Case 08, File 02: Without

AKA: Is This Episode Naming Convention Better Or Worse Than Part 1/Part 2 Style?

When a major part of the show departs, there is a temptation to, when discussing it, get Meta in your discussion. And why not, it's clear to anyone who watches that reality has intruded upon the show and that decisions are not being made with "What's good for the story" in mind, they're being made within the real life constraints being forced on them. But at some point you have to stop away from that and start considering the story for what's actually happening in it.

Our episode kicks off exactly where the last one ended, with Doggett and Mulder out in the desert having a standoff over Gibson Praise. Mulder decides to let Gibson go (Gibson immediately runs off into the desert) while Mulder decides his best exit strategy is to jump off a cliff. And hey guess he was right, cause he gets away, which causes Scully to realize he's an Alien Bounty Hunter and Doggett to realize that shit is weird.

So rather than try to solve the problem, they head back to the school to look for Gibson or Mulder, but the Alien Bounty Hunter has already shifted to look like one of the teachers. Scully meanwhile follows one of the deaf girls who rides off into the desert, where she finds Gibson hiding out in a shelter in the desert, but he hurt his leg and she needs to get a car to bring him back. Back at the school, Doggett gets a call from Kersh who tells him to figure it out or he's in trouble, which Skinner intuits to mean that Kersh gave him this assignment to set him up to fail. So that's neat.

Doggett feels like he needs to talk to Scully, and the Alien Bounty Hunter shows up disguised as her to talk to him, but unfortunately for the ABH (hm, never calling him that again), the real Scully shows up and the confusion causes everyone to try and grab the Alien Bounty Hunter, who responds by attacking an FBI agent. Doggett thinks that's a little on the weird side, but he is prepared to brush it off and move on.

Scully and Skinner meanwhile are busy having standoffs over whether either of them are the Alien Bounty Hunter, while Gibson is busy having visions of Mulder being tortured. Skinner and Scully resolve their differences and go find him, but once Gibson tells Scully that Mulder is out in the desert someplace, Scully decides to walk around the desert to look for him while Skinner takes Gibson to the hospital. This goes about as well as you suspect; Scully wanders pointlessly around the desert for a bit (while the spaceship is like 10 feet away) while Skinner gets ambushed by the Alien Bounty Hunter.

"GOOD LUCK DOGGETT!"

Doggett finds Scully out in the desert and she realizes Skinner is in danger so they head back to the hospital to help. Doggett finds Skinner stashed in the ceiling while Scully has a fight with the Alien Bounty Hunter and ends up shooting him in the neck and killing him. A few days later, Skinner and Scully are recovering, but Doggett feels like he's been screwed by Kersh. And it turns he's right, because Kersh assigns him to the X-Files. Guess he's going to be a main character going forward. Oh and I guess Mulder is still stuck on the spaceship.

If Within spent too much time looking backward, Without is at least trying to look forward, see what the series can look like for the rest of the season. We spend some time trying to expand on Doggett, give him some rapport with our existing characters and some conflict with others, to get some plots and dynamics to actually explore. It's not all great or even particularly successful, but it's nice to see the series at least trying to create a new status quo.

And there is good stuff in there. Doggett is kind of getting thrown into the deep end, plot wise (Mulder and Scully had been hanging out for over a year before they had to deal with shapeshifters with blood that could kill you) and it's good characterization to see how he handles it. I also really like the final scene at the end where he and Scully bond for the first time. Patrick and Anderson may never have the chemistry and Duchovny and Anderson had, but it's good for them to build their own thing.

The episode also benefits from some really tense action beats. Yes, we ultimately know that the Mulder Doggett confronts at the beginning of the season isn't actually Mulder, but that just makes it more tense, as we don't know how the Alien Bounty Hunter is going to handle it, and the sequence with the two Scullys is really solid, partially due to some great editing but also because Anderson really sells it. I guess it helps that I'm already programmed to think of Scully as the most badass person to ever live.

This is not definitive proof it's an alien, Scully chokes dozens of FBI Agents every day.

There's lots of little scenes, in fact, that really work; Scully and Skinner's confrontation over whether either of them are the Alien Bounty Hunter, Scully's fight with the aforementioned Alien Bounty Hunter, Scully's despair over her inability to find Mulder. They're admittedly mixed with scenes that really do not work (Scully following the deaf girl about 30 feet back is really funny to me, what would happen if the girl just turned around?) but the episode on the whole has more moments that work than don't.

I'm just not sure they add up to a coherent hour of television, especially given that a lot of these scenes come at the expense of the secondary characters who end up underserved. Skinner is basically dealing with his entire world getting turned upside down and also nearly gets killed by the Alien Bounty Hunter, but he ends up mostly serving as a motivating influence for Doggett to turn on Kersh. Meanwhile there's something very dark and tragic about Gibson as a character (he's like 12 and he's survived an assassination attempt, that's dark man) that the episode briefly manages to contact, but ultimately backs away from exploring. I like Gibson a lot, is me point, and I wish we got more of him.

We are also at the point where the show is trying to figure what's going to be the new plot and is quietly retconning stuff or shifting elements around to try and bring in new villains, with the Conspiracy dead and the Cigarette Smoking Man MIA. Bringing the Alien Bounty Hunters back into prominence makes sense, although the circle of them on the spaceship is a visually silly image and I'm not certain there's that much depth to plumb out of him. The series is gonna need another human villain before long and this episode doesn't do much more to advance the Myth Arc then drag Doggett into it and drag Gibson out.

"Do I have to start shooting everything in sight until this problem resolves?"

People love to say that a show should have ended at this or that point, but while that might be true (lord knows there were several dozen points where The Simpsons should have exited) that's not a helpful stance to take. Outside influences always alter the trajectory of a show, sometimes in major ways like the death of an actor, sometimes in minor ways like a location not being available the day of a shoot. So you can't always account for every little thing that changed the way a show was made. At the end of the day, all you can do is take it for what it is, which is what I'm going to try to do for Seasons 8 and 9.

Try, I emphasize.

Case Notes:

• Having to have Mulder, Scully and Doggett in the opening titles means they don't have much outside the three of them. I guess that was true last episode but I didn't notice.
• Duchovny is doing a fair amount to telegraph that he's not actually not Mulder, it's good.
• I like how as soon as fake-Mulder lets Gibson go, Gibson just peaces all the way out. Doesn't run to Doggett, just bolts.
• Fake-Mulder backing over the cliff is a baller move.
• Scully just immediately groks that it's an alien bounty hunter pretending to be Mulder, good on her.
• Doggett: "You're starting to remind me a lot of Mulder yourself." Me: Yeah, almost like she's the new Mulder analogue. It's okay, you're the new Scully analogue.
• The Alien Bounty Hunter just resetting his bones is pretty metal frankly.
• I'm honestly impressed Gibson's friend managed to ride as far out into the desert as she did on her bike, I'd probably fall over dead. She probably has better heat resistance though.
• Scully just walking straight onto the 3 square feet of the trapdoor where Gibson is hiding means she's inherited Mulder's powers of intuition and blind luck.
• Kersh calling up Doggett to yell at him is Skinner's cue to try and turn Doggett to his side. Even in universe, everyone hates Kersh.
• Doggett starts believing that Kersh set him up to fail pretty fast. Seriously, everyone hates Kersh.
• Now Gibson is having psychic dreams about Mulder being tortured. The crew is VERY salty.
• I like Scully and Skinner squaring off when they both think the other is the Bounty Hunter, it's good character work.
• Scully's "I can't take the chance I won't see [Mulder] again," is once again proof that the series knows how to play my heartstrings like a fiddle.
• The scare chord playing over Gibson just waking up made me wonder if I was missing something enough that I rewound the episode twice to look.
• I feel like the Alien Bounty Hunter being able to shift into someone as short as Gibson's friend is cheating, come on.
• I do like Doggett finally calling out the fact that even if they find the spaceship, they basically have no chance of doing anything about it.
• Oh come on, the spaceship was 10 feet away the whole time?
• I like that Doggett and Scully's inability to communicate their respective plans is what screws everything up.
• The confrontation between Scully and the Bounty Hunter is well done.
• I feel like the at one point was that you needed the special needle thing to kill the aliens, but Scully gets it in one shot. I guess they got kinda tired of that.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can continue to complain about Robert Patrick trying his best.