Case 09, File 09: Provenance

AKA: It Cannot Be THAT Hard To Kill A Baby

Thus far most episodes of Season 9 have been surprisingly good, or at least not bad enough to justify getting upset about. The exceptions have mostly been the Myth Arc episodes; It's very clear that the series lost any control it had over the tv show's long term direction ages ago, and is spinning in circles trying to find a plotline that'll stick. The super soldier plotline has been pretty inconsistent so it turns out the best way to move the plot forward is to grab plots from like 3 seasons ago.

Our episode kicks off with some dude trying to jump the Canadian border into North Dakota on a dirt bike. And before you think he's pretty cool, he immediately does what I would do on a dirt bike, IE crash and burn, literally. But, we see that he has a rubbing of the spaceship from way back in Biogenesis. The FBI thinks this is pretty weird, and Skinner, Kersh and Brad call Scully up to Skinner's office to interrogate her about it. She's confused about it and refuses to answer questions, but then goes and sees Doggett and Reyes and fills them in on  the story with that, remember that?

Doggett decides to go and check out the investigation into the guy who uh, exploded, only to find that Brad is running it and it's also swarming with people, looking for a supposedly dead guy, which Doggett thinks is weird. But we, the audience, know the dude isn't dead cause we see it, and worse we see he has a piece o' spaceship and uses it to heal himself. Scully wants to know what's going on with the spaceship to help with what's going on with William and Doggett is the helpful sort though, so he heads back to DC and breaks into Skinner's office to get the info.

Turns out the guy who jumped the border was an FBI Agent who went undercover with a UFO cult and went silent when they went into Canada. While this is happening the now-healed FBI Agent (whose name is Comer) is hotwiring trucks and heading towards DC, while his old cult is digging up a UFO in...Calgary. Okay. Also Comer shows up at Scully's house and uh...lemme check my notes, tries to murder a baby.

But lucky for the baby, his mother is Dana Scully, most badass woman in the world and she shoots him a whole bunch. And she's pissed, even when Doggett and Reyes shows up, refuses to call for medical attention for him until he says why he wanted to kill William. He doesn't although, she does grab the piece of artifact from his jacket and she has Reyes take William away to keep him safe, while the cult dispatches another lady to get at William when they find out Comer has been shot.

"This would be pretty rad if I wasn't about to die!"

Skinner and Kersh decide it's time to come clean; Comer was sent to the UFO cult when they made threats against Mulder and Comer's last communique before going silent was that Mulder was already dead. But when Reyes brings William back, the piece of the artifact is attracted to him and she decides she needs to take him out of harm's way...entrusting him to the Lone Gunmen. Okay. But, the cult lady is already there and she runs over Doggett before finding the Lone Gunmen and holding them at gun(men)point, to lead into our cliffhanger.

The "Previously On" that opens up this episode calls all the way back to Season Six, which I consider really brave and a little presumptuous. I'm not going to be equally presumptuous and judge both episodes without having seen the upcoming follow up, but it seems like they're reaching back into the series better years to try and give the existing story some weight that it's lacking, pulling in elements that it feels like the story left behind. Whether it actually succeeds is up for debate, but I at least understand why that's where their minds went.

I'll tell you what though, if the episode has one value to the show, it's reminding us how fucking good Gillian Anderson is as an actress. She taps into some real intensity during the scenes where she's confronting Comer, and you really get the sense of how draining and stressful trying to raise a child under these circumstances is, to the point where she's basically willing to let Comer die to get information out of him. I feel like that's a shift for Scully, and not an entirely unwelcome one.

I'm pretty sure this is how War of the Worlds started.

Of course that returns us to the recurring bugbear of Season 9, that they still don't know how to balance their leads. This episode is more or less purely Scully's story, and while Anderson does great with that spotlight, it does seem weird that all Doggett does is say hi to Brad and break into Skinner's office, and Reyes doesn't do anything in the episode except get told to take William someplace at the midpoint (we never find out where) and be present for a lot of stuff.

But I guess it makes sense to focus in on Scully given that this is calling back to the the crashed UFO Seasons 6 and 7, that neither Doggett nor Reyes were there for. Thing is, those episodes weren't about Scully, not really, they were about Mulder going crazy and Scully just trying to fix it, and then that plotline kind of vanished, long before they even hinted William would exist. Bringing it back now, as the solution to the dangling William plotline is very abrupt and feels like they're trying to mash together two plots that were never intended to fit together to let them gain significance from each other.

Or maybe it feels like that because after the super soldier storyline muscled its way into what was otherwise a completely unrelated episode back in Trust No 1, it feels weird to have a Myth Arc episode without them at all. The series may be trying to hedge its bets by bringing in a new villain as the Super Soldiers aren't working out (remember, at this point they still expected to be renewed for the next season) and bringing one that borrows elements from a lot of previous episode probably seemed like a good bet.

"Hey mom, this new mobile you got for me sucks."

And say what you will about the follow up episodes, The X-Files is still really good at setting up cliffhangers and making exciting little episodes. The premise of the UFO Cult wanting to kill William is a scary one and the episode sets it up reasonably well, even if it takes some shortcuts to get to there (would a newspaper in Calgary really be carrying a story about a rando FBI Agent getting shot in DC?) and ending the episode on the shot of Beyers having the gun pointed at him is exciting. Even the weird subplot where Skinner, Kersh and Brad lie to Scully and Doggett is entertainingly conspiratorial, and it's nice to see Brad verbally sparring with Doggett.

The series has so long ago lost control of where its long term story was going and is at this point spinning rapidly towards what will be it's initial conclusion. I don't remember the specifics of the ending, but I remember it not being well received by the fanbase and not feeling very satisfied with it, at least the first time. And part of that might be the sheer number of balls in the air; Trying to take elements from previous seasons and hammer them onto the current plot is going to lead to some awkward episodes. Maybe they should have just let those stories go.

Case Notes:

• You've got some nerve putting stuff from the Season Six finale in your Previously On.
• Not often you see border patrol on the Canadian border.
• The guy jumping the border has elected to do it on a dirt bike, which is honestly pretty rad.
• Seems kind of odd the bike would explode that hard from hitting the ground but whatever.
• I'm not gonna lie, calling someone up to your office only to reveal when you get there that there's like 10 people there with you is a pretty dick move.
• Everyone is being so confrontational in this meeting.
• Scully is being pretty coy about what the markings do to Doggett and Reyes, you'd think you could lead with "They nearly killed Mulder."
• Scully being so into the spacecraft because it might help out with whatever is going on with William makes emotional sense, but it feels like abrupt that she's just thinking of it now.
• Doggett is just straight breaking into Skinner's office, guess Mulder rubbed off on him.
• They spend a lot of time teasing out the reveal of the spaceship, when it's obvious from the word go that's what it is, and if I'm supposed to recognize the dude overseeing it, I don't.
• Apparently Doggett is the only member of the X-Files who doesn't live in an apartment.
• Comer being ready to hotwire a truck is good, but him getting caught and just instantly beating the shit out of the dude is better.
• We're getting a lot of information fast, but I feel like the UFO cult disappearing into Canada is backfill from them realizing the FBI wouldn't send a dude to Canada.
• They treat the reveal that the UFO Cult in Canada has a second UFO as a reveal for the audience, but we saw it like 2 minutes ago.
• They spend way too much time dancing around the fact that the cult wants to kill Mulder.
• The episode puts a lot of weighty emphasis on the idea that Mulder has been killed by the cult, but this is a dude so deep underground that no one knows how to find him, why would this rando cult know where to find him?
• The artifact reacting to William is dramatic, but does make me wonder why it didn't do that earlier.
• The cult lady got down to DC from Calgary quick, that is like a 30 hour drive. I guess she could have flown, but that just raises further questions and it's still not a short flight.
• Is this the first time Reyes has met the Lone Gunmen? And hey, opportunity to reference the fact that the Gunmen have had to care for a baby before. They don't, but they could reference that. Also, where's Jimmy?
• Doggett getting hit by that car matters more than I was expecting it to, I feel like he's walked off bigger injuries.
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can afford to get my UFO cult off the ground.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Comer is played by Neil McDonough, an actor whose name I've heard but did not recognize on sight. He was on Band of Brothers before this and has since gone on to a lot of stuff that's famous or semi-famous, especially a recurring role as Damian Darhk in the Arrow-verse family of shows and a recurring role on Desperate Housewives (we'll get the entire cast, we will).

In addition the episode also sees the first appearance of The Toothpick Man, who is played by Alan Dale. He's been in a ton of stuff; The OC, Once Upon a Time, a major role on NCIS. But I'm required to point out that he was on an Australian soap opera called Neighbors in a main cast role and has appeared in 1,100 episodes, which is only 1/8th of the episodes that have been made. That's right, a tv show you've never heard of before now has 44 times the episodes of the show I'm reviewing now. The world is odd.