Thoughts in a File Marked X

Let’s get something straight right away. I hate this episode. But, then, I hate William! It’s not the baby’s fault. He’s probably as adorable as Scully thinks him. I hate what he did to my all-time favourite TV character. I hate that he reduced her to, well - dare I say it? - a mother. I hope you women out there – if there are any who read this blog – don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against motherhood. Or fatherhood, for that matter. My wife and I have two of the most beautiful, wonderful, gush gush children imaginable. Only in the context of the X Files, and specifically, Scully, do I hate the baby. I am gloriously happy for her as a human being. She had previously lamented her inability to have children in ‘ Home ’ and ‘ Emily ’, for instance. As a person, she is blessed by the birth of William. But, Scully isn’t a person, is she? She’s a character in a TV show. Not just any character, mind, oh no. She’s a rational female character whose job it is to rationalize the ...

A script by William Golding it is not! The ‘ Lord of the Flies ’ is a translation from the Hebrew ‘ Beelzebub ’. Ironically, Beelzebub was likely invoked to ward off the flies, rather than attract them. But myths are nothing if not flexible. Which is precisely why we are not overly keen on myths in this scientific world in which we live. Today, everything must be plain and simple – either/or , as Søren Kierkegaard would say, flying in the face of  Slavoj Žižek . Politicians are not allowed to change their minds, admit that maybe a policy needs amendments, or decide not to leave the European Union. It is seen as a U-Turn, if they do and, thanks to that, oh so English Lord of the Flies, Margaret Thatcher , this is seen as political suicide. So, we are lumbered with, as Doggett so ably puts it, a culture that takes “enormous pride in being sub-mental”. It has given us Reality TV and, consequently, Donald Trump. How lucky we are to live in a world that we created for ourselves ...

Every morning, around 7am, Fredo opens his door and Fido steps out to do his business and frolic a few minutes. Fido’s days are crammed with inactivity as he awaits Fredo’s return home from work. Around 4pm every day, Fido gleefully welcomes home Fredo, who quickly changes, grabs up Fido’s leash and then the two of them walk to the park – Fredo walking off the tensions of the day; Fido taking the opportunity to sniff and chase. Then, one day, Fredo doesn’t appear at the appointed time. Fido eventually goes to investigate and finds his friend apparently still sleeping. Fido whines. Fredo doesn’t wake. Fredo never wakes again. Fido’s life has changed irrevocably. Does Fido indulge in speculations on the nature of reality? Does he conclude that the nature of reality has fractured, that there was a real world in which there was a Fredo and, now, an unreal world in which there is no Fredo? Or maybe, the before-world was unreal and now he must face a reality he has no way of understandin...

Okay, ‘ Dæmonicus ’ is not the X Files at its best. But, then, very little of Season Nine is. That said, I quite like this episode. It is episodes like this that makes me thankful I’m not a TV critic. If I was, I would have to agree with them0vieblog.com when it says that: There are no tangible stakes, because there’s never a sense that the audience knows the limitations or the motivations of the bad guy. It is hard to get too invested in the chase when Josef Kobold will always be one step ahead because of convenient plotting and (possibly) supernatural ability. I don’t want to agree with this justifiable criticism simply because it precisely delineates the reason why I like the episode. I like the fact that, for once, there is no Mulder or Scully expounding a theory, that there is a possibility of things happening that haven’t been previously catalogued and filed away. The dynamic between Mulder and Scully was always that he was open to extreme possibilities and she the scepti...

Growing older is depressing. One has to face the fact that one’s relevance isn’t what it once was or, even more depressing, that one was never really that relevant, that it was all no more than a fantasy of one’s own making. There is no doubt that the X Files had been hugely relevant - a whole different world ago. Even though a good story transcends its time and place and touches on what it means to be human, it only becomes ever harder to tell the story in a way that continues to reverberate in hearts and minds. The title of Season 9s two-part opener may well have been ‘ Nothing Important Happens this Season ’. Special Agent Dana Scully must surely be questioning her relevance throughout most of this season. Gillian Anderson brought to life one of the most influential and iconic TV characters ever only to find herself, this season, reduced to little more than a co-star in her own TV show. In truth, Dana Scully was a story that had been told and should have been allowed to disappea...

What does the final episode of Season Eight tell us about human ‘ Existence ’? It does nothing more nor less than life itself. It provides no answers except those we choose to see. Life is a paranoid nightmare, in which the buggers really are out to get you. Life is merely the means by which we propagate our genes and give birth to the next generation so they can do precisely the same. Life is the relationships we form; the people we know we can rely on. Life is a miracle. Life is beyond understanding, wherein which nothing makes sense. Life is … well, whatever you read into the episode. Though raised a Catholic, I never had to memorise the 370 fundamental questions and answers on the Catholic Faith that is the Penny Catechism: #2 Why did God make you? God made me to know him, to love him and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next. While still I count myself Catholic, and fully believe this answer, it isn’t what one might call entirely s...

Whatever loses its goodness ceases to be. Thus wicked men cease to be what they were; but the appearance of their human bodies, which they keep, shows that they once were men. To give oneself to evil, therefore, is to lose one's human essence. Just as virtue can raise a person above ordinary human nature, so vice lowers those whom it has seduced from the condition of men beneath human nature. For this reason, anyone whom you find transformed by vice cannot be counted a man. Although vicious men keep the appearance of their human bodies, they are nevertheless changed into beasts as far as the essence of their souls is concerned." Boethius,  The Emboldenment of Philosophy , 523 CE Essentially, if you are reading this, you are human. Dogs, kangaroos and rattle snakes are not in the habit of sitting down to read a blog on the internet. Your pet dog may be, to you, more human than most of the people you know, yet it remains a dog - an animal you just happen to measure favoura...

There is something wrong with being alone. We human beings are not, generally speaking, meant to be alone. And, it has to be said, very few of us are. Loneliness is not a question of how many people there are in your life. It is a question of how many people you allow to be a part of who you are. So it is that some people can be lonely in a crowded room. Nobody, but nobody, is responsible for your feelings of loneliness but you yourself. Doggett is faced with being ‘ Alone ’ in the nineteenth episode of Season Eight. Clearly, he is already missing Scully even as she walks out the door, “This pregnancy leave – it is just leave, right? I mean, you are coming back eventually?” Imagine the X Files with no Mulder and no Scully; just Doggett, alone, down in that office! Was never going to happen! This is a show predicated on the relationship between two agents - one male, the other female. So, only moments after Scully’s departure, Agent Harrison arrives. Just as Doggett, left to himse...

The black oil reduces the body to what we fear it might be in our darkest nightmares, a machine made of meat. ( them0vieblog.com ) Does the black oil, in ‘ Vienen ’ reduce the human body to a machine or, simply, symbolize our dependence on machines? As with any symbol, it is open to a variety of interpretations, so both readings might well be relevant. It largely depends on the reader of the text. I, for one, refuse to read any text as symbolizing the human being as machine. It’s a workable concept and probably holds considerable meaning for many who have a, in my opinion, diminished view of humanity. It truly makes no difference that the human body functions in ways that can be seen as a form of mechanization, just as the workings of the brain have often been compared to computers. That we are willing to reduce ourselves to the level of something that we created is abhorrent. God, in coming among us in human form, in the body of Jesus, is not thereby reduced to the human level. ...

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Empedocles “has been regarded variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud.” Evidently not a “ stable genius ”, then, and, very likely, someone who would utilise Twitter to his own aggrandizement, but, nevertheless, someone who is regarded as “one of the most important of the philosophers working before Socrates ”, to quote, once again, the IEP. Empedocles it was who gave us the perennially popular idea of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Out of these four elements all things stem. According to Empedocles, all that exists is some mixture of these four, with the whole being something other than its constituents, while they, in turn, retain their own individual nature. Just think on that for a moment. Before Socrates – that is, before Athens and all that it gifted to the political, philosophical and literary world – ...

The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope. Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.549, Da Capo Press While others shout of war’s disaster Oh, we won’t give in Let’s go living in the past Jethro Tull, Living in the Past, 1969 I don’t often quote Wikipedia, but, in its article for ‘ Three Words’ , it describes Absalom as ‘the former leader of a doomsday UFO “group”. It seems a rather succinct way to describe such a complex character. For once, the irony is quite subtle because not much is made of it. Absalom ‘predicted there would be an alien invasion at the Millennium.’ As he himself notes, it turns out he was right. As so many are not! The question is whether Absalom’s group were a ‘doomsday’ cult? It seems, in ‘ DeadAlive ’ and ‘ Three Words ’ that rather than merely succumbing to the invasion, Absalom intended to resist. There is certainly no reason to think that Absalom’s group is a ‘ Heaven’s Gate ’ in waiting. After all, tho...

Why do we talk about Mulder as a Christ-like figure and not a Christ figure? Well, Christ only needed one resurrection, for one. What are we on with Mulder, now? His fourth? Somebody, somewhere, seems to be running out of ideas! Understandably, I suppose, for a show in its eighth season. Whichever way one chooses to look at it, the X Files is ‘ DeadAlive ’ at this point in its run. It had always been the case that an average episode of the X Files exceeded most other TV shows for writing quality and production values and this definitely remained the case throughout Season Eight. But it wasn’t quite the show it had been in its heyday back in the 1990s. Putting aside Mulder and Scully, for a moment, characters like Skinner, Cigarette Smoking Man, Krycek and, even, John Doggett were fascinating and well-wrought. The show never quite knew what to do with Alex Krycek yet, still, he was a figure of weight and significance – an air of expectation existed every time he made an appearance. ...

And, so, Monica Reyes arrives on the scene. It is an interesting name. The original meaning is lost but, in the 4 th Century, Monica was the name of St. Augustin’s mother – she it was who aided his conversion to Christianity. Not unnaturally, the name accrued Latin and Greek associations over time. In Latin, it is associated with ‘ moneo ’, meaning ‘ advisor ’ and in Greek, ‘ monos ’, meaning ‘ one ’. The name Reyes is even more evocative as it relates directly to the mother of Jesus. In Spanish, Mary, the Virgin mother of Christ, bears the title ‘ La Virgen de los Reyes ’, which means, ‘ The Virgin of the Kings ’. Unfortunately, the character was to prove something of a disappointment – certainly, she never lived up to her name. Something was made of her specialism in ritualised crime upon her arrival, but little was made of this as her tenure developed. While more of a believer than Doggett, her willingness to explore extreme possibilities never really made her suited to the X ...