The Fractal Hall Journal

Gillian Anderson’s performance is brilliant, highlighting once again how Hollywood hasn’t found a single actress of her calibre since she was first cast as Scully. Why don’t female characters in film or TV appear to be any good? Because “acting ability” just isn’t considered to be any where near as important as finding a pretty little thing to hang off the hero’s arm. Scully’s one of the greatest female characters ever created, and played by a top class actress. Let’s face it, a character like this is never going to come along again.

There’s one bit, where Scully walks in late to a meeting where the head of her hospital is about to override her decision regarding one of her patients. For a second, I thought the scene was going to go badly south, because it looked like Scully was going to let it slide. You can see every emotion on Anderson’s face, every single missed opportunity and sacrifice she’s had to made over the past decade, every doubt that haunts her. The thing is, I’ve seen too many female characters react by letting something like this slide, then later on (for example) sneaking back to give the patient the treatment anyway. Because that’s just how women behave, isn’t it, Hollywood?

Not Scully, thank fuck. She puts her foot down, reminding all of us that she doesn’t take shit from anyone. It’s a fucking brilliant scene, and don’t try and tell me there’s a single female character in any other movie this year who gets treated with anything approaching the respect Scully does.

She’s completely the heart of the film, and it’s such a damned shame that this film is going to be dismissed just because it doesn’t have enough aliens in it. She convinces Mulder to get involved because it gives him a chance to be pardoned, for them to finally get their lives back, only to watch him get too involved, for both of them to get close to something so unimaginably dark that it taints both them and their relationship. That’s pretty heavy stuff, and something that’s stayed with me long after I left the cinema, something I couldn’t really say about the first film. I have to admit, in plot terms at the start I was a bit worried that it was looking like Carter was just doing another serial killer thing, as if what he really wanted to do was Millennium: The Movie, but when the weird-science twist becomes apparent, like a bolt of lightning we suddenly believe, absolutely, that we’re watching the X-Files once more.

There are negatives, of course. There’s a possible suggestion that being abused as a child makes you catch gay, which is incredibly ignorant. On a fannish level, Mulder gets pardoned far too easily, considering all the shit that went down in the final episode of S9. Does a low-level agent like the one who asks for his help really have that much pull with a military court? If I can get all fan-fictiony for a moment, I’m going to go ahead and assume that because the original trial was so mickey mouse he was acquitted of murder in his absence (maybe with the off-screen help of Doggett and Reyes? Oh, God yes! Fan Wank Supreme!), but was still being chased on the lesser charge of escaping from custody. I can just about believe the Bureau would let that charge go in exchange for helping them find a kidnapped agent.

But, all-in-all, this really is a disturbing, fascinating, engaging film, one that embraces the themes of the original series and takes the characters into darker psychological territory, all the while reminding us why we liked them so much, and cared so much about what happened to them. It’s a far better encapsulation of the show than the first film, and one that to my mind shows how relevant the X-Files remain.

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Before we carry on, I have to admit something. Of all the films that came out in 2007, the one I liked most by a fair distance was Transformers. I must have watched it half a dozen times since getting the DVD. The last time I watched a film this much was Terminator 2 and I was 12. And I’m pretty sure I can argue that it’s objectively a better film than, say, Ghost Rider (which I also kind of liked), although some might say that’s a bit like arguing that punching myself in the stomach is objectively better than punching myself in the cock.

I’m having trouble recalling what my point is.

Wait, what I mean is that my subjective opinion of Transformers is utterly useless to anyone, because it’s a film most consider to be utterly crap that I don’t even have to convince myself I like. Star Wars die-hards may have to convince themselves to like any of the prequel trilogy, but I don’t even have to do that. I think it’s fair to say that Hasbro’s early-age indoctrination systems are awesome and terrible in their power.

I bring this up because what you need to understand is that I know what I’m like. There are things that even I don’t trust my own opinion on. Transformers is one of them. The X-Files, despite the months-long Nostalgia Trip, is not.

And I honestly think that the new X-Files film is objectively a very good film.

Look, I know what bad X-Files episodes are like. I’ve sat through every single one of them. I know the ones where continuity is too dense, where the writers get all strung out on how fucking deep and meaningful they are, where Burt Reynolds turns up and acts like a twat. This is not a bad episode.

Problem One, perhaps, appears here. Because it is very much an episode in an ongoing story. That’s not to say it’s impossible to follow if you’re not familiar with the show, as they tell you everything you need to know and avoid any mention of the unimaginably tangled backstory. It’s not even that it looks like a tv show- they may have not had a big budget, but it doesn’t look any cheaper than, say, Gone Baby Gone. In fact, I’d say the look of the film holds up very well next to your typical serial killer/cop drama film, as that’s more obviously the vibe Chris Carter was aiming for rather than the Independence Day stylings of the first X-Files film. No, if it fails anywhere it’s in not giving new viewers, or lapsed viewers, a reason to root for Mulder and Scully.

That’s probably the wrong way of putting it. In an average adventure movie (again, like the first one), you don’t really need to know anything more than X is a bad guy, Y and Z are good guys, you can tell because Y and Z are all funny, cool and attractive and X is shooting at them. You hop on the rollercoaster, things blow up real pretty, and by the end Z has won, X is dead and Y has sacrificed themselves heroically. But, even though theres a set of horrible baddies in I Want To Believe, that’s not what the film’s about. The film’s about Scully, how she relates to Mulder, how her life has irrevocably changed over the past six years, the kind of life she wants to lead, and all the things she’s lost and sacrifices she’s made. Most importantly, it’s about her faith; religious faith, sure, but also faith in Mulder and faith in herself.

And that’s the problem. I think most people want to see her and Mulder decapitating werewolves and shootin’ down UFOs and super soldiers. I think that’s what most people went in to the cinema expecting to see. But that just isn’t the story Carter wanted to tell. That’s where the familiarity with the whole arc of the previous 9 series comes in handy, and that’s what has doomed this film. I’ve got a reason to root for Scully. I don’t necessarily think that anyone coming into the film cold does, or rather I think that because they’re expectations are not being met, they don’t give the story a chance.

Scully’s always been the main character, really. I mean, it’s great to see Mulder again, but he’s essentially a manchild who can’t ever get beyond an obsession with The Truth. The show’s really about Scully’s life, and how she deals with the drama caused by an obsessive who can’t let dangerous weirdness go.

Where the film is different from the series is how dark it gets, and I don’t mean in terms of gore (there are far gorier episodes) but rather in theme. Billy Connolly (who isn’t that bad, thank fuck) plays a paedophile who may be psychic, and the film doesn’t ever shy away from the revulsion the characters feel for relying on such a man. In fact, the way that [spoiler] Mulder wants to give the man credit towards the end shows how far his obsession with The Truth goes; it’s irrelevant to him what his crimes were, however vile. His insights helped to catch the bad guys, and no matter how unpalatable that truth is, to Mulder the truth trumps everything. I think this is an important take on the character, one they couldn’t really pull off on the show. We’ve always taken it as read that The Truth is the most important thing of all. This film confronts us with a truth that is abhorrent.

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“Release” is an episode that gives a rushed conclusion to Doggett’s story arc. I’d assumed it had been put to rest when it turns out an Evil Force killed his son (as seen in Series 8), but apparently there must have been plans to extend the plot a little, including the random involvement of Suddenly On The Take Smarmy Agent Follmer. The episode doesn’t quite hold together perfectly- there’s a serial killer plot that’s never quite explained, Smarmy Follmer’s emergence as a mob employee really does come out of nowhere, and I’m not sure there needed to be even more improbable layers to the murder of Luke Doggett. And Reyes (again? They needed to undermine her again?) is shown to have galatically poor judgement when it turns out she knew Follmer was taking money from organised crime but did nothing about it for three years.

But again, the faults can be ignored because we’re watching John Doggett deal with an unimaginable amount of frustration and pain, to finally earn some closure. Robert Patrick owns the episode, and it’s a good wrap-up for a character I’ve really, really grown to like. There’s a hopeful note regarding Reyes and Doggett’s relationship right at the end, and it’s a credit to the actors (and the creators) that we really want the characters to have a future together.

“Sunshine Days” is a piss-poor comedy effort centred around the fucking Brady Bunch, of all things, and is better off being ignored. Who the fuck thought this made a better penultimate episode for a show like this than the previous? Another example of the questionable judgement that sank the series.

“The Truth” is the biggie, the one that has all the answers. And it does, really. And to be fair, it’s not like they didn’t give us the info we’d need to puzzle it out ourselves, it’s just that with all the dead-ends and abandoned plot lines (like the old guy from the movie who ran that company and was never heard from again) we need Carter to strip out the insignificant bollocks that’s built up. That said, it pretty much all went in one ear and out the other, so if you want a comprehensive recap you should probably watch the episode. The first hour is practically a clip show, so we’re talking about a seriously laboured amount of voice-over exposition here. The final 30 minutes, surrounding Mulder’s breakout and the unnecessary reintroduction of Cancer Man, only for him to get nuked by a helicopter gunship, is exciting enough. But the important bits of the episode are in the small, quiet moments.

Like when Mulder and Scully get a decent reunion scene. Like the funny moments between Mulder and Skinner. Like the ghosts of X, Krycek and the Gunmen returning to help Mulder one last time. Like when we realise that Marita Covarrubias really was on Mulder’s side, all along, and that X hadn’t died in vain (that said, I suspect this was a little bit of a retcon on Carter’s part, but it’s a good one). And finally, it ends with Mulder and Scully alone in a motel room, echoing the conversation they had in the motel room in the very first episode that was the true beginning of their partnership. And there’s certainly hope, here. From what I remember, the final episode was criticised for being open-ended and inconclusive, even down-beat, but I don’t really think it is. Because Cancer Man hasn’t destroyed Mulder’s faith, and now we know The Truth. Yes, the invasion is going ahead, but now they know the alien’s weakness, and where to find a mineful of kryptonite. Sure, they’re on the run, but there’s every reason to believe they will find a way to halt colonisation.

Scully: You’ve always said that you want to believe. But believe in what Mulder? If this is the truth that you’ve been looking for then what is left to believe in?

Mulder: I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us, greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.

Scully: Then we believe the same thing.

Mulder: Maybe there’s hope.

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“Improbable” completes the excremental trifecta of Worst X-Files Episodes Of All Time, taking its stinky seat with “Rain King” and “Fight Club”. I think I’m at the point where it’s impossible to distinguish which one is worse. They just seem to meld into one huge effluvial turd. There’s pointless song-and-dance scenes, an utterly bollocks plot about numerology that makes the main characters look like credulous buffoons, cringeworthy dialogue and Burt Reynolds on irritating form shaking his tired old arse at the camera. And by “irriating”, I mean “like fibreglass powder to the bumhole”. But ultimately, the biggest sin these episodes commit, besides being comedy episodes that aren’t funny, is being just plain boring.

Fractal Fact: Reynolds isn’t the first film star to turn up unexpectedly. Other “wait, isnt that…?” moments on the Nostalgia Trip have included Shia LeBeouf as a dying kid, and one of the Wayans brothers as a copper.

Six episodes left of the series, and it finally gets good. Apart from the occasional decent scene, the S9 really has been inessential to say the least. By this point, surely they must have realised they were going to be cancelled, if only to give them a chance to write a suitable finale? If they’d have pulled their fingers out earlier, maybe they could’ve delayed the axe and given a Doggett/Reyes continuation a chance.

“Scary Monsters” is the first one of S9 that really feels like an X-File, a really creepy tale of monstrous crawleys attacking a family in a remote house. Every main character gets something interesting to do (even if, once again, Reyes has to be the agent who needs saving), and there’s a hilarious bit where Scully does a post-mortem on a cat in a takeaway tray. Compared to the embarrassing attempt at humour of the last episode, it shows how the show can be funny without having the main characters look like fucking idiots. “Jump The Shark” is meant to be the final episode of “The Lone Gunmen” spin-off, and isn’t very good. Every other LG episode was really good, strong enough to make me want to watch a show based on the characters. This one just falls a bit flat, with an absolutely awful performance from the British actress/assassin who was a regular on the other show, and if it’s a fair reflection of the other 10 episodes or so, I don’t think I really want to watch it. And to top everything, they kill off the nerds, which is really shitty. I mean, Mulder doesn’t even turn up at the funeral. In fact, the send-off is so poor (plus, you don’t actually see them buy it) I’m just going to get in a fanboy huff and assume they’re not really dead.

“William” is a very good arc episode, suffering from none of the unnecessary complexities of the rest of the super-soldier storyline. It’s simple and heartbreaking, a tale about family and trust, about how Scully has to give up William for adoption because otherwise he will never be safe. The central mystery- is a hideously scarred man who knows a lot about the X-Files really Mulder?- is intriguing, and the twist about his true identity is executed perfectly. Because the man is Jeffrey Spender, close enough genetically to Mulder to cloud his DNA test, and on a mission to save his nephew, by injecting William with a compound made from super-soldier kryptonite that turns him into a normal baby.

There are a few outstanding questions- when did Spender and Mulder (and Skinner, for that matter) find out Cancer Man really was Mulder’s father? It was mentioned in a dream sequence in S6, but never followed up on, so presumably the realisation and fallout happened off-screen. Did everyone think Spender was dead after his father shot him in the X-Files basement, and if so why were the two agents never creeped out that Mudler’s brother got blown away in their workplace? Or did they all assume he’d done a bunk? And finally, why does Scully think her son would be safer with people who don’t have clue about the dangerous soldiers who are hunting him? I assume that, somehow, she knows that they won’t be able to locate him now he doesn’t have any super powers. These are all minor points, however, in a really standout episode.

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“John Doe” is a pretty interesting episode where Doggett’s memory gets wiped, and he’s lost in a mob-run town in Mexico. It’s filmed in a gritty, washed-out fashion, more in keeping with The Unit, say, than the X-Files, and it really does show how long the programme’s been running. I mean, the difference in production quality between this episode and the pilot is enormous. It’s a good episode for Robert Patrick, giving him a lot to do, including a devestating scene where Reyes has to tell the amnesiac Doggett that his son is dead, meaning he gets to go through the most traumatising event any parent can be faced with twice. If there’s a weakness here, it’s that the episode is (like “4-D” and “Daemonicus”) tries to subvert the status-quo. Sure, this is something the X-Files was known for in the latter half of the run, with mixed success, but it strikes me as a little daft at the point because we don’t really know what the status-quo is at this point.

“Hellbound” is the usual religious hokum the show is so fond of, this time centred around Reyes. Slowly, we’re just about learning what the character’s about, but there’s still too much angst and crying, this time due to the possibility that she’s doomed to repeat the mistakes of her previous lives over and over. Again, what made Mulder and Scully so interesting was the way that it was the bloke who was usually the impulsive, emotional wreck, with Scully being the level headed one. Sliding back to cliched gender norms is not helping this series. Oh, also, continuity error- we’ve already established that reincarnation in the X-Universe occurs at the moment of conception, not birth. Stick that in your wok and stir it, programme from six years ago.

I’m not sure exactly what, if anything, really happened in the two parter “Providence/Provenance”. Yet another UFO cult turns up, someone else wants to kill William, etc., etc. Fucking Jim Robinson from Neighbours turns up. My God, who decided that he should get a big time Hollywood career? 24, Star Trek, Lost, it’s like I can’t switch the telly on without seeing his fucking face. And his American accent stinks.

Hold on, where was I?

Right, UFO cult. Apparently, there’s a prophecy that says William is going to be a super-powerful messiah that will stop the invasion, but only if Mulder’s still alive. A rogue FBI agent thinks Mulder’s dead, so wants to kill William because now the UFO cult will kidnap the child and raise him to be on the alien’s side. Then he gets killed. And they kidnap William. But then the buried UFO the cult has dug up takes off, and burns up all the baddies but leaving William alive. Making the whole two parter pointless and incomprehensible. Dear Scully, losing your child but having it all turn out OK anyway is not a valid care plan.

“Audrey Pauley” is the first Reyes episode I really enjoyed, with some great work from Gish and Doggett. It’s a little odd the way they’re hinting that the two are attracted to one another (in “Daemonicus” it was hinted that Doggett was attracted to Scully, and that wasn’t that long ago. Maybe Doggett’s just a hound dog), in that the subtext was present in “4-D” but has been ignored in every episode since, but from this episode on, it is at least addressed. “Underneath” is mediocre and notable only in that, for once, Doggett is the believer. It’s a new take on the Scully/Mulder Skeptic/Believer reversal that used to happen whenever religion came into it, but in S9 takes the form of Reyes believing any old shit except when it comes to murder cases her partner was involved with in the past. Which is a bit prickish on her part, actually. The writers really don’t want anyone to warm to her, it seems.

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And here we are, finally. The very last series.

There’s a shiny new starting sequence, and I kind of like it. It’s in keeping with the previous one, while also having a more modern coat of paint. Also, the pictures of the leads on the ID cards don’t look grotesquely distorted, as they have in previous years. And Mitch Pileggi finally gets on the credits, and it’s amazing that it’s taken so long, considering how important Walter Skinner’s become. From the off, it’s obvious that someone thought that the series could have functioned without Mulder and Scully.

The only problem in this respect is Monica Reyes. She just isn’t even given that much to do. Her only quirk from Series 8- that she was finding it impossible to quit smoking- disappears, giving her absolutely no other distinguishing characteristic. I’m glad they play down her psychic-ness, but it just kind of leaves her standing around, slack jawed with shock at all the crazy goings on. Also, she really doesn’t have that much chemistry with Doggett, which just underlines how much, even in its darkest, grimmest moments, the series relied on the humour and dialogue between the previous FBI agents. And by that, I don’t mean the funny episodes (oh God, do I not mean the funny episodes), but rather the quips and digs that were so much a part of Mulder and Scully’s relationship.

Mind you, the fault here really does lie with Doggett’s character. He’s just not set up for the humour, and this showed through in S8, too. Because it’s easy to forget that Scully could be just as funny as Mulder, in the early years in particular, but that kind of interaction just doesn’t work with Doggett. It’s a shame the writers couldn’t find a way around this, because it turns out that Doggett’s a great character, one that’s improved a huge amount since his half-baked introduction.

“Nothing Important Happened Today” is a run-of-the-mill arc episode that introduces Reyes’ smarmy former lover and new Assistant Director Follmer, played by Cary Elwes. Because what Reyes needs really needs in the first episode where she’s a main character is to be undermined by an appaling taste in friends. Also, it turns out Doggett’s former army buddies are now unstoppable super-soldiers, engineered either by the former conspiracy or the aliens to assist in colonisation. They appear to be the group who’ve stepped into the power vacuum following the destruction of the Syndicate back in S6.

“Daemonicus” is a run-of-the-mill serial killer episode where the baddie, Josef Kobold (ah, nice, I see what you did there. Clever clever wordplay, you clever clever lot you), gets away at the end. Presumably, he was intended to become Doggett’s Pfaster, but the show’s cancellation meant he’s never seen again. The only things that stand out are echoes of “Irresistable/Orison” in the way the serial killers appear as demons in certain shots, and the overly-flashy camera work. I guess someone was angling for an Emmy.

“4-D” isn’t so much run-of-the-mill as a load of old crap. It’s the first episode that rests on Reyes’ shoulders, and frankly she’s just not interesting enough to carry it. It’s got a silly, reset-button, parallel-world-skipping premise, and has Reyes getting outwitted, screaming, crying a bit, and generally being a bit wet. This is a theme that the character gets lumbered with pretty much for the rest of the series. In short, she gets everything that Gillian Anderson never had to put up with, a stereotypical weak female that I never thought the X-Files’ producers would introduce. For fuck’s sake, of all the programmes ever made, surely the one you’d think as being above this crap is the one that gave us Dana Scully? And believe me, I don’t for a second think it’s actress Annabeth Gish’s fault, because I remember her being pretty good on The West Wing. She’s just given absolutely nothing cool, memorable or even useful to do.

“Lord Of The Flies” is a monster-of-the-week that falls flat because it’s largely a satire of Jackass. Oh, pop culture references, you do date so. “Trust No 1″ is an alright arc tie-in that kind of moves the William plotline forward, in that it confirms that Scully and Mulder have slept together in a really creepy scene where Locke from Lost tells Scully he’s been spying on her for years. The subtext seems to be that William was conceived the old fashioned way rather than via IVF, with his alien-ness coming from either post-conception engineering, whatever got unlocked in Mulder’s genome back during “Biogenesis/The Sixth Extinction”, or both. But I’ll be honest, who the fuck knows by this point? There’s a big old copout ending where we find out that a certain type of magnetic ore is the super soldiers’ kryptonite.

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So far, Series 8 has turned out to be better than I expected, even if it did stink a bit at first. Doggett has finally turned out to be a pretty cool character, even if the banter between Scully and Mulder is badly missed. I have to stay, it’s still a very well-written show, much better than most things on the box.

Mulder’s return is perhaps a little underwhelming. It’s not that it’s been handled particularly badly (certainly not as badly as the S8 openers), it’s just that we know he’s going to be going again, so it’s a pretty hollow return. And like I mentioned in the last X-Files post, all his antagonism towards Doggett does is alienate both of them from the viewers, a huge mishandling of the situation considering that the very premise of the show was changing, and that Chris Carter was on record as saying that the show could continue to run even without the two lead characters.

Here’s the question- could the series have continued without Mulder and Scully? Without having seen the final series yet, I’d have to say a cautious yes, even if Reyes’ appearances have been underwhelming. Doggett could certainly have carried the show, but it would have been a very different thing. Then again, I’ve said more than once that the middle-third of the show’s run was hugely different to the very first series.

There’s two things that scuppered the X-Files’ future on TV- three if you include the September 11th attacks. For a while there everyone lost their taste for portentious disaster programming, and would rather get behind their government than endlessly question and mistrust officials. Subsequent events have shown that there’s no more important time to be doing those things than in the wake of horrific events, of course, and I suspect it’s no coincidence that a new X-Files movie’s on the cards now that recent years have proven that the politically powerful have no problem with lying, frequently and outrageously, to get their way.

The other factors were the alienation of long-term fans following the departure of the lead characters, something that was handled very poorly and without much enthusiasm, but also I suspect there was some fatigue on the part of the writing staff. After all, how much can you write about aliens and monsters week in week out before getting sick to death of the whole thing? The show would probably have needed some new blood to continue, and I’m not sure how likely that would have been.

“Empedocles” has Reyes returning, along with her (ugh) psychic power, but does at least give us some insight into Doggett’s past. Again he comes to blows with Mulder, and there’s a little subtext here about why Doggett can’t bring himself to believe in weird X-Filey shit (because it would suggest he didn’t do everything he could’ve to save his own son) but it’s an unsatisfying episode overall, with very little resolution offered to ongoing mysteries (such as Scully’s difficult pregnancy) or the central mystery of the episode- was Doggett’s son really killed by the personification of infectious evil?

“Vienen” is a far better episode, again showing the writers at their strongest when they isolate the characters in some way, this time on an oil rig. Oddly enough, it’s also the last episode I can recall seeing before the Nostalgia Trip began, when it was shown on FX in the daytime sometime last year. Doggett and Mulder are forced to work together against an outbreak of Purity/Black Oil, with Mulder finally learning to trust Doggett, and that the X-Files themselves are in the right hands now that Mulder’s finally got himself booted from the Bureau for essentially causing an international incident. The handover scene is handled well, and overall it’s a success, even if all the plot threads don’t hang together (why did the bad guys torch the rig at the end? Did the alien craft turn up to carrying them off as was hinted at?) and it’s not really clear why Mulder’s decided he can trust Doggett just because “he’s seen it now”.

“Essence” and “Existence” finish off the series, and are absolutely cracking. The negatives first: the plot isn’t completely comprehensible. It’s not clear at all what the motives of the bad guys are, here. It would seem that the alien replacements (which Mulder almost became) are “super-soldiers”, Terminator-style baddies that will stop at nothing to blah blah, etc. They appear to be working with Kersh and Krycek against the remnants of the old Syndicate’s hybrid project, presumably in league with the alien colonists. But if that’s the case, and that Scully’s baby is also some kind of super-human that pose a threat to the invasion, why do they let the child live? There’s a lot here that relies on the unstoppable bad guys just deciding not to carry on killing Our Heroes, which isn’t fantastic writing. Agent Reyes returns and, once again, just comes across as a hippy with mild psychicness.

But, I’m happy to leave all that to the side because there’s so much to like.

The thing is, these could easily have served as the final X-Files episodes ever. In fact, they really should have. Yeah, the super-soldier arc would have been left dangling, but beyond that the series has already given closure to the Syndicate and Samantha’s disappearance, and they were the important things. We’re still left with an impending invasion, but the hints are that Mulder, if not Scully’s son William, holds the key to humanity’s survival. That note of hope is more than enough, really. The alien replacements’ motives can pretty much be written off as serving the colonist’s purposes. Anything else would needlessly complicate matters, considering the producers have spent every season since the first movie streamlining the confusing arc story.

The resolutions offered in the final episode are perfect for all the main characters. The Lone Gunmen get a short cameo as three wise men bringing presents to the new child. The replacement Billy Miles is the antagonist, which is a great way of tying back to the very first episode. Even though the whole light-in-the-sky leading Mulder to Scully and William is cringeworthy, it’s at least in keeping with the show’s religious and UFO themes. And in one of the most satisfying scenes, Skinner finally gets to blow Krycek away, the man who’s been tormenting him for years. It’s a great exit for a great bad guy.

And had the show ended here, Mulder and Scully would have got their happy ending, united with the child that, while not explicitly revealed as Mulder’s son, belongs to both of them.

In conclusion, the series started poorly, got loads better in the middle, wobbled a bit around Mulder’s return, mishandled every character at one point or another but just about managed to stay on track, and had an ending strong enough to have adequately capped the whole show. A continuation was largely unnecessary, but continue it they did. Only one more to go, folks.

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Over the course of Series 8, Doggett’s consistantly referred to the ongoing X-Files project as a “unit”. It’s an interesting use of the phrase, in keeping with his worldview and personality. It’s always been a quest or a crusade for Mulder, and then Scully. But to Doggett it’s just a job, although one he takes very seriously, and he uses the official terminology to reflect that.

Apart from anything else, Doggett is stubborn as hell, and this is what finally endears him to us and gives us the one connection between his and Mulder’s personalities. When he says he won’t give up until he finds out what happened to the missing agent, we really believe him- even if on-screen the writers never really show him or Scully doing much to look for the guy.

Jeremiah Smith, the shapeshifting alien healer who appears to be a good guy returns in “This Is Not Happening”, and heralds the return of everyone’s favourite obsessive man-child. Whether this is the same Jeremiah Smith we last saw isn’t explained (I assume not as (a) there were a number of apparent clones of him across the country and (b) he’s a shapeshifter so who’d know anyway?), but the arc-story macguffin is that the people being returned appear to be dead, but get brought back to life by his healing power. Turns out the twist is that they’d come back to life anyway, but “reborn” into alien sleeper agents/colonists by the alien virus, a virus that Smith is attempting to eradicate. And when Mulder returns, it seems to be too late- he’s dead, and he gets a funeral.

Skip forward three months, and Scully and Skinner dig him up again because it turns out he’s just hibernating. It’s never really clear what the media make of this, if anything, and the fact that an FBI agent has come back to fucking life doesn’t cause any kind of a stir suggests that the Fourth Estate is pretty damn weak in the X-Files’ reality. I suppose it all goes back to the flukeman not being all that big a deal either. Presumably, this shit happens all the time.

There’s a few notable appearances here, too. Annabeth Gish turns up as Monica Reyes, later to become the new female lead in the Scully-light final season. She isn’t particularly compelling, unfortunately, and only comes across as a generic guest star, which isn’t a great start, and it’s hinted she’s got psychic powers which really, really isn’t the way to be taking the show. I don’t fancy a series’ worth of Millenium (or, for that matter, Medium) style visions driving the plot.

Krycek shows up to try and blackmail Skinner into killing Scully’s unborn child (and nice to see they haven’t forgotten about the nanobots Skinner’s poisoned with). His motives aren’t exactly clear beyond the fact he’s, you know, eeeevil, but he’s a great character so I don’t mind and besides, it leads up to one of the show’s greatest scenes ever. Doggett figures out Krycek’s up to no good, and when he tries to make his escape in a car, Doggett sprints after him and belts him one through the open driver-side window. It was just about the last thing I expected to happen, and it was awesome. They never let Mulder do anything like that.

Mulder’s return is a little crazy. Scully cures him of the illness that would have turned him into a sleeper agent, and the scene where he wakes up and for a few seconds pretends that he’s lost his memory is touching and hilarious. It’s great, because we finally feel that Mulder’s back.

Except, of course, he isn’t. Not really. “Three Words” shows Mulder going home, but disorientated and disconnected from his life and his partner. It’s a hell of a thing for both him and Scully, really, because he’s missed so much in the months he was abducted and then thought dead. He’s got no family left, but what did Scully go through? How far did she move on? And where is his place in the world now? Again, it isn’t clear whether he’s supposed to be the father of Scully’s child or not. There’s hints he is, but it isn’t explicit. We know from earlier episodes that she tried for IVF with Mulder as a donor and using the harvested eggs he found in the Pentagon Sci-Fi closet, but apparently the treatment didn’t take.

And his obvious distaste for Doggett is genuinely gutting. After everything Doggett did to save him, the first thing Mulder does is swing for him. The maddest thing about the scene is the look of crushing disappointment on Doggett’s face. I’m somewhat divided on the turn of events, really. On one hand, it is at least true to the perspective of the characters, and of what Mulder knows about the other agent moving onto his turf, but even so we’ve finally come to like Doggett so we don’t want Mulder to act like an arsehole to him. I know it’s all about drama, and it’s played out very well by the actors, but again it ends up being more frustrating than compelling. Besides, we’ve already gone through the mistrust with Scully at the start of the series and it wasn’t much fun then, never mind having to retread old ground.

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There was one thing in the last episode I quite liked, though. At one point, in order to trace a phone call Doggett rings Danny, a character who’s always off-screen but acts as the FBI’s telecommunications guy. I first noticed Scully refer to him by name ages ago, and forgot to note it in one of the earlier overviews. At the time, I remember assuming he was a one-off character, but that it would be cool if he was referred to later on but never seen, and that’s exactly what went on to happen. We’ve heard both Mulder and Scully refer to Danny a number of times, and it’s the first time the writers find a good way to bring Doggett into the show’s already-familiar world by hinting that everyone in the Bureau knows Danny.

It really is the small world-building touches that defined this show, and part of its decline was the way so many bit-characters got knocked off. Oh yes, the death of Agent Pendrell remains an open wound. They tried to replace him with Chuck, the reoccuring scientist guy who’s just as nerdy about the paranormal as Mulder, and while he’s alright as supporting characters go, he still strikes me as the guy they get in when the Lone Gunmen actors are on holiday.

The other thing we’ve lost from the show, of course, is Mulder’s apartment. Seriously, it was practically the third lead on the show. Hell, I feel like I used to live in that apartment. They should have contrived a way to get Doggett to move in.

Ooookay, that went to a bit of a weird place.

“Invocation” is the first Nu-Files episode that’s any good, and the first time we’re given a chance to warm to Doggett. Sure, towards the start he goes overboard with questioning a traumatised child too forcefully, but at least we begin to understand why, with the hints about tragedy in his own past. And the actual plot, involving scary messages from beyond the grave and a spirit child (yet not of the starlight variety), is creepy as hell and very close to earlier series’ in tone.

“Redrum”, the story of a man living life backwards from his death, Memento-style, bit-by-bit piecing together the circumstances of his wife’s murder and his role in it, is excellent. Very clever, very well-written. Of course, it’s carried by Joe Morton (Dyson from Terminator 2, the first of a couple of nods to Robert Patrick’s most famous film) rather than either of the leads, and as usual Doggett gets to be a prick in a few scenes. “Via Negativa” is the first mostly Doggett episode, and while I don’t usually like dream-logic stories Patrick really sells it. Finally, the character’s showing a little promise beyond hard-arsed New York cop, even getting to meet the Lone Gunmen without the writer needing him to be a bastard to characters the audience likes a lot. That’s three episodes in a row that are pretty good, so this isn’t looking so much like a slog anymore. Of course, at the time, it was already too late, the first couple of stinkers having already driven the fans away.

The next few episodes are all by-the-numbers X-Files, but to be fair they’re not particularly poor ones, and we’re finally given a chance to appreciate Doggett more. The breakthrough episode is “Medusa”, where Doggett (again) gets to kick butt in a way wimpy old Mulder never did by being Scully’s eyes and ears hunting for a possible biological contaminant in the Boston subway system. It’s a claustrophobic episode (from the “Ice/Darkness Falls” mould the show’s always done well with), one that shows the trust that’s grown between the two mismatched characters. I was really warming to the Nu-Files by now-

-And then Mulder comes back, and the producers do their best to screw the pooch.

Not quite at the point where the rest of the S8 overview is ready to go up, so this will probably be continued in a couple of days’ time.

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We’re Mulderless now, and straight out of the gate it’s cock-up after cock-up.

The first episode of the eighth series is crap. There’s not much plot to speak of; hand-wringing and arse-covering at the FBI over Mulder, Deputy Director of Evil Kersh is back, Scully gets her computer nicked and then everyone goes to Arizona to look for Gibson Praise, just because. The Lone Gunmen are in it but don’t do much, their only job to convince the fans that this is really, really still the show you love, honest, please don’t switch off.

The episode’s biggest problem, in terms of theme, is deciding what the heck to do with Scully. Arc-wise, she’s pregnant now, though we’re not told how. There’s a nice bit that shows her making a Mulder-style intuitive leap regarding the aliens’ flight plan, showing how far she’s come and foreshadowing her new “believer” role to Doggett’s skeptic, but unfortunately it just isn’t the character we’ve come to know. She’s carrying the show, for better or worse, but like all the episodes that are mostly Mulder or mostly Scully, it just feels unbalanced, as unfocused, in fact, as the episodes following Scully’s abduction in series 2. Back then, though, we knew she was coming back.

The characters’ lives are in turmoil, the aliens are going around cleaning up the evidence of their existence (possibly while disguised as Mulder), and the show desperately needs a workable, compulsive concept to keep the viewers watching. So what happens? Well, first of all, Scully damn near has a breakdown, freaking out on anyone who looks at her funny and letting Doggett (and more on him in a second) talk her into doubting Mulder. Great, the only character left in the show for us to identify with, and the writer wants to make her look like an idiot. Is this meant to build Doggett up by comparison, at Scully’s expense?

Doggett. Oh dearie, dearie me.

First time we see him, he tries to con Scully into betraying Mulder. He’s the new male lead, and he’s just been an arsehole to the only other character we like. Then Scully throws water in his face, which seems utterly unlike her. It doesn’t matter that he’s being just as manipulative as Mulder could be when questioning someone he thought was suspect, and it doesn’t matter that Scully’s under enormous emotional pressure. They both come off as petty in the face of dire circumstance. Not a good start.

Of the few Doggett episodes I’ve seen, I remember quite liking him. It really doesn’t come across in this one. But then, it was always going to be an uphill struggle. Even if he does turn out to be memorable and worthwhile, he’s replacing a much-loved and already classic character. And in the opener they don’t even try to get us to like him. He’s chummy with Kersh (although there’s a brief moment where he makes it clear he isn’t going to be pushed around), and he appears to mock Our Hero and his mission in front of a room full of other agents. The episode ends with him pointing a gun at someone who looks like Mulder (though it’s probably an alien). I know it’s all going to turn out alright, that they’re just spinning it this way to make Doggett joining the good guys that much more significant, but the fact remains that we need a reason right now, this episode, to keep watching, and we’re not given one.

As for actor Robert Patrick himself, I can’t get over how much younger he looked in 2000 to how he does now. It’s like getting a job on The Unit aged him twenty years.

“Patience” and “Roadrunners” are by-the-numbers X-Files that define the new status-quo. Doggett is now the straight man, and Scully as the believer is taking a little getting used to. There’s still a tension between them as Scully doesn’t really trust him yet, and I’m still not sure they’re handling his introduction very well. There’s more than one scene where Doggett is shows to have more authority than Scully, a (presumably deliberate) mysogenistic undertone that’s all the more jarring from being largely absent from the show so far. And that’s yet another problem: Doggett’s a former Marine, a New York cop, a typical no-nonsense John McClain type. In other words, a character that we can watch on every other cop show on the idiot box. There’s nothing new to him, or the conflict between him and Scully, yet he’s meant to be replacing one of the most unique characters in the genre. And all the writers seem to want to do is set Scully, and through her the viewers, against him.

I know conflict is necessary for drama, but it’s making the show more vaguely irritating than compulsively watchable, and with Duchovny gone and Anderson eyeing up the exit, they really need to do something to make Doggett an adequate replacement for both of them if he’s going to be carrying the show.

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