X-Files Episode Guide: Terma

Written by Frank Spotnitz & Chris Carter

Directed by Rob Bowman

And.... now we drive over the cliff, and the end results are worse than what happens when Mulder does the same in Russia.

The conclusions of two-part episodes are invariably disappointing. After getting promises that the findings of part one will end up revealing world-changing proof of alien life or that the government is guilty beyond doubt, we always put the toys back in the box with nothing ever changing. People get killed, the evidence conveniently is destroyed, and our beleaguered heroes are left with nothing.  That's exactly what happens here, only this time is worse because it takes place before Congress, where--- even if you do buy into the idea that these people are just straw-men for the Consortium----  you'd think would have a level of importance. Scully is held in contempt of Congress (but we already knew that from the last episode) and the government has no interest in pursuing any evidence. That's bad enough, but when Mulder leaps to his feet and yells at them for basically not being able to believe in extra-terrestrial life, he sounds pathetic and ridiculous as it look. It's a terrible moment that makes Mulder look like the kook everyone thinks he is. I would like to say it's the worst moment in the episode, but it isn't--- it's just the most disheartening.

Oh, there are so many problems with Terma. All of the forward motion we got in the last episode is thrown away to be replaced with awful dialogue that just seems to hang there. Skinner and Scully are forced to say sentences at each other that are so long an unwieldy, you have the marvel at their capacity to relate them. William B. Davis and John Neville snap and snarl at each other in such an overdramatic, contempt-filled  way, you'd think they were auditioning for Grumpy Old Men.  The teaser which seems to come out of Kevorkian territory that just seemed like the writers are making a statement by writing into the mythology, which is borderline offensive.

But the worst part of the episode isn't the long rambling dialogue--- we're used to Carter-speak by now. It isn't that the writers are so busy with exposition they completely overlook vital plot points, like how the hell Mulder got out of Russia just in time to appear before the committee, or why the hell Krycek arm was amputated. It's not even that after establishing the conspiracy as international we're now going back into a Cold War type struggle, which wasn't even hinted at before.

No, it's the last few scenes, when it is revealed that Alex Krycek, who until this point has been defined as part of the American conspiracy is now revealed to be a Russian operative under the name of Comrade Arntzen, one powerful enough to get a Soviet killer out of retirement.  Even the most devoted fans of the series thought that this came completely out of left field, and it still stands as one of the biggest failures of the entire series. It's one thing to throw part of the plot away if  you're not comfortable with it; it's another to completely rewrite what a character is supposed to be for the sake of it.. None of Krycek's motivations for the last year and a half now make any sense. And it gets worse because now it seems we can't even believe how he got out of the missile silo, so they've thrown away part of what we learned in the same episode. For the remainder of his time on the series, Krycek's motivations or place in any part of the conspiracy will never make any sense, and it only can be seen as a clear demonstration that the writers didn't know they were doing when it came to the mytharc.

The episode is not entirely without effective moments. The scene with the Prisoner in the gulag where he tells Mulder of his desire to die, and then gives him the weapon that he was going to use to kill itself is fairly good, because at least its about something, and the work of Stefan Angrim is very effective. The assassin, Paskow, is also fairly interesting because he's one of the few characters on any side of the conspiracy that clearly has doubts about what he does, but is efficient at his job anyway. And the next to last shot revealing Krycek's false arm is effective---- they should've stopped right there. But the good moments are few and far between, and are lost in the middle of the same kind of scenes we've been getting for three years now, and its starting to get a little tiresome at this point. Unfortunately, we're due for a good many more of the bad then the good from this point on when its come to the mytharc.

Terma basically proves that Carter has no game plan when it comes to the mythology. Oh, he has ideas that are interesting--- the black oil looks interesting enough, and the ideas of smallpox being involved is a good concept---- but he's now proven that he's willing to throw characters under the bus in favor of the mytharc. Which is bad enough, but to do without any basic plan was criminal, considering he has now completely reversed himself as to where he was in the conspiracy that he was at this point in  Season 3. This mythology ultimate shifts as much as the Alien Bounty Hunters---- speaking of which, where were the aliens in this episode?

My score: 1.5 stars.