X-Files Episode Guide: The Field Where I Died

Written by Glen Morgan & James Wong

Directed by Rob Bowman

Of all the episodes that I have watched so far, this one is the first I really wasn't looking forward to watching again. There were very few episodes of X-Files that I considered truly dreadful the first time around, but The Field Where I Died was one of the group that I considered the most pretentious of the lot.  It also didn't seem to show Mulder in  a particularly good light---- here the ATF and FBI are trying to stop a cult from committing either a massive attack or a mass suicide, and here's our hero undergoing hypnosis to try and remember whether or not he spent his past life with the female guest star of the week. It seemed the definition of fiddling when Rome burned, particularly because we got so little in return--- the regression sequences for Mulder is one of the most painful sequences you will ever see on the series, not because it's powerful or moving, but because it seems to be one of the most hideous cases of overacting you'll see on television.  I know the last time I reviewed this episode, I gave it only a 1 (and that was on a scale from one to ten.) Just put it on the list of worst episodes ever and move on.

The critical response to this episode, much like that of Talitha Cumi, has also undergone significant divergent. At the time the episode originally aired in 1996, Entertainment Weekly gave it an F. The passage of time has been a little kinder to it, and other viewers of the series have been more favorable. But even in the favorable reviews of the episode, I have tended to see under the heading 'daring, but not nearly as good as its trying to be." One gets that feeling from both Duchovny and Kirsten Cloke, who plays Melissa, the wife of  Vernon Ephesian, the head of a Hale-Bopp- Jim Jones type cult located in the south.  One wants to give credit to Cloke for giving a very brave and radical performance as  a woman so tormented by her life at the Church of the Seven Stars that she has started to see her own past lives. The problem is, it's just not good enough.  Frankly, every time she started to channel one of her past lives, I grimaced in pain, the accents and tones of people of different eras and sexes were so horrible. And poor David Duchovny--- the scene where he is regressed hypnotically first to the Holocaust, then to the Civil War  features writhing so painful that you'll wonder who the hell he's trying to channel---- William Shatner?

But maybe time was a little kinder to this episode than some of the others, or maybe I was just a little more patient. Whatever the reason I didn't loathe it with the same disgust I did Teso Dos Bichos  or Excelsis Dei. Perhaps  it was because I seemed to realize the point of what Mulder was trying to do. With less than twenty four hours before Ephesian and his followers are released to the compound to do something dreadful, Mulder and Scully are trying to find something--- anything--- that can avert this tragedy from happening. So Mulder tries to find a link with Melissa that might reveal where the bunker of weapons are, even if it involves trying to find out about her past life in  the Civil War. Mulder is so desperate to find this stash he undergoes hypnosis himself, and seems to find a  connection between himself and Melissa.

Of course, some people hold grudges against this episode for other reasons---- mainly that Mulder's soulmate through the eons seems to be this poor troubled woman, and not Scully. As a shipper, I can see their frustration. As a writer, though, I'm inclined to give the episode a little more credit for not going to the obvious link, and have Mulder and Scully be friends throughout the centuries and not lovers. It's a sweet and rather charming thing to think, and because Carter still was holding fast to the idea that Mulder and Scully would never, ever be romantically involved (who knows? At this stage, he might even have meant it), there's a daring there, too.

But what makes this episode such a dark one is the fact that Melissa is too damaged to even believe in past lives or that there's anything good waiting in this one. That may have been the point by Morgan and Wong, but its effect is to make the whole episode seem a little pointless. The episode ends with one of the bleakest finales the series would ever do, with Mulder walking through the bodies of the suicides of the cult, a tragedy that the FBI foretold, and yet was absolutely useless in preventing. The problem is, despite being on all the characters minds, the writers have spent so much time dealing with the past lives that the tragedy is considerably blunted when we get there. And by now, we've gotten so used to hearing purple prose in voiceover that when we actually hear poetry (Robert Browning, I think) we just think: did Carter get called in to write this section too?

The Field Where I Died is not a great episode--- indeed, I think my original finding that this is Morgan & Wong's weakest script still holds up after nearly two decades. However, it's probably more do the high quality of their work overall rather than the fact that this episode sucks. At least it continues to demonstrate that they're willing to be more daring after their hiatus from the series It's still muddled, bleak, and ultimately unsatisfying--- but I no longer think that its the disaster I did when I first saw it. Who knows? Maybe in my next life, I'll consider it a classic. But for now:

My rating: 2.5 stars.