Case 07, File 01: The Sixth Extinction

AKA: The Mulder School For Gifted Youngers

The seventh season of a show is almost always a transitory period. Many well known shows (Parks and Rec, 30 Rock) called it quits at the end of their seventh season. Other shows that continued on had major shifts happen at the end of their seventh seasons; Larry David left Seinfeld at the end of their seventh season, Steve Carell left The Office at the same time in their show. And hanging over The X-Files Season 7, like the Sword of Damocles is the fact of David Duchovny's exit at the end of the season.

Our Season opens with Scully hanging out on that beach in the Ivory Coast with the spaceship, researching it and the weird rubbing that drove Mulder crazy and then seeing a phantom man and getting attacked by bugs. Back in America, Mulder is still not doing great, and to demonstrate this, he attacks Skinner, leaving a torn off piece of his gown with "Help me" written on it in Skinner's pocket. So he's probably doing fine, right?

Back in the Ivory Coast, a new doctor named Amina shows up to tell Scully that she wants to work on the spaceship too, that shit is weird and maybe don't share that fact with the superstitious locals. That ship has sailed however, as the seawater immediately starts boiling, which seems odd. Back in DC, Skinner gets Mulder to write down a name on his hand to go and find someone to help Mulder out.

The name turns out to be Kritschgau (remember him? No? I don't blame you) who has been fired by the DOD and is living in a shitty apartment, which he blames Mulder for (not unjustly). But Skinner thinks he can help Mulder and it turns out he can: The CIA had other psychics that Kritschgau had seen and he knows that the problem is their brain is too powerful for their body, but Phenytoin can help him. Turns out he can read minds and he knows Skinner is working for Krycek but he wants Skinner to help him anyway.

"Okay but there's no "I'm in Hell" attached, so we can probably rule out Cenobite involvement. Probably."

Meanwhile, back on the beach, Dr. Barnes shows up out of nowhere (just roll with it), claiming he didn't actually kill Dr. Merkmallen, but the water immediately turns red and Scully keeps seeing the phantom African man. They begin deciphering the spacecraft and find the top has human genome on it, but the bottom has quotes from various holy books on it. But then Dr. Barnes decides the best way to handle all this information is to go crazy, and refuse to let Scully and Amina leave.

Back in DC, Mulder keeps demonstrating his growing powers, and Skinner and Krischgau decide to break him out of the hospital. But Fowley (who decided she wants to just be a straight up villain) catches them and Mulder has a seizure. Back on the beach (we're almost done bouncing back and forth, I swear), the fish Barnes caught come back to life and Scully takes the opportunity to club him in the face with a chair and bolt with Amina. On the drive back, she sees the phantom man, who tells her "Some truths are not for you" which convinces her to finally head back to DC.

Back there, she finds out that Mulder is back in a coma and Skinner is banned from the hospital. Fowley visits Mulder to tell him that she loves him and Scully visits to tell him to hold on. Back on the back, Barnes kills his guide, who comes back to life and kills him a little bit later. The next day, Amina arrives with the police to only find Barnes' body, and the spaceship is gone. And that's where we get out To Be Continued.

I don't know how long the specter of Duchovny's exit from the series was hanging over the writer's heads, but this episode feels like they knew, even if they didn't know yet. Mulder is there, and all the characters are obsessed with him, but he spends most of the time rendered silent, maybe saying 5 or 6 lines in the entire episode. It feels like a test run for the series without Mulder, while still trying to push the story forward, but not too far, they've got one more of these to do.

If Mulder could see Scully acting this obsessive over an alien spaceship, he'd probably faint.

In case you didn't get this from the plot summary, there are two main threads in this story, one devoted to Scully on the beach with the spaceship and one devoted to Skinner and Kritschgau trying to get Mulder back to being a functioning human being. Of the two, I like Scully's more, at least in this episode. It has momentum and stakes and is also where most of the weird, scary scenes take place. The phantom African Shaman(?) may not be the most racially sensitive trope to draw on, but it's a good visual and the scenes with the bugs and the boiling sea water are both solid scare scenes, and do a good job of selling the (vaguely defined) power of the ship.

Mulder's plot on the other hand does a poor job of disguising the fact that it's mostly trying to run in place. Sure we get Kritschgau involved and get some exposition and displays of Mulder's powers, it's hard to escape the knowledge that Mulder begins and ends the episode more or less in the same position: Tied down in a hospital, powerless to communicate. Obviously the ticking clock of Mulder's brain melting from lack of sleep is the big motivator for the three parter so they can't resolve it just yet, but maybe they could have hidden it a little better.

Not that Scully's plotline is without flaws either. Dr. Barnes, who had barely any screentime in the previous episode, shows up at the midpoint and there's very little space between his arrival and him just going crazy. I feel like some scenes might be on the cutting room floor (or just in the writer's mind) because it's hard to get invested in him when he doesn't seem to exist for any other reason other than to threaten Scully and Amina with a machete and then take a different machete (or possibly the same machete?) to the face.

"How do you lose a spaceship? It's a spaceship! It's really big!" 

Aside from that, it suffers from all the same issues that a lot of middle chapters of three episodes suffer from. Without a proper beginning or a proper end, the story has to spend a solid chunk of time just meandering about. A stronger understanding of Amina or Barnes might have given them a small arc within the episode to give us some payoff in the episode, but Amina is just as flat as Barnes (although, I'll admit, the payoff to their plots, IE the visual of the beach with the spaceship missing, is solid). And while I'm complaining, the visual of the ocean turning red is awful, there had to be better effects available than that.

Season Seven is a season I've been looking forward to reviewing, cause my rewatches tend to trail off at the end of Seven or the beginning of Eight, and without that as an option this time, I was curious to see when the feeling that I should end this and go rewatch something else would hit. And it hasn't hit yet, I still like the series, even as the seams start to get obvious. Maybe it'll hit later this season, maybe it'll wait till Season Eight or maybe it won't hit at all. But I guess we're gonna find out together.

Case Notes:

• Oh they're actually still doing Previously Ons?
• Mulder's still being driven mad by the Alien Artifact, so Scully has taken over opening voice over duty.
• Scully calls Mulder's mind "Beautiful" in the opening VO which is kind of sweet, and also a little weird as a compliment. It feels in character though.
• Scully also mentions that the craft was for Mulder to find, cause he was the only one weird enough to figure it out. She phrased it differently, but I can read between the lines.
• The shot of the phantom man in Scully's tent is neat, but I like the shot of her desk covered in bugs more, sells the supernatural element better.
• Scully hefting a machete is really funny to me for some reason.
• The rubbing has turned off Mulder's brain's ability to sleep so his brain is going to melt is a hell of a ticking clock.
• I like Duchovny attacking Skinner without a word. Duchovny sells it hard, and I like Skinner finding the fabric in his pocket a moment later. Plus I like Skinner telling him that he doesn't want to hurt Mulder even while pinned, cause, you know, Skinner.
• The subtitles say that the Africans are "Speaking Native language" but the primary language of the Ivory Coast is French.
• I like Amina walking into the tent covered in dead bugs with Scully just looking tired. Of course Scully handled it, she's Scully.
• I also love Amina basically telling Scully that her chances of keeping the ship secret are basically nil.
• The dude getting boiled in the seawater is a neat visual but it kind of tells me that no one would be working on the ship after that.
• Dr. Barnes telling Scully that neither of them believe in aliens despite being there is really funny to me.
• I like the the fakeout of Mulder writing Kritschgau instead of Krycek is good, but it took me way too long to remember who he was.
• Kritschgau looks like shit, and I like that he blames Mulder, since it is kind of his fault.
• There's a lot of good stuff in the Kritschgau-Skinner-Mulder scene, but it does feel a bit like a retcon that Kritschgau knows all this stuff about ESP.
• Fowley, at this point, has shifted from morally ambiguous character to full on antagonist.
• Kritschgau saying that he doesn't believe in aliens when he's done telling Mulder that he can read minds is really amusing to me.
• The idea that Christianity (and Islam, and all religions) come from the aliens is a neat one, but it doesn't totally square with the actual demons and angels Mulder and Scully have dealt with.
• Dr. Barnes going crazy in the middle of this episode kind of comes out nowhere and I feel like it could be better set up.
• I like Mulder making a Ghostbusters joke in the middle of him getting his ESP tested.
• I'm sorry, is Kritschgau doubting that Mulder is psychic after he literally read people's minds, a lot.
• I was literally just thinking that Scully could totally take the clearly not well Dr. Barnes when she clubbed him in the face with a chair. I love Scully.
• Dr. Barnes has gone full psycho killer by the time the episode has hit the third act. I'm not clear on whether the ship did it, the heat or just facing the existential horror of the ship.
• Also apparently no one bothered to tell anyone that there's a lunatic hanging around on that beach with a machete.
• Fowley tells Mulder that she has her reasons for joining up with the Cigarette Smoking Man but I'd love to know what they are.
• Scully returns to the FBI from Africa having apparently not stopped home to shower and change.
• Scully is apparently Mulder's doctor so she can get through any security they put around him. God they're great.
• Scully begging Mulder to hold on is great, I love it when this show rips my heart out.
• The Dr. Barnes storyline is basically one long buildup to the ship being gone, but I'll accept it.
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