X-Files Retrospective: Why The Mythology Never Worked And Why We Still Cared Anyway

 

 

In retrospect, the biggest problem with the mythology that surrounded The X-Files wasn’t that it very quickly became unfathomable. When you consider that Chris Carter never had a plan for the mythology from the start, it’s actually kind of impressive that it managed to make sense for as long as it did. (In later articles on this part of it, I will go into detail where everything went off the deep end.)

No the biggest problem with the mythology became evident the longer the show went on. As the depths of the conspiracy became larger and larger, the idea that Mulder and Scully could do anything to stop it became inconceivable. Even exposure seemed impossible by the time the series was halfway through its run. It did not help matters that near the middle of the series, when the invasion seemed on the verge of succeeding Carter would increasingly regulate Mulder and Scully to little more than spectators rather than participants. When Full Exposure was promised in February of 1999 what was not so much notable about it was what the viewer learned but how insignificant Mulder and Scully were to the global events unfolding. The climax of their efforts to stop the invasion amounting to little more than a few futile shots at a train car that were barely even noticed by the Syndicates themselves. When the Syndicate and their families were burnt alive by an alien resistance, it was implied that if Mulder and Scully had been on the X-Files at the time it could have been avoided. And the irony was that there was no evidence before or afterwards that Mulder and Scully could have done anything to stop what happened. (It did not help Carter’s cause that this entire storyline was more or less dumped immediately after this.)

In the seventh season finale Requiem (an episode that many at the time, including myself, thought would be the series finale) Mulder and Scully spend the opening act of the episode having their expense reports monitored by a Bureau auditor. He tells them that so many of their cases remain unsolved and that they have not proven much of anything in seven years that its not budgetarily viable to keep this department open. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if the Syndicate wasted so much of its time trying to thwart Mulder and Scully that none of them decided on this as an obvious course of action. The entire course of the series is basically a saga where no matter how deeply Mulder and Scully try to investigate a crime, their investigation often end with more deaths, no perpetrator and no sense of resolution. The FBI is a bureaucracy after all and it would have cheaper just to bring the unit down because it was a waste of money then to keep sending a chain of increasingly incompetent assassins after Mulder and Scully.

Nor was this something limited solely to the conspiracy. In the very first season the first sequel to an episode ‘Tooms’ was written. In the third episode of the series ‘Squeeze’ Mulder and Scully manage to stop a serial killer who has been murdering his victims and devouring their livers. Eventually it is revealed the killer Eugene Tooms is a mutant, who kills five victims and then hibernates for thirty years. Tooms is imprisoned at the end of ‘Squeeze’ and there had to have been some who questioned whether there was a purpose to bringing a villain back this early in the series run. I think the reason comes at what amounts to Tooms’ parole hearing (he is only being charged for his attack on Scully at the end of the episode) and Mulder makes an appearance at the board, tells them everything the viewer knows about Tooms  - and he is viewed by the authorities as a lunatic. Glen Morgan and James Wong, who wrote both episodes, no doubt did this deliberately. In the basement of the X-Files, Mulder’s theories are plausible. In the outside world,  Mulder’s a laughingstock even though he’s inevitably right. And considering the Bureau’s image, both expenses and no result should have been enough to shut the X-Files down long before they stumbled upon the conspiracy.

I have a feeling that had the show only been about the upcoming alien invasion just from an academic level, it would have never obtained the popularity it did, much less been worthy of it. What made me and millions of other viewers invest in the series over the period of a decade and still care about it nearly thirty years later was that the writers knew this. They might not have gotten their without an outside event, but once they realized and leaned into The X-Files became one of the greatest shows of all time.

The outside event was Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy in the spring of 1994. After the series was renewed for a second season, the writers knew two things: one Gillian Anderson was absolutely vital to the success of the series, and two they were going to need to work around at least one episode of her absence when she gave birth. During the opening episodes of Season Two, with the X-Files shut down, Mulder and Scully had been assigned to other units. The two of them kept working together, but Mulder was in the field and Scully was essentially in the lab. This wasn’t subtle at times – Gillian Anderson was constantly being shot in large lab coats – but the viewer had no reason to suspect anything underhanded was being plotted. That all changed with what amounted to a four-episode arc that led to some of the greatest drama the series ever produced and effectively put the show where, from 1994 until 1999, it was one of the greatest series of all time.

‘Duane Barry’ was the first episode of The X-Files to receive major recognition from the Emmys. Chris Carter received his first Emmy nomination for writing it and it was also his directorial debut. Some think this was his high mark as both on the series (I virulently disagree) but I do agree he never did so in as simple a fashion. The episode is about the title character, played by Steve Railsback in one of the great guest performances of the entire decade. In the terrifying opening sequence we see Barry being abducted and perhaps the most horrifying thing is that the sequence ends with him screaming: “Not again!” over and over. In the aftermath, he has been institutionalized but makes a break for freedom, steals a security guard’s gun and takes his doctor prisoner. Mulder gets involved when he is requested by another FBI agent Lucy Kadzin, who gives the bare minimum: Barry is a freak who believes he’s been abducted by aliens and all she wants Mulder to do is ‘talk UFO speak to calm him down.’

Mulder knows that there’s more to this but he’s genuinely appalled to learn that Barry was ex-FBI and that the real reason they want this resolved is to avoid an embarrassment. Eventually Mulder’s goes in disguised as a paramedic, ostensibly to get one of the hostages who has been shot released. It soon becomes clear he needs Barry as much as Barry needs him: both need someone to take them seriously.

Railsback’s performance is magnificent. He only refers to himself  in the third person and I have always thought that means that his experiences have so traumatized him that he needs to keep saying his name to remember who he is. And the experiences we see and hear are horrifying: few viewers will forget when he tells us that they drilled holes in his teeth – and then Carter shows it to us in detail. We watch the episode completely convinced in Barry’s story – and then Scully shows up and tells us that we have no reason to trust him. Barry was shot in the head on duty and left him with no moral compass or to distinguish reality.

When Mulder learns what happens he doesn’t show it, but he does try to complete his task soon after: the hostages are released and Barry is taken out, wounded but alive. Everything seems resolved – and then Carter pulls the first great trick in the show’s lore.

In the hospital Agent Kadzin (CCH Pounder, playing an early version of the role she will perfect on The Shield in several years) does something we rarely see anyone do to Fox Mulder: thank him for helping him and then showing him that there might be truth to what Barry was saying. Earlier he claimed to have implants put in him by the aliens of the government, and they’ve found evidence of them throughout his body. Mulder shows one to Scully, who can’t explain but thinks it’s might be shrapnel. Then when she’s at the grocery store that night, she runs in over the electronic counter – and it starts going crazy.

But the piece de resistance comes in the last two minutes. Duane Barry has awakened and escaped from his hospital. Scully is calling Mulder troubled by what she has found. There’s a lightning flash – and Barry is outside her window. The last minute of the episode is Scully screaming for help as Barry attacks her.

There had been no hint that the episode was going to be a two-parter – The X-Files had not done one at this point in its run. But even this cliffhanger didn’t prepare us for what happened in Ascension the next week.

Mulder is at Scully’s apartment, where the police and Bureau are crowded. The next day the FBI is trying to figure out the next steps in the investigation and they don’t listen to Mulder at all, not even when he asks the pertinent question as to how Barry found her in the first place. (We never learn whether the implant led Barry to her or the Syndicate did but based on what we saw an episode prior and later events, I’m inclined to believe the latter.)

Mulder and his new partner Alex Krycek go to Skyland Mountain, where Mulder having listen to Barry’s rants thinks he is going. When traffic comes to a stall, he finds a stairlift that will provide a shortcut but the manager tells him it needs repair. Mulder, who shows the blindness that so many will find frustrating (but is understandable given the circumstances) forces to get in and barely listens when he’s told to keep it under fifteen.

Then comes the second shock. We’ve known for two episodes Krycek is a double agent, but it still comes as a shock when he hits the attendant with a club and kills him, and then commandeers the lift. Mulder is nearly killed twice over, first when he tries to make a leap for a nearby lift, then when Krycek starts it again when he’s jumping. It’s one of the first major action sequences of the series and  it’s thrilling.

Still in the terms of how television worked in 1994, the viewer has no reason doubt that Mulder will catch up to Barry and Scully will be rescued. Maybe she’ll let out a quip as she falls into Mulder’s arms. Except Carter has no intention of doing that. Mulder does catch up to Barry, but just before he does there is light in the sky and we hear Barry shout: “I’m free! You sons of bitches can’t touch Duane Barry anymore!” There’s a genuine sense of joy when we see Barry at this point. He has spent the last episode and a half certain that in order to keep himself safe, he has to provide ‘them’ with someone to take his place. Mulder, who had empathy for Barry just a few hours ago, snatches him by the lapels and when he’s in custody, nearly chokes him.

Not long after Barry dies suspiciously and Mulder is considered the culprit. Krycek meets with the Smoking Man clandestinely who tells him to keep Mulder’s trust now that he has it. Later on Mulder finds the ashes and makes a different report to Skinner, in which he accused Krycek of murder and conspiracy. Skinner makes a call for Krycek, but when they try to reach his house, he has disappeared. (Krycek was supposed to be written out of the series after this episode but Carter and the writers chose to keep him around. His character would be a recurring feature on The X-Files until Season Eight, though like so many characters on the series, he had exhausted both his usefulness and plausibility well before that.) Skinner uses this as an explanation to reopen the X-Files.

It should be a moment of joy – but there are ashes. Scully is still missing and there’s no sign of where she is. The last scene of Ascension shows a forlorn Mulder looking out at the night sky, heartbroken.

This two-parter was groundbreaking because these things simply didn’t happen on TV in 1994, certainly not on a show with only two leads. And the writers made it clear that there would be no easy resolution. In the opening moments of 3, the next episode, we see a forlorn Mulder walking into his office, putting Scully’s file in a cabinet and then tearing months of the calendar, first from May to August – when Scully disappeared – and then to November. The implication is heartbreaking.

‘One Breath’, which I will write about in great detail in a separate article is in my opinion one of the finest episodes in TV history. It’s reputation has suffered slightly over time – there are parts that are too spiritual for today’s audience, and some think that the confrontations in the series took place far too early in the show’s run – but it remains a towering achievement.

Margaret Scully (Sheila Larkin, the wife of one of the show’s executive producers) is preparing a headstone for Dana when the episode begins. That night, Mulder gets a call and learns that Dana has appeared at a Georgetown hospital, alive.

Duchovny has been brilliant throughout the first half of Season 2, but in One Breath he gives one of his greatest performance in the entire canon. He spends most of the episode in a state of perpetual motion, propelled by rage. Part of it because there is no apparent explanation for how Scully ended up here, part of it is because she is in a coma, but most of it is because he is denying something he knows very well: Scully doesn’t want to be kept alive by machines. (It is a testament to how close they are after less than a year together that Mulder is the signatory of her living will.)

Mulder makes it clear to Melissa, Dana’s sister, that he ‘can’t just wave his hands in the air’. He spends the first half of the episode trying to find a way to treat her, then in the second act chasing down a man who stole a sample of Scully’s blood. Chasing him, he runs into X (Steven Williams) his second informant who makes it very clear that Mulder can not go down this path, and that he has to accept Scully’s death. He then proceeds to cold-bloodedly kill the man Mulder is chasing.

Dealing with this Mulder demands that Skinner give him the location of ‘Cancer Man’, aka the Smoking Man. (William B. Davis is listed as a guest star from this point forward.) Skinner refuses because he does not want Mulder to kill him, but later he provides his address.

This is our first real look at the supervillain of the series, and it’s fascinating to see how clearly Davis nails it. He is utterly calm with a gun to his head, and that causes him to be remarkably candid. He says he brought Scully back because “I like her.” He tells Mulder that he has ‘a little power. I’m in the game because what I believe I do is right…that if people knew what I did, it would all fall apart.” Even when we learn all of the evil things this man is responsible for, the fundamental truth behind what he says remains. It is the divide between Mulder and CSM that makes up much of the series. Mulder believes the truth is the most important thing but based on everything we know about the world today; do we really want to know the truth? If we learned that the government was conspiring with aliens to take over the planet, wouldn’t it all fall apart?

Mulder doesn’t have it in him to pull the trigger, which seems to impress the Smoking Man. He resigns from the Bureau but Skinner tears up the letter in front of his face. He then reveals an experience in Vietnam in which he was left for dead that is one of Mitch Pileggi’s finest hours on the show. In it he makes it clear that while he can not except the truth of what Mulder’s investigates, Mulder can and that makes him better.

Mulder still intends to resign and then X appears on his doorstep, giving him a choice. He is going to give him the men who took Scully. They will show up in his apartment and Mulder will ‘defend himself…with terminal intensity.” Watching Mulder its clear he has nothing left and we see him trying to follow through.

While he is waiting, the one source of light in the episode shows up at his door: Melissa. She tells him that Dana might go at any time. Mulder again rejects her spirituality and she finally loses her composure. “I expect more from you. Dana expects more from you.”

That night, Mulder goes to Scully’s bedside. Scully has been sitting apart from all this. Mulder says: “I don’t know if you’re there. But I think you know its not your time. And you always had the courage of your beliefs.” We see the clock on the wall tick past the time that his guests were expected…and the camera cuts to his apartment where Mulder collapses in despair.

In a different article, I will deal with Scully’s journey in One Breath because it does resonate in a different way. What I will say is that the scene where Scully regains consciousness is beautiful. As is the scene that follows in Mulder’s apartment. The phone rings and goes to the answering machine. Mulder is clearly dreading the call that’s coming before he picks up and says I’m here. The smile that crosses Duchovny’s face when he hears what his happened is the final jewel of his performance; we know in that moment Mulder is in love with Scully, even if he can’t admit it to himself.

The episode ends with Mulder at Scully’s bedside returning the cross that was torn from her neck at the time of her abduction. Scully says she doesn’t remember what happened but Mulder doesn’t care. He leaves to let her recover, but as he goes she says: “I had the strength of your beliefs.” He smiles as he leaves.

This series of episodes was important for The X-Files in two ways. From this point forward, the mytharc was not so much about exposing the conspiracy but finding out what happened to Scully. Even when the mythology begins to run out of steam in later seasons, as long as we are reminded that this as much about Mulder and Scully as it is about the conspiracy itself, we can stay invested. I know it was the case for me.

The second was how the series was regarded in the eyes of critics. In January of 1995, The X-Files received the first of what would be three Golden Globes for Best Drama Series. Considering that most of these episodes had aired just before the eligibility requirements for the Globes ended in 1994, there’s little doubt this run was a huge boost to critics profiles. That year, The X-Files was nominated for Best Drama by the Emmys for the first of four consecutive years. (It never won, but there was an extremely good group of dramas on TV during this era, and its hard to argue with the logic of NYPD Blue, ER, Law & Order and The Practice all winning the years that the show was in competition.) The X-Files had done something that sci-fi TV had not managed to do in decade, enter both the critical and public consciousness. As messy as the mythology would become, there’s little doubt this arc of episodes helped ensured that it would have a place there to this day.