Listen to the Rain

You may have thought I abandoned this, but no, I'm just very slow!

Little Green Men
WTF, they weren't green at all.

The aliens in this episode were weirdly cute. Like, the door burst open, white light blazed forth into the previously dark room where the UFO had disabled the electricity, and then the alien started...doing the robot? They traveled all those light years in order to kidnap people and have a dance competition? Is Space Channel 5 an accurate depiction of human-alien diplomacy?

During the episode, they bring up the Wow Signal, so-called because the astronomer who found it wrote "Wow!" on the paper it was printed on. It was never repeated and no one actually knows what it was or where it was from. Here they say the communication they're getting is better, but I was curious while we were watching and looked it up and found up that the Wow Signal is 1) real and 2) might have been interference from a passing comet. I guess we'll know in 2017, though this does remind me a bit of that Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal about science ruining everything. At least we might still have alien megastructures.

I like how Mulder is falling into classical conspiracy thing. Scully brings up that they have no evidence they're being followed or watched and his immediate response is that's just proof of how powerful and far-reaching the conspiracy is. I mean, he's right, because this was the 90s when we thought the government was capable of this kind of comprehensive coverup and FEMA camps and black helicopters are the bedrock on which X-Files is built, but it's still a great way to come up with a ton of false positives. This is the point where schoolpsychnerd pointed out that Delta Green wouldn't even approach Mulder as a Friendly. He's too credulous. They'd send him on an opera and he'd be like, "It's clearly SHADOW JUMPER, probably in collusion with TATTERDEMALION. I've got the evidence right here," and he would show pictures of one of those classic rooms with papers and string everywhere and then ALPHONSE would turn to ANDREA and say, "I believe Agent FOX is due for retirement."

Also I just realized both schoolpsychnerd and I fell down. When the MOONDUST team ("Blue Beret" in the episode) showed up and just opened fire, we should have turned to each other and said, "No NORWEGIANS."

The episode ends as you'd expect, with all physical evidence useless and Mulder and Scully alive, though it was nice to see Skinner tell off Cancer Man. Oh the 90s, when you could still smoke indoors.

The Host
Ah, the infamous Flukeman episode. This is one of the few bits of X-Files lore I knew before I saw any of the show, just from hearing about it on the internet and looking it up on the wiki.

I mentioned before after watching Darkness Falls that my headcanon is that X-Files is a prelude to Fallout, and the revelation that flukeman is a Chernobyl mutant just reconfirms that. This is a universe where radiation exposure doesn't give you cancer and kill you, it gives mutates you into monsters. At least, sometimes. Enough that it can create viable new species out of insects and flatworms.

We had a bit of a debate over the course of this episode--is the flukeman a parasite that mutates the host, or does it just rely on the host for nutrients and then vanish into the sewers and grow into a mammal/flukeworm hybrid monster? The episode is kind of ambiguous over whether the flatworm grows into a human monster hybrid thing or whether it needs to mutate someone. Vomiting up the larva indicates the former, but some discussion at the end seems to point to the latter. Also, radiation turning flatworms into flukeman monster is directly Fallout--look at the mirelurk king, mutated from a snapping turtle--and that hits me right in my suspension of disbelief. It's totally arbitrary, but it happens.

I really liked the debate between Mulder and Skinner over what to do with the captured flukeman. Skinner wanted to give it a psych eval and Mulder telling him it was a monster and it was pointless. It's something I leaned on when I ran Cthulhutech--protection of human rights is very important, but human rights only apply to humans. Not even to things that look like humans. Especially not to things that look like humans.

I also liked how the Russian sailor had his own name tattooed on his arm. I guess it's in case he forgets?

Also, doesn't this totally shatter the Masquerade? This isn't like the previous episode where everyone involved is a part of MAJESTIC, dead, or our heroes. They had federal marshals try to transport it down public highways and a bunch of sewer workers got killed. Plus, the larva shows there are more out there. The one in the sewers is probably from the Russian's body--which gives them xenomorph-like powers to ignore conservation of mass, but whatever, radiation --which leaves the original and the new one from the sewer worker. They don't have supertech that lets them erase tapes and kidnap people. They're just flukemen. How is MAJESTIC going to conceal this, and do they even care about concealing it when they have aliens to deal with?

I know it's monster-of-the-week and that's not the point, but now I want armed sewer worker flukeman-hunting squads.

Blood
Let's learn cyber-Aklo!

Okay, not really. What it actually reminded me of is the old White Wolf game Hunter: the Reckoning. If you're not familiar with it, the premise is that ordinary salarymen and retirees and stay-at-home parents and taxi drivers and so on start seeing people with horrific blood-dripping fangs or horns and goat legs or looking half-wolf, and then store signs or public transit displays with messages like THEY WALK AMONG YOU or IT DOES NOT LIVE or YOU MUST STOP THEM. It's about how ordinary people deal with suddenly knowing that there are monsters among them and not being able to close their eyes to the sight. Except the art, which was all Trenchcoat McKatana of the clan McKatana hurling molotovs with abandon. That dichotomy meant it never did all that well--people who bought into the personal horror aspect refused to buy it because of the art, and people who wanted Trenchcoat McKatana found out that the rules were about your marriage breaking down and your powers not being enough to actually fight a vampire, so it never worked that well.

Anyway, I spent most of the beginning of the episode wondering if it was another crazy computer, like Ghost in the Machine, but that turned out not to be the case. They left the ultimate villain ambiguous, even though it's clearly a MAJESTIC psi-op. There's even a black helicopter doing the spraying of the mysterious chemical, which a quick google informs me is not actually a chemical but is instead an airbase in Switzerland. They clearly wanted something that was close to LSD without actually being LSD, so I suppose they succeeded in that.

I commented to schoolpsychnerd about how fake the blood looked in the lobby after the elevator murder, and checking the X-Files wiki, I found this passage:

blood slabs – translucent, portable pieces of rubber shaped like pools of blood – were positioned on the terra cotta floor of the tower lobby.

"Blood slabs"? I didn't even realize that was a thing! I even found a recipe here, though watch out for 90s web design. Just think of it as more authenticity, considering the reason I was looking it up.

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending--I think it was a bit tacky to evoke the Clocktower Shooting so directly. Though here, in a truly statistically improbable display considering the pile of shell casings left behind, no one was killed or even injured. At least, no one on screen. I suppose it could have happened in the background, and if it did, at least it happened at a blood drive?

I guess Mulder's phone at the end is a strike against the idea that it's MAJESTIC. From what I've seen so far, I think they're above taunting Mulder with 90s phone text messages. Which isn't to say that it's not the government doing it. If there's one thing we learn from X-Files, it's that the government has roughly thirty dozen conspiracies running in parallel, all of which manage to stay perfectly hidden from each other. Taunting isn't in that headspace.

Episode 18: Miracle Man
This would have been a perfect choice for a hoax episode, and it wouldn't have even needed that many changes for it. I mean, "faith healing." It's right there in the name. They just need to provide plausible deniability and let the viewers draw their own conclusions, and they come so close to doing that. There are locusts in the courtroom, and it turns out that they were in cages near the ventilation system. The (targets? beneficiaries? victims?) of the faith healing die, but they were poisoned with cyanide! And then they throw in the visions of Mulder's sister to reassure the viewer that it's okay. He really does have superpowers.

I did like the character of Samuel. I liked the way he was having a crisis of faith and didn't turn out to be some kind of evil serial killer, but I think that the visions undermined the ambiguity of the story to its detriment. They were trying to tie it into the mythology, sure, but. Ugh. I just wish that they'd at least have one hoax episode. I'm going to keep banging this drum until it breaks.

I do appreciate that you never see the "resurrected" Samuel, though. I'm kind of surprised he didn't show up Children of the Corn-style to punish the sheriff with G-d's wrath. And the identity of the killer was a good twist, as compared to how "Shapes" worked. But most what stuck with me was that it was too neat and should have been less clear. I don't have that much else to say on it.

Episode 19: Shapes
This was the werewolf episode. It wasn't a bad episode, necessarily, but it was the werewolf episode and it did all the things that always happen in the werewolf episode. They kill the werewolf early, but gasp, the murders continue! Why? Could it be that the person who was injured by the werewolf is, himself, now a werewolf? Well, now that you mention it...

And Mulder can tell it's the werewolf episode, too. You can almost see him ticking off the boxes as he looks for evidence.

I didn't realize that Native American werewolves was an older trope, though I suppose it's something that's often applied to marginalized groups--see also the whole Romani werewolf thing. I was glad that they actually cast Native actors for the parts, and then a little annoyed that the mythology was basically window dressing. Sure, manitou and so on, except it was a werewolf. It wasn't passed down in family lines, it may or may not have been spirit possession, but it was definitely "I got attacked and now I'm a werewolf too," which is your standard Wolf Man-style werewolf. That goes back to what I was saying about it being the werewolf episode.

The wiki tells me that "Shapes" came about because the suits wanted to include more standard monster scenarios, so I can see where they tried to spin it into being a bit more exciting within the bonds of keeping it standard, but it didn't stray far enough from the tree for me.

Episode 20: Darkness Falls
With the revelation that radiation turns wood mites into man-eating deathbug swarms, it is now my headcanon that X-Files is a prequel to Fallout. And a sequel to all those 50s B movies. All of them. That's why there's all those x-files out there.

This episode had a good premise--killer bugs that are maddened by darkness and eat people--but I thought it was hampered a bit by the other characters. The ecoterrorist and logger were both thinly sketched caricatures, so I didn't care when they got eaten. The bottle episode aspect, where they were all stuck in the cabin with a limited supply of gasoline powering the light, wasn't as good as in "Ice" just because there were fewer characters, though the revelation that they couldn't keep the bugs out at all and it was only the light that kept them safe was pretty well done.

The wiki points out that the weather during the shooting was terrible, and I kind of wish they had done a bit more with that. Maybe if the rain also kept the bugs from swarming, adding tension based on the uncontrollable weather? I suppose they wouldn't have been able to time that as effectively as the generator running out of gas, though it might have added another element on the side of nature being terrible and unpredictable.

Also, I liked this exchange at the end:

MULDER: "How you going to contain it to the forest? What if the swarm migrates?"
MAN: "The government has initiated eradication procedures. They're quite certain that by using a combination of controlled burns and pesticides, they will be successful."
MULDER: "And if they're not?"
*pause*
MAN: "That is not an option, Mr. Mulder."

The MAN's dialogue was really odd and wooden, but it was just ambiguous enough that it could have been creepy foreshadowing instead. It was a "Top. Men." kind of moment, and a great way to end the episode.

Episode 12: Fire
Faxes! Cassette tapes! Welcome to the 90s! Or Japan!

(spoiler: It's not Japan)

I'm starting to love Mulder's bullheaded gullibility. There's a conversation with an actually kind of creepy arson specialist about accelerants and flammability and how conceivable it is to start fires under certain conditions and he's suddenly like "but guise wat if pyrokinesisisisisis?" And he's right because this is X-Files, but it makes me wonder how he conducts his personal life. If one of his socks is missing, does he assume it's been abducted by aliens or fallen into a dimensional rift or something? I'm surprised Scully's hand isn't permanently melded to her face.



I was a bit distracted by Badger being the villain and showing his true psychotic lowlife credentials, but not enough for it to harm my enjoyment. And the plot and his behavior tied into a concept I've found interesting about psychic powers--that they're related to the psychic's mental state. Like, someone who can speak to ghosts has had a brush with death, or a telepath not respecting anyone's privacy, or a pyrokinetic being an arsonist. Like so many ideas with mythic resonance, it's really easy to read this an in extremely uncomfortable way. Mental illness gives you superpowers!

It's a bit like my flip characterization of Changeling: the Lost as "abuse gives you superpowers."

I didn't buy most of the rest of it, though. Mulder's old flame (hiyoooo!) had no chemistry with Mulder at all and her showing up was a bit too James Bond. The car and the cassette were ridiculous. And the government is imprisoning a pyrokinetic, taking precautions to show that they know he's a pyrokinetic, so why is any of this stuff secret again? I wonder how far the show will be able to stress my acceptance that this somehow remains secret without breaking it?

Oh, that's right. In the 90s, everyone thought the government could conduct a successful conspiracy.

Episode 13: Beyond the Sea
Last episode had Badger, and this episode has General Hammond as Scully's father and Gríma Wormtongue as a creepy serial killer psychic. I recognized Don Davis right away and now Stargate and X-Files will forever take place in the same universe for me (even though here he was in the Navy and in Stargate he's in the Air Force), but I had to look up who Brad Dourif was. Amazing performance.

This was probably my favorite episode of the show so far. I know that just swapping Mulder and Scully's narrative roles is kind of cliche, but I thought it worked even if I would have preferred to see more General Hammond around and I'm annoyed that they introduced Scully's father just to kill him off. After episode after episode of Mulder's wild-ass guessing that's constantly proven right, I'm glad to see him wrong. And there was enough ambiguity until the half-way point of the episode that Boggs could have been running a scam to get back at Mulder. And then at the end, Scully does the natural human thing--she handwaves it all away and justifies it in light of her pre-existing beliefs.

I do wish she hadn't had the visions, though. That pretty quickly tipped it over into telling us that there was something X-Filish happening and that Boggs was legit. In a show about mysteries, a little more mystery would be nice. Though the scene with the spirits of Bogg's victims was genuinely creepy.

It's also a good example of how X-Files works because of interplay between Mulder and Scully, and why I've been told to only watch up to season seven. The tension between skeptical and naive believer who is always right () and the chemistry between the actors combine together to drive the show. And Scully not coming to the execution at the end? Wow. Wow.

If I had to pick one X-Files episode to show people to get them to watch, it'd be this one. Not to knock "The Post-Modern Prometheus," but...

Episode 14: Gender Bender
Alright. So we have a group of Orthodox Jews / Amish / the Strangers from Dark City who live in a cult compound up in the hills of Massachusetts. Also, they can change their sex at will. Or maybe not at will, and it requires some kind of eldritch ritual in their womb-temple to the Black Goat of the Woods. Honestly, once Mulder went down there and saw them using the Milk of Shub-Niggurath to resurrect someone, he should have called DELTA GREEN. Except they would have just come in and burned everything down, and then we wouldn't have had an episode.

So what was going on? Were they cultists? Aliens? Alien-human hybrids? Mutants? Who knows. My personal explanation based on how they talked about "humans" as a separate group is that they were some of the Thousand Young of the Black Goat of the Woods, and there's not really anything to contradict me except that I know X-Files was made before Cthulhu got its tentacles into everything. That's actually one of the aspects of this episode I liked the most--there was no explanation. The viewers were just as confused as Mulder and Scully were. Some of the venom in my previous episode commentary has been defused now, though I'm sure it'll come back if the show goes back to Mulder always having the proper explanation five minutes into the episode. Or maybe it'll wrap around and be kind of charming like it was in "Fire."

I also like how federal agents had no problem rounding up a posse and busting into a cult compound. You can tell this was written pre-Waco.


Brief non-episode point: Apparently Chris Carter was planning on having a lot of hoax episodes mixed in with the actual supernatural ones, according to the X-Files Files, but they realized that the hoax episodes simply weren't as interesting as the supernatural ones. And I can understand that, as much as it sometimes annoys me.

Watched more X-Files with schoolpsychnerd and chronicluscious and I wanted to post about it. Enough so that I made a tag for it. I'm not going to post about every episode--I already missed episodes 1-5, so--but I'll post occasionally.

Episode 6: Shadows
So I already wrote about how it's a problem that Mulder's always right, but this episode kind of drove that home. Alien invasions are all well and good, but as chronicluscious pointed out you can't just run that week to week, you need something else to break the monotony. And X-Files's answer to that is a murder ghost.

I'll ignore the metaphysical questions that the existence of murder ghosts raises and jump to Mulder. I mean, Mulder's not instantly right--he initially thinks it's telepsychokinesis--but he's right enough. It's a bit like the problem that Delta Green has, where to rights there should be a lot of cases with completely mundane explanations where Mulder's wild-ass guessing is totally wrong, we cut to one of those shots of Scully reacting appropriately to his theories, roll credits. But that's boring and we don't watch X-Files to see CSI with conspiracy theorists--and that "we" includes me, I admit--so it's not in there. Thus, murder ghosts.

I'm surprised MAJESTIC (as I'll call the conspiracy from now on, because it's too perfect, and also it's another Delta Green reference and I have a reputation to maintain) didn't roll in and try to figure out how to weaponize murder ghosts, honestly.

Episode 7: Ghost in the Machine
I love the way they talked about computers in the 90s. That bit with "Data travelers, electro-wizards, techno-anarchists" is just a perfect summary of computers on 90s media. I mean, computers are still magic boxes that can do anything on TV, but in the 90s the language they used to talk about them was better.

I did have a bit of a hard time taking the AI seriously, though. First off because they kept calling it an "intelligent machine," and second because I'm imagining the AI stored on a 100 mb hard drive. I have show episodes on my computer now that are bigger than that AI probably was. Yeah, I know that multi-gig desk-sized hard drives existed, but the computer wasn't that big.

Also, I really want the computer geek's house. One level, flowing water everywhere, dark color scheme? Only problem is the lack of window shades.

And Mulder's old partner was totally a deep cover agent in House Slytherin.

Episode 8: Ice
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of The Thing.

I mean, the episode starts with a dog. It has alien parasites frozen in ice. It has distrust and people not knowing who's infected. It has a throwaway line from one of the scientists about whether there's something out there when Scully throws the magazines out into the storm.

And I think that it's the best of these three. The way the parasites kill each other but they only have one parasite sets up a nice tension. They have the cure with them, but they don't know who's infected and if they put the cure in the wrong person then it'll just infect them. The parasites don't turn you into a shapeshifting alien monster, they make you way more irritable and prone to bursts of anger--in much the way that being trapped in a small space with several other people who are all under severe stress makes you irritable and prone to bursts of anger, so it was entirely reasonable that any of the characters could have been infected. The episode kept the suspense throughout, which I think is a first for me in my experience with this show. Usually I can figure out what's going to happen pretty quickly.

And then MAJESTIC rolls in and blows the whole thing up. I'm surprised, since I figured that they'd want it for research, but maybe they decided the risk of a rage zombie outbreak was too great. I mean, one of the conceits of this show is that the secret government organization is staggeringly competent, so I can actually imagine them performing a proper risk assessment and making a reasonable conclusion based on it. Forget murder ghosts, MAJESTIC is the most unbelievable aspect of the X-Files.

More next time (maybe)!