazed at how realistic Butlers acting was, until he found that Dan, like me, is a severe ophidiophobe! Shudders. Also, the tone is all over the place, the girl revealing her (false memory) abuse doesn't fit into the same story with frog rain, and the PTA being stalked by the Devil for not being proper Satanists! Mrs Paddock is an absolute hoot, however, and her final chalkboard message to Mulder and Scully is a highlight.
#9 Irresistible
"Irresistible" - Nick Chinlund is fantastically creepy as a psycho. Donnie Pfaster is basically a dodgy man who no one pays attention to, which makes him creepier than a thousand aliens with ray guns. That scene of him in the cell, looking at Scully, is the cinematography of nightmare fuel. The problem is that Pfaster takes up so much of the time, that most everything else falls into the shadow, and I don't like Scully being so damsel in distress yet again, nor her walking into an obvious trap that she would usually recognise as one. Yes, she has PTSD, but still, it takes from the character imo. One thing I do like is that Mulder is personally called in by the local authorities thinking it was a UFO case at the start, but when he debunks this, they take all of his profiling advice seriously. Because the episode remembers that, even if people find his conspiracy theories a bit wacky, Fox Mulder was still regarded as one of the FBI's best mindhunters. At least the episode remembered one of the agents intelligence!
#8 Soft Light
“Soft Light” – Tony Shalhoub’s shadow is a black hole!
Everyone remembers this one. The death by shadow scenes don’t linger on the
SFX, which is probably just as well. The motivations of everyone involved are
murky, with nearly everyone involved in some form of conspiracy but not realising how disposable
they are. X is at his darkest here, casually letting colleagues die, executing
a scientist and kidnapping a man to force him through medical experiments. The
reveal of Steve Williams angry face starring through the peephole is more
chilling than most monster of the week reveals. Keep your enemies close! Also, Scully’s protégé/sacrificial lamb young detective is
incredibly one note. The cold opening also tells us that if our Mr Newirth had
not been such a nosy sod he’d have lived to tell the tale.
#7 F. Emasculata
“F Emasculata” – The one with the ebola like virus attacking prisoners in a jail. As a kid, I remembered the exploding pus being disgusting, but I thought the infected meat going to the prisoner with the same name as a the dead biologist was an example of a screw up. Nothing is ever down to chance in The X-Files however, and here the pharmaceutical company, with the back of the government, have deliberately used the prisoner as guinea pigs to test how fatal the contagion is. Two prisoners escape leading to more death. Dean Norris from Breaking Bad has a role as a sheriff, and the scene of the gas station clerk being quarantined against his will (basically to die) is haunting. Also, Scully follows quarantine and infectious disease procedure and other doctor does not, and one of them doesn’t survive. The Cigarette Smoking Man implies this sort of deliberate infection happens all the time and is for the greater good, it’s the implications of the story which chill.
#6 Fresh Bones
"Fresh Bones" - This one is messy but there's an anger throughout that is refreshing for the 90s. Mulder and Scully investigate voodoo related deaths at a refugee camp, rife with abuse overlooked by the military. There's enough twists in this to make it sure where the episodes heart is, like the twist of who is behind the voodoo. There's also the small refugee boy who seems to be protecting Mulder and Scully, who turns out to be the first victim of the covered up abuse, helping from beyond the grave to save others. And the reveal that the supposed bad guy is actually an innocent victim, and the real bad guys are using fear and racism to cover their tracks. It's astonishing and brave and furious. It takes a lot of myths about Haiti asylum seekers and turns them on its head to make the villains those who look the other way, while people in power use their authority to abuse those who can't answer back. So the voodoo scenes are a bit goofy, and some of the scenes have dated in thirty years, but the heart of this thing is more timely than ever in Trump's world.
#5 Anasazi
“Anasazi” – Surprisingly slow start, though it hangs on the promise of stuff to come with the dead alien found in the Arizona desert, and The Thinker (he didn’t think of a way to survive this episode) hacking into the alien files at the DOJ. Then Cigarette Man is chatting away with Bill Mulder, and Bill Mulder brings Fox over to his house just in time to get shot by a returning Alex Krychek. Bill Mulder, still an arsehole. Mulder tries to fight Skinner, but Skinner bested X in a fight earlier this season so Mulder has no chance. Later, Mulder beats up Krychek, so we see the degrees of ability in punching here. Anyhow, there’s a file encrypted in Navajo that reveals government involvement in alien abductions, and a boxcar full of dead aliens. Dead aliens with experimentation marks on them. Cigarette Man arrives on the scene, and orders the boxcar, where Mulder is hiding among a bunch of dead aliens, set on fire, and its our traditional end of series cliffhanger.
#4 Aubrey
"Aubrey" - A pregnant cop starts to hallucinate the crimes in an unsolved murder case and finds a cold case victim buried in the middle of nowhere. At the same time, the murders start up again, and the most likely suspect is a dying old rapist. Morgan Woodward from Star Trek is the old villain, and he's very good at making the guy seem unrepentantly dangerous, even in his frailty. Somehow he's able to channel his own evil down his family tree via psychic abilities/nature v nurture. This was a very good episode, about the lingering impact of evil acts on the innocent, and is far more nuanced and sympathetic than the previous episode (Excelsis Dei) was on the same themes. Deborah Strang is excellent in a difficult role. Also, the direction of this is top notch, not just with the nightmare sequences, but even houses are shot to look threatening, and there's some amazing use of shadow and tone, like in the introduction of Morgan Woodward's old sod.
#3 Humbug
"Humbug" - Gordon Tipple is here, he was the Master briefly in the TVM. He played Hepcat Helm, which was such a great name that I was left disappointed when he dies before the first ad break. This episode is unique among X-Files for me, as the one I experienced for the first time as a book, rather than the TV episode. On screen, Vincent Schiavelli imbues his role with a tragic dignity, Michael Anderson from Twin Peaks gets some great lines with David Duchovny before being dragged to his death through a dog door, and The Conundrum is memorable, as is the villain of the piece. Legit laughs to Scully inferring to the Sherif that Mulder is one born every minute, as does Jim Rose's Dr Blockhead warning Scully that genetic engineering will lead to humans looking just like Mulder!
#2 Sleepless
"Sleepless" - Finally, the X-Files produced a great Season 2 episode after a dire start. This one has Tony fn Todd as a haunted Vietnam War vet, on whom the government experimented so that he can never sleep. For 24 years. I think in real life that would kill you, but here it gives Todd the power to turn dreams into reality. He uses this partly to get revenge on the officials who allowed the lobotomies to go ahead, but also to use death as a kindness to his old war colleagues, who all suffered the same fate and are haunted by the ghosts of the civilians they murdered. One particularly well done scene has Todd meeting an old comrade, Henry, and the man eventually accepting his own murder as a gift from an old friend. And Henry shows up later as a ghost haunting the Doctor in charge of the programme. Tony Todd is excellent as a damaged antagonist who wants to be at peace. Also, this introduces newbie FBI agent Alex Krychek. I'd never seen this episode before, so I thought the earlier scenes where he looks genuinely upset Mulder and Scully keep ignoring him were going to be crucial character development, and these thoughts went out of the room when he showed up as Cigarette Man's lacky in the final scene. Chris Carter's entire MO is doing things very slowly and here he rushes into a plot twist! Anyhow, this was a great episode, a real find in this rewatch so far.
#1 One Breath
"One Breath" - Another great episode in Season 2. Chris Carter's team can't work out how to solve the alien abduction angle now Gillian Anderson has given birth, so Scully just appears out of nowhere in a hospital. But this one is less about the plot and more about the character. Scully is dying, and her mum and sister are ready to pull the plug (as per Scully's own wishes) but Mulder is unwilling to let her go. It's only when he's able to make peace with the idea she's gone that she comes back. It's a treatise on life after death, and what makes us human. There is a bit of alien conspiracy bollocks added, but its filler. It does allow Steve Williams to shine as X, a very different kind of insider. He's not Deep Throat, he's Mulder without the ethics and twice as paranoid, which gives him an edge that suave Jerry Hardin never needed. Also, Mitch Pileggi gets a chance to act and shines. As does William B Davis: "You don't scare me, I've seen Presidents die." All the while, a guardian angel moonlighting as a nurse keeps an eye on Dana Scully, knowing everyone will see the light eventually. Mulder spends the episode wanting revenge while Scully dies, but when he decides to forgo revenge and say goodbye to Scully, she immediately gets better.
X-Files was presented as aliens and thriller but it excels with the character stuff like this.
Oh, and that scene with Don S Davis returning as Scully's dad's ghost, to her, telling her what she didn't get to hear in Beyond the Sea?
Absolutely manipulative emotional stuff, and it works.
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