X-Files S10E6: The DNA of Dana

Sestra Amateur: 

The struggle continues – literally and figuratively – as the Season 10 finale circles back to the season’s first episode. Remember Tad O’Malley? Sveta? The return of Cigarette Smoking Man? Yeah, I forgot most of it too. But let’s dive in and refresh your memory so you can forget again until we rewatch "My Struggle III." 

Unfortunately, the episode begins with a Dana Scully monologue and anyone who actually reads this blog knows how I feel about those. (Hey, I just plagiarized myself!) Doctor/Agent Scully is condensing 10 years of conspiracy theory episodes into a couple of minutes, while we view photographic evidence of the incidents she’s recalling. (Could you imagine if someone actually took pictures of these very private Scully moments: Dana abducted and tied up in a car trunk, Dana unconscious on a hospital bed, Dana being impregnated...) Then the special effects team morphs Dr. Scully into an alien and somehow the show has my attention again. But the biggest lie of all soon appears: Instead of reading “The Truth Is Out There,” we get “This Is The End.” You be the judge if you think it should have ended here or whether Chris Carter needed another season to dig his way out of the hole he created with Sculder.

Special Agent Dana Scully is watching the latest inflammatory video by Tad O’Malley. It’s been six weeks since he went off the air and Sveta was killed. He’s no longer in hiding and he’s now claiming every American citizen has some alien DNA inside them. Scully answers when Tad calls Special Agent Fox Mulder’s office phone. He tells her to come to Fox’s home, which has been ransacked. 

Mulder’s nowhere to be found, so Dana involves the local police and Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who’s hanging with Agent Einstein, the alternate “Scully” agent we met in the previous episode. Einstein naively believes no one can tamper with DNA. I guess she never read Jurassic Park. (Yes, I know it’s fiction. Yes, I know it’s about dinosaurs. Just let it go.) Drs. Scully and Einstein head to Dana’s other employers, Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, where they encounter a sweaty, confused man who’s clearly sick. Meanwhile, Fox, who looks like he joined a fight club and keeps losing, is driving to an unknown location and ignoring Skinner’s phone calls.

Dana takes Einstein’s blood and explains how the anomaly in Scully’s blood is, by definition, alien. (Here on The X-Files, people always jump to the “extraterrestrial” definition instead of the generically accurate “strange” definition.) Einstein still isn’t on board, but lets Scully take a blood sample. (I wonder how nu-Scully would have felt about COVID-19 vaccines.) Einstein’s partner Agent Miller arrives to help with the Mulder search and to share the news that O’Malley’s conspiracy theories about killer viruses are gaining traction on the Internet. Based on their encounter with the sweaty, confused man who is a military soldier, Dana thinks it’s already begun. She believes the man has anthrax, something from which he was inoculated when he deployed to Iraq. If Dr. Scully is correct, whatever people have been vaccinated against, that’s what’s going to make them sick. She desperately calls Fox, who continues driving south and ignoring his phone. 

But you know what’s really bugging me about this episode? Mulder’s laptop in his FBI office. It’s not locked. The man who was on the TrustNo1 bandwagon for 10 years (except for Scully, and even that wasn’t 100 percent of the time) leaves a signed-in laptop open and unlocked on his desk?! So convenient when Miller uses Fox’s phone finder app to locate him in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Forced plot contrivances still run rampant on The X-Files.

Dr. Einstein and Dr. Scully are scientifically analyzing the situation at Dana’s hospital. Einstein points out how something needs to be taken away from the genome to shut down people’s immune systems, not added to it. Then Scully gets a phone call from a woman who claims she can explain what’s happening. If you read the guest star list at the beginning of the episode, then you know it’s Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), former partner of Scully and Special Agent John Doggett. 

Team Danica meet and Monica admits she left the FBI 10 years earlier because she made some not-so-great choices. Flashbacks show her being called to the bedside of one badly burned Cigarette Smoking Man, who claims to be the most powerful man in the world. His power? To depopulate the planet while the chosen few live. So Monica chose to stick around as CSM’s lackey, hoping he won’t use his weapon, but slightly comforted by the knowledge she (and Scully) are protected. 

Who the hell is this Monica Reyes?! How could she follow this path without reaching out to John Doggett or any other reliable FBI connections like Scully or Skinner? And why don’t we get at least a throwaway line about what happened to Doggett? Maybe she's an intergalactic hitman posing as her, maybe she's a clone. Nope, sorry to say this is really Monica. Anyway, Reyes also claims Cancer Man sent someone to Mulder’s house, which is why Fox looked beaten and his house got trashed. Mulder arrives at Cancer Man’s house and holds him at gunpoint. CSM wants to spare Fox’s life. Mulder wants no part of it.

Tad continues to expose his conspiracy theories, which seem to be coming true but still sound so freakin’ wacky. The hospitals are overwhelmed and losing main power. Einstein gets information but not any help from the Center for Disease Control. Dana, based on information from Monica, hopes to use her protected blood to save others from the “Spartan Virus.” Too bad the hospital doctors are now getting sick too. In fact, poor O'Malley and his crew are also ill. So are Miller and Mulder. 

Miller doesn’t seem amused by Cancer Man and rescues Fox. CSM follows them outside with a gun but instead of shooting them, he tells Miller to tell Mulder goodbye for him. Back in the hospital, Scully is working alone to create the serum since Einstein is feverish. Miller calls Dana to let her know he has Fox and is heading her way. Scully finishes the cure and prepares doses for Einstein and the other doctors. O’Malley laments mankind going out with a whimper. 

Scully tries to stop looting and encourages people to go to the hospitals for vaccines. She’s trying to get to Mulder but the roads are gridlocked. Miller and Fox are back in the D.C. area but they’re stuck in traffic. Dana finds them but thinks Mulder is too sick for her serum to save him. He needs stem cells from William, the son she gave up for adoption. But before she can even try to figure out where to start looking for him, a UFO appears because, you know, this is The X-Files.

Sestra Professional: 

My best memory of watching "My Struggle II" for the first time involves being one of the first to comment on social media about the episode's opening teaser posted during the halftime show of the 2016 Super Bowl. I had the top post on the official X-Files Facebook page, and someone from the XF team even responded to me. As it was a literal teaser, it didn't stay on the site long, disappearing like Monica Reyes' drive and determination to the annals of time.

"My Struggle II" just continuously reminded me of when and how the show used to do everything so much better. Like Sestra Am, I don't really like voiceover monologues as a plot device. Even in the heyday, they were clunky and overutilized big words no one ever uses on a day-to-day basis. I did think Morris Fletcher's in 'Dreamland II" (Season 6, Episode 5) was pretty stellar, though. Nevertheless, I did recognize the beginning teasers as serviceable tools for the greater good. Dana's to start this episode? It was just basically a more colorful way of doing "Previously on," which was also tacked on there anyway. Oh well, it had been a while since someone used the word "debunk."

So while every tried-and-true X-Files fan -- and even the most casual observer -- knew of the history that brought Scully to this point, the idea of morphing her head into an alien was something that wasn't on our radar. Here I'll insert a special caveat for any artist/fanfic writer who had done such a thing. What I mean there is just based on the standard viewing habits of your common household X-phile. I do wish the alien head was a little more shadowy, as though shown in a dearth of light, and didn't rely so heavily on CGI.

Long ago, seemingly in a galaxy far away, the mythology stories used to be the ones the fan base waited on. Whatever the Cigarette Smoking Man and his cronies were up to, that was what we wanted to see, and all the monster episodes were just stopgaps between the greater story. For me, that ended somewhere in the sixth season. I was watching more for the bottle episodes, and rolling my eyes when the Syndicate played into the action. Note: I did give it more of a pass when Alex Krycek was around, but those appearances got more sporadic as Nicholas Lea got his own series work. 

The biggest failing of "My Struggle II" is the absence of Mulder and Scully together on the canvas for most of the show. In fact, there's kind of an overall dearth of Fox period. That was all fine and dandy for Season 9, it doesn't play as well in a six-episode revival. David Duchovny does get to show off what fine shape he was still in during a fight scene that brings Mulder back into his real father's orbit. But Sestra Am made a fine point about Fox's computer and phone tracker earlier, these are certainly not footprints such a paranoid personality would leave behind.

I made certain choices: And the second biggest failing would have to be the change that's come over Monica Reyes in the ensuing years. Even with the alleged flashback to how she joined forces with Cigarette Smoking Man, we're missing the person I once deemed as the most forthright straight shooter in the show's history through the end of the regular run. This person bears little resemblance to that woman, although I suppose we get a glimmer of it in the fact that Reyes clues Scully in on what's actually going on.

This episode makes better use of Dana than we've seen in some time, although it's a little surprising she can't recognize the voice of the woman who delivered her baby on the phone. After discerning that something may have been given to each and every human being who got a smallpox vaccine, Scully listens to Einstein's input, she doesn't discount her outright. Dana is working the problem, and unlike the way Fox would play it, she does take Einstein's theory that something is being removed from DNA and not added into account.

When this first aired, the possibility of measles, mumps, rubella ... basically anything and everything at the same time seemed like some scary but outrageous science fiction. But now in the wake of coronavirus and all its variants with monkey pox coming up behind it, it seems downright prescient. I'm longing for the days when all our heroes were called upon to do was clear a building under a bomb threat.

You don't want to believe: I'm willing to buy Cigarette Smoking Man's premise of depopulating the planet with science given by aliens. Of course, there's the trademark pontifications penned by Chris Carter (with assistance from science advisor Anne Simon and Margaret Fearon) about how the hottest year on record, bird population and decimation of megafauna has nothing to do with CSM's machinations. I'm not quite sure why the master manipulator would want to restart the world with the two people who have given him the most trouble, I guess he's assuming they would fall in line the way Reyes ridiculously did.

I was today years old when I put together how close the words Dana and DNA are to each other. That seems like something I should have picked up on eons again. Scully realizes what needs to be done to literally save a world suffering from widespread depleted and/or disappeared immune systems. It all gets a little too scientific for me. Even with my advanced Orphan Black genome knowledge, the explanation starts to elude my grasp.

What I do understand is the advice to stay indoors. If only all these people had masked up and worked from home. We had knee-jerk reactions to that happening when COVID shut everything down, but it prevented an even more pervasive kind of spread happening on this episode.

And that brings us to the climactic scene. You would think Scully would try to treat Mulder with the IV she brought with her while trying to solve the greater problem of locating their child for his stem cells. But there was no time for that ultimately, as a UFO dramatically appears overhead. I didn't consider it a godsend when the episode originally aired. I thought it was the aliens having intel on what was needed and appearing at that moment. As we'll soon find out, it wasn't that. It was ... other.

Guest star of the week: When the revival started, Joel McHale gave the proceedings a jump-start with the forthright decisiveness of Tad O'Malley. We recognized his character from an array of conspiracy theorists we inevitably run across in our daily lives. That made it all the more impactful as the reality of the situation dawned upon Tad here.

If not for her...

Growing up in the '70s and '80s, Olivia Newton-John was part of the fabric of our lives. In the mid-'70s, the British-born Australian chanteuse's songs were everywhere on the radio, on the pop stations the Sestras listened to and on the country station Mom turned on whenever we were in the car. "If Not for You," "Let Me Be There," "If You Love Me (Let Me Know)," "I Honestly Love You," "Have You Never Been Mellow" and "Please Mr. Please" were tunes we knew as well as the informative ditties on Schoolhouse Rock. In 1978, Grease indeed was the word. Don't know how many times we saw the all-time biggest grossing movie musical, but Mom bought the soundtrack LP and many hours were spent in the bedroom trying to figure out why the dialogue in the fotonovel did not match what was said in the movie. Xanadu was considered a flop, but we loved it too, as it was released in the time when hanging out in roller rinks was part of the social scene. Totally Hot was one of the first albums Sestra Paige remembers buying. And then MTV landed in 1981, and "Physical" took over. It was No. 1 for about a billion years (actually 10 weeks, but it was the top song of the '80s).

But it wasn't until later that we realized what a gem Olivia really was to the world. She canceled a concert tour to protest the slaughter of dolphins. She became a spokesperson for many causes, including UNICEF and the United Nations' environment program, and when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she never ceased to try to continue raising awareness through her participation in so many different programs and agencies. The reason why her participation was so crucial was because everyone respected Olivia. Even if her music wasn't your bag, odds are you appreciated her. Over the years, that's been evident on the pop culture front. Moviemakers, show runners and musicians still tap into that easy, breezy Olivia feel that paints a picture quicker than pages and pages of dialogue. Everything from Lost to The Simpsons (twice) made use of her magic. With that in mind, the Sestras picked out 10 of our fave ONJ-flavored moments from movies, TV and music.

Sestra Leah

I Honestly Love You -- Jaws (1975)
I have seen Jaws A LOT. I let it run in the background when it’s on TV. Sestra plays it whenever I visit. We repeat so many lines for comedic value, but over the years, I still managed to miss something. (Don’t you love when that happens?) I recently rewatched the scene of Chief Brody and wife Ellen enjoying their day at the beach moments before poor Alex Kintner becomes a bloody geyser of horror. I was this many years old when I heard Olivia’s "I Honestly Love You" playing on a transistor radio in the background of their conversation. How have I never heard that before? (The Daily Jaws knew, of course, and the site recently featured the song's inclusion in tribute to Olivia.) And the tune really sets the tone for the timeline in the movie. I – or you -- probably heard that very same song playing on a radio at the beach or pool when we were kids, and it’s such an innocent prelude to what is about to happen. Good call, music supervisor.

 

Over the Rainbow – Face/Off (1997)
Everybody knows John Travolta and Olivia starred together in Grease. Fewer people know they had a second movie together called Two of a Kind. But there are other projects to which both contributed. Like in Face/Off, starring Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Sure, Olivia didn’t act in this one, but it’s her angelic voice you hear singing a rendition of "Over the Rainbow." The pivotal scene involves a slow-motion shootout in which Cage – as Travolta’s character, I believe. I really should watch this whole movie someday – and Gina Gershon, the kid’s mother, are trying to keep her kid calm amongst all the carnage. They play Olivia’s song over the boy’s headphones while they try to escape. It works, even if the plot sounds more far-fetched than Danny and Sandy flying a car into the clouds or angels using two thieves to decide the fate of the human race.

Hopelessly Devoted to You – Pushing Daisies Season 1/Episode 2 (2007)
Who would be brave enough to try and out-Sandy the one and only ONJ? Why, Wicked’s Kristin Chenoweth, of course. Kristin played Olive Snook on ABC’s short-lived, but charmingly creative series Pushing Daisies. Olive was in love with her boss, Ned, who was in love with his childhood friend Charlotte (aka Chuck). Olive's unrequited love storyline was established in the series premiere, but for the second episode, Kristin drove home the point by singing about her woes to formerly dead dog Digby, while dealing with intruding, wannabe customers and swaying with the restaurant’s floor buffer. You can really feel Olive’s pain through the absurdity of the scene, and Kristin recently shared hers about the loss of Olivia on Instagram.

We Go Together – The Big Bang Theory Season 5/Episode 17 (2012)
Grease was the word when the female characters on The Big Bang Theory – Penny, Amy and Bernadette – watched the iconic movie because Amy had never seen it before. (Turns out, her overprotective mother was worried it would encourage Amy to join a gang.) But the show’s love affair with Grease continued in 2016, when the cast appeared live for A Night at Sardi’s, a musical revue and awards dinner that raises money for the Alzheimer’s Association. The seven main cast members sang a medley of "You’re the One that I Want" and "We Go Together" for a live audience. Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar embodied John Travolta while Kaley Cuoco, Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch performed their best Olivia, all in the name of charity. ONJ would have been proud.

Twist of Fate – Stranger Things Season 2/Episode 9 (2017)
Stranger Things has made its bread and butter by feeding on our need for nostalgia. Every season features something memorable from our generation’s childhood. Of course, they have a bad habit of using songs that weren’t released yet (looking at you, Cutting Crew, Bangles and multi-season offender Moby). But when they use music we grew up listening to while hanging out at the mall, riding bikes with our friends or playing games, it takes us back. The second-season finale brought us to the Hawkins Middle School’s Snow Ball, where we get to enjoy ONJ’s "Twist of Fate" while watching dressed-to-the-nines-but-nervous Dusty enter this unfamiliar territory and seeing poor Steve gaze longingly at his ex-girlfriend Nancy. (The second scene has more impact if you rooted for “Stancy” all through Season 4.) It’s too bad they went with "Time after Time" instead of ONJ and Cliff Richard’s ballad "Suddenly." That would have been perfect for the slow-dancing scene with the kids. But some ONJ is better than none, right?

Sestra Paige

Xanadu -- WKRP in Cincinnati Season 3/Episode 13 (1981)
One thing you pick up on very quickly in reviewing the array of pop-culture possibilities is Olivia's sense of fun. She was never adverse to sending up her image, and that will be a recurring theme in my picks. But it's never more glaringly apparent than on the WKRP episode "Dr. Fever and Mr. Tide (Part 1)." DJ Johnny Fever, always vocal on the show about his hatred for disco, was booked to host a Cincinnati dance program "Gotta Dance." When Johnny realized he wasn't going to get to play rock and roll, he adopted an alternate personality -- Rip Tide -- to do his dirty work for him. The Ripper starts off his first gig by introducing "Miss Oblivious Neutron Bomb" as "Xanadu" starts to play. In a red-sequined disco outfit, Rip lets loose with a wild sequence of twirls and dance moves that we just know were lying in dormant in Johnny Fever for far too long.

 

Please Mr. Please -- Primary Colors (1998)
In Mike Nichols' thinly veiled comedy about a politician who seems destined for the presidency if he can just get out of his own way -- ya, Bill Clinton without the Clinton name -- candidate Jack Stanton (John Travolta) calls upon the services of naive campaign manager Henry Burton (Adrian Lester) and irascible fixer Libby Holden (Oscar-nominated Kathy Bates) to uncover Stanton scandals before they happen. Even though she's just out of a mental hospital, Libby is great at multitasking. While driving her truck, she can talk business while singing along with "Please Mr. Please" on the radio. The movie's toughest-talking character's even gets Henry -- the least likely character to be warbling an ONJ song on the canvas -- to sing along for a bit.

Have You Never Been Mellow -- Veronica Mars Season 3/Episode 9 (2006)
When an Olivia song pops up in the middle of something you're watching, it's a background buoy. Her voice is mellifluous and soothing without being grating or cloying. So in essence, it's like the musical version of an old friend. That can be used to great effect in heightening a scene's tone, stakes are heightened by her very presence. Sestra Leah mentioned that with Jaws, and it's also accomplished to great effect in "Spit & Eggs." Dean Cyrus O'Dell (Ed Begley Jr.) has just made a controversial decision that doesn't protect Veronica Mars and the other girls on campus. As he drives away, the soundtrack cuts back and forth from the frat boys' head-banging music to O'Dell playing "Have You Never Been Mellow" in his car. He's egged by the denizens of Lilith House as Olivia sings about having "your head up in the clouds." It was true of the dean, and something he paid for dearly at the end of the episode.

Physical -- Glee Season 1/Episode 17 (2010)
To this day, "Physical" is still widely used in pop culture. But I can't think of a better instance of the ubiquitous '80s hit getting airplay than in "Bad Reputation." Members of the Glee Club stumble across a video of McKinley High School cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) recreating the legendary "Physical" music video WITH Olivia. The show went all-out on production values, with the whole brightly colored workout room motif recalling the era pitch perfectly. Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley) and company are really tickled by it, and it's impossible not to agree with them. Olivia also guested on the season finale, "Journey to Regionals," showcasing her willingness to send up her image, but if you ask me, they went a little too far. I find it easier to believe in Xanadu muses than the idea that Olivia was disturbed by the fact that more groups didn't cover her material.

Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John -- Juliana Hatfield (2018)
I never made the connection between Olivia and the Boston-based musician who broke out as a solo artist in the '90s until this tribute album came out. Once it did, it seemed almost too obvious. As Juliana grew up in the same time frame as we did, it wasn't a big surprise to find out she was mightily influenced by ONJ. Sure, the Blake Babies and Lemonheads veteran's sound is a little grittier, but at the core, the voices and the sentiments align perfectly. In culling together this album (which offered a portion of the sales to the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre), Juliana perfectly straddled the line between reminding the listener of the originals and making them her own. She included six of the songs on our list, also delivering a sizzling cover of "Make a Move on Me" while spotlighting a couple of lesser-known songs in ONJ's catalog -- "Don't Stop Believin'" (no, not THAT ONE) and "Dancin' Round and Round." But I don't want to play favorites. Every track is a gem and she avoids all the possible pitfalls to deliver the ultimate tribute.