X-Files Episode Guide: Synchrony

Written by Howard Gordon & David Greenwalt

Directed by James Charleston

Like so many X-Files episodes, this one is more significant for what was happening behind the scenes than in front of it. Synchrony was the first---- and only X-Files script written by David Greenwalt, who, like so many other writers connected with the series, would go on to a long and successful career, first on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then Angel, and currently the head showrunner for the NBC fairy tale/police procedural Grimm.  One would like to say that one could sense his talent right off, as one could with Gilligan or Spotnitz, but unfortunately the episode that emerges is one of the more convoluted and messy episodes the series would ever do (and this isn't even a mytharc episode.

Considering that time travel was a theme that Carter swore up and down as the series progressed, one wonders why he broke his word on it, especially when you consider just how asymmetrical it seems. It becomes even harder to fathom when you learn how many drafts Greenwalt and Gordon had to go through to make it even understandable for the version we got. Admittedly, time travel is a theme that any sci-fi series worth  its salt will eventually visit, but considering how badly the series seems to be messing up the concept of alien invasion, one was hoping they would consider something relatively simpler. Instead, we have scientists talking in speculative ways about chemical compounds, and old men running around MIT stabbing people with needles to flash freeze them.

The biggest problem of the story is, after not even hinting at the idea of time travel more than half the episode, Mulder seems to leap to the idea on the flimsiest of evidence. He's made some bizarre leaps in the past, but this is definitely one of the more ridiculous one. You wonder why Scully, so skeptical about everything else, doesn't even try to come up with any other plausible one, when the average viewer can come up with a couple. What makes it even harder to belief is that we have all of these great scientific minds here---- and they all seem to reach the same conclusion a little before Mulder. Perhaps one could understand how Jason Nichols; girlfriend could reach the conclusion, if you want to believe in that hoary staple that love transcends time. But the younger Jason Nichols seems to reach the same conclusion even faster than Mulder does.

But the episode's biggest problem is that why Jason Nichols has come from thirty years in the future to stop anyone and everyone possible from making time travel possible. Instead, what we get is one line at the climax --- "a world without history or hope, where anything that can be known is known". And like so many lines in the series, it sounds good in concept but it doesn't really seem to mean anything. If you're going to make time travel part of a dystopian future instead of utopia, then give some frigging evidence. Don't just follow this up by having Jason Nichols set himself on fire.

There are admittedly interesting ideas and its clear that the writers have a fair amount of homework. But what this episode really lacks is heart, not brains. Time travel is such a bold subject , but rather than play with the big ideas, what we seem to get are a lot of bodies turning into icicles, while people look on detachedly. I don't know what is more dispiriting, Mulder and Scully standing over the body of a resuscitated scientist that explodes into flames, and being so calm about it afterwards. Or Jason's research assistant girlfriend recovering from hypothermia and the loss of her boyfriend, by immediately going back to work on the compound that will nearly killer. On second thought, its that sequence---- it sums up the mood of the episode a little too well.

Synchrony isn't a terrible episode. A lot of the effects are very good, including the scenes where Dr. Yonechi gets flash frozen as we watch and both the scenes at the hyperbaric chamber. And its rather nice that Mulder brings Scully senior thesis from the Pilot back into play, even thought it does seem a little bit of a labor to give her something else to do. But for all the grandeur of the subject matter, what we get is a workshop episode that seems to have taken too many drafts and not enough at the same time.  Its okay, but there are a lot of things that could and should've been done to make it easier to understand and to like.

My score: 2 stars.