Things Are Getting Strange

Content warning for Emily - Child death and discussions of sexual assault

While Christmas Carol hinted at some conspiratorial follow-ups, we weren't really prepared for this the latest entrant in the Scully abduction subplot. Toxic alien blood! Shapeshifters! Mulder flipping out over a three-year old he met two hours ago!

Not wholly sure why Mulder didn't get fired over his actions in this episode. Nor how Scully is still talking to him after info-dumping the events of Memento Mori on an adoption hearing judge.

Do you remember Pusher? What a great villain and a great episode. All finished nicely and conclusively. Somehow we now have Kitsunegari and more Pusher. More is not necessarily better in most things. And while Pusher himself is still fun, it feels a bit like all involved with this one hadn't been paying hugely close attention to the first episode.

Lot of weird oversights and character oddities in this one...

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Content warning for The Post-Modern Prometheus - discussion of sexual assault
Content warning for Christmas Carol - discussion of suicide

It's The X-Files Christmas special!

Sort of. First off, we have to go read a well-regarded comic we are... less than happy with. The Post-Modern Prometheus is often cited as one of the series' best episodes, but we can't really get past the central premise and no matter how you try to skew an interpretation it always comes back to some form of sexual assault and everyone in the episode is somehow just okay with this (and worryingly in one case outright delighted).

Which is not to say the episode does not have its charms; the acting, the guest stars, the soundtrack, use of Cher songs, the cinematography, the make-up - all great. If only it had been attached to a less gross premise.

And now the Christmas Special with, uh, Christmas Carol! What was once Scully being Ebeneezer Scrooge lumbers us with more time with the series' most slappable tertiary character: Bill Scully Jr. Which is not to say its a bad episode though Kim notes a surprising number of goofs and mistakes made in this episode.

Ultimately this Scully-centric episode is pretty good but leaves things on a huge cliffhanger for next week...

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The X-Files takes a trip back to 1989 and the formation of the Lone Gunmen. Also plausibly how Mulder's interest in aliens originated too. We talk the big questions. Like who's Kung fu is best and how does Suzanne find that hotel room?

But in all seriousness, the Usual Suspects acts as a great pilot for a Lone Gunmen spin-off that does eventually happen. But as we rapidly figure out, this is more of a character-development episode than a weighty plot episode. Nice to get the Lone Gunmen's characters hammered out and Kim can stop referring to Byers as 'the robot'.

Detour has the distinction of being the first episode of The X-Files Kim ever saw. Also the one where the Mulder has definitely not read the script and keeps on guessing as to what is lurking in that (very cold. Best to wear layers) Floridian swampland...

We discuss why The X-Files never actually did a Mothman episode as well as some choice Sculder moments for the shippers.

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The answer of how Mulder's dead body can be identified in Gethsemane and this not be David Duchovny leaving the series turns out to involve literal murder. And both Redux and Redux II don't spend much time at all grappling with the little detail of Mulder totally killing someone (which is not the first time) and then blasting said someone's face off with a shotgun.

But hey, what's a little murder between conspirators? Scully seems decidedly unfazed and we enjoy her Skinner must be evil attitude a whole bunch while Mulder keeps wandering into exactly the right places by almost chance.

Redux II turned out to be a bit of a shock on re-watch as it derailed an otherwise great point on how Paper Hearts would fit into this season really well. Had someone not shown up again in a scene where a really big important question is not only not asked but all the implications glossed over as hard as possible.

We get into quite a bit how Scully's very personal, very important plot is shunted largely off-screen (to say nothing of the concluding moments) and how the Lone Gunmen aren't in this enough. Especially Frohike (and, you know, when you can have Frohike but don't, I really don't understand why given he's on set the entire time anyway).

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Content warning - depictions and discussions of suicide

Ketamine is a very different substance to whatever Herbert West uses in Re-Animator. But The X-Files seems to quite look how Dr. West's stuff looks so Mulder gets injected with it in this episode.

Revelations of a sort from Mulder's past! Can we trust anything we see given the peculiar way the memory is uncovered and how it kind of splices into Samantha's abduction from Little Green Men?

Gethsemane is a word Nick has tremendous difficulty in pronouncing. Also the end of season 4 and... apparently its all fake. All the X-Files. Nothing more than a smoke-screen. The alien stuff anyway - we are pretty sure Tooms and Flukeman left some physical evidence of their weirdness. It is weirdly not implausible that all the shape shifters we've seen to date are merely members of the Blundht family...

But this time (unlike that time Jack Schaffer told Mulder it was all lies in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space') seemingly both Mulder and Scully are convinced they've been chasing shadows (though that episode seemed to have a definitive ghost....). This despite the frozen alien found in Canada.

We also discuss best and worst episodes this season - with input from out Twitter followers.

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Content warning for Elegy - depictions of autism

Welcome to the Skinner show! In this week's episode - Zero Sum - Skinner is embroiled in the shadowy cover-up while Mulder is almost one step ahead of him in a surprising twist to the norm.

There's some good and bad insect accuracy in this episode and we get into Marita's nature as Mulder's contact once again. Also why are the Syndicate members named like they are?

Elegy is by agreement one of the bleakest episodes of the series to date. So much so we get side-tracked onto bowling and from there to The Big Lewbowski. Also some ramblings about the end of Game of Thrones.

But we do also discuss Elegy and its surprising links to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest...

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Content warning for Small Potatoes - discussions of sexual assault

A glimpse of the future! Or at least there was a future for the time-travel episode of The X-Files for the character to arrive back from. We get into how Scully doesn't seem to be right given the episode clearly has the future not being static. So maybe we can avoid the dystopian lack of hope that apparently has now gripped the world some thirty years hence?

(fun fact, the implication in this episode is the universe gets time-travel sometime around 2027. Just four more years!)

Inevitably we end up talking about other time-travel things and a reasonably obscure sci-fi novel which seems to have some bearing on the dystopia.

Small Potatoes is a weird episode given it seems to understand the somewhat murky nature of its subject matter but refuses to let go of its comedy trappings which makes everything oh so gross.

Making a comedy episode of The X-Files has produced some tremendous episodes in the series to date. Making said comedy episode revolve around an unrepentant multiple rapist is absolutely not the way to do it.

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Is this Scully's  worst birthday ever? A surprise rendition of Happy Birthday, an Apollo 11 key-chain, Mulder suggesting a plane crash is due to a UFO and then a visit to the actual crash site to look for survivors.

Far be in from me to suggest this is not her ideal way to spend her birthday, but Scully doesn't looked entirely thrilled in Tempus Fugit. Not that her birthday really factors into all that much - at least until the cliffhanger hinge between this episode and the next.

Still, its nice to see Max from season 1 come back again. And there he went too...

And with Max we lose another member of the secondary cast. This pair of episodes is weirdly brutal.

We get into whether anyone made an effort to rewatch Fallen Angel before writing this episode and how Max might have handled his previously reported death. Before, you know, this episode.

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Content Warning: discussions of anti-semitism

Come to New York! See none of the famous landmarks! I guess Kaddish is set in Queens, but still...

We talk about how one dresses golems (and Umbrella-corporation projects) and how Scully's ongoing storyline doesn't seem to impact this episode at all.

And that's it for this week. Next week-

Oh wait. Unrequited. Always forget this one.

It does have Larry Musser in it! Otherwise, we get kinda caught up on how Sleepless did a similar plot so much better in Season 2.

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Never Again provokes the unexpected question: did Morgan and Wong really not like returning to The X-Files after Space: Above and Beyond?

Inevitably this episode also sparks some more consideration of Sculder shipping and the seeming increasing importance of episode ordering for how events play off each other. That said, this is also the talking tattoo episode.

Memento Mori is much better, linking right back into a whole host of conspiracy elements and much more expected characterisation of Mulder and Scully. Some great performances and what might be the first real use of The Lone Gunmen in the field. Hey, maybe we could get a spin-off for them?

At this juncture it seems such a promising idea...

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