To recap the last episode, Fox Mulder is dead. Well, that was a quick recap. In Raleigh, North Carolina, Fox's funeral is essentially an X-Files reunion: Dana Scully, Assistant Director Walter Skinner, the Lone Gunmen (how can they be sure it’s not a conspiracy to arrest them?), Deputy Director Alvin Kersh (probably just wants to make sure it’s true) and the Mulders (since they’re buried in that cemetery). Where is John Doggett? He should be there to support his partner, even though his job is done -- he found Fox. 
Doggett meets with Kersh and Skinner three months later to get his “atta boy” and his choice of reassignment out of the X-files. Surprisingly, John is reluctant to leave the most vilified division in the FBI. He justifies his reason to Scully; if no one is there to hold down the fort while Dana’s on maternity leave with “little J. Edgar,” Kersh will permanently close the X-files division. Scully uses her work history to try and convince Doggett to get out while he can.
Meanwhile, off Cape Fear in North Carolina, Robert DeNiro is terrorizing Nick Nolte and his family. (Sorry, but I saw the 1991 version long before the 1962 version with Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, so that’s my go-to reference.) Also happening at the cape, fishermen make the deadliest catch: a dead body. The Wilmington coroner is told to autopsy immediately. Too bad the clearly dead man is not actually dead. On the “upside,” the living corpse is Billy Miles, who was abducted by an alien bounty hunter in Season 7, Episode 22: "Requiem." Skinner gets notified and brings John to Mulder’s grave where diggers have exhumed his body. Fox’s corpse is taken to the coroner’s office in Annapolis, Maryland, where he proves to be physically alive but in a state of decomposition. I’ll bet he smells something awful too. Scully gets word and arrives full of hope.
Doggett meets with D.D. Kersh, who wants John to drop the “Mulder thing.” Is this because the FBI doesn’t want to give Fox three months’ worth of back pay? And is Mulder's current medical care covered by his insurance plan? I doubt it. At the hospital, Dana goes down the hall to check on Billy Miles, whose body looks way worse than Fox's. He suffers a grand mal seizure in her presence, but Scully also thinks there’s an equipment malfunction since she saw two heartbeats on the monitor.
Back at FBI headquarters, Walter looks and acts like he’s about to have a heart attack, but it’s just Alex Krycek playing puppet master. To refresh your memory from "S.R. 819" (S6E9), Skinner has nanotechnology in his body that Palm Pilot Bandit Krycek controls. Alex seems to be enjoying his power over Walter a little too much. Krycek claims he has an alien vaccine that can save Mulder. And a decomposing Billy Miles wakes up, gets out of bed and takes the world’s most disgusting shower. Luckily, his decomposing skin reveals normal skin underneath.
Doggett finds Scully at Mulder’s bedside. Hope he didn’t spend too much time and energy looking for her anywhere else. If he did, he really doesn’t know his partner at all. Meanwhile, Team Sculett see a naked shell-shocked Billy staggering around the hospital. Dana and John have different interpretations regarding Miles' statement about being on a ship -- he thinks fishing boat, she thinks spacecraft. Doggett is now just being stubborn about aliens being a factor in Billy (and Fox's) continued existence on this planet. Scully is fed up with Doggett’s doggedness and gives up trying to convince him. Her medical experiments on Billy indicate he “shed his skin” and became a new person, but she’s not so sure it’s a good thing. She neglects to update Skinner, who sees hope for Mulder because of Alex's alleged vaccine.
Doggett visits Absalom in a West Virginia prison to learn how he healed alien abductees in the previous episode "This Is Not Happening" (S8E14). Walter checks on Fox, but Krycek is in the room waiting for him. The price Skinner has to pay to get the vaccine from Alex? Make sure Dana loses her baby before it’s born. (Thinking back – well, forward – to "My Struggle III" (S11E1), maybe Krycek knew who the baby’s “real” father is. Maybe he thought he was doing everyone a favor. Remember, the last time we saw Alex, he was pushing Cancer Man down a flight of stairs in "Requiem.")
Doggett finds Scully at Mulder’s bedside. Hope he didn’t spend too much time and energy looking for her anywhere else. If he did, he really doesn’t know his partner at all. Meanwhile, Team Sculett see a naked shell-shocked Billy staggering around the hospital. Dana and John have different interpretations regarding Miles' statement about being on a ship -- he thinks fishing boat, she thinks spacecraft. Doggett is now just being stubborn about aliens being a factor in Billy (and Fox's) continued existence on this planet. Scully is fed up with Doggett’s doggedness and gives up trying to convince him. Her medical experiments on Billy indicate he “shed his skin” and became a new person, but she’s not so sure it’s a good thing. She neglects to update Skinner, who sees hope for Mulder because of Alex's alleged vaccine.
Doggett visits Absalom in a West Virginia prison to learn how he healed alien abductees in the previous episode "This Is Not Happening" (S8E14). Walter checks on Fox, but Krycek is in the room waiting for him. The price Skinner has to pay to get the vaccine from Alex? Make sure Dana loses her baby before it’s born. (Thinking back – well, forward – to "My Struggle III" (S11E1), maybe Krycek knew who the baby’s “real” father is. Maybe he thought he was doing everyone a favor. Remember, the last time we saw Alex, he was pushing Cancer Man down a flight of stairs in "Requiem.")
Doggett tells Scully about Absalom’s claims while she updates him about the alien virus vaccine. Walter locks John out of Fox's room so he can remove Mulder from life support. After Doggett kicks in the door and grabs Skinner, Walter tells him about Krycek’s ultimatum. John goes after Alex in the parking garage and Krycek tries to run him down. Doggett leaps onto the car and gets in a few punches before he’s forced to let go. Alex destroys the vaccine vial and leaves. Upstairs, John learns Walter's actions may have saved Fox's life.
Doggett meets with D.D. Kersh at FBI headquarters and learns he burned his bridges. It’s pretty telling how Alvin would rather have one of his agents dead than alive. Back at the hospital, Mulder, who’s been treated with (non-alien) antiviral drugs, regains consciousness and manages to make Dana laugh twice. See? The impossible is possible.
Doggett meets with D.D. Kersh at FBI headquarters and learns he burned his bridges. It’s pretty telling how Alvin would rather have one of his agents dead than alive. Back at the hospital, Mulder, who’s been treated with (non-alien) antiviral drugs, regains consciousness and manages to make Dana laugh twice. See? The impossible is possible.
Sestra Professional:
We start off at Fox's funeral. His second death during the run of the show if we're counting the arc encompassing the end of the second season and the start of the third. And decades later, it begs the question, how can they resurrect one of their leads ... again? Remember in Stephen King's Misery, that Nurse Annie Wilkes -- for all her insanity -- needed the return of her own favorite character to be truthful to the story. He couldn't just be back, there had to be a measure of logic involved or legs would be broken.
We start off at Fox's funeral. His second death during the run of the show if we're counting the arc encompassing the end of the second season and the start of the third. And decades later, it begs the question, how can they resurrect one of their leads ... again? Remember in Stephen King's Misery, that Nurse Annie Wilkes -- for all her insanity -- needed the return of her own favorite character to be truthful to the story. He couldn't just be back, there had to be a measure of logic involved or legs would be broken.
In rewatching this time, I was struck by the fact that I've scoffed at better ways of bringing someone back from the dead in television or movies. But I never went "nope, not good" when it came to Mulder's return. Guess I just wanted Fox back in the fold bad enough to overlook the happenstance.
At the very least, Doggett did his job by locating Fox. It's just a bonus to see how invested he's become in his job and his partnership with Scully by wanting to stay down in the basement with Dana's impending maternity leave to prevent the permanent locking of the X-files doors.
If it looks bad, it's bad for the FBI: The mythology has been played so fast and loose by this time. I guess nothing should be too surprising, and that includes the excavation and revival of Mulder. Annie Wilkes probably wouldn't think too kindly upon it. Fox certainly didn't get out of the metaphorical cockadoodie car. We'll just gloss over the fact that an FBI agent with questions surrounding his disappearance probably would have been autopsied and/or embalmed within an inch of his life, as they say.
But the story picks up some steam pretty quickly. Not that I believe in the skin shedding concept -- even though strangely enough, I've been in the midst of an Orphan Black rewatch which literally just mentioned a similar theory. Hey, there was a great opportunity for an Orphan Black/X-Files crossover.
All aboard: Of course, the ongoing story is so out of whack at this point that we haven't gotten back to Skinner's nanobots in some time. This really was a fabulous plot device that was excellently executed in "S.R. 819," but the ball -- sorry, 'bot -- was dropped for a year and a half. It would have been more interesting to see Walter-Alex entangled on a more regular basis than much of what we actually saw in Season 7, I'm comfortable admitting that much.
The uneasy history between Skinner and Krycek makes for rare meaty stuff for Mitch Pileggi to work with. Contrast Walter's dilemma with Kersh's silly concerns/jokes about overtime. Yawn. Dude, I saw sunrises just working on elongated baseball games at my regular job. I'm sure you get paid more than enough not to be too perturbed by some late nights, Alvin. We're all far more interested in what Skinner will do with his physical limitations exacerbated by emotional burdens.
You're on the wrong floor: Speaking of nice touches, Scully gave us her version of an academy report card at the midpoint of Doggett's year. She praised the quality of John's work and his strength of character. Dana apparently knows to always cover the good stuff before going into the bad, since she then berated John for not opening the grave -- no matter what the outcome was going to be with Mulder.
Anybody miss me? It's been a while since Scully's been able to use science to save someone. And they're all extremely lucky that Walter's act of sabotage ultimately worked out in Fox's favor. But seriously, the first thing Mulder thinks to do after regaining conscience is to torture Dana some more by playing an amnesia joke? (Cue a flashback to Dana's similarly ill-timed prank during her Fight the Future rescue.) But Fox is forgiven because of his final line of the episode, because save maybe Sestra Am ... and possibly Doggett ... and definitely Kersh ... you were missed, Mulder.
Guest star of the week: When Billy Miles initially was seen in the pilot, he had limited purpose as a garden-variety alien abductee. Actor Zachary Ansley couldn't have expected he'd be back in the fold again again, but even with his skin sloughed off, he retained an edge that proved useful here and will come in handy down the road.
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