Things Are Getting Strange: Recent Episodes

Nick & Kim

An X-Files rewatch podcast by two long-term British fans. Updates weekly. Music Credits: "Envision" & "SCP-x2x (Unseen Presence)" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Content Warning: the episode of Twin Peaks discussed contains depictions of transphobia.

Seeing as its the episode somewhat confusingly titled Masked Ball, it means David Duchovny is here! We talk a lot about his role as Denise and how Twin Peaks manages to largely side-step a lot of problems with how she is depicted and treated in the episode.

We spend a lot less time on James' new sideplot, which... yeah...

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So... now what?

Well, the series needs to keep Cooper in town, so there's a very abrupt owls coming home to roost moment for the wildly illegal stuff he's pulled previously in the series.

But we also have other plotlines that won't just end... Though the series does seem to have completely forgotten Maddy even existed.

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Well. We're here. Now the cast catch up with the viewer and the whole who killed Laura Palmer part of the plot is resolved. But there's another 13 episodes to go...

Outside of murder, the other plots from the series continue...

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Something of a dramatic reversal into comedy after the darkness of the last episode... We discuss why some people aren't keen on this, but get into the likely reason why Twin Peaks is like this..

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Content Warning: discussions of sexual abuse, violence against women, murder of women, abuse of minors and yellowface.

So, we come, inevitably, to the horse in the Palmer household. With all the horrors that entails and all the reveals. Please bear in mind the content warnings - we don't dwell on the details but do touch on what happens and the associated discomfort.

Apart from the unmitigated horrors, there are nice moments of levity and continued soap opera shenanigans. And of course, the answer to the question posed by the pilot.

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Cooper finally contends with his litany of illegal actions! For a few minutes. Then he starts withholding medication...

Twin Peaks continues!

We talk about James's perplexing timing to resolve last episode's cliffhanger and how Shelly is evaporating audience sympathies in her and Bobby's escapades.

Bonus points if you know what a vicuna coat is and who's most likely to own one...

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Back to Twin Peaks!

We briefly talk about upcoming X-Files news (both old and new!) and The Amazing Digital Circus finale (don't worry, we're not about to spoil anything) before diving headlong into the Pacrific Northwest.

We get hung up on how ambiguous the layout of Twin Peaks itself is even now and celebrate that Audrey is finally getting rescued!

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We get a bit hung up on how Maddy's hair has changed over the course of the series. And reach silly conclusions about the potential Laura Palmer-ifiction of every woman in Twin Peaks. Sort of like Third Impact. Or carcenisation.

Otherwise this is a kind of a place-holder episode with setups for the future and some typical soap-opera moments. Where has Mike gotten to...?

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If you're watching along with the series, what perpetual cynic Albert believes in might come as rather a surprise in The Man Behind the Glass. Especially moments after his giddy glee about the pop-culture provenance of the gun used to shoot Cooper.

While discuss Doctor Jacoby's surprising home-life, Donna's improbably horrible timing and why we are at best indifferent to James and the love-tangle he seems intent on flinging himself head first into.

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So much coma! We wind up talking about how much of a trope the soap opera coma is... and how Twin Peaks weirdly (for Leo anyway) plays it closer to reality than most...

We get side-tracked onto The Fourth Kind for a while purely because of how it used owls and how that might be a kind of inference back to this series...

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Twin Peaks gets off to a slightly unusual second season start...

We discuss comas and how it feels so oddly distanced from season 1. Also get minorly fixated on the previously unmentioned Hayward daughter.

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Hard to ignore how good Piper Laurie is in this episode. And in general in this series!

We've reached the all too soon end of season 1 of Twin Peaks and it feels like everything's happening, so many cliffhangers and dangling plot-threads! And somehow while talking about the series we loop in things like Clueless and Psychonauts...

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Watch as Dale Cooper fends off Audrey's attempts at seduction in order not to bring the FBI into disrepute shortly before making use of the Bookhouse Boys because they need to do something across the Candian border! Not saying he shouldn't have resisted Audrey, but the latter also feels distinctly dodgy.

At this point in the series everyone seems to be converging at One Eyed Jack's or about to commit arson. Or making checks notes Laura Palmer's cousin dress up as her in order to lure her psychiatrist out of his office in order to steal an audio cassette made by Laura Palmer...

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Twin Peaks continues to tease that a solution to its central mystery can only be imminent! Birds singing and perpetual music get their explanations here!

But in the meantime, we continue to complain about James, continue to enjoy every time Bobby shows up on-screen, and remain hopelessly fixated on Maddy and who's playing her in this series. Also the mill-arson plot is just getting more tangled by the minute.

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Feels like everyone is turning out to be psychic in Twin Peaks... Laura Palmer, Sarah Palmer, Dale Cooper... Hank Jennings?! Or at least we don't have a good way for him to call right after the letter he sent (presumably days earlier) was opened.

But! For those who know the kind of things Twin Peaks is famed for may be interested that this is the first time an owl has an on-screen presence. Also Maddy looks very set to just make all the relationship tangle even more complicated...

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You may be shocked - SHOCKED - to learn Twin Peaks immediately swerves away from naming Laura Palmer's killer despite explicitly promising such an answer last episode. Such is the way of Twin Peaks, and these days its well known this was never quite what David Lynch and Mark Frost wanted to focus on, and yet... the answer is out there still.

In the meantime we talk a fair amount about the funeral at the centre of Rest in Pain and bring up Ringu once again.

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The Red Room makes its appearance in Twin Peaks! If you've been wondering how the series has the reputation it has, it all ramps up from here.

We talk backwards talking, our "clues" for the central mystery, compare the series to (variously) Insidious, Neon Genesis Evangelion and professional wrestling!

Also come to a startling realisation about the Horne brothers...

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The soap opera continues, though we will note how Cooper seems to travel. Or at least which items seem essential. We're still a bit early, not quite to the kind of thing Twin Peaks would become famous for... But there's still some weirdness.

We talk a lot about Laura Palmer's astonishingly active pre-death life and the odd bits and pieces that would normally get cut out of this kind of show. If it wasn't going to be, well, what Twin Peaks will be...

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Join us as we take a trip into the Pacific North-West... To a town with a population way too high for how its depicted. And an eccentric population.

We are, of course, talking about Twin Peaks this time. Taking in the views of the feature length first episode (critically not the International Pilot version of this which we will get into later), we find that the series is a lot more subdued this early with few of the hallmarks that would be infamous as it went on...

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Alas we have reached the end of Darkplace with so much of the series still left unglimpsed... What sights and truths could it reveal? Maybe that Dean Learner actually can act since once again he actually does for a brief moment.

Given the title and subject matter for The Creeping Moss from the Shores of Shoggoth, we end up talking about HP Lovecraft. But there's also some Clive Barker and Quatermass in here too...

Next time, we're off to Twin Peaks!

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Looking past the less than subtle "borrowing" of John Carpenter's back-catalogue, we end up zeroing in on the actual theme of Scotch Mist! Doesn't have much to do with xenophobia, fog, mist but is very prevalent in the episode!

Inevitably we also talk a lot about Stephen King...

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We reach the infamous episode! The one with Garth Marenghi's attitude to subtext... Also his questions no one else asks...

Despite the very obvious Planet of the Apes styling, we talk more about Avatar, Star Wars and Rawhead Rex and have fun trying to get back to the point as usual.

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Content warning: mentions of sexual assault

We're not wild about this episode of Darkplace, but as discussed it contains some of the more quotable lines. Also the episode has the absolutely incomprehensible production mistake of Thornton Reed actually acting in the episode!

Otherwise, as is our way we meander off into other avenues of the 80s and in particular 80s horror...

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Episode 2 of Darkplace has perhaps one of the more obvious inspirations from a famed horror author's work and perhaps quailing from the maddening reality of that we talk about why where horror is set seems to dictate what kind of horror you wind up with.

More fake lost media and horror projects that intend to hide their actual horror nature and how thin the border between horror and comedy is; all derived from Mr. Marenghi's work.

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In a surprising move, we change our focus to something quite different: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace! A comedy, sort of horror series from the early 2000s.

We get into how it all works and talk about how it belongs to the weird sub-genre of fake lost media. Also the bewildering cloud of comedy projects the various cast are involved with.

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A wrap up now we're done with The X-Files for now. A whole franchise overview, out top comedy, top serious, worst episodes and best villains!

Next time: Something Quite Different.

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Or at least, there are a surprising number of British people and accents in this series continuation! We discuss the implications and... probable influences on the direction of travel the book is taking. We're quite taken with the writing and how Scully is depicted.

(and realised after the fact - while we note that the timeline feels off in this book and comment that it has to occur within about 4 months of My Struggle 4 as per human biology, there are some references that are suspect...

What we mean is, typically the assumption is a series of The X-Files has to happen more or less concurrently with broadcast - something more or less borne out by Season 11, Seasons 10 and 11 have to happen in at least 2016 or charitably 2016 to 2018 at best. Its not impossible to take place after that, but its unlikely to be the intent. What we're getting at is that the references to WandaVision and Andor feel out of place given neither series would exist at that point in time unless My Struggle 4 occurs late 2022. Which, yes, is very pedantic, but surely that implies a hugely divergent timeline given Covid 19 ought to have a major bearing on the plotlines, so I don't think so?)

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Somehow, Nick forgot the gore-fest of Nothing Lasts Forever existed at all, but is now painfully aware of the strange choice of penultimate episode. Not least that the original intent was much more meaningful, touching and appropriate at this late stage. And not involve nailing back-street doctors to the floor with fence posts for reasons the episode never bothers to even try to justify.

And My Struggle 4 suffers greatly thanks to My Struggle 2. We struggle to talk about the finale and how much is left unresolved, how many answers unanswered and how only now do we know its not the end but Perihelion is not starting from a position of strength per se.

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It's man vs machine in Rm9sbG93ZXJz, though the robot wait-staff are also determined to make Scully pay. One way or another. We discuss the motive of the antagonist and how Scully could be plausibly tracked through her personal massager...

Familiar feels very old-school The X-Files but we get hung up on plot weirdness and suspect character design. Also why Mulder and Scully got involved in the first place.

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We get really hung up on the implications of Jackson Van De Kampf's life in Ghouli and how people just ignore the less than great series of events that would have lead to this episode's events. Not really helpful that Jackson clearly used to have a quite different and significant name. We get heavily into how what was clearly a monster of the week episode morphed into something else...

Kitten feels a bit Wetwire, a bit Blood and a lot another Skinner episode about his time in Vietnam. Despite an interesting reason for the episode existing, it feels a real strange thing to throw into what everyone anticipated The X-Files' final season being...

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*if you want to end the series in the best possible way...

Plus One is a fun episode, possibly a little overshadowed by the sterling guest-star turn and the efforts of the make-up department. Also suspect the entire point of the episode was less doppleganger hangman game and more getting Mulder and Scully into bed together...

The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat is not actually the final episode of the series, but like Sunshine Days, the perfect note to go out on. An episode that at last uncovers the true villain of the series, that rocks everything you thought you knew about every previous episode... and makes a surprisingly good argument against Season 10 and 11 existing at all...

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We reach Season 11 and find that the chosen way to resolve the massive, massive cliffhanger season 10 left on is.... lacking.

My Struggle III spends a lot of time undoing some of Season 10 but not all of it and as a result leaves some weird debris behind. We talk retcons and wave goodbye to the nominal replacement Mulder and Scully...

This is one of Kim's most hated episodes, and its hard to ignore that being written and directed, the thoroughly nihilistic episode is being inflicted on Langely as seemingly creator really out to hurt his own creation.

And for those confused by our episode title, we will explain quite what that means too...

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Don't promise us the Lone Gunmen being back and then do... that.

Babylon was quite notorious on first broadcast and the intervening years have done little to aid the fact it feels the wrong fit for The X-Files in general and specific for Mulder and Scully. We also get into what the whole point of Einstein and Miller probably was...

My Struggle II uses the phrase "alien DNA" way too many times (we counted) and made Kim quite angry with its rather flippant - if typical - attitude to how medicines work and what certain terms actually mean in real life.

But what a cliffhanger! Oh, how can they possible resolve it....?

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We struggle to say much about Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, broadly because the episode is an absolute delight and revisiting it has not diminished how starkly it contrasts with the rest of season 10. It is still a fantastic episode.

Home, Again on the other hand is part fantastically acted Scully drama, part serious Arcadia remake and part mystifying Candyman-a-like. One of these things feels distinctly out of place and we struggle to make sense of why the episode is formed like this...

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Welcome to season 10! And plots we could swear we saw in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'. And Gethesmane...

Still! The X-Files is back. Skinner is back! Cancer man... is somehow back! And now we're trying to retcon seemingly 9 seasons of plot out of the backstory. We discuss how strange the apparent project to discredit Mulder is and how odd some of the choices with the revival are.

Founder's Mutation is at least a better episode. Though all these mentions of William are concerning. They're not going to do anything with him, right?

...right?

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We reach the second The X-Files film and are beset by questions. Many of them "Why this?" and "Really?"

While the acting is fine, we are not so taken with the plot or the any of the new characters. We also learned a fair amount from the synopsis we are not sure we even got hinted at in the film itself...

Somehow we can even pick fault with the end credits...

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So here we are. What once was the end of The X-Files is a bit too much like how Seinfeld ended for its own good...

We end up talking about Franz Kafka for hopefully good reasons as well as continuing to observe that Mulder should never be allowed in any kind of court-room.

We also get to our best and worst episodes of the season.

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Release wraps Doggett's running backstory up perhaps a little too fast and a little too without warning (and that's not getting into Reyes' questionable decision re: seeing people taking bribes). But. There is an answer - its bleak and awful and does not involve whatever happened to Samantha. We are however obliged to point out that supernatural force continues to drag its feet in these kinds of episodes...

We disagree on just how supernatural the episode is and discuss the implausibility of walling fresh murder victims with clay.

Sunshine Days could easily be the last episode of The X-Files ever. Sure, Mulder's not present and the whole super-soldiers - let alone alien aspects of the series - would remain unresolved, but it makes a point about the quest for the truth and the cost of that pursuit that with the whole series in mind is extremely persuasive.

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A strange description of Jimmy Bond, but accurate nonetheless.

After our hiatus, Nick is trying to be more positive about The X-Files. Each episode must have some positive points. Unfortunately, he is trying this on Jump the Shark and William of all things.

Jump the Shark does have a lot of sharks and Morris Fletcher. We get into why concluding a series in a different series feels like a terrible plan and how most of the regular X-Files lot seem to be largely absent. Still a shame to say goodbye to the Lone Gunmen, if not so much The Lone Gunmen, though some behind the scenes stuff makes the decision more comprehensible. Though... we'll be back to this in future.

William (the character) is also far from done, despite this William (the episode) seemingly determined to tie up a plot-thread before the series runs out of time. The make-up and prosthetic effects are absolutely phenomenal and we're in two minds bout how the series seemed to toy with expectations given leaving guest star names off the start, but making real clear about the writers and director being one D. Duchovny...

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At least, we're pretty sure guest star Burt Reynolds is God in Improbable at any rate. A rather stunning surprise from Chris Carter, this episode is tremendous fun, though unable to escape more questions about why Reyes isn't fired for this sequence of events.

We talk about our own life-path numbers and how relevant they are; also how Mulder crazy contrasts with Reyes crazy...

Scary Monsters sees the welcome return of Leyla Harrison to the series in a amusing if still grisly episode that can't quite hide how much it resembles a rather famous The Twilight Zone episode.

We wind up talking about fandom given how Leyla views the X-Files staff and how Mulder might be becoming Poochy...

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One of them anyway...

Audrey Pauley feels more like a Twilight Zone episode, but is an interesting contrast to Steven Maeda's previous season 9 episode of 4D. And yet, somehow we end up talking about Dark Souls and Die Hard during the course of this episode. And how familiar the villain is.

Underneath is an episode we really did completely forget existed. And this despite it being the most The X-Files episode this season! A shame that Doggett is completely correct in this episode for a succession of completely wrong reasons.

Also not clear how he trusts anything after this...

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...mostly about the current state of the conspiracy here in Season 9...

Providence, wait, Provenance. No, Providence. Dammit, its Provenance!

Provenance has the Lone Gunmen for hilariously, almost futile inclusion and seems to want to hark back to one of the series more startling reveals - a half-buried ancient UFO off the coast of Africa. Except not we have one in Calgary, Canada.

We complain at length about what has been done to Scully's character and how weirdly certain people are that Mulder has died somewhere off-screen (made pointless given Carter's reported statement that Duchovny would be appearing in the finale).

Providence doesn't get much better as a weird alien prophecy means either Mulder or William has to die for... reasons, and how everyone acts like Mulder stopped the aliens taking over when he did effectively nothing of the sort.

The episode also reminds of us of better things. Babylon 5, The Tommyknockers. Quatermass and the Pit...

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Vince Gilligan has failed us!

And apparently only us as the critical reception to John Doe is strikingly positive. We speculate how much of this is due to snobbishness around sci-fi/fantasy/horror and how much is because we're well acquainted with Gilligan's later productions.

Also a waste of a memory vampire...

Hellbound is not The X-Files take on Hellraiser, but that film inevitably comes up as a point of comparison given such focus on skinned corpses. And also ask high-brow philosophical questions such as when does the soul enter the body - and The X-Files' apparent inference being potentially hours after birth...

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With Lord of the Flies, we wonder why The X-Files is now about a group of British school-children trapped on a desert island-

Wait...

We actually get curious as to whether the show's allusion to Jackass makes any sense anymore and the horror of body lice as a concept. At least we have an unscrupulous entomologist in the form of Rocky to provide entertainment in an episode reminiscent of Rain King but... Well, things are different now.

Trust No 1 demands the question of did Chris Carter actually want to still be involved in this series? Mostly because he seems quite intent on torpedoing Scully's character in a deeply frustrating and seemingly pointless episode.

Well, there is the introduction of the super-soldier's weakness, but there's some... hilarious complications with it.

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Daemonicus is Kim's most hated episode of the entire run of The X-Files. Fun times!

A good start leads into an increasingly dissatisfying experience and we once again discover how different intent was to how we wound up interpreting the episode on both watch and re-watch. Inevitably we also end up talking about Hannibal and also Hannibal.

Also; its clear the writers don't quite know what to do with Reyes...

4-D is better though bleaker and depressing and should probably have shown up in the series later. But the series struggles to know what to do with Scully, these initial episodes seemingly written before her return was confirmed.

And really, why ask about vampires of all things?

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We're not entirely sure if Scully buys Jigsaw brand mobiles for her baby or the foley-artist made a strange choice for season 9's opener, but when baby William seems to use telekinesis to make his mobile move... It does sound like something out of Saw...

Welcome to Season 9! It all looks and sounds and feels a lot better than another series we've been struggling through. And in a possible bid to get more viewers both episodes involve Lucy Lawless not wearing anything.

We discuss how the tone of the series has changed dramatically after real world events and how much more serious things have gotten. Despite the super-Soldier stuff.

But at least Reyes is now part of the main cast. New intro feels wrong though.

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...it won't attract the worm!

Weapon of Choice used (for no particular reason) in All About Yves is one of the high points. We get into why even with the writers throwing every trick in the bag to get a second series, even the revelatory answers were never going to be exactly great by way of Star Wars and Twin Peaks.

Plus, Kim has a far better plan to capture Yves than anything Morris Fletcher has dreamt up and its really hard to overlook how much simpler and effective and quick her suggestion would be.

As is usual we get into an overview of the series, along with best and worst episodes and look forward to returning to The X-Files.

Farewell The Lone Gunmen! You could have been a fun series if you consisted of episodes like The Unusual Suspects, Three of a Kind, or Pilot. Alas, you made Jimmy Bond a mainstay of the series and kinda wrecked everything. Kim even has a far more interesting use for him in the series too...

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We were told these two episodes were an improvement... and that was not wrong!

The Lying Game impressively avoids a gigantic pitfall that would have made the episode incredibly uncomfortable and lowered our impression of the characters still further. It also boasts a guest appearance from Mitch Pileggi who does a stellar job of impersonating Jimmy when events call for it.

We'll even overlook how the reasons the LGM get into the plot aren't exactly meant to be their thing, the plot does revolve around the kind of thing they would care about. It's doing well!

But it's just... why don't they even try talking to Mulder or Scully or Doggett as events spool out? Why do we need to add a moment when a dog humps Langley's leg? Why does Skinner not jump to shapeshifter as the explanation when confronted by himself?

The Cap'n Toby Show is likewise more LGM-like than a lot of the series. It even has a scene about how the LGM find stories which feels so intrinsic and fundamental, its actually really odd it wasn't in episode 3.

Despite this, the episode while better, it remains faintly awkward with some odd focuses. And as has become a pattern, the original three LGM do one thing while Yves and Jimmy do another. And at the 11th hour, the series tries to imply something more about Yves, but there's only one (sort of two) episodes to go and no time to really get into it.

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It is hard to muster energy for The Lone Gunmen at this point...

Diagnosis Jimmy feels stitched together from discarded parts of other episodes and continues to call into question how Jimmy is able to exist in the real world. Meanwhile the other LGM-centric plot feels so poorly justified for its inclusion.

Unprofessional nurses and weirdly ineffective bear-traps abound...

Tango de los Pistoleros is a better episode but has so many question marks hanging over it that its still hard to enjoy. We wind up talking alot about how the characters don't appear to have any character arcs and again how weird it is that the series can't even attempt to duplicate either LGM-centric The X-Files episodes...

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We've reached episode 100 and so... are taking a break from The Lone Gunmen for this week.

Instead we have taken a trip to Springfield to witness the reasonably inexplicable crossover of The X-Files into The Simpsons. Which remains a lot of fun and is an extremely highly rated episode even now.

A lot of jokes and only a little threat of fear, famine and pestilence...

We also talk about the spec script, Flight 180, that went on to become Final Destination. We talk about the differences between the script and the eventual film, Charles Scully, and Scully's... shot fired retort to Mulder in one bewildering moment.

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...which was probably more baffling on release, but now we have to ask why the LGM don't actively use Linux for like paranoid reasons...

Back off hiatus! And despite the episode title being Planet of the Frohikes, the episode is more about Jimmy and chimpanzees and not really about Frohike at all. We get into the episode tipping its hand way too early, the The Murders in the Rue Morgue inferences and are somewhat floored by Yves actually being in-character.

Why does the series have a running gag about the LGM's newspaper being trash? How much has Dreamland influenced all this?

Alas it could not last: Maximum Byers has Yves pushed back into an eye-candy role. Its also blatantly influenced by The Green Mile just with cockroaches in place of mice and the series actively referencing The A-Team.

Next time, we take a break from this series as we have reached episode 100!

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Stuff happened between watching Three Men and a Smoking Diaper and when we recorded this episode and made it somehow even less fun than the first time around when we were merely severely annoyed by every little thing in it.

Quite apart from the Lone Gunmen apparently getting into Gonzo Journalism rather than their normal style, the continued reliance on Jimmy as the "presentable" member of the gang (and not, say, Byers), the apparent lack of using Jimmy for his intended purpose (explain technical terms) and the juvenile humor, somehow the episode just casually tosses Frohike and Langely literally kidnapping a child and apparently of the mind to just hang onto it come the ending.

That this is Chris Carter's fault is even more astonishing being someone who should know far better than this.

To say Madam, I'm Adam is better is not hard. However, the initially fun hook drops by the way-side almost immediately and the entire premise and tone of the episode is from some half-forgotten early (and cancelled) sitcom from the 90s by the last third.

Its a peculiar episode, the Lone Gunmen repeatedly refuse to dwell on the actual sinister background details, no one apparently has any idea what to do with Yves and the hook and explanation don't really connect... Not unheard of in The X-Files either, but given this episode ostensibly is about a man convinced he was abducted with aliens and ends with disrupting a wedding in a wrestling ring, all former examples were somewhat mild.

At least next week's episode is written by Vince Gilligan. That's... gotta be a good thing. Right??

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Somehow the third episode of the series is Eine Kleine Frohike, an episode of The Lone Gunmen which feels like it should come from a hypothetical season 4 when the writers have well and truly run out of ideas. That it's also taking inspiration from The Ladykillers is just an additional bizarre twist to the whole mess.

We return to wondering if this series is just supposed to be an unauthorized Mission Impossible reboot or it just somehow has amazing rubber masks for some other reason. Jimmy's presence in the series continues to mystify and annoy given his depiction as barely capable of tying his own shoes.

There's been butt related moments in all the episodes so far, but so much greater is Langely's encounter with a bull in Like Water for Octane. Somehow this is a running thing in this series.

Overall this is much more like the kind of episode we expect from this as a spin-off, but we get hung up on silo demolition and the astonishing excuse the episode chooses to use to not introduce water-powered cars to the wider X-Files universe.

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We swap from the bureaucratic FBI to a low-circulation newspaper office run by three familiar characters. Welcome to The Lone Gunmen. The one series spin-off of the popular trio into their own show!

Second time we're discussing an episode titled Pilot...

For the most part the series starts strong with a plot more Lone Gunmen like than The X-Files provided for quite a time. There's some Mission: Impossible, some unfortunate correct guessing at events that occurred less than a year from broadcast, and a whole new character whose presence we can't help but be suspicious of.

Bond, Jimmy Bond does not provide much comfort. A whole other new character introduced and set to be a main-stay according to the credits. A plot that seems decidedly non-Lone Gunmen. And a continued insistence on the group barely scraping buy with their funds.

We wind up talking about why Jimmy is here and real world blind sports versus how they are depicted in this episode.

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The X-Files could genuinely have ended with Existence. There's room for a future version of the series, but a lot of plot is resolved and the current alien threat is so nebulous. But Season 9 looms. But before that: The Lone Gunmen.

And before that: We get hung up on all the Biblical imagery in this episode, none of it subtle. Including the UFO/guiding star thing. We are increasingly unsure on how any of the conspiracy works or what this means, but the Sculder shippers are presumably very happy.

Still curious about who exactly William's father is...?

We also wrap up this season with best and worst episodes. And best villain.

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Not to The Doors slightly sadly. That would be a bit too surreal. But certainly, closing and not even locking a door is enough to deter the new villainous version of that kid from the pilot episode of the series from attacking Doggett or killing Mulder. Useful stuff.

But before that Essence stuff, there's Alone:

Scully leaves the X-Files (the department) but remains in The X-Files (the show)! Doggett gets a new partner! Slightly inexplicably transferred from accountant to field agent. We like Layla in her first appearance here being the quintessential X-Files fan by asking awkward questions about the end of Fight the Future.

Then there's the start of our season closing conspiracy! And while the show-runners knew this wasn't the end of the series, it might have been. Or at least the start thereof.

We query Mulder's apparent ability to do what he wants, why Scully's child's sex and parentage is still in question, and other than audience fake-out, why does one character concoct such an underhanded way to feed Scully dietary supplements for her pregnancy.

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Its never bad to have an episode where Reyes shows up. Though Empedocles does stress this attitude. For the main plot, Reyes herself prompts all kinds of questions about her existence within the FBI and her complete non-crossing paths with the X-Files. For the subplots, we do have to increasingly stress the question no one wants to ask: just who is Scully's baby-father?

But that gets side-lined in favour of Doggett's tragic backstory. Alluded to back in Invocation and then ignored. Until now!

Vienen should be a fun time. Another Thing-style episode for The X-Files. And the black oil is back! We're just left with a lot of questions. Like what even does Mulder do now he's not on the X-Files... maybe? Why does he insist on poking the bear (Kersh)?

And why is Scully so often side-lined and shoved aside this season?

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So Krycek's back in Deadalive. What has he been doing? Did he tell anyone he killed CSM off last season? Why does he want Skinner to prevent Scully from giving birth? We get no answers.

But Mulder is definitely dead. Totally. 100%. Just pay no attention to him being first in the opening credits again.

We get very confused about why Theresa (the other abductee returned last episode) doesn't factor into events, also how this weirdo new alien scheme works and how Scully used to think Mulder had more friends.

The three words in Three Words are very much not what you would assume. We were expecting something along the lines of a famous scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Instead we got a movie tag line.

There are some very odd technology queries with how this episode plays out and how people are forced to go to various places for no entirely coherent reason. Mulder (shock, he's alive!) meeting Doggett goes badly and we surprise ourselves by not enjoying Mulder's return to the series proper. Possibly to do with the alleged legal strife running concurrent with the season.

At least the Lone Gunmen do Lone Gunmen stuff again! Even if Scully now insists on calling them "The Gunmen" which is kinda weird.

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It is hard not to question Scully's decision-making ability in Per Manum. Not least because she figures the best place to hide out while conspiratorial stuff is going on is with the army. Who have never, ever been involved with anything shady and conspiratorial.

We discuss how ultrasounds tend to look a tad on the alien-side of things no matter what one you look at, Scully's lack of questions at multiple points, our confusion over what the latest twist of the conspiracy even is, and why it is at the very least impolite to get Doggett out of bed at 3am to tell him nothing of value.

This is Not Happening is sadly not the return of Lord Kinbote. Nor are we sure the repetition of the phrase is well-handled. Or various character's inability to stealth effectively. The episode boasts one of the few doctors we can be sure is not in on the conspiracy given how inept he seems.

Still, with the aliens apparently dropping bodies off the back of their ships, is it perhaps time for a certain member of the cast to rejoin proceedings?

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We're back! After injury and illness, we return to watch Doggett die in The Gift!

It is perhaps not as big a spoiler as you might imagine given he's perfectly fine and in the rest of this season despite this slight complication. This is a weird episode though and features an entity which we are repeatedly told is a soul eater despite not acting anything like one.

A shame the episode starts well and has a really good setup that fails to pay off come the ending.

Medusa continues a sporadic trend of episodes where the sting doesn't really mesh with the later reveals and eventual solutions. We discuss who's authority wins between FBI and Deputy Transport Chief - and are not entirely convinced the episode has this right.

Still, its a fun episode. A bit Mimic and a bit Aliens but also very much like a season 1 episode.

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We watched Tetsuo the Iron Man ahead of Salvage this week. Mostly because Salvage is an admitted version of the film. The experience was illuminating but did underscore how strange the idea of doing this idea as an X-Files episode and all the parts Salvage left out. At least we got to see all the things that inspired Tetsuo and all the things it seemingly influenced after...

We also talk a fair amount about new film Alien: Romulus, but also pick at the parts of Salvage that are confusing. Like whose ashes were Ray's widow given? Why are Doggett's explanations not even close to Scully's alternate theories in past series?

At least its better than Badla, now a major contender for the worst episode of the series. We vainly attempt to make sense of the plot and struggle mightily with the villain's motivation for literally anything. The one crumb the episode provides doesn't actually seem to apply and we are left with nothing but dissatisfaction.

A real shame this is the last time we'll see Chuck in the series...

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The premise and intent behind Via Negativa is really neat and interesting! The actual episode starts really strongly and then loses its way somewhat spectacularly and is found exceptionally wanting. Very confusing and not in a fun what is reality kind of way the episode is probably going for.

We talk about Event Horizon a bit and how the episode seems to hand wave away the impossibility of the murder weapon, though at least we get a Doggett-Skinman team-up episode so that's fun.

We get high-brow literary with Surekill. Or at least note that Of Mice and Men was probably an influence on the episode and that a similar moment crops up in The Losers (go Petunias!).

Its an interesting episode where massively cool and useful powers are being used in a kind of rinky-dink money-laundering scheme but the stakes are still appreciable and effective. Though surely seeing through walls would result in something more like the video to Hey Boy, Hey Girl by the Chemical Brothers...

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That Doggett can go through the events of Invocation and come out the other side to dismiss anything happening in Redrum is nothing short of astonishing. Never did Scully get handed something so ardently impossible as the dark tale of child kidnap and apparent manifestation from beyond the grave. Fresh Bones was not this concrete with its impossible child.

We get into how Closure from last season does provoke a lot of awkward questions for how the dark, dark backstory for this episode is even able to occur - where are the damn fairies for this one? We also speculate if Doggett is psychic somehow given he hits on a near-miss to the guilty party really fast...

Also the child is terrifying.

Redrum is a thing that happened EARLIER.

We talk about the eclectic mix of other backwards productions; Seinfeld, Sealab 2021 and Memento, and note Redrum is a curio amongst them. Also the least helpful time-travel story as Martin Wells can't even muster the kind of evidence someone like Max in Life is Strange can come up with. Not that this is a slight on the episode at all!

We discuss how the episode was written and note that like Memento, the actual story is very straight-forward and simple, but the presentation is what makes it all work. And that maybe as per the stated dates, Scully should be like seven months pregnant.

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A decidedly odd start to Doggett's time on the X-Files. And we can't ignore that it would be more effective if Patience and Roadrunners was swapped in the episode order. And also that Patience feels a lot like a re-do of Squeeze just without actually re-watching Squeeze and apparently just working off the vague memories of the classic.

We compare the monster to Buffy special effects, dwell on the nature of the show's Bible and wonder about man-bat breeding colonies. And also admire how no one mentions a certain DC comics character once.

Roadrunners is a bit different to Vince Gilligan's normal ways. This is tense, dark, gory and scary. Reminiscent of Morgan and Wong's Ice but a very different setup and execution.

We can't avoid noticing Scully's tattoo from Never Again has vanished somewhere in the last few years and how unfortunate it is that she already needs a rescue.

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New season and new character! With Within we welcome John Doggett to The X-Files and indeed, the X-Files. Our new hardened skeptic to Scully's abruptly much more open-minded version of herself. Which does feel a little odd as it feels like seeing the UFO at the end of Requiem would be more of a trigger for this, but here we are.

Also Kersh is back!

We discuss how Scully remains difficult for many X-Files writers to cope with and the implausibility of various spaceships within Earth's (or Earth-like) atmosphere. Also how we are now awash in Mulder retcons.

Without never really gets around to the particular question of what Scully even thinks she can do if she can find the relevant UFO in Arizona. One-on-ones with the Alien Bounty Hunter or most of the aliens in series tends to go badly for a variety of reasons.

We're also bemused by Gibson Praise being relevant again and how its taken this long for anyone to actually contend with the existential nightmare of dealing with the Alien Bounty Hunter.

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Is it ever possible to have a story wherein a character is granted three wishes and for them to not screw up immediately? Je Souhaite certainly paints none of the would be wishees in especially good light.

Despite the inherent issues with humanity, the episode is a lot of fun. Scully gets to be giddy about autopsying an invisible man, while Mulder tries to rules-lawyer his way out of unwanted side-effects. As the penultimate episode of the season (and at one stage, possibly ever) its a fun time.

Requiem feels like an episode went missing somewhere. A lot has happened since we last checked in with Krycek and Marita apparently. We do get somewhat concerned about CSM's intention to rebuild his shadow syndicate with Krychek, Marita, Greta (his nurse), and a crashed UFO.

That no one can find. Despite this being relatively simple in, say, Fallen Angel or Nisei or Memoirs of a Cigarette Smoking Man... There's some inconsistencies shall we say. And despite what looks a lot like a crash, the accident was incredibly fortuitous for rounding up abductees...

We discuss the difference between Geiger and Giger counters, sum up the season, get into the best and worst episodes and look ahead to the strange new phase of the series.

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Not sure if the first episode to receive the treatment, but it turns out Mythbusters specifically took down one of the central premises of this episode as being effectively impossible. So, no you can't listen to the Aramaic version of I am the Walrus on that pot your aunt made...

Hollywood AD is a weird episode. Part religious struggle and part Hollywood wrecking the premise of The X-Files itself and reducing a Cardinal who cracks joke into a bizarre version of Cigarette Smoking Man in the form of the Cigarette Smoking Pontiff. We talk about Borges and Gary Shandling and how 20th Century Fox apparently liked making films on top of graveyards.

By the rules that bind us, we are not allowed to talk about Fight Club. At all.

Not that we especially want to. Kim strives to find a highlight in amongst one of the most universally derided entrants into the series and finds little. We talk inconsistent phenomenon, so many jokes not taken, and a theory about why this episode is like this.

But really, you're better off watching the film of the same name that has nothing to do with this mess.

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The enduring question we were left with all things was what happened? The answer seemingly was Carter and Spotnitz who did things to the episode and fundamentally changed a few things about the directorial debut of Gillian Anderson.

It is a shame as we would really like to like this episode but even now the details drift away. Except for a ship-baity start and deeply unsettling statues. And crop circles feels a really weird thing for Mulder to fixate on when he has actively talked to multiple aliens at this point and never thought to ask if they actually had anything to do with them.

(but given even nominally trust-worthy instances like the Alien Bounty Hunter lied to Mulder's face - for no reason - with regard to Samantha's whereabouts, not sure Mulder could have gotten a straight answer).

Brand X is clearly the superior product here. Even Jigsaw agrees. Tobin Bell is quite amazing in this episode coming well before astonishing success with a certain barbed wire infested series. Shame the stuff about insect eggs, the beetles in general are not... great for realism or coherency.

But who cares? Body horror and we get a supernatural excuse for the nastiness. And a... slightly confused smoking PSA.

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We are very much ignoring the future of En Ami. We know and we will get to it. Later.

For now, we have questions about extraneous other angels and the complete lack of Lord Kinbote. And that man really does not live up to the code-name 'Cobra'. Still, the CSM and Scully road-trip has its moments though we are bewildered by the end as to what the point of any of it was - and speculate things might have been quite different on the first draft.

Not quite an episode about nothing, but also not really the heist episode it could have been.

Chimera is one of those episodes we flat out did not remember before hand. Except for the ravens. As with First Person Shooter we are kind of left with a lot of questions as to why the supernatural stuff happened and why the monster is so inconsistent across the episode.

Also Scully does appear to have forgotten what an actual job at the FBI entails versus hanging around with Mulder. In any case, she's not in this one much. Sort of a reverse Chinga.

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If you are at all convinced by the advertising, the promotional gimmicks, the press interviews for First Person Shooter, we are here to tell you in no uncertain terms how bad this game is. That said, you likely already played it during the press embargo and know of its absurd difficulty spike, its complete lack of cohesion and rumoured risk of permanent physical injury, death or removal from this plane of existence.

We are not ultimately sure who is responsible for this mess. While William Gibson and Tom Maddox's names are on the episode, Chris Carter is listed as director and some of the... "choices" in this one are definitely because of him. We get into how bizarre the game is, how terrible it would be to play (especially in contrast to what was actively available at the time), and how the episode seems to spool out without really even a token explanation of how any of this is possible.

Theef is an episode we spend a long time speculating how it might have fulfilled its original brief if things had been different. So much so we have to keep insisting we really did enjoy this episode. It just has some weirdness and again, the stated intent doesn't come across.

At least its one of the grisliest episodes and boasts one of the scariest villains the series has had in ages. Shame its whole stance on folk medicine is hopelessly muddled.

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And thus we learn the final fate of Samantha Mulder!

Is it satisfying? No. Closure is very touching and quite beautiful and well acted. But as a capstone to a question that first appeared in the very first episode this is not what anyone wanted. We get into how this fails to make much sense with seven years of other conspiracy (we know the aliens habitually lie, but why bother to claim Samantha was alive back in End Game?) and why this is basically just Redux's solution with some extra steps.

Still, that's one answer down. For those keeping score: aliens are real, CSM fathered all the Mulder children, and Samantha was dead the entire time.

Not even sure if there is anything left to go. Other than whatever CSM was up to in The Sixth Extinction Part 2.

X-Cops on the other hand is the bizarre The X-Files/Cops mash-up and it works far better than it should. We get into how much it reminds us of Ghostwatch and how The Blair Witch Project near certainly had some influence on its presentation.

Also implies Mulder deals with the reveals of the previous episode by hunting werewolves in downtown LA.

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Content warning: mentions of animal abuse, implied incest, child death

Signs and Wonders is somewhat diminished when we learned about the various animal cruelties on set during the filming of this episode.

Getting past that, we are left with a succession of questions about what and why this episode happened. Its pretty fun though and we learn about how auditions were done for the episode and which members of the cast and crew were more than three blocks away whenever the snakes entered proceedings.

Some despairing at the theme of the episode but at least we had more fun than...

Sein und Zeit sounds like it should have something to do with Signs and Wonders. At a quick enough glance, you could be forgiven for thinking its the same title just in German. But no!

Sein und Zeit is hard to talk about for a number of reasons. Not least is the similarity to a real life murder case - and how much of it will hinge on next week's Closure given its hard to get away from the reveal that this episode serves to finally resolve what happened to Samantha.

We get hung up on all the other Samantha's variously pinballing through the series and what the implications of this episode seem to be leaning into. Kim offers the thoroughly entertaining idea that the episode is in fact a follow up to Folie a Deux and thus offers a much weirder take on procceedings.

Ultimately, its Paper Hearts again - an issue that doesn't initially hinder it too bad - aside from we've seen this already Chris, but then rapidly spirals into weird decisions as it sets up a cliffhanger.

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It is hard to watch Orison without immediately concluding that Scully is totally getting fired right after the climax of the episode. And yet - based on The Amazing Maleeni - somehow shooting an unarmed man, pointblank while he is being arrested by her partner is not enough.

Weird how it was Scully who'd finally wind up killing someone like this. Mulder kept trying but never managed it. Still, we are supposed to have some empathy given the man in question is Donnie Pfaster, once again determined to murder Scully. Just... None of this got setup or even hinted at as some deep psychological scarring for Scully.

We inevitably get into how this wasn't meant to be about Donnie Pfaster in the slightest, and the original (Millennium-esque) episode was changed into an unnecessary follow-up to Irresistible. At least there won't be another...

The Amazing Maleeni is a lot more fun, even if Kim does reveal a rather gaping plot-hole that renders the whole episode a little moot in the end. At least some of the magic is real - or at least performed by actual stage magicians.

We discuss other fictional magicians and implausible bank heists. And how Scully should wear a top-hat from now on.

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At this point, it is quite impossible to talk about Rush without also mentioning Chronicle. And we can't! We get into how similar the two instances are and how they diverge quite wildly.

We talk about the villain's lack of imagination, the welcome reappearance of Chuck, and how Mulder doesn't get really obsessed with the impossible shot pulled off in the climax. Definitely puts the JFK conspiracy to shame.

Also how network censorship makes things nastier.

Imagine if you will, reading this post. You go to click the link and knock over your coffee, right onto your keyboard. You stand up abruptly and knock your chair backwards and it collides with the bookshelf. It sways and a box on top topples over and lands heavily on the ground.

The thump dislodges the plaster in the ceiling of the room below you and kills the armed gunman coming to murder you.

Implausible? Maybe. But that's the Rube Goldberg-ness of this episode where we discover weirdness like how scratchcard payouts work and Shia LeBeouf's early career.

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Mulder may often feel like a jerk, but Hungry kinda paints him as a predator playing with his food as he takes his sweet time doing anything about poor old Rob in this episode. If Mulder was a bit quicker than likely three people might still be alive...

Still, this is a monster-eyed view of The X-Files and pretty good. We get into the contrast to Terms of Endearment and how Rob might be a proto-Walter White all things considered. Not sure why people quibbled about finding out who the killer was so fast with this one...

Millennium is the second actual (if you count The Unusual Suspects) but intended third crossover into The X-Files. And comes courtesy of Chris Carter's other show that outside of one nod to The X-Files and an appearance by Jose Chung had trundled on quite happily without intersecting. It doesn't entirely work here and we get hung up on crossovers as a concept for quite some time.

But Sculder shippers win out! Here (after cuts, parallel universes/dreams and Mulder's inexplicable dream-marriage to Fowley) is the first kiss the pair get onscreen. At least Mulder wasn't cock-blocked by a bee this time.

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Taking a brief break from Season 7, we try to give an overview of the first X-Files game - The X-Files Game.

We get into FMV games as a whole and the specific drawbacks in general and here specifically. There's not a lot of Mulder and Scully in this game, but you can die in a bewildering and often funny succession of odd occasions.

We try to make sense of the plot and end up concluding you're far better off just watching Piper Maru instead. However, if you are curious, our complete (though edited) experience is up on Patreon!

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While it might be a metaphor for the loss of the "truth" in The Sixth Extinction, it is impossible not to interpret the order of events wherein Dr. Barnes kills a man, that man comes back to life and kills Dr. Barnes, and later when events return to the same beach, the entire UFO is now missing as Grand Theft Spaceship. By zombie.

Quite how Scully will cope with standing on and studying the hull of a downed UFO remains to be seen. Elsewhere we talk questionable science and dubious science.

It is concerning that Mulder's idealized alternate world fantasy of The Sixth Extinction Part 2 - Amor Fati involves him marrying Diana Fowley while she has a distinctly Cennobite-like look. Marries her but not Scully. In a fantasy dream sequence while undergoing brain surgery....

Welcome to the new phase of the conspiracy. Its a lot like the previous...

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This then is the end of The X-Files.

No. Really.

Fine. The point is we can't actually be sure that anything that happens after Field Trip in fact happens in series. It could all be a fungal hallucination as Mulder and Scully are dissolved in yellow goo in an underground cave.

Something of a dramatically bleak ending but hard to argue against.

(Though in reality, we know the universe resets if Scully dies because she can't so this probably isn't strictly true).

There is probably a good reason Scully is on the Ivory Coast at the end of Biogenesis. Probably. Otherwise welcome to the new conspiracy! Where Bibles are magnetic and looking at rubbings of metal can give Mulder migraines.

We are very interested in how Scully is going to excuse what she sees at the end of the episode, but surely there's some explanation.

We also sum up season 6, cover the best and worst episodes - and debate the best villain as always. Tune in next time for season 7!

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Nick has to insist quite a lot that he likes this episode though is not sold on baseball. Which it very much what The Unnatural is all about. A love letter to baseball that's also an X-Files episode that's also a lovely monster of the week episode that's also (sort of) a conspiracy episode and also makes a bit more sense of how the aliens work.

Nothing short of amazing really. We discuss how the episode works so well and how the replacement of a guest star somehow makes the whole situation less awkward than it would have been despite having two different characters with the same name in the series.

Three of a Kind while not the most important episode and pretty fairly judged as filler content, is at least great fun to watch. Effectively pilot #2 for The Lone Gunmen, its great to see a continuation of The Unusual Suspects with a hilarious guest turn from Scully and the Lone Gunmen themselves in great form.

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Startlingly the first episode this week Scully actually suggests Spontaneous Human Combustion as a possible cause of death. Which if we're honest shouldn't be a huge surprise after the events of, say, Fire back in season 1.

Trevor is a curious monster of the week episode suggesting tornadoes can give you super-powers. But what really floored us this week was the comments from director Rob Bowman about how we apparently completely misunderstood the episode. And really don't accept his stance on this one. Seriously, man, what the hell?

We are not sure if Milagro has a deliberate or completely accidental JD Salinger reference in it. Or if it started as a deliberate nod and then something got muddled because the alleged reference its making is to a sitcom. This despite an episode about a writer.

We're not wholly sure why any of said writer's moves work on Scully or even how the episode works, but we do have an important question: where has Skinner gotten to?

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Content Warning: multiple dog deaths

Arcadia is satire with a capital S. Perfect community built on top of a landfill. Oh and enforced by a trash golem! Or tulpa maybe. Mulder does do a lot of conjecture in this episode...

We discuss the alien nature (to us anyway) of there gated communities and the conformity therein and also the state of Mulder and Scully's fake marriage on display. There's a good deal of fun to be had in this episode despite the more horror-y than normal sting.

In software development, before you get to a release (generally version 1.0) there are few prior steps. Testing something before release is generally done in the beta stage - the thing works generally and shouldn't fall over, but there are things missing and its not at its most stable. The initial version is called alpha and might explode if poked too hard.

This next episode really needed to be held back until the beta version was complete.

Alpha wastes its guest star (Andrew Robinson - Garak in Deep Space Nine) and is borderline incoherent. We discuss all the hits! Like how the villain's plan is basically impossible, how massive dogs are made small, the bewildering ramblings of a suspected otherkin, Scully being jealous (again), and the better AND WORSE alternate intended ways the episode could have gone.

We can even make a case for this being worse than Tesos des Bichos....

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Back to the monster of the week(s)!

Well, monster of the week anyway. Agua Mala is a comedic bottle episode with a unnerving monster, some amusing character moments and a lot of water. Oh so much water just all the time.

We discuss the somewhat odd implications about how Mulder talks about Arthur Dales in this episode and depictions of entomologists on film.

Back to the monster of the week(s)!

Well, monster of the week anyway. Agua Mala is a comedic bottle episode with a unnerving monster.... Wait a minute.

Monday might allegedly be inspired by The Twilight Zone, but its impossible not to drag Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day and Haruhi Suzumiya into a discussion about it.

While there is a pretty clear point to the time-loop, we've got a different one building off of Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose and Tithonus.

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Could this be the end of the conspiracy? Is the planned for day here (about a decade early)? We discuss much of the conspiracy's tangles in Two Fathers. And also make a weird Xenogears connection for kicks.

We try to make sense of the episode's new claims while not being thrilled about CSM point blank talking to the audience through so much of the episode. And get amused by the rubber masks the alien rebels are now resorting to.

One Son really does feel like the end of the conspiracy. Mostly. At least its hard to see this part continuing much longer with the ending in place.

But we can't escape questions that plague us. Like how do the rebel mask things work? Why do people want to share a planet with a species that is quite keen on obliterating everyone there and can do so with impunity? Why is Cassandra Spender actually special?

Despite all the answers we still have questions and the series is instead prepared to move right on...

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SR819 features nano machines and a decidedly confusing plot about Skinner! Until it stops being about Skinner with extreme rapidity and we wonder how Mulder and Scully get to go on this adventure without Kersh throwing yet another book at the pair.

We discuss a certain returning character's career trajectory in The X-Files and his somewhat bewildering actions of late. At least we have Mulder's pet senator back in the action. And still not helping Mulder much at all. We get into just how diplomatic immunity works since it keeps coming up.

Tithonus is an episode that demands discussion of Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. So much later and possibly inadvertently, one line from Season 3 pays off here. This is a great gothic episode with Scully unaccountably taking some huge risks and plunging herself into danger in a case away from Mulder.

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Content warning: child death, forced abortions, animal abuse

After a run of comedic episodes, season 6 swerves hard into perhaps the darkest plotline The X-Files has ever had. But somehow any description of what happens in Terms of Endearment paints a picture of a bleak and thoroughly depressing episode which is somehow really fun to watch.

Some of it is probably Bruce Campbell, but the episode performs a startling trick of going so dark but somehow making everything bounce along at a good clip. It never lets go of the horror but it never gets too heavy. Not so much a comedy as extremely light-hearted.

The Rain King prompts a typical objection (why is this at this point in the season) but otherwise provides the first X-Files romcom episode. As one reviewer put it, cute but not excessively.

Aside from one dead cow, the episode is otherwise a strange deviation from the normally at least partly harrowing supernatural aspects to instead deliver an examination of Mulder and Scully's relationship reflected elsewhere.

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Dreamland II continues with some possible stake-raising. Can Mulder and Fletcher get back to their original bodies? And what might be the fallout if they can? Not that Mulder learns a huge amount during his somewhat brief visits to Areas 51. Meanwhile Fletcher sets his sights on Scully...

We discuss the weirdness of extending the joke episode out this long and how a fair amount of it doesn't really make sense. We completely forgot that Fletcher - like the rest of Area 51 - knows less about aliens that Mulder at this point. And Samantha is referenced and apparently we're continuing to ignore what Redux II had to say about her...

It is a bold choice to continue The X-Files with Michael McKean in place of Mulder after the events of Dreamland. Okay, so the body-switch did get reversed in time for this Christmas special of How the Ghosts Stole Christmas.

Which is a much better Christmas special than the last time The X-Files did something so seasonal. But while the episode is fun, the weird limitations of the episode hamper things - and we note how weirdly blunt Chris Carter is being in this episode.

Where has the darkness in The X-Files gotten to?

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Triangle is the second X-Files time-travel episode!

Maybe.

It could be the first Wizard of Oz X-Files episode which does make everything a lot weirder. And if we're honest, its a bit more likely. It doesn't help that the ship is less than accurate, the German is less than accurate and even the code names are inaccurate. Still this is a popular episode from Chris Carter himself.

It feels a bit like a Doctor Who episode at points. And does deliver a Sculder kiss. Sort of. More of a surprise was the Skinner/Scully kiss we'd completely forgotten about.

If venturing near Area 51, try to do so when malfunctioning US made UFOs aren't overhead. Then you won't get body-swapped with a genuine MIB....

Dreamland has a lot of great gags and a lot of not great other monster of the week stuff. While One Breath might have given us a glimpse of how CSM spends his days not at work, Dreamland gives us a whole MIB family for Mulder to make everything worse for.

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The X-Files returns to TV with season 6. And a new locale. One these first two episodes are not remotely subtle about...

For The Beginning, we talk about apparent Grey alien lifecycles and Chris Cater's pettiness. And where is Krycek even now? Its so hard not to contrast the black oil as it exists back to Piper Maru and how different everything was. We just don't talk about bees.

Drive kind of gets overwhelmed by its big guest star - not least this is a major part of how he was cast in Breaking Bad. But its a great episode - and as far as Nick was concerned for the longest time; the series opener.

For a change its Mulder's turn to get kidnapped but we do have to ask how he still doesn't get how to operate within the FBI on non-X-Files stuff without lashing out constantly.

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We're off to the movies!

The X-Files film (or Fight the Future - however rightly or wrongly it is so named) still holds up really well all these years later. Actual concrete details about the whole conspiracy are unveiled! Backstory! The threat! The slim hope of salvation!

Just... We get into how much the Black Oil has changed since its introduction in Piper Maru. And how the Syndicate have gotten very kill Mulder in this film. Also its hard not to notice some weird echoed plot-beats to season 5 episodes, how rapidly Well Manicured Man pivots depending on situation and episode and ask where the hell is Krycek?

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The inevitable episode where Mulder gets himself committed.

Folie a Deux is a great creepy episode that is almost a black comedy, but remains a fine creature-feature for the tail-end of season 5. There's some Philip K Dick in this episode - as well as a touch of Lovecraft.

We are admittedly in danger of just praising Vince Gilligan all the time, but this is a really good penultimate episode that has nothing to do with the conspiracy.

The End is the end. Or at least was going to be when The X-Files - like Star Trek - shed any mundane ideas about being a TV series and would instead metamorphose into a film series. That came crashing down to Earth pretty fast, but this episode at least seems prepared for all change and soon.

Shame its a bit of a mess and stuff happens and people do things and Nick is still better he was charged fuil-price for one VHS tape of this episode as it was allegedly vital to the film's setup (Spoiler: barely).

Since we've hit the end of a season we do the usual best and worst episodes - along with best villains.

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It feels a lot like All Souls forgets all about the events of Revelations from season 2 - that time it heavily implied Scully was set to be the next Messiah's guardian in some future conflict. Instead Scully has an opportunity to come to terms with the events of Emily - but also encounter a Seraph (maybe) and the Devil (maybe).

All we really know is that the CGI is terrible. And its oddly easy to get the Seraph confused with one of the other guest cast members. And if we have a devil wandering proceedings, why couldn't we get Mrs Paddock back from Die Hand, Die Verlezt?

Seinfeld has kind of poisoned our estimation of certain actors - thus both of us noted one of them as Kruger rather than the character he was actually called in The Pine Bluff Variant. Inevitably discussion quickly winds up with: if Mulder and/or Skinner just told Scully what was going on, things would go so much more smoothly.

But despite our best efforts, we can't quite make sense of how the part in the cinema actually works - and why anyone would dare touch anything the militia group in this episode has handled.

For those interested:

The composer for the Disney Channel theme video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rjBWmc1iQ

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...as final words instead of a guy shot by a cop blurting out 'Mulder'.

Well, I suppose he had to get involved in this flashback into the 1950s for Travellers somehow. Into a world of red-scares and transplantation with a mind to... We never quite get what the whole spider in the throat thing is supposed to achieve in this episode. Presumably something but that deal evades the plot as it trundles along.

Also the second appearance of Mulder's wedding ring! Of which not a breath is said in this or any other episode. We're reasonably sure he's not married in the series present. Reasonably.

Seeing Ghosts, sorry, Mind's Eye is basically Oubliette version 2 but with less stakes and distinctly not as good as that earlier episode. We're also really unsure how this remote viewing thing Marty has in this episode actually works - or why the government hasn't seized on this after things like Soft Light?

We also end up talking about Red Dragon quite a bit...

For Those Interested:
The referenced plagiarism debacle is documented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ

Maggie Mae Fish's video on HUAC and Strikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07bwL0fiM1A

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Patient X asks the question of "What would The X-Files be like if Mulder was an absolute jerk" and reveals that it makes us really want to strangle him in this episode. We get into how odd his characterisation has been across this season and how his vehement denial of alien abductions feels a little out of the blue in this episode.

But otherwise we're very keen on both of these episodes even if the syndicate has jettisoned all of their careful euphemisms when talking about aliens and what they have been up to this whole time. Also Krycek has re-entered proceedings again! And we get possibly the most intense and effective cliffhanger for a two-parter since Anasazi!

....bit of a shame the potentially Buckaroo Banzai referencing The Red and the Black seems to lose its nerve with tension and resolves the cliffhanger a handful of minutes in and with a few oddities over it. We get into changing allegiances and discuss how the aliens keep insist on making things really difficult for themselves - seeming only so Mulder can be in the vicinity of weirdness happening.

And... we knew he couldn't be dead. Not really. A long-running villain returns to the fold. And Mulder seems to have his faith back and will hopefully be less insufferable now.

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We're heading back to the 80s for some serious cyberpunk action in the first episode this week with Kill Switch! But somewhat disappointed. Invisigoth has a cool name and a cool look, but ultimately the episode feels a bit unsatisfying.

We discuss William Gibson's writing outside of The X-Files and the vision of AI back here in the 90s and how it contrasts to any current discussion. Also try not to get bogged down in computer discussions about how little sense this makes but also some disappointing ideas not taken. For a fun drinking game, take a shot every-time someone says 'Kill Switch' in this episode.

Bad Blood might not be quite the episode you remember it as being...

This is a Rashomon joke. The second time The X-Files makes use of the differing personal slants on an investigation remains an absolute hoot and an all-time favourite. We are forced to admit how this - like many of the other comedy episodes - diminishes its status as a good X-Files episode even though we love it to pieces.

The X-Files second take on vampires is hard to top all things considered. We strive to not simply list all the moments that make this a thoroughly enjoyable X-File.

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Content warning - Schizogeny - discussion/depictions of child abuse

Content warning - Chinga - above average violence

Schizogeny often ranks amongst the least favourite of all The X-Files, and its really hard not to see it in that kind of light. How the plot fits together, what even is Man with Axe's deal, and how do the villain's powers remotely work are all questions left unanswered by a confusingly shot ending. Nor does the villain seem to have any kind of actual plan.

People overlook evidence and come to strikingly unsatisfying conclusions and even Mulder's oft-noted tendency to read the script doesn't really aid him. Still, for lesser known games, its fun to see MDK in the episode even if this is a fleeting neat moment.

Chinga should be fine. Great even. Stephen King had already written a huge amount by 1998, and yet this episode (in addition to being grossly offensive in Spanish) is something of a mess. A hugely entertaining mess but a mess nonetheless.

Starting with a pretty horrific sting, the episode struggles to navigate between slightly weird and serious and winds up as comedy for the most part. Its not really meant to be as funny as it turns out and the less than effective special effects don't help. Something of a shame this is King's only contribution to the series...

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Content warning for Emily - Child death and discussions of sexual assault

While Christmas Carol hinted at some conspiratorial follow-ups, we weren't really prepared for this the latest entrant in the Scully abduction subplot. Toxic alien blood! Shapeshifters! Mulder flipping out over a three-year old he met two hours ago!

Not wholly sure why Mulder didn't get fired over his actions in this episode. Nor how Scully is still talking to him after info-dumping the events of Memento Mori on an adoption hearing judge.

Do you remember Pusher? What a great villain and a great episode. All finished nicely and conclusively. Somehow we now have Kitsunegari and more Pusher. More is not necessarily better in most things. And while Pusher himself is still fun, it feels a bit like all involved with this one hadn't been paying hugely close attention to the first episode.

Lot of weird oversights and character oddities in this one...

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Content warning for The Post-Modern Prometheus - discussion of sexual assault
Content warning for Christmas Carol - discussion of suicideIt's The X-Files Christmas special!

Sort of. First off, we have to go read a well-regarded comic we are... less than happy with. The Post-Modern Prometheus is often cited as one of the series' best episodes, but we can't really get past the central premise and no matter how you try to skew an interpretation it always comes back to some form of sexual assault and everyone in the episode is somehow just okay with this (and worryingly in one case outright delighted).

Which is not to say the episode does not have its charms; the acting, the guest stars, the soundtrack, use of Cher songs, the cinematography, the make-up - all great. If only it had been attached to a less gross premise.

And now the Christmas Special with, uh, Christmas Carol! What was once Scully being Ebeneezer Scrooge lumbers us with more time with the series' most slappable tertiary character: Bill Scully Jr. Which is not to say its a bad episode though Kim notes a surprising number of goofs and mistakes made in this episode.

Ultimately this Scully-centric episode is pretty good but leaves things on a huge cliffhanger for next week...

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The X-Files takes a trip back to 1989 and the formation of the Lone Gunmen. Also plausibly how Mulder's interest in aliens originated too. We talk the big questions. Like who's Kung fu is best and how does Suzanne find that hotel room?

But in all seriousness, the Usual Suspects acts as a great pilot for a Lone Gunmen spin-off that does eventually happen. But as we rapidly figure out, this is more of a character-development episode than a weighty plot episode. Nice to get the Lone Gunmen's characters hammered out and Kim can stop referring to Byers as 'the robot'.

Detour has the distinction of being the first episode of The X-Files Kim ever saw. Also the one where the Mulder has definitely not read the script and keeps on guessing as to what is lurking in that (very cold. Best to wear layers) Floridian swampland...

We discuss why The X-Files never actually did a Mothman episode as well as some choice Sculder moments for the shippers.

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The answer of how Mulder's dead body can be identified in Gethsemane and this not be David Duchovny leaving the series turns out to involve literal murder. And both Redux and Redux II don't spend much time at all grappling with the little detail of Mulder totally killing someone (which is not the first time) and then blasting said someone's face off with a shotgun.

But hey, what's a little murder between conspirators? Scully seems decidedly unfazed and we enjoy her Skinner must be evil attitude a whole bunch while Mulder keeps wandering into exactly the right places by almost chance.

Redux II turned out to be a bit of a shock on re-watch as it derailed an otherwise great point on how Paper Hearts would fit into this season really well. Had someone not shown up again in a scene where a really big important question is not only not asked but all the implications glossed over as hard as possible.

We get into quite a bit how Scully's very personal, very important plot is shunted largely off-screen (to say nothing of the concluding moments) and how the Lone Gunmen aren't in this enough. Especially Frohike (and, you know, when you can have Frohike but don't, I really don't understand why given he's on set the entire time anyway).

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Content warning - depictions and discussions of suicide

Ketamine is a very different substance to whatever Herbert West uses in Re-Animator. But The X-Files seems to quite look how Dr. West's stuff looks so Mulder gets injected with it in this episode.

Revelations of a sort from Mulder's past! Can we trust anything we see given the peculiar way the memory is uncovered and how it kind of splices into Samantha's abduction from Little Green Men?

Gethsemane is a word Nick has tremendous difficulty in pronouncing. Also the end of season 4 and... apparently its all fake. All the X-Files. Nothing more than a smoke-screen. The alien stuff anyway - we are pretty sure Tooms and Flukeman left some physical evidence of their weirdness. It is weirdly not implausible that all the shape shifters we've seen to date are merely members of the Blundht family...

But this time (unlike that time Jack Schaffer told Mulder it was all lies in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space') seemingly both Mulder and Scully are convinced they've been chasing shadows (though that episode seemed to have a definitive ghost....). This despite the frozen alien found in Canada.

We also discuss best and worst episodes this season - with input from out Twitter followers.

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Content warning for Elegy - depictions of autism

Welcome to the Skinner show! In this week's episode - Zero Sum - Skinner is embroiled in the shadowy cover-up while Mulder is almost one step ahead of him in a surprising twist to the norm.

There's some good and bad insect accuracy in this episode and we get into Marita's nature as Mulder's contact once again. Also why are the Syndicate members named like they are?

Elegy is by agreement one of the bleakest episodes of the series to date. So much so we get side-tracked onto bowling and from there to The Big Lewbowski. Also some ramblings about the end of Game of Thrones.

But we do also discuss Elegy and its surprising links to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest...

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Content warning for Small Potatoes - discussions of sexual assault

A glimpse of the future! Or at least there was a future for the time-travel episode of The X-Files for the character to arrive back from. We get into how Scully doesn't seem to be right given the episode clearly has the future not being static. So maybe we can avoid the dystopian lack of hope that apparently has now gripped the world some thirty years hence?

(fun fact, the implication in this episode is the universe gets time-travel sometime around 2027. Just four more years!)

Inevitably we end up talking about other time-travel things and a reasonably obscure sci-fi novel which seems to have some bearing on the dystopia.

Small Potatoes is a weird episode given it seems to understand the somewhat murky nature of its subject matter but refuses to let go of its comedy trappings which makes everything oh so gross.

Making a comedy episode of The X-Files has produced some tremendous episodes in the series to date. Making said comedy episode revolve around an unrepentant multiple rapist is absolutely not the way to do it.

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Is this Scully's worst birthday ever? A surprise rendition of Happy Birthday, an Apollo 11 key-chain, Mulder suggesting a plane crash is due to a UFO and then a visit to the actual crash site to look for survivors.

Far be in from me to suggest this is not her ideal way to spend her birthday, but Scully doesn't looked entirely thrilled in Tempus Fugit. Not that her birthday really factors into all that much - at least until the cliffhanger hinge between this episode and the next.

Still, its nice to see Max from season 1 come back again. And there he went too...

And with Max we lose another member of the secondary cast. This pair of episodes is weirdly brutal.

We get into whether anyone made an effort to rewatch Fallen Angel before writing this episode and how Max might have handled his previously reported death. Before, you know, this episode.

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Content Warning: discussions of anti-semitism

Come to New York! See none of the famous landmarks! I guess Kaddish is set in Queens, but still...

We talk about how one dresses golems (and Umbrella-corporation projects) and how Scully's ongoing storyline doesn't seem to impact this episode at all.

And that's it for this week. Next week-

Oh wait. Unrequited. Always forget this one.

It does have Larry Musser in it! Otherwise, we get kinda caught up on how Sleepless did a similar plot so much better in Season 2.

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Never Again provokes the unexpected question: did Morgan and Wong really not like returning to The X-Files after Space: Above and Beyond?

Inevitably this episode also sparks some more consideration of Sculder shipping and the seeming increasing importance of episode ordering for how events play off each other. That said, this is also the talking tattoo episode.

Memento Mori is much better, linking right back into a whole host of conspiracy elements and much more expected characterisation of Mulder and Scully. Some great performances and what might be the first real use of The Lone Gunmen in the field. Hey, maybe we could get a spin-off for them?

At this juncture it seems such a promising idea...

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It was, perhaps, inevitable that The X-Files would do an episode on the chupacabra at one point. Only, El Mundo Gira isn't really about the chupacabra. Its not really a telenovela either - not outright weird or dramatic enough!

We wind up contrasting the episode oddly to F. Emasculata and Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' for previous examples of some of the episode's narrative bits and pieces.

Leonard Betts is a particular favourite of Kim's - Nick gets a little hung up on some existential questions, but we can both agree that Scully really does get to kick ass in this episode for a change - somewhat unrealistic defibrillator usage non-withstanding.

The most polite X-Files vampire so far...

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Terma somewhat disappointed after such a strong opener in Tunguska. We're not sure if the writers quite understand how vaccines work (like at all). Nor are we sure how and when and especially how Krycek can be some cunning master manipulator and still wind up losing an arm in a hilariously unconvincing sequence.

Maybe Mulder's been reading the script. Or maybe he's psychic. He kind of deserves his own X-File given how Paper Hearts goes:

Paper Hearts is a stand-out episode - and fan favourite - and Nick has only one real complaint about it (two if you include how Mulder avoided getting fired over the events therein). Easily haunting and enthralling and uncomfortable, everyone gives this one their all.

And hey, maybe Mulder is psychic. And while he might have forgotten, we're going to insist he might be because of being present at Samantha's abduction. And that proximity giving people weird abilities was spelled out all the way back in Conduit...

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The shocking truth about Cancer Man's past and how he killed significant people! Or Cancer Man's thinly veiled autobiography passed off as fiction? You decide with regards to Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.

We note how the episode is both plausible as backstory for the nemesis figure within the series, but also how it largely steers around most of the detail relating back to the main series' conspiracy. The how and why CSM got embroiled with aliens is mostly skipped... but we do learn he's allegedly keen on fixing sporting events from time to time.

Tunguska is the next conspiracy two-parter and a triumphant return of the black oil! Bit odd it seems to behave differently but there are possible reasons. A fun episode with some great portents for the future of the series and the usual crop of returning faces.

The most important question the episode prompts is, how at risk is the Syndicate's conspiracy to overzealous customs agents? Based on this episode, it seems the answer is very!

Can the episode hold up in part 2? Find out next week...

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Content Warnings - themes of abuse against women and children, gore, fear of doctors/medical procedures.The Field Where I Died is a very polarising episode in the fandom. As such we get into why and the arguments from both sides - and its all connected back to whatever stance you might hold on the Sculder ship.

We navigate some inconsistent hypnosis and some curious historical goofs in an episode we can pretty much all agree looks really good.

Sanguinarium is a weird and unsatisfying trip ultimately. The presence of a Twin Peaks cast member can't quite overcome the needless gore and nastiness, nor the somewhat confusing nature of the villain's plan.

It is fun to see Mulder contemplate rhinoplasty however...

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Content warning - potential racial insensitivity, discussions centred around lobotomy.

In both episodes!

We're not sure Howard Gordon was really the right person to pen Teliko. Also odd how its similarity to Squeeze seems to escape both Mulder and Scully's attention. Definitely not one of the series' better vampires all things considered.

Still, for the Sculder shippers, their bond is sufficiently strong that Scully can read Mulder's facial expressions in critical moments. We also speculate on how Mulder should contact Marita instead of freaking her out when its late outside the UN building in New York.

Unruhe also has a spike as a central point and what the villain of the week is up to is potentially completely unrelated to the how and why Mulder and Scully are caught up in this case. We make a note of how many Scully kidnap's this is (the fifth) versus Mulder's instances (one).

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Content Warning for Home - Abuse, incest, infant death are all fundamental aspects of the episode plot.

There are no easy answers for Mulder in Herrenvolk. The conspiracy does shift forward with some interesting reveals, but Jeremiah Smith does seem to correspond to the typical alien response to Mulder (ie, lying) regarding Samantha.

Somehow Kim gets away with saying 'Deadly Bee Weapon' a lot, but this ties into the series pulling a few elements together around smallpox of all things.

Home is absolutely notorious and grisly and an episode we would tend to avoid previously. Rewatching surprised us with the amount of jokes it contained and how and why those jokes were used to undercut the extremely dark subject matter.

Also notable for being the return of Morgan and Wong to the series. We get into the multiple inspirations for the episode and how it stakes up against those influences.

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Wetwired feels a whole lot like a re-do of Blood (from Season 2) with a bit of Ghost in the Shell eye-hacking on top. Not that it is anime-style eye-hacking.

We discuss Mulder's strange inability to emphasise with Scully's paranoid turn in this episode as well as how knowing Dutch could give the game away right at the start.

Talitha Cumi is the big season ender with Biblical overtones. Quite why Mulder gives this case the time of day is unclear. We discuss the weirdness of both Jeremiah Smith and the Alien Bounty Hunter's behaviour - as well as how finnicky their weaponry appears to be.

Also - given this is the end of Season 3, we get into our 5 Favourite episodes, our least favourite episode(s) and our preferred villain of the season.

Next time: Season 4!

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Content warning - Animal Death in Quagmire

The first of this week's episodes doesn't involve war in Ba Sing Se. Or Unobtainium on other planets. Instead we get a weird hybrid monster of the week/conspiracy episode where the forces of the supernatural help Skinner in perhaps the least helpful way.

This is Avatar apparently.

We discuss the curious merits of framing Skinner and getting him fired after the attempted murder back in Piper Maru.

Quagmire also seems to be an episode struggling with its premise; part lake monster story and part intense Mulder and Scully character relationship piece. Where Mulder completely flubs his empathy on numerous occasions.

Still, at least Stoner and Chick are back.

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We would (quite seriously) love to see James Hong be cast as a CSM equivalent or just be a member of the syndicate in general, but in the likely absence of that, we will take his fantastic turn as the Hard Faced Man in Hell Money. Which features a good number of actors who have also been in Mulan.

We discuss the episode's kind of back-door pilot feel and why the body-part lottery supernatural cover-story feels kinda redundant in the end.

The X-Files has dabbled a few times by this point with implying alien abductions are in truth covers for some other shady goings on by the government. Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" offers the wonderfully silly next step by asking what happens if, mid-faking an alien abduction, an actual (stop-motion looking) alien showed up and captured the disguised air-force pilots and their would be teen abductees?

If only the story could be remotely as simple and not make everyone look very, very silly. We find it tremendously hard not to gush about all the surreal comedy this episode provides, the assorted guest stars and cinematic flourishes to sell the unreliable narrators.

Fear not though! Even with this episode Nick manages to come up with some complaints and nuisance slips on the part of the episode.

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Pusher is that rare thing - an episode Nick is unable to find much of a fault with at first. Blackly comedic and engaging, this cat and mouse encounter between Mulder and the titular Pusher is so good.

We do get into Mulder's pretty incredibly specific knowledge of the Japanese language and how this episode might have damaged whatever burgeoning relationship Mulder and Scully have been building.

We struggled to say much about Teso Dos Bichos ultimately. Other than we could totally watch The Relic (the 90s monster movie, not the more recent housebound horror about dementia) for a similar (very similar) setup and have a far better time.

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Time for a new alien species!

Piper Maru brings us the very sinister, very dangerous Black Oil. Whether the alien in truth or - as Mulder conjectures - a medium for transference, its still damned cool as a new threat.

Anyone, anywhere might be infected! Though just watching their eyes for a bit tends to give them away.

And, you know, that the Black Oil is perhaps one of the worst stealth operatives in the world except for the times it is.

Apocrypha is probably the best second part of a two-parter we've had to date, even if Cancer Man's suggestion to Skinner digging too deep into Melissa Scully's death is sending the same assassin to shoot Skinner and when that doesn't work, sending the same assassin to shoot him all over again.

Still we get some tremendously creepy moments, a potential reworking of the power dynamics in the Syndicate and are left wondering if Cancer Man shouting "You saw nothing" ever works for him.

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...The X-Files also stares back into you!

Aside from a few fun moments (and pre-fame Ryan Reynolds), Syzygy has little to recommend it. Mulder and Scully are out of character and kinda annoying and increasingly unprofessional.

Still! It oddly provided the origin point of the Keystone Cops footage we found in our Let's Play of The X-Files Game (part 1 available on Patreon). We get to talk about 90's teen culture and how we would rather the episode focused more on ostensible villains Terri and Margi.

Grotesque manages to change some of Mulder's backstory and be inconsistent with its own plot. As one of the admitted major inspirations on Millennium it is not without interest for future detail, even if Nick wanted a more supernatural-edge to the episode, while Kim would rather the Seven-like aspect got more focus.

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Wherein Kim is very keen on Bambi Berenbaum's bug talk in War of the Coprophages.

But that's after Revelations which seeks to invert the usual Mulder and Scully dynamic by making Mulder staunchly sceptical and Scully open to less scientific conclusions. I only wish Scully applied her new-found beliefs to every other episode going forward.

Also; tip for demons/agents of evil/other nefarious agents - booking rental cars under known demonic names makes you pretty obvious.

War of the Coprophages is the latest by Darin Morgan so we have a new funny episode with some pointed jabs at Mulder's entire belief-system. And Sculder shippers get some unexpected food in this installment.

We've also got a Let's Play of The X-Files Game in the works over on Patreon!

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...and you too could own a.... lacklustre alien autopsy video.

Nisei starts with what looks an awful lot like an alien autopsy on a train and ends with Mulder leaping onto a completely different train. Which may or may not contain... something.

We get quite taken with the "red-haired man" as he is known, though according to one DVD somewhere, he does have a name. The episode is pretty exciting with Mulder doing stunts, avoiding armed soldiers and swimming in a harbour at night. But Scully might be on the verge of finding out what happened after Skyland Mountain. While Mulder sparks an international incident.

731 seems to forget that Mulder caused an international incident (or Skinner was just lying for some reason) and goes in some odd directions to turn Scully back into a hardcore sceptic all over again. Because Reginald FirstElder said so.

We make note of some lazy props and are so very taken with X's turn this time around.

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Content warning: Both episodes contain depictions and discussions of suicide. The Walk contains child death and Oubliette contains depictions of mental illness. Listener discretion is advised.And we're back.The Walk is basically Excelsis Dei version 2 but much less skin-crawlingly gross and with a more compelling villain. Who has way more scruples than the elderly patients in the former episode. Not above killing a load of people.

We once again have some issues picking out character names but otherwise this is an effective monster of the week episode.

Oubliette rambles into a discussion about Jack the Ripper at one point. If there is a simple note about the episode its that it should be a little longer. Not a two parter, but the episode feels a tad rushed as is.

I had been anticipating this episode as a huge Scully Killed Another One with Bad First Aid, but it turned out to be nowhere close to as bad as her prior stunts - and Kim will confirm its not a bad depicition of CPR. That said, there's a weird failure to help keep someone warm and Scully's apparent exasperation at the medical impossibility of drowning in river water in a car a mile away...

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Content warning for 2Shy - stalking, emotional manipulation of women

We continue the monster of the week portion of Season 3!

The List is a killer ghost plot for whom the supernatural menace is less impressive than the one in Shadows. In one sense this is to heighten ambiguity of just how supernatural the episode is (until the ending sting anyway). In another, why Neech is bothering with smothering people with pillows when surely he can crush their throats from the inside?

Kinda feels that maybe the episode would be better as a ghost POV thing. Still! The guest stars are good and the series got a set that got reused a bunch of times. And we get to talk about the discomforting working with insect larvae one of the actors had to do.

2 Shy! Not just a song by Kajagoogoo (also I managed to mix up The Lion's Mouth with The Lion Sleeps Tonight (they were one after another on a cat-themed mix-tape in the 90s and I got the bands completely wrong). Kajagoogoo did not sing the latter) but the identity of a gross fat-eating vampire.

Virgil Incanto has one of the least plausible X-Files' names to date (and Kim is on hand to explain why) and is a thoroughly unpleasant villain for the week. There is fun to be had in the shaky 90s notions of how the internet worked and the semi-justified naming of a sex worker as "Holly McClane".

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The X-Files takes a hard left turn back to monster of the week goodness!

Somehow we wound up discussing the sadly never arranged Fire vs D.P.O. face-off which would pit a recovered Cecil L'Ively against the still seemingly still-powered Darin Peter Oswald. As far as we know no one's tried this in any official release...

Kim is pleased with unexpectedly accurate defibrillator depiction but disheartened by the utterly implausible fulgurite scene.

Does Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose need anything more to be said about it? It tends to either top or come very close in lists of the best X-Files episodes, and its incredibly hard to argue against that. We make our best efforts to say anything new...

Revisiting the episode reveals a thoroughly downbeat and bleak episode riddled with black humour, great jokes and characters. And some setups for the future. Scully has a dog now and apparently doesn't die. Mr Bruckman is somewhat less accommodating towards Mulder...

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Look, we like Samantha here. Doesn't feel like Bill Mulder was exactly hugely invested in his daughter based on the implications Paper Clip sets up.

But that's after The Blessing Way which has some great stuff for Scully, and some... screentime for Mulder. Questions about of how Mulder got out of a (for want of a better term) hermetically sealed room, for which Camoflauge Man (no, really, we're pretty sure that's his name) can find no trace of him minutes later.

Yes, there are some explanations of how Mulder's escapology works but none are exactly satisfying. Still, this episode introduces Well-Manicured Man and 1st Elder leading to a wondering of why didn't Bill Mulder get a similarly themed name (or did he?!).

Paper Clip is back into the real conspiratorial mode however and gives us some intriguing hints of what the shadowy forces are up to as well as making Cigarette Smoking Man human in a way we've not seen previously.

Mulder remains a bit of a jerk (we could blame the lingering after-effects of being drugged I suppose) and Scully loses another family member as we try to puzzle out what the hell the presumable aliens at Strughold mining facility were trying to do.

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The end of season 2!

Anasazi seems to make clear that CSM is just in a perpetual state of lying. Not entirely sure you could even find out what he wants for breakfast.

We're not completely convinced by the encryption on the Thinker's downloads - nor where this guy has been for most of the season after getting name-checked in One Breath.

We also get to find out what our Twitter/Mastodon followers thought of the season in terms of best and worst episodes. And best villain, though thanks to the one person who really threw us a curve-ball on the answers...

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We're pretty sure people aren't too fond of Soft Light, but really it's a good episode with a great guest star in Tony Shaloub and exposes a whole other depth to the character of X otherwise not even hinted at.

Sure, the science makes no sense, but this hasn't ever really stopped any other episode of The X-Files. Plus, this is the first episode written by Vince Gilligan who'll go on to produce some notable future episodes and some reasonably popular mega-successes.

We've started keeping track of the genesis of X-Files episodes, and in the stakes of being as disgusting as possible, Our Town does win out. Currently at any rate. Not wholly sure what to make of Mulder's initial theory that is obviously wrong from the cold open.

And maybe this should have lent into the blackly comic aspects of the premise...

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The Calusari is absolutely the nastiest episode to date but loses points because real life Calusari dance a lot more than the store-bought exorcists in this episode. Outside of Samantha, has The X-Files managed to cast a child actor who does not have the (oft-quoted) "cold, dead eyes of a killer"? Not so far. Then again, the child actor here is the same one from Conduit.

The genesis of the episode is somewhat bewildering too... and why are the walls coated with honey?!

F. Emasculata has a load of gross-out moments and some worrying implications in how Mulder handles his eternal quest for the truth. Meanwhile Scully's inability to conduct basic first aid seems to be tampering with her handling of biohazardous material and if she wasn't a main character, there's no way she was getting out of this episode alive.

Skinner admitting there is a conspiracy feels like it should be a bigger thing, but its kind of incidental...

Død Kalm cannot really escape how it feels - an episode written to make use of a set. The set in question being the ship the production crew hired for Colony and End Game. Also it feels very much like another entrant of an Ice-style episode (see also: Darkness Falls and Fire Walker) and associated in-fighting but less exciting than any of them.

The other problem is it has a great knack in suggesting and shooting down far more interesting ideas than the episode actually contains. Its a very slow, very tiring episode.

At least Humbug is a wonderful contrast. Darin Morgan's first episode was reportedly cut down from its highest comedic moments (Kim relates how the novelization picks up the discards), but this is still a tremendously entertaining episode.

Successful mostly because the The X-Files has not been intentionally funny (while we laughed all the way through Space, we are pretty sure that was not the idea) so far. An inversion of just who is the outsider while also notable for Scully disappointed at the midway mark that the explanation is so mundane. Definitely feels like Mulder is rubbing off on her...

Turns out you just can't trust aliens. Whether its multiple clones of your sister or the bounty hunter who can look like anyone. Everyone likes to insist Samantha is fine but they either have a vested interest in getting Mulder to do something or just don't care.

End Game is a great follow-up to Colony though suffers a similar weakness of not being quite as energetic or thrilling as its first part. Not sure how Scully just overlooks guy who looks identical to Mulder who walked into her hotel room so easily. We are so very pleased with Skinner though, who like Rupert Giles, has that quirk of when he takes his glasses off, you know he's serious.

Fearful Symmetry is probably the most absurdly car-crash, nonsensical episode of the series. Not only does an episode that opens with invisible elephant and has invisible tiger (and caught on tape) in the middle somehow not involve invisibility towards the ends, it also really begs awkward questions about the alien's accuracy.

If the aliens have a plan, this one is really beyond us.

While just blurting out "He's a ghost" at the start of The Sixth Sense would have somewhat undermined the final twist, its not at all clear why one character in Fresh Bones is unable to make a fairly fundamental quirk of Chester Bonaparte's existence clear to Mulder and Scully.

Still, its nice to have X back even if his presence here is something of a surprise. We also find out the novelisation makes a lot of the episode's more nebulous plot details much clearer.

Colony is an amazing fast-paced episode. That also demands we refer back to Gender Bender in season 1 for our shape-shifting aliens and the implication. There is of course an implication that literally no one in The X-Files universe can be trusted now this concept has been introduced.

The final twist of Scully being a shape-shifting alien will be quite the doozy. Wait. Are we absolutely sure Scully is the one who came back in One Breath!?

(We are pretty certain. But you never know! Maybe this will factor into her decision to not be in any potential future seasons past 11)

Content warning for Irresistible - implied necrophilia
Content warning for Die Hand, Die Verletzt - mentions of rape, child abuse, death of infantsAside from some odd depictions in the cold open, Irresistible is a tremendously creepy yet mundane (in the sense of not being supernatural) episode of Season 2. A creepy and unsettling monster of the week. We make the case of this being a far better follow-up to One Breath than Firewalker ever was and critique Mulder using the case as an excuse to watch a football game.

Die Hand, Die Verletzt is somewhat at odds with Irresistible in how Scully deals with dead bodies in this context, but otherwise Season 2 goes from strength to strength with a story about lapsed Satanists. Blackly comical (premise, the tendency of the satanists to loudly denounce satanism, the tabloid version of satanism depicted a few times) but also quite disturbing with some practical effects.

But we love Mrs. Paddock and Kim absolutely has a more accurate idea of how snakes work than is depicted on-screen.

Content warning for Excelsis Dei and Aubrey - mentions of sexual assault.

We weren't looking forward to revisiting Excelsis Dei and were not surprised by the experience of re-watching it. The base subject matter is off-putting; Mulder and Scully seem to have traded personality traits (since when was Mulder adamant about the most absolutely mundane solution?); and the episode seems decidedly confused about whether the mushroom crop reduces Alzheimer's symptoms and gives old people telekinetic powers OR the mushroom crop reduces Alzheimer's symptoms and energises the restless dead haunting the halls of Excelsis Dei.

Aubrey is a better mystery with only a little of the 90s magical computer program to keep the plot going. Tremendous guest appearances though in a tale of genetic memory and serial killers.

Content warning for Red Museum - mentions of sexual assault.

Scully's going back into the field in the next two episodes of The X-Files season 2.

It is... not easy to talk about Firewalker without frequent allusions to Ice back in season 1. So we didn't even try to avoid it. Weirdly it also has an opening which doesn't match how it ends, but Ice does it so much better (and doesn't concern itself with people wandering around in temperatures three times the boiling point of water).

Also for an episode called Firewalker, the robot itself is almost incidental.

Red Museum is a confounding episode. Starting with a great cold open, the episode spends half its run-time setting up a lot of weird supernatural weirdness. And then without warning turns into a conspiracy episode which feels like it should be a much bigger deal all things considered.

But no.

Season 2 of The X-Files continues...

Content warning - 3 involves descriptions of abuse and this comes up in our discussion.

We've had werewolves so far, how about some vampires? Assuming you don't subscribe to Kim's theory that most of the monster of the week entities are some form of vampire (needing to feed on livers, infect their host to continue and so on), 3 offers our first vampire episode! And from the writer of Roland! This should be great.

It... really isn't. A twitter poll failed to turn up any support for the episode and we struggle to care as events play out and the script's nature as an unmade season 1 entrant becomes more and more obvious as we repeatedly fail to note one of the guest star's names correctly.

One Breath is dramatically better, though feels a completely different genre to Duane Barry and Ascension as it was once distributed back in the 90s. Scully gets to sleep through this for the most part so its all Mulder again. We meet more of the Scully family - for which Kim advances a neat theory. Still kinda floored that the FBI once used the entire X-Files office for storing the photocopier.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner only has a little more to work on. Slightly frustratingly it seems all Scully's abduction stuff must be at the hands of humans. Unless the Grey aliens really were going to rifle through Mulder's apartment that evening. Or Melissa actually is the guilty party and turned up early to confound everyone.

Season 2 of The X-Files reaches the first two part episode!

Duane Barry is an excellently tense, hostage negotiation episode with a guest star who's trustworthiness wanes as the episode goes on only for the final moments to call any doubts into question. We however find time to talk about Mulder's speedos and poke at just how relevant the whole Phineas Gage thing is to Scully's insistence Duane Barry himself can't be trusted.

Ascension sparks a continued debate over whether the first of the two objects with light beams in the sky over Skyland Mountain is a military UFO, a regular UFO or a helicopter. Since I get to write these bits I would argue one of the former, but I know on social media I am not getting anywhere with this argument and seemingly everyone else thinks its the latter. We do again wind up talking about how rushed Krycek's character feels in this little three episode arc.

Also; Skinner, you can like, just re-open the X-Files?! On a whim?!

Kim's Conspiracy Corner is caught up with no end of inconsistencies and ambiguities across the new reveals of what Duane Barry tells us and the glimpses whether real or imagined of the alien abductions...

Season 2 of The X-Files continues!

Blood sees the welcome return of the Lone Gunmen and the first writing credit for Darin Morgan. We discuss how the novelisation makes a lot of aspects clearer and call into question guest-star William Sanderson's choices towards the climax.

Sleepless introduces a new partner for Mulder: Alex Krycek (returning and recast guest star Nicholas Lea). Bit of a shame it feels like someone forced the writers' hand about his function in the series but until the last 30 seconds he feels a lot like Mulder's younger replacement. Also Tony Todd is in this and great, though why his "your mind makes it real" powers don't outright kill Mulder is decidedly unclear.

No Kim's Conspiracy Corner this week; something tells us we're going to be very taken up with it imminently...

Season 2 of The X-Files begins a whole new era for the series.

Little Green Men is perhaps the series's third pilot - a great jumping on point and a great episode all round. Just why do the aliens dance during abductions and how much of this episode really happened? Just how bad at their jobs are the Blue Beret Crash Retrieval Team?

It is perhaps a bit of a shame the episode prevented us from seeing Mulder vainly trying to get a dead body through customs...

The Host is a wonderfully gross monster of the week episode. Was getting your own name tattooed on your arm the done thing back in the 90s (in Russia anyway?). Also the Flukeman is absolutely a ninja given his ability to attack from stealth.

Episodes 24 of The X-Files season 1 asks a lot of questions - and while Fox might once have worried audiences would conclude the series was over - for season 2 to pick up.

The Erlenmeyer Flask finally, finally has Scully seeing something with no wriggle room and very little other interpretation. And she'll be hard pressed to argue the object she decides to pickle doesn't have some supernatural implications.

Mulder on the other hand possibly is not remotely paranoid or cautious enough and things don't go so well for him.

We sum up the season as a whole and get into favourite episodes as voted via social media alongside our own. Also least favourite episode and favourite villain.

Episodes 22 & 23 of The X-Files season 1 really do show the variances of the series.

Born Again's major revelation is that Scully gets a front-row seat to some supernatural happenings. Which... she probably writes off as something mundane. Oddly, we don't get to hear her version of events in what feels like a re-do of Shadows.

Roland features perhaps the most cold and vicious of the villainous characters to date, but is a very touching and affecting episode with a possibly dark sting come the end. We agree this one is very good, if oddly the series could nail down fake-beard technology.

Episodes 20 & 21 of The X-Files season 1 are both excellent!

Darkness Falls is a wholesale tribute to Ice (or possibly Chris Carter deciding he could also do a bottle episode with paranoia and in-fighting) just set out in the wilderness with bugs for enemies and an apparent inadvertent environmental theme.

Tooms is the unexpected sequel to near universal favourite episode Squeeze. Eugene Victor Tooms is back, but damn, is his doctor in love with him or not? Highly unprofessional. We debate whether the episode should really be centred more on Scully than Mulder. Also returning is Cigarette Smoking Man who has taken up residence in new on-going character Walter Skinner's office.

Episodes 18 & 19 of The X-Files season 1 seem to continue the series's struggle to find its own identity.

Miracle Man has been described elsewhere as something you'd expect in Murder She Wrote - which is not wholly unfair. Scully continues her proud tradition of inadequate or non-existent first aid skills, while Mulder unexpectedly gets some weirdness regarding Samantha.

Shapes is an absolutely by the numbers werewolf story. But at least it has Hawk from Twin Peaks in a guest star role. Scully has to be wilfully misremembering events in this one. And does this episode have foreshadowing for a season 9 episode (no).

Episodes 16 & 17 of The X-Files season 1 continue an uneven run.

Young At Heart should be a good monster of the week episode with a man with a salamander hand! But somehow that never really factors into anything, least of all the villain's new career as a piano tuner. We're pretty sure Scully's losing another one of her friends after the events of this episode.

E.B.E. is a gloriously good episode and filled with conspiratorial goodness. We get a little hung up on our own separate ideas of what was where in the truck (and why you would ship an alien body to Washington state for killing when surely that can also be done in Turkey?) and when, but can agree we like The Lone Gunmen and the increasing murky levels that Deep Throat is operating in.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner finds us wondering about potentially another type of alien who don't quite match any from previous encounters.

Episodes 14 & 15 of The X-Files season 1 could not be more different!

Gender Bender has us discussing how aliens don't appear to have previously had any anthropological interest in humanity. What the Kindred actually are up to is open to serious debate as is how often does Brother Martin - Marty to friends and lovers - actually shower if they still have white clay under their fingernails by the time the fifth dead body is left in their wake.

Lazarus on the other hand prompts some questions about Scully's previous personal life and her exes. Also what kind of staff Maryland University keeps on their payroll. We note once again the strangely long shadow that Exorcist III seemingly casts over the series.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner notes that this may be the first time we've seen corporeal aliens in the series - even if that red string is only connected in the final seconds of the episode.

Episodes 12 & 13 of The X-Files season 1 offer quite the contrast of tones for the series.

Fire was for some reason once seen as particularly frightening, but we both had a grand time re-watching this episode. Not sure it was supposed to be quite as funny as we found it. Among the weird revelations on this rewatch was the easily overlooked detail that the villain is literally using cans of rocket fuel while repainting a house.

Also so much Sculder content for those so inclined. You might not have made it to series regular, Phoebe, but you certainly spurred things on.

Beyond the Sea by contrast is a much more sombre affair and our first Scully-focused episode. The heady mix of Silence of the Lambs, Exorcist III and Zodiac is pretty effective all things considered. And of course, this would not work without Brad Dourif as guest star.

Also our first Twin Peaks cast member in Don S Davis as William Scully.

...wait, do Mulder and Scully both have fathers with the same first name?

And for the first time, no Kim's Conspiracy Corner. No aliens, no hint of government involvement. Unless Nick's bizarre theory about Cecil L'Ively being the origins of the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender somehow pans out.

We both enjoyed episodes 10 & 11 of The X-Files season 1. Not that we don't have a few observations. Questions. Criticisms...

Fallen Angel offers some sort of Predator-like thrills (just be glad you can't see what it actually looks like... Not in a Bird Box sense, more in a 'You might die laughing' sense), hints at much vaster conspiracies but also has us asking awkward questions about what the presumed unseen alien at the centre of all this is up to - while Deep Throat's allegiance is now somewhat questionable.

Eve has Mulder's least logical jump to conclusion ever and on top of that he's incredibly wrong! What initially looked like maybe vampires, but Mulder insists is cattle mutilation turns out to instead be eugenics. Scully remains terrible at talking to kids though.

(but seriously, where did the 8 litres of blood go?)

Kim's Conspiracy Corner surprisingly starts connecting the red thread between episodes as we find that the ghost alien from Space and the seemingly stranded creature in Fallen Angel aren't all that different.

Episodes 8 & 9 of Season 1; Ice and Space.

For Ice we take a trip to Alaska for the X-Files' version of The Thing complete with paranoia and probable alien life. As Kim notes this is the first time we've seen alien life on-screen in the series.

Then of course, we get ghost aliens, some confusing special effects and the apparent reveal that the FBI are essential help in space crisis' in Space.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner attempts to fit ancient aliens and space ghosts into the overall whole.

This week we're discussing episodes 6 & 7 of Season 1; Shadows and Ghost in the Machine. The former is the tale of the kindly boss of a weapons manufacturer and apparent nepotism for one of the secretaries. Will seat-belts plague Scully forever more and prevent her from ever directly seeing anything supernatural?

The latter episode has Nick going off on numerous computing tangents and Kim contributing some philosophical aspects. While its nice to see returning character of Deep Throat, the episode is definitely not one of the best so far.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner attempts to fit AIs into the tangle of red yarn...

This week we take on episodes 4 and 5 of Season 1. That would be Conduit and Jersey Devil. We ponder how alien spacecraft can be swift, silent things that hang in the air in Deep Throat but will cook an RV in Conduit.

Also Mulder is really into the not very Jersey Devil-like woman he encounters in Jersey Devil who we have dubbed 'Boobfoot'.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner tries to make sense of a very different alien abduction from Pilot to round things off.

This week we're talking about episodes 2 and 3 of season 1 of The X-Files - Deep Throat and Squeeze. We also touch on our Halloween decorations, Kim's current headwear and her success with Muldle.app - The X-Files wordle-a-like.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner can only draw on Deep Throat this week, but we'll retroactively include Squeeze if this does somehow factor into the series' grand conspiracies.

Nick and Kim chat about The X-Files' origins and inspirations. We then take a dive into the various elements of the first episode - Pilot.

Finally we have Kim's Conspiracy Corner where she attempts to make sense of what the aliens - or unseen force in the woods - is up to based on this episode's events.