Requiem
We are gathered here today to remember the dearly departed.
The X Files is dead. Long live the X Files.
At times like this, it is appropriate to look both to the past and to the future.
If we cast our minds back a season and four episodes to ‘The Unnatural’, we see how the end can actually be a beautiful thing.
Not to spoil the image, we must, however, keep in mind that the X Files has already had its resurrection experience. The series was originally scheduled only for five seasons, so maybe the title of the episode in which Josh Exley had his Pinocchio moment was more prophetic that we might have realised at the time.
Cast your minds one season and two episodes into the future; the penultimate scene of ‘Nothing Important Happened Today II’ in which we see Shannon McMahon, who we thought must be dead after having Knowle Rohrer’s arm thrust through her chest, lying on the sea bed. Of course, we know what is about to happen. Anyone who has ever seen a modern so-called ‘horror’ film knows that the monster cannot be permanently dispatched. Sure enough, as we wait anxiously, Shannon opens her eyes and another horror cliché can be ticked off the list.
As much as I would like to cling to the end of ‘The Unnatural’, I can’t help but think that, after ‘Requiem’, the prospect of an eighth season is more akin to Shannon McMahon opening her eyes at the bottom of the sea. The X Files has become the very thing it sought to protect us from – as did Bill Patterson in ‘Grotesque’.
Like Virgil Incanto, in ‘2Shy’, the X Files seduces us into staying with it when, as in any so-called horror movie, common sense tells us we should run like Hell! Season Eight is a decent Season and John Doggett is a worthy substitute – not replacement – for Mulder. The relationship that develops between Doggett and Scully is at least interesting even if it remains a pale shadow of what we had with Scully and Mulder.
Compared to anything else, then or now, Season Eight of the X Files is a decent season of TV. But it’s like the alien bounty hunter - a thing that has taken the shape of something it isn’t.
I don’t even begrudge John Doggett and Monica Reyes taking the reins in Season Nine. What makes that final-not season heartbreaking is the way in which Scully is shunted to the side. Government/alien conspirators and the F.B.I. hierarchy has been unable to achieve what the show itself does to Scully. After all the peril she’s been in over the years, her end is not with a bang but a whimper.
If one thinks rationally, one must accept that, after Mulder’s abduction, there really is no point to carrying on. The previous seven seasons have been, in the main, consumed with Mulder’s quest to find ‘The Truth’. To a far lesser extent has he tried to convince others of the existence of the conspiracy between the government and the alien colonists.
He failed!
As an agent of the F.B.I., he was unable to convince the world at large that the conspiracy existed.
How the Hell, then, as an abductee, is he ever going to convince anyone?
No one listens to an abductee! We’ve seen this often enough over the years.
The whole purpose of a requiem is to give thanks for the life of the deceased and to accept that the future will be a little emptier for their passing. But it is to the future that the requiem directs our gaze. After giving thanks for having had some time with the deceased in our lives, now is the time to move on – open to what the future might have to bring.
Season Eight – I can’t bring myself to comment further on Nine just yet – is like the worst case of seeking closure.
The X Files is dead. Long live the X Files.
At times like this, it is appropriate to look both to the past and to the future.
If we cast our minds back a season and four episodes to ‘The Unnatural’, we see how the end can actually be a beautiful thing.
Not to spoil the image, we must, however, keep in mind that the X Files has already had its resurrection experience. The series was originally scheduled only for five seasons, so maybe the title of the episode in which Josh Exley had his Pinocchio moment was more prophetic that we might have realised at the time.
Cast your minds one season and two episodes into the future; the penultimate scene of ‘Nothing Important Happened Today II’ in which we see Shannon McMahon, who we thought must be dead after having Knowle Rohrer’s arm thrust through her chest, lying on the sea bed. Of course, we know what is about to happen. Anyone who has ever seen a modern so-called ‘horror’ film knows that the monster cannot be permanently dispatched. Sure enough, as we wait anxiously, Shannon opens her eyes and another horror cliché can be ticked off the list.
As much as I would like to cling to the end of ‘The Unnatural’, I can’t help but think that, after ‘Requiem’, the prospect of an eighth season is more akin to Shannon McMahon opening her eyes at the bottom of the sea. The X Files has become the very thing it sought to protect us from – as did Bill Patterson in ‘Grotesque’.
Like Virgil Incanto, in ‘2Shy’, the X Files seduces us into staying with it when, as in any so-called horror movie, common sense tells us we should run like Hell! Season Eight is a decent Season and John Doggett is a worthy substitute – not replacement – for Mulder. The relationship that develops between Doggett and Scully is at least interesting even if it remains a pale shadow of what we had with Scully and Mulder.
Compared to anything else, then or now, Season Eight of the X Files is a decent season of TV. But it’s like the alien bounty hunter - a thing that has taken the shape of something it isn’t.
I don’t even begrudge John Doggett and Monica Reyes taking the reins in Season Nine. What makes that final-not season heartbreaking is the way in which Scully is shunted to the side. Government/alien conspirators and the F.B.I. hierarchy has been unable to achieve what the show itself does to Scully. After all the peril she’s been in over the years, her end is not with a bang but a whimper.
If one thinks rationally, one must accept that, after Mulder’s abduction, there really is no point to carrying on. The previous seven seasons have been, in the main, consumed with Mulder’s quest to find ‘The Truth’. To a far lesser extent has he tried to convince others of the existence of the conspiracy between the government and the alien colonists.
He failed!
As an agent of the F.B.I., he was unable to convince the world at large that the conspiracy existed.
How the Hell, then, as an abductee, is he ever going to convince anyone?
No one listens to an abductee! We’ve seen this often enough over the years.
The whole purpose of a requiem is to give thanks for the life of the deceased and to accept that the future will be a little emptier for their passing. But it is to the future that the requiem directs our gaze. After giving thanks for having had some time with the deceased in our lives, now is the time to move on – open to what the future might have to bring.
Season Eight – I can’t bring myself to comment further on Nine just yet – is like the worst case of seeking closure.
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