X-Files S6E22: Feelings of alienation

Sestra Amateur: 

It’s a good thing Hulu has The X-Files since Amazon Prime no longer carries the series, but I'm contending with commercials gumming up the stream when I rewind scenes for this blog. And no, I will not pay extra for commercial-free since I’m fine with them for every other series I watch that I’m not reviewing which includes, well, all of them. If Hulu wasn’t an option, it would have been funny to try and find Season 6 at a library for the purpose of watching the finale. 

Bad news: This episode starts with a voiceover. Good news: It’s Scully’s voice, not Mulder’s. She gives us a Cliffs Notes version of our planet’s affection for extinction while we try to determine whether the next extinction event is coming soon … or has already begun. 

In West Africa, something allegedly amazing has washed up on the Ivory Coast. We don’t get a clear shot of it, but the score and camera angles indicate it’s something worthwhile. It’s part of a larger tablet, and when Dr. Merkmallen connects it to his own piece of the tablet, they fuse together, fly across the room and impale a Holy Bible. (The pieces, not the scholar.) He’s weirded out by that behavior, so he books a flight to Washington, D.C. (yep, let’s just bring that thing into the United States and make it our problem) and meets with Dr. Sandoz, who has a third piece. But that's a fatal mistake and Merkmallen is killed by Sandoz’s imposter. 

The case falls in Mulder’s lap because of Merkmallen’s theory life originated on another planet and flourished here. (Maybe Ridley Scott acquired his origin theory for Alien prequel Prometheus from this ep.) Familiar with the ideology, Scully doesn’t discount it. The original Sandoz is also missing – along with Merkmallen’s body -- so Dana thinks it’s a case for local law enforcement, not the feds. 

Assistant director Skinner gives them a rubbing of the tablet. While riding in the crowded elevator, Fox’s hearing is distorted and he tunes out Scully. Maybe he was in proximity to the tablets? Sculder arrive at the American University crime scene where “Dr. Sandoz” is now Dr. Barnes, head of the department. Dana shows Barnes the rubbing and Mulder again experiences a painful effect from it. Scully calls someone to authenticate the rubbing, but Chuck claims it’s a fake and identifies the doctor as a debunker. Chuck witnesses the rubbing’s effect on Fox, but he can’t explain it. Somehow Mulder knows Barnes killed Merkmallen.

The agents check out Sandoz’s apartment and learn he’s been meeting with Albert Hosteen in New Mexico. You remember Albert, don’t you? He’s the king of the voiceovers whose storyline covered three episodes beginning with "Anasazi" (Season 2, Episode 25). Was he helping Sandoz read the tablets or helping him create fake ones? Either way, our heroes have to put a pin in that because Fox managed to find Merkmallen’s corpse – well, most of it -- shoved in the kitchen garbage can. 

Sculder later update Skinner and we learn about cosmic galactic radiation. Merkmallen likely had exposure to it and it’s possibly what’s causing Mulder’s tinnitus/mind reading ability. Clearly his condition is progressing and it’s making him very short tempered with his superior. Of course, paranoid Mulder is right; “traitor” Skinner gives his office surveillance tape to Alex Krycek.

Dana tells Fox to rest, then treks to Gallup, New Mexico, and learns Albert is dying of cancer. Scully finds another rubbing in Hosteen's hospital room which has been translated into Bible speak, “And God said … multiply and replenish" … yada yada yada. Mulder obviously is not resting, he’s looking for evidence in Dr. Barnes’ campus office. The doctor returns and somehow knows something is off in his very cluttered room. Maybe he also has mind-reading capabilities, because he almost finds Fox hiding in the lab. Mulder tries to follow Barnes, but the headaches are too much and he collapses in a stairwell. 

Back in New Mexico, Scully chases Sandoz, who was shadowing Albert. There’s such an extreme closeup of her face that I thought it was going to be one of those David Lynch-ian I-see-the-suspect-in-the-reflection-of-your-iris moments. Dana “catches” Sandoz while Krycek walks right past a writhing Mulder to meet with Barnes and hand him Skinner’s videotape. Meanwhile, Sandoz is updating Scully about the extraterrestrial origin of our recorded history. He shows Dana a third piece of the tablet that starts spinning on its own. Scully calls Fox to update him and almost gets sidetracked when Diana Fowley answers the phone. Luckily, Dana remembers to argue with him about Genesis and aliens. Diana then calls Cancer Man with an update. Put your shirt back on, Fowley! 

Albert is brought home to the reservation for a healing ceremony. Skinner calls to tell Scully that her partner is in bad shape in a Georgetown hospital. She leaves Sandoz with his piece of the tablet and hightails it to Fox’s bedside. Turns out, he’s in the psychiatric ward suffering from abnormal brain function. Mulder looks like he’s losing his mind and it doesn’t help his paranoid state that there’s a visible camera in his padded room. 

Unfortunately, Dana learns Walter had access to a report she hasn’t sent him yet and calls out him and Diana for being liars. She goes to Mulder’s FBI office and finds a camera in the smoke detector. Scully gets distracted by Sandoz, who calls with the revelation that the human genome is part of the code on the tablet. Too bad he gets shot to death for his trouble. Dammit, Krycek! Back on the Ivory Coast, Dana makes contact with the people who found the original tablet pieces and unearths way more than she anticipated. Jeez, did this just become Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers? Unlike Ridley Scott, King got there first.

Sestra Professional: 

With The Syndicate predominantly dispatched of midway through this season, The X-Files had to come up with a different facet to anchor the mythology. On paper, it looks like it should work -- Mulder might have fallen ill by the very thing he's been seeking all these years, Krycek is finally utilizing the upper hand (Alex in-joke!) on Skinner, Scully's got some physical evidence and the one person the shippers don't want anywhere near Fox seems closer to him than Dana.

But these puzzle pieces they're trying to fit together don't really click into place as easily as components of that tablet. Take five shots of Mulder, a couple of Scully, a tablespoon of Fowley, a teaspoon of Skinner and a pinch of Krycek ... and try and mix it together. It's all rather staid and I wish it worked better than it did, because this is the foundation of the mythology for the rest of the regular run. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to setting the stage for Season 7. 

Like Sestra Am, I could seriously do without a voiceover teaser -- even Dana's. These have always leaned to the pretentious side, even in the best of times. Appreciate the quick glimpse at the cavemen from the beginning of Fight the Future, but illustrations of dinosaurs mixed with clips of the Apollo 11 mission seem to overstep the bounds. (Great, now I'm thinking about a T-Rex craning its neck to try and look at a UFO hovering over its head.) But the opening's ending revelation of the extraterrestrial piece in the water ... now that grabs my attention.

I am just a hired gun for the FBI: It's all too serious. Even in the bleakest of conspiratorial times on the show, there was something breezy about Fox's quest or at least something invigorating about finding any nugget of information. We get very little of that here, even in the early conversation between our leads. Scully tells Mulder he's won. But since Fox still doesn't know what happened to his sister, he doesn't see it that way. This interaction is nothing like the energized scene we got to open Fight the Future. It doesn't feel like they've won to me either.

Not to totally paint "Biogenesis" in bleak terms. David Duchovny does a nuanced job with Mulder's descent into whatever he's descending into. I would have hoped a Fox breakdown would come with a little wackiness, with some emergence of the part of his character that has always been dicey. (For example, the way he went off the rails in the previously mentioned "Anasazi.") With his defenses down, his penchant for speaking before he thinks could have been utilized more here.

Over the course of six seasons, Skinner became Sculder's ally. And the way the powers-that-be realized they could mess with that equation was through Krycek's threat to his life. Compromised Skinner is something that could have been utilized a lot better than it has been to this point. Then again, we haven't seen much of Walter since he almost died in "S.R. 819" (Season 6, Episode 10). His inclusion in this episode is something of a throwaway for moments of clarity for both his charges -- separate but equal realizations that Skinner might not be telling his agents everything they need to know.

Could we too become extinct? I agree with Sestra Am, that was a mighty strange closeup on Dana. Still not understanding what the point of it was, but from there on, Scully vaults from merely following in Fox's footsteps to a more active part of the investigation. It's heartening that she's no longer missing out on the key discoveries, even if she doesn't believe that a passage from Genesis' inclusion on the artifact means the aliens put us here in the first place.

I'd have liked for Diana to have been a more formidable foe/obstacle to Mulder and Scully's relationship, particularly since Duchovny's real-life friend Mimi Rogers should have been a great get for the show. But she really never was. She doesn't provide the same charge that seeing Cigarette Smoking Man or Krycek does. Even though we want those two to ultimately be defeated, we can still revel in their machinations.

You're both liars: So off to another Dana voiceover and it's just as pretentious as the start of the show. Couldn't we have just skipped the meanderings about the "audacity of the invention" and gone right to the part in which Scully witnesses Fox's breakdown in the padded room? That's a truly frightening concept, the smartest woman we know can't figure out to help the person she wants to help the most. She knows she can't count on Walter and Diana and that has her verging on Mulder territory (when he's his usual self anyway).

So Scully has to go it alone, right after she finds out artifacts seem to contain the map to our genetic makeup. And then she gets the moment all of us have been waiting for six seasons, she's touching a spacecraft. If only Mulder had been there to witness it. Or at least coherent enough to hear about it. ... Unless they're still in the mushroom from last episode.

Meta-llurgy: In the official episode guide, Chris Carter said starting a new branch of the mythology enabled the show to advance the characters. "...There would be a scientific basis to the search for extraterrestrials, which plays perfectly into both Scully's scientific bias and Mulder's willingness to believe in the supernatural. Which means that Mulder's and Scully's belief systems will finally begin to come together -- which is where we're going to go in Season 7." Executive producer Frank Spotnitz added in the guide that it was important to clear away the conspiracy in "One Son" and "Two Fathers" (S6E11-12) in order to facilitate that. ... The beach scenes were filmed at the Leo Carrillo State Park in Malibu, California, the same site used in the opening of the 1978 film Grease.