Case 05, File 13: Patient X

AKA: I Have No Mouth But I've Got A Good Reason

As ongoing mystery stories get more dense and complex, it is inevitable that the authors have to begin making up stuff on the spot to keep the plot going, or more importantly to keep the audience coming back. Once you have established grand new revelations as your primary audience engagement, you have to keep coming up with new ones, which can lead to Mystery Inflation which is, to put it lightly, where the fun train stops. It happened to Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Attack on Titan and it was inevitable that it would happen to The X-Files.

Our episode kicks off with some teenagers in Russia watching a spaceship overhead and somehow missing that all their friends in their parked cars were getting burned alive. Oh and then one of them gets caught by a faceless dude. In the morning, some UN Soldiers, led by our friend Marita show up to check out the scene and find the people burned more badly than any human weapons could. Oh and Krycek captures the kid and tells Marita to sod off. Remember Krycek? Yeah he's here now.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mulder is attending a UFO symposium and decides to call it all bunk, because he's currently in that phase where he doesn't believe in UFOs. After his lecture, the doctor of a famous abductee, named Cassandra (who always sounds like she's just a few words away from giving you a Scientology pamphlet) who the doctor wants Mulder to talk to. Mulder is still skeptical, but meets with Cassandra who tells him that lots of shit is going down with the aliens and that she's feeling called back to them.

.

Back in Russia, Krycek infects the kid he captured with the Black Oil and then proceeds to sew his eyes and lips shut and bolt with him to the US. Later, Scully is approached by a young FBI Agent named Agent Spender who tells her that Cassandra is his mom and that he doesn't want Mulder and Scully talking to her. Scully agrees and goes and tells Mulder. While all that is happening, back at the plot, Marita reports to the Conspiracy, who are freaked out and think this wasn't supposed to happen yet. Cause, they say, this is the start of Colonization. Dun dun dun.

This episode is very fond of the flame suit stunt, which is good, cause I am too.

Also causing a dun dun dun, Krycek offers to trade the kid for their research on the vaccine. Back at the less exciting stuff, Scully reads Cassandra's file and realizes that they were both abducted from Skyland Mountain (Season 2, Episode 6 True Believers) so she goes to talk with Cassandra where they commiserate about their similar experiences and also about the feeling their being called someplace. Speaking of being called someplace, a bunch of former abductees show up at Skyland Mountain and...immediately get lit on fire by the faceless guys. D'oh well.

So Mulder starts to think this is weird, and he and Scully start investigating. First they go check in with Cassandra cause uh...they were all part of the same MUFON group? Oh and they all had the implants. I guess cause they need an opportunity for Agent Spender to get pissed at him. Anyway, Marita finds Krycek and it turns out they're working together, and also banging, which means Krycek is sure to betray her. But, surprise, she betrays him and absconds with the kid! But the kid pulls out his stitches while Marita is calling and escapes! And then, it's time for our cliffhanger: Scully, Cassandra and the kid all end up on the same bridge waiting for a UFO when the faceless guys show up and start lighting people on fire. Dun, dun and also dun.

This is around the point where my memories of the Myth arc stuff starts to bleed together (is the next episode the part where the Conspiracy all get killed? I feel like this is too early) so we're kind of going in a little blind. I could read ahead but I don't want to. So while the knowledge that all this stuff is still not going anywhere I found interesting enough to retain, this episode on its own is pretty good. It's got that first episode of a two parter quality where a lot of how much I like it is based on how it concludes, but for now, I actually liked this episode a lot.

"No, the guy from Ancient Aliens isn't here, stop asking."

So let's start off with the stuff I liked a lot about this episode: I like the reveal that Marita is working with Krycek, I actually like it a lot. Marita is a character that they never have any idea what to do with (her ability to help Mulder is hampered a bit by the fact that she's a person with like, a life and a real name) and Krycek hasn't been seen since mid-Season 4 so having these two characters have plans and a history we're not privy to helps the world feel alive, like they were off doing their own thing while Mulder and Scully were investigating vampires and killer dolls. Not everything revolves around them, Krycek and Marita have their own thing going on.

Oh and I love love love the Faceless Aliens, they remain one of my favorite elements. This is related to the other thing that I found incredibly compelling and horrifying in this episode (the kid with his eyes and lips sewn shut) and I forget how long it is till we find out what their deal is, but the fact that they are recognizable as the current Face of the Aliens (the Alien Bounty Hunter) but with no eyes or mouths is incredibly compelling whenever they show up, suitably horrific on the face (pun intended) of it, but with just this tiny hint of something bigger going on.

I'm less enthused about the other new introduction to the lore, Jeffery Spender. I like Cassandra a lot, Veronica Cartwright does a great job and I like the interpretation of an abductee who's not only really into it, but always seems like she's on the verge of busting out the E-Meter. But my memories of Jeffery are not positive, he was never a character that clicked with me, and he doesn't make a good first impression here. Maybe I'll change that opinion as I rewatch (I related a lot to Xander when I was teenager first watching Buffy and let's just say I don't anymore), but if you're a Spender fan...maybe chime in in the comments to tell me what I'm missing?

I don't really have a good caption, this is just a great moment.

Whatever, Jeff the Spend is a very small part of this episode, more of it is spent playing keep away with the kid whose eyes and mouth have been sewn shut (the scene where he pulls out his stitches and freaks out Marita is genuinely one of the scariest in the series) while Mulder and Scully wander around looking for the plot. I'm not super happy that Mulder and Scully barely seem to be involved in the plot, but that's mostly a result of the plot being mostly set up for the next episode, I'm sure they'll be more involved then.

If there's one thing that's super valuable, to me as an X-Files fan, about doing this project, it's being able to keep all the plot threads and characters beats of the overarching Myth Arc in a format written by me, so if I need to go back and check on stuff, I can. This lets me not only keep the plot straight as it gets more confusing and overwritten, but will also let me figure out where exactly my interest in following it tends to drop out. And we haven't reached that point yet. I'm still drawn in enough by the Faceless Aliens and the weird vague conversations to keep it all straight.

...let's hope I'm not eating those words in the next episode.

Case Notes:

• Mmmm, some vague Mulder monologue about space and god. Pretty sure he's just laying out that he just read American Gods.
• My memories of this episode are vague, but I genuinely did not remember the entire field of cars on fire.
• I had to rewind the episode briefly to see if the dude who grabs one of the teenagers is one of the face-less aliens, or a dude whose had his eyes and mouth sewn shut.
• Does the UN usually go and check out a bunch of cars getting randomly lit on fire? Or is it just cause Marita wants them to.
• Krycek has been on screen 10 seconds and he's already plotting to betray the kid he met. Oh Krycek.
• Hey Krycek meets Marita and comes to yell at her for working for the Conspiracy. Glass houses Krycek, glass houses.
• The lady abductee sounds a little too much like a faith healer.
• I know very little about UFO conventions but this one seems really big. Do they really draw crowds this size? Maybe they were bigger in the 90s when conspiracy theories were more fun.
• I genuinely forget Mulder no longer believes in UFOs, but he sells his new skepticism in the scene at the panel, and his conversation with the doctor.
• Wait, Krycek is working with the Tunguska Gulag? I thought he fell in with the group that didn't like them? Am I misremembering? Did he betray them too?
• Cassandra brings up the Duane Barry incident in conversation with Mulder which uh...did she not hear how that ended? It did not end super positive.
• Again, Cassandra sounds just a little bit too much like she's going to hand you a pamphlet about Xenu.
• The guys in the Tunguska Gulag say they're doing an experiment, but all their experiment ever seems to consist of is dripping the Black Oil onto people. Shouldn't you like, vary it?
• The reveal of the kid with eyes and lips sewed shut still freaks me out to this day.
• I don't actually care, because it's not important, but in another edition of "The X-Files underestimates the size of Russia:" Krycek sneaks the kid out of Tunguska and gets him out on a boat leaving from Vladivostok. They're nearly 2,000 miles apart (roughly the distance from West Virginia to California) and getting directly requires you to pass through China. So that's pretty impressive.
• We are 20 minutes in before we finally see Scully.
• Hey, our first appearance of Spender. We'll uh, we'll get to him. Right now he's just complaining that Mulder is talking to Cassandra, his mom.
• We're starting to get some actual time tables on what's supposed to be happening and when (2012 is the year, but don't worry about it). This is when we're starting to get some real myth stuff going on and...well we'll talk about it.
• Again, I don't actually care about the timetable stuff, but let's just say it's very impressive that Krycek left on a shipping freighter from Vladivostok and managed to get to the US within the month.
• I love Mulder doodling on his picture. It's such a great little character beat.
• I actually feel really bad for Scully looking at the fact that Cassandra was abducted at Skyland Mountain, she's clearly having what could be considered a PTSD reaction to it.
• The scene between Scully and Cassandra is nice, subtle scene, and Gillian Anderson does some great acting during it.
• Dude who arrived late to the Skyland abduction just sits there while a faceless dude lights a guy on fire. Fucking drive man!
• Mulder tells Jeffery Spender that he won't be bothering him anymore. Heh.
• Wait, the same ship docked in New York harbor? That is a very very very long journey, what the hell?
• Marita just straight up hijacks the kid, managing to betray Krycek before he betrays her.
• The struggle Scully has telling Mulder that maybe he should consider taking the abduction option seriously is pretty great.
• Everyone is just dragging this kid with his eyes and lips sewn shut around and no one stops them to go "Wait, what the fuck?"
• And then the kid as the abduction site with Scully and Cassandra and literally no one goes "Wait just a goddamn minute, does that kid have his lips sewn shut?" Come on.
• You'd think at least some of these people would be nervous about all meeting up given the last time it happened all the people got burned alive, but whatever, that's UFO tech in your brain for ya.
• As "To Be Continued"s go, this one is pretty solid.
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Current Celebrity Watch:

Cassandra Spender is played by Veronica Cartwright, an incredibly veteran actress who has appeared in a lot of really great movies, notably the 79 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien, the latter of which is my favorite horror movie of all time. She recently appeared on an episode of Supernatural, which is still going for...some reason?