Written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz
Directed by Rob Bowman
Of all the episodes that we've seen
so far connected with alien abduction, the one that probably had the least
chance of being followed up on was 'Fallen Angel' . Shot so early in the series
run that not even the creators had any idea how to classify it, it was
emotionally satisfying because it was less about a conspiracy, and more about a
man. Max Fenig was such a memorable character and his fate seemed so
up-in-the-air by the end of the episode, you wouldn't have thought that the
writers would be able to return to it.
So what Carter and Spotnitz do is
make this episode about a conspiracy, and not tie it to the mytharc. There's
definitely a conspiracy going on, but with none of the mytharc character
present, it doesn't have anywhere near the baggage that so many of the
mythology episodes have gathered by now. There's no long stretches of purple
prose by men in dark rooms. Instead, we are put face first in the middle of an
airplane crash, where we don't get any evidence in the teaser as to what
exactly is going on. We see Max, we see a man appear to prepare for some kind
of attack (and can I just say that is probably the coolest gun I've ever seen
in any episode of TV), and then something happens. We don't get to see exactly
what happens, but we get an immediate sense of the aftereffects. The sight of
the plane crash is one of the most brilliantly put together set pieces that the
series would ever do. It's an episode that sets up one of the most brilliant
possibilities for an accident imaginable, and then at the end of the first act
completely demolishes the theory. (You could also be forgiven for not knowing
what the lost nine minutes mean, if you didn't
remember from the Pilot. Then again, since by the end of this episodes,
we'll never be sure whether it's nine minutes lost or gained, one could let
this little flaw go too.It's also an episode where Mulder get to do something,
rather than let events happen to them, as is the case in so many mythology
episodes. And it does something practically unheard of in the series--- it
presents them with an investigative officer named Millar, who dismisses
Mulder's early theories, not with scorn, but with genuine anger. And then, when
he is confronted with evidence he can't explain, he comes to Mulder and Scully and owns up to it. Call Guinness..
About the only thing this episode
does that fans probably were upset by was they bring back of the more memorable
characters, and then have the majority of his appearance as a dead body. For
once, however, we can't really object to this because the rest of the
performances are so well done. Joe Spano, in a role not far removed from the
ones he would play for Steven Bochco, is brilliant as Mike Millar, a man who
shows remarkable range and growth for a character that starts out at
loggerheads with Mulder. He is willing to own up to what he doesn't know, and
is just as determined to find the truth as Mulder and Scully are. And as if
that weren't enough of, he actually has a close encounter of his own. (Another
brilliant shot and directed sequence) Equally good is Tom O'Brian as Sergeant
Frish, the soldier who, unlike so many others on this series has a conscience
and wants the truth to come out. The scene he has with Scully where he tries to
explain how he justified what happened as just being numbers on a radar, and
then seeing the crash site, is one of the more powerful and haunting moments in
the episode.
And the episode is also one of the
most brilliant directed shows in the whole cannon. Rob Bowman has always been
one of the more dependable hands behind the camera for the series, but here he
exceeds himself by quite a margin. There are so many brilliant segments in the
episode---- the shots of the crash site, Mulder identifying Max's body as other
family members to the same, the astonishing sequence where Mulder, trying to
avoid capture by the government, plays chicken with a landing airplane,
and the absolutely astonishing final
shots of the underwater crash site, where Mulder encounters a UFO, manned by an
alien. Some people may have been disappointed that the alien and the craft bore
little resemblance to anything we've seen on the series; I actually think that
helps the episode. It gives the show the feel of slightly 'traditional' first
season episode, backed up by a fourth season budget.
Because it tries so hard not to be a conspiracy episodes makes
Tempus Fugit one of the best episodes of that stripe that we've had in nearly
two years. Of course, because it is two-parter, one is naturally expecting that
everything will fall apart in the concluding episode. In a sense, that's what
happens at well (we'll get to that next week), but because the series sets the
story's stakes so low, and the character stakes so high, that our main worry
isn't whether or not they'll reveal the existence of aliens, but whether poor,
sweet Agent Pendrell will survive getting shot. That's a sign that for the
first time in a long time, we have confidence that Carter knows what he's
doing.
My score: 4.5 stars..
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