The X-Files is back! For this six-part mini series, I will be recapping and reviewing each episode. These will contain spoilers, fair warning.
Okay, first of all, I have to talk about this episode title. Though Chris Carter says he pulled it from a book that wasn’t Mein Kampf, I still can’t shake that uncomfortable feeling it gives me. It’s just a really negative connotation that I, and I presume many others, would have with that phrase as it is the English translation of Hitler’s manifesto. Maybe not the best choice for a title, CC.
I definitely got choked up when they used the original style opener (with a small addition for Mitch Pileggi’s credit). This was something I was genuinely concerned about after having watched the late season credits, which somehow managed to look more dated than the OG 90s credits. They went for the nostalgia instead of pulling out something new; they even kept in everyone’s old badge photos.
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The episode switches off between the Roswell crash in 1947 where a young doctor is brought to the site by the military and present day Washington, D.C. with our intrepid duo. Though currently, they’re not so much a duo, as Scully has since moved out of The Unremarkable House, but the episode does bring them back together. Skinner passes it along that an Alex Jones-esque character, Tad O’Malley (Joel McHale), wants to speak with them because of their history with The X-Files. His plan is to use their knowledge to blow open a conspiracy against the American people. I loved Mulder and Scully’s subtle, shared side-eye while O’Malley is talking.
O’Malley then introduces them to a multiple abductee, Sveta (Annet Mehendru), who had met Mulder following her first abduction as a child. She tells them about her experiences and shows the scoop-mark scars left on her body, and asserts that she now has alien DNA. In the following scene, Scully examines Sveta and learns first-hand Sveta’s mind-reading abilities. Though brief, I enjoyed this scene because I love almost any scene where Scully and another woman interact, and that they have this (pretty horrible) thing that connects them. They’ve both been put through all kinds of hell, but neither of them exactly know why. Even as close as Scully has been, she still has very little answers as to why she was taken, harmed repeatedly, developed cancer as a result of the chip implanted in her, lost her sister, and had to give up her own child.
Mulder gets to see a replica alien craft and looks like a little kid at Christmas. He then meets with Sveta again later and learns that she wasn’t telling the whole truth about her abductions. Like Scully, it was more likely a group of shady government types who took her and orchestrated it to look like an alien abduction in order to experiment on her. This eventually leads into the group reconvening and O’Malley explaining that he will lay out this vast government conspiracy on his show the following day. To borrow from Pamela, it was like watching Chris Carter’s conspiracy theory fever dream. Scully, naturally, thinks this is just a way to make the public more afraid and paranoid.
Sadly, Sveta wasn’t long for this episode, and was killed by a mysterious craft that appeared to scan something in her arm before bombing her car at the very end of the episode. This appears to be part of a clean-up job by the government, along with the scientists at the hangar being killed and O’Malley taking down his website. The episode ends with Mulder and Scully being called back to the FBI, and a somehow still alive Cigarette Smoking Man announcing that the X-Files have been re-opened.
Overall, the pacing of this episode was pretty wonky. Lots of exposition and some clunky dialogue, so it felt like not much happened. Perhaps it was an attempt to set up the show for potential new viewers (hence the info dump at the beginning), but it made the episode feel off. I think what might have fixed this would have been to tack on a second hour to the premiere, or to continue it in the second episode. It could have given the story a little more breathing room. There will be a “My Struggle Part 2” at the end of the series, but I still think they could have spread out the first episode a little more.
Something that wasn’t lacking in the episode is the natural chemistry between David and Gillian. They don’t come off as different characters; they feel like the same people, just older and in different places in their lives. Sveta tells Scully that it was Mulder’s depression that caused their relationship to fail, and we saw some evidence of this in I Want to Believe. At that point, Scully had returned to be a practicing doctor, specializing in work with very sick children. Mulder had turned his home office into a replica of the one he had back at the FBI; he was digging himself into hole after hole of conspiracy theories. I can see why Scully would feel the need to step away, but not want to cut Mulder completely out of her life.
That being said, I think there still is love there. I don’t think that just goes away because you need space. This is further cemented by their having a child together. And it shows in their interactions throughout this episode. Mulder ribs her about “for better or worse” and Scully later describes her relationship with him as “intense and challenging… quite honestly the most impossible.” Obviously not a whirlwind romance in the traditional sense, not by a long shot. I don’t expect them to be moving back in together by the end of the new series, but seeing them so easily falling back into step warms my little shipper heart. It’s what I loved so much about their relationship in the original series – I didn’t need to see them making out at every turn, but that unfailing trust in and the need to protect each other was, and is, so great to watch. Though I wouldn’t mind some kissing either.
Okay, let’s be real, I’d be squealing and running around my living room.
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What did you all think of the first episode?
Images courtesy of Fox and The X Files Source.
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