Case 09, File 04: 4-D

AKA: Hey Cause 4th Dimension And His Apartment Number! Clever!

I've gotten asked by people in the past what elements make a good Monster of the Week episode and the honest answer is, there's no specific elements that an episode needs. There are things that help; Unique monster, solid central performance, good hook, on top of the usual things an episode needs (directing, acting, script). But the lack of any one of those central elements won't sink an episode, and frankly having any one won't make it work. If I had to say what an episode needs to be, it's more than the sum of its parts.

Case 09, File 03: Daemonicus

AKA: Anyone Seen The Exorcist III?

For the first seven seasons of The X-Files, the team was just Mulder and Scully, and that made for an easy dynamic; Mulder believed in weird shit, Scully would be skeptical, semi-romantic banter, rinse and repeat. Making the dynamic built around a trio, even if Scully feels more like a side character than one of the core group, means they need to work out how this going to function as a unit, and how they're going to bounce off each other.

Case 09, File 02: Nothing Important Happened Today II

AKA: It's A Bad Reason To Be Called That

It's very clear, in retrospect, that there was no particular plan for The X-Files larger plot, but a lot of people were fooled because the show FELT big. But if you were paying attention and knew what to look for, the signs of the show's inconsistency were always there, and one of the big ones is Alex Krycek. I've made jokes about Krycek's constant betrayals, but the painful truth at the core of those jokes is that Krycek was written like that because they didn't have a solid idea of what Krycek actually wanted. And with Krycek dead, they needed a new guy who betrays people constantly.