Thoughts in a File Marked X

The trouble with Science is that it is done by scientists. The troubles with scientists is that they are human beings. The trouble with human beings is that they are inquisitive. And the trouble with being inquisitive is that nothing but the answer will end the quest. Jason Nichols, the Elder, travels back in time to prevent the discovery that would ultimately lead to his being able to travel back in time to prevent the discovery. The question of whether this is possible is not just a science question. ‘ Synchrony ’ only dips its toes in the very edge of this vast ocean that is the question of time travel. At the end of the episode, after elder Jason has incinerated his younger self, uttering the words, “It’s better that we never were,” only one body is found. Scully asks Mulder, “You find the second corpse?” To which Mulder replies, “No, and I’m not holding out much hope that they will, either.” When the younger Jason dies the older ceases to ever have existed and so no body is ...

Max Fenig should have been an ordinary, decent person. All he wanted was to be left alone. But Max is no Greta Garbo and his wish was not to be granted. As anyone who has seen the two-parter, 'Tempus Fugit '/' Max ' knows, Max Fenig died, along with one-hundred-thirty-three others when Flight 549 crashed with, apparently, only one survivor. What set Max apart from those others, what prevented Max’s being just an ordinary, decent person, is the role imposed upon him; that of alien abductee – a part in a drama the playing out of which led to the fate of 549. Mulder has an affinity for Max. As much as Max hated his abduction experiences, Mulder is almost overjoyed when he discovers nine minutes missing, implying alien activity, and suggesting, to Mulder at least, that Max wasn’t aboard Flight 549 when it hit the ground. Even though it might mean another abduction scenario for poor Max, it would at least hold out hope of his still being alive. It seems to be importan...

That moment when Mulder asks if there is "any indication or suspicion that Flight five-forty-nine may have been forced down?" In a crowd of people who all supposedly know why they are there and the job they have to do and one person speaks up with a perspective that hasn't been considered. Can't be because it's, as Americans are so fond of saying, 'outside the box'. Ordinary, decent people, who follow the rules as a way of navigating their way through life, undesirous of the attention a personal view might draw down upon them, never ask the question that forces others to think. Mulder has, time after time, shown he is unwilling to merely accept the standard view. Way back, in Season One, in ' Squeeze ', after being invited backhandedly onto a case by a colleague of Scully's, when asked if it might be a case of little green men, Mulder responds with "Grey". Tom Colton: Excuse me? Mulder : Grey. You said green men, a Reticulan...

I must admit, when I first watched ' Unrequited ' I didn't understand the title's relation to the story. Maybe because I am so steeped in literature and was expecting a tragic love story or, maybe, because I'm not American, I just didn't get it. I'm speaking as a person who spent many years - more than most - as a student, with essays to write which had to have a title before I could begin. As an English teacher, I tell students that the title can come after the writing and, for many of these blogs, that's how they get the title they do. But I always begin with the title of the episode. Without a title I have nothing to write. It's a personal thing. As I watched ' Unrequited ' again, I still didn't get it. Until I read the review of this episode at them0vieblog.com . Then I got it. When one is not American it is difficult to understand things that might seem obvious. Watch ' Apocalypse Now ’ (1979) or ‘ First Blood ’ (1982)...

[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. [4] In him was life, and the life was the light of men. [5] And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (Jn.1:1-5) The Sepher Vetzirah , the text Arial uses to create her golem , was written nearly two hundred years after Saint John opened his Gospel with one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry ever written. Even in English translation, the complexity of thought and the power of language remain. So many of the ancient traditions used by the ridiculous Dan Brown and the equally ridiculous History Channel were inspired by the mysticism inherent in Christianity rather than vice versa. Mithraism is first documented late in the first century A.D., that is "in the year of Our Lord", meaning after Christianity, not before. So a...

' Leonard Betts ' told us that Scully has cancer and, thanks to a shuffling of the production order, ' Never Again ' showed us her reaction to that news with an uncharacteristic night of near passion. In ' Memento Mori ' we finally see Scully begin an attempt to fight what she terms "science's demon possession". That she does so designate her cancer in this way is rather telling for it shows the extent to which she has become immersed in Mulder's worldview. This is little less than shocking coming so soon after the near break-down of their relationship in ' Never Again '. In that episode, Mulder made the distinction between them clear: But let me remind you that I worked my ass off to get the files reopened. You were just assigned. This work is my life. Scully does respond that it also becoming hers, but Mulder is right when he retorts, "You don't want it to be." Even after all the pair have been through togethe...

Haven't we all said that? Usually the morning after the night before. James Bond had it right though, ' Never Say Never Again ' (1983). Ed Jerse - divorced, drunk, tattooed. If movies and TV are any kind of reflection of American culture it seems getting a tattoo is the thing to do to mark some significant moment in life. I'll go with the scene in ' Starship Troopers ' (1997) as my reference, but there could be countless others. It's a question I've pondered endlessly - just how much do TV and movies reflect the culture that produced them? Without doubt, a text is the product of the culture and time in which it is produced. What makes it fascinating, as a non-American, is the accepted view of the West Coast as more liberal than the East yet it still produces ' Dirty Harry ' and ' Die Hard ' (1988). The thing that really bothers me about ' Die Hard ', which is up there in my greatest movies list, is Al Powell. It's that sce...

' Leonard Betts ' the most watched episode of the X Files ever, asks a really important question - one that isn't really answered by the show. Why must Leonard be a monster? TV folklore says that the strange and gifted must hide themselves away from the gaze of science for fear of becoming merely an object to be studied and, ultimately, sent for 'slicing and dicing', to use Mulder's pictorialisation. (cf. ' Teliko ') Leonard Betts - or Albert Tanner as he actually is - certainly is strange; a man made from cancer, who must 'eat' cancer to survive. Sounds monster-of-the-week material, doesn't it? But think about it. Being cancer, Leonard has an extraordinary talent for spotting cancer in others. Which he uses to the good benefit of others, serving as an EMT at the start of the episode, a calling to which he returns later after his re-growing of his head. He is even a pretty good surgeon, as we see on his removal of the cancer from his m...

It is claimed that the X Files is of its time, the 90s, which, of course it is. (cf. them0vieblog ) Nobody can watch an episode today and not smile at those quaint phones, for instance. Even the themes of the show must have some relevance born of that era - until recently, could a show so paranoid and so full of conspiracy have been as successful as the X Files was in the nineties? It is not the sudden change in American politics, however, that keeps the X Files relevant. Every good story well told remains relevant in every age. Shakespeare has the advantage of being redone, reset and revitalised. A TV show is what it is; there is no going back to change things. Those phones will forever be outdated. Story is always human life encapsulated within a text and, as such, remains revelatory of who we are. The X Files tells tales of human beings as we were back in time, which is not so much different to how we are today. It really isn't necessary to revamp Shakespeare. King Lear ...

You're sat on the sofa, or maybe your favourite armchair, in front of the TV. You select what you feel like watching. You settle back and prepare to leave the real world behind. For the next hour or two, the story will be your reality. We enter the world of the story with ease - like hypnosis, we slip into it without notice. While we exist in this unreal world it is more real than the one in which the sofa continues to exist. If the baby cries or the doorbell rings or the moon falls from the sky we are annoyed at the disturbance, delaying any reaction in the hope that it will just go away all by itself. So caught up are we in the world we have entered, we share the emotions of the people whose lives we observe. Until that moment when they do something so obviously stupid - fans of horror films will know this feeling. It's the feeling we get, in 'Paper Hearts', when Mulder runs out of the motel room to save his sister. He knows it isn't Samantha as well as...

Life is the greatest gift. Unless it's a burden. Our perception of ourselves must be tempered by our attitude to life itself! We claim to value all human life and yet dispense with it when it becomes inconvenient. We philosophize about the value of all human life, yet hold some more valued than others. The great American experiment claims that all life is equal while reality is patently very different! We are hypocrites! The old lady, at the beginning of ' Terma ', must sneak out in the midst of night to end a life which to her is unbearable, yet younger women can walk into a clinic and terminate a life as a right. There is nothing more telling of the human condition in the modern world than our values of life. Plural because there is no single value that holds. Life, like all things human, is up for dispute. We cannot, in all honesty, say we value life if we allow the holocaust of the unborn, or insist on keeping alive those who would be better off dead. The...

' Tunguska ' takes an actual event of 1908 as its starting point. Around this historical occurrence the X Files weaves its web of conspiracy. Of course, these days, ' conspiracy ' is a pejorative, implying Syndicates and Illuminati and, for good measure, the Knights Templar . The human imagination gave us Shakespeare 's plays , Tolkien 's Middle Earth and Einstein 's Relativity Theory . It also gave us Franz Joseph Gall 's Phrenology , Erich von Däniken 's ' Chariots of the Gods ' and Hitler 's Final Solution . Above all of these, it gave us Darwin 's Theory of Evolution by Means of Natural Selection . For its sheer beauty, simplicity and explanatory power, Darwin's theory must come close to being the crowning glory of human achievement. All theories begin life in the human imagination. If one person is not able to conceptualise the idea and later find the evidence to give that idea substance there would be no science. ...

For all its ability to play Olympian games of chess, what has the American experiment accomplished? It fought the good fight against Communism and endowed the world with its movies; it provided much needed aid to Britain in the forties and then persuaded us to join its invasion of Iraq. It has given the world Disney and Coca Cola and a war on terror that no one really wants. In a world driven by economies no one can afford to dismiss America. What the world can do is as America has always done - pay lip service to the beast. A paradigm shift has occurred and America has been shifted to the side. It no longer holds the West in awe, Svengali like, for its underbelly has been revealed to the world. If ever there was a conspiracy it was America's belief that it deserved special mention in the annals of the West. Only now are the rest of us beginning to laugh at the American joke. It was given more of a chance to fulfill its potential than most but only because we needed it to su...

Who wouldn't want to be someone else? Jacques Cousteau  - that's who I wanted to be as a child. But then I drowned! Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see? Do you see the child who suffered years of bullying at school? Or the student who wasn't as intelligent as a sibling? Or the gawky kid who was so shy he couldn't get a girlfriend? Or the introvert who had no small talk for casual encounters? Or the ‘idiot' who discovered philosophy? Or the fool who trusted others? Is it even possible to look in the mirror and like what one sees? ' Sanguinarium ' asks us to think about changing reality. As usual, it offers no answers. But it does impel us to think - despite being another particularly weak episode. I never fully understood  Jacques Lacan . But I did get his concept of the  mirror . I had stared into it long enough. I am now of an age when I can look back on my life with a degree of reason and spirit. Would I have done anything differently?...