X-Files Rerun "Ascension"

"I'm free you son of a bitches! You can't touch Duane Barry anymore!"
Originally Aired 10/21/94

The best tram-car sequence since Moonraker!

"You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his red right hand." Wow, not only does Duane Barry have a catchphrase, he also has his own theme song, which funnily enough is playing on his car's stereo. Also something that's funny which I just noticed (or maybe forgot since last time), is that Skinner orders Krycek to take Mulder home safely. Yup, he's just handing him right over to the enemy. Way to go, Walter!

All kidding aside, this episode is truly one of the all-time greats of the entire run of The X-Files and presently sits at #9 on my personal "Top Ten Episodes" list (if you ignore the fact I still have about 30 "unseen" episodes.) It packs a reall wallop, as it begins with Scully's abduction, follows Mulder's pursuit of Duane Barry, then Mulder is left empty-handed and broken-hearted by the time it concludes. Steve Railsback makes another appearance as Duane Barry, Nick Lea makes his third appearance in a row with Krycek's true colors finally being known to Mulder, William B. Davis is back as the Cigarette Smoking Man, Sheila Larken reprises her role as Scully's mother, Steven Williams delivers cryptic information as X, and of course Mitch Pileggi appears as A.D. Skinner. It packs in as many guest stars as it does memorable moments. I also like the pacing of this episode too, because the Duane Barry mystery is resolved by the half-way point, then it still packs even more plot on top of it. If I hadn't noticed the counter on my dvd player (or known the running time for these episodes), I'd swear this ran longer than the usual 45 minutes.

I have no idea who Paul Brown is since he didn't write many episodes of The X-Files, so its a wonder how he was given the greenlight to write such a crucial episode. I want to say his next episode is a turd, but I can't recall which it is, so maybe he was given some help by Chris Carter. No matter who wrote "Ascension", it was a pretty neat idea to abduct Agent Scully because it served several purposes. Behind the scenes Gillian was pregnant so they needed to briefly write her out. On-screen, we finally get much more of this conspiracy that Mulder is always so worked up over. It raises the stakes by actually putting the main characters in danger and X being a shady informant fits perfectly with this new direction the series is taking. While Mulder may have lost Scully, he did regain his position on The X-Files unit, so that part of the plot is finally wrapped up after being unresolved since the end of the first season. There's a subtle line of dialogue that I noticed this time through. Mulder says someone could have given Scully's address to Duane Barry and Krycek looks like he's about to say something but stops short. Now I've always figured Krycek just killed off Duane Barry because all evidence of alien life is eventually destroyed by the end of each X-Files episode, but this time that takes on a new meaning. He killed Duane Barry so Mulder wouldn't know who really took Scully.

Besides "Ascension" being a milestone for the series, I've noticed my reviews really have come a long way since I started this in the Fall of 2008. I looked back to my original Facebook review of this episode which was posted on February 6, 2010 and I could barely type a full paragraph then. I'm able to write a lot more now, but I think I was funnier back then, because in that review I said, "I really dug the song Duane has on in his car, if it even was his car. Nice sweatshirt too."

X-Files Rerun "Duane Barry"

"Mulder, it's me. I just had something incredibly strange happen."
Originally Aired 10/14/94



"Duane Barry is gonna use you for target practice."

I like this one more as time goes by. I think its because the episode takes a break from the "X-Files formula" and doesn't have an actual investigation; this time it's Mulder alone with a crazy alien abductee. I even heard the words from "Chunk" in the Goonies movie inside my head as I started this episode, "hhh-hostage crisis!" Mulder says he needs information on Duane Barry, the alien abductee, but I think even without it, his background as a criminal profiler should be enough to get him through this situation. I am a bit surprised that wasn't mentioned at all.

The guest of the week is Steve Railsback, who plays the title character of "Duane Barry." I love that he talks in third-person and punches whiny bald guys; its eerily comical. "You callin' Duane Barry a liar!" is a pretty good catchphrase, too. I think he should have been nominated for a Supporting Actor Emmy, not CCH Pounder, though she is alright as the stern SWAT commander. This watch I even noticed "Andy McLaren" from Millennium (Stephen E. Miller) as the guy who fits Mulder for his wire and tells him what to do. Krycek is back too, though he isn't given a whole lot of anything to do. He just serves the SWAT team's coffee boy, which somewhat makes me feel sorry for the guy.

Just like last week's episode, I like how this plays out as a standalone story until the revelations in the closing moments. The ending this time features a brief investigation into one of the implants that Duane Barry said was a way that the aliens could track him. As soon as Scully has the surface of the chip magnified, you instantly know its a bar code, so when she's at a grocery store a few moments later its a pretty cool scene when the store's bar code scanner flips out and buzzes like crazy. That'll show them for doubting Duane Barry! That type of ending, which links a standalone to a greater conspiracy and the story arc, was an area The X-Files had never really went before. There were brief glimpses in the first season when Deep Throat was present in "Fallen Angel" and "E.B.E." This type of storytelling is present in tv shows I watch today like Fringe and Supernatural, where each episode is mostly a separate investigation with moments at the end to link them to the season-long arc.

Chris Carter wrote the script and did a great job for his first time directing an episode. Well, I think he did a great job since Duane Barry could've easily slipped into the territory of being a parody, just like last season's guest star Brad Dourif. Plus, I'm sure its hard to keep an episode interesting that is mostly scenes of talking with little action, so he cut to plenty of footage of the aliens torturing Duane Barry. Its the most we've seen of aliens on the series and even though this was filmed nearly twenty years ago, the giant, over-sized alien heads don't appear corny like most 1990's sci fi aliens. In fact, the drilling in Duane Barry's mouth is still creepy (even though they revealed on the dvd set that it was just water.) I believe after "The Host" was my first real exposure to The X-Files, this was one of the first I can remember watching when Sci Fi Channel had those 7 hour marathons of a different show each weekday. Thank god for the times when the Sci Fi Channel used to be cool!

X-Files Rerun "Sleepless"

"Why else? To build a better soldier. Sustained wakefulness dulls fear, heightens aggression. Science had just put a man on the moon. So now they looked to science to win a losing war."
Originally Aired 10/7/94

Today seems like a good time as any to revisit this series. With Season Five being on a holiday break, and I also get a paid holiday break for the first time ever, I thought I'd jump back to where I left off with my Season Two reviews. "Sleepless" may appear like your typical killer-of-the-week investigation but several big revelations happen throughout the hour, making me feel like this is the time when "shit got real" on The X-Files. While Season One ended with a death, the closing of "The X-Files" unit, and there was also unknown forces working behind the scenes, this time they finally rear their ugly head.

I still feel they should have created more of a dynamic between Mulder and Krycek. Alex is very convincing in his role as the wet-behind-the-ears agent that originally opens the case and then brings Mulder along with him. Holding off on showing Krycek's betrayal til the next episode would have been a better move, that way the knife cuts a little deeper not just to Mulder but to the viewer. Instead we barely get to know Krycek. My only guess is that the producers went for a trademark of Hitchcock movies by building suspense because the viewer knows before the characters do. A unique part of Krycek's role is that he actually *is* sent to spent on Mulder, which he joked about in the Pilot episode when meeting Agent Scully.

Another interesting part of the episode is its guest star, Tony Todd. He always brings a quiet intensity to roles and his appearance on The X-Files is no different. Like Season One's Roland, Todd's character of "Augustus Cole" is a sympathetic villain. Although he does kill two SWAT team members to escape the police, most of his victims are out of revenge. Its like what I've read about many classic villains of movies and television, that the most convincing villains are those who believe they are doing the right thing.

There's even a third guest star this week, one who I have grown to love over my 5 years of reviewing episodes online. His appearance is limited to a brief scene but it has been teased since the start of this season, which is a new informant for Fox Mulder, simply named "X." Now that I've finally watched the movie JFK, I get the reference for naming the character "X", which also perfectly follows "Deep Throat" as another famous informant. X's appearance in this episode is much like Deep Throat's run, which was just to show up and advance the plot, but I like how X actually becomes much more than that in later episodes.

This is the unofficial start of my favorite story arc on The X-Files and years later its still a great episode. I say "unofficial" because they don't count it among the alien conspiracy episodes because the case is your typical "X-File" investigation. I actually really enjoy episodes like this the most from the first several seasons because it gives the series a sense of continuity and that something really evil is going on in the government. Once the series was hitting its peak, they seemed to do away with that and settled into a clear division of standalone and mythology episodes.

With Tony Todd in 2009

"Emily"

"Does F.B.I. stand for Federal Bureau of Imagination?"
Originally Aired 12/14/97



One of the interesting sub-plots of The X-Files series has been the use of clones. They only pop up every so often, like once per season, so maybe X-Files writers have about as much of a clue as to their purpose as I do. They first appeared in Season One's "Eve" as young girls that had an evil urge to kill, though I suppose no one has a "happy" urge to kill. Season Two's "Colony/Endgame" featured the possibility that these clones are more than just a failed, one-off science experiment and that its part of a greater conspiracy, even with clones of Mulder's long disappeared sister. I think Season 3 was relatively clone-free, until Season 4 re-introduced the Samantha clones. The clones always seemed to have defects, maybe birth defects because they're artificial and not the creation of a man and woman. I like that this episode explores more into these clones and ties it into Scully's story that I thought was over in "Redux II."

I have a feeling I am reading too much into the clone in this story, since neither Mulder nor Scully ever act like she is a clone despite all of the evidence that she is. The big tip-off to them should have been the green bulge on Emily's neck and Mulder almost doesn't even realize in time for it to be stabbed, just like the alien stiletto to the back of the neck in past episodes. The scene when the nurse does poke at Emily's neck is almost like something straight out of a horror movie, with Emily sitting up as if nothing has happened. I don't know if the child is a bad actor since she shows no emotion or if they told her to sit up like a zombie, but it works well enough to make for a creepy scene.

It feels to me like they wanted to explain why these clones have short shelf lives so they used Scully's extracted ova to tell it. "Emily: The Life of a Syndicate Clone", which is what you could call this episode, has a radical change of pace from the previous episode but I like it. I think that once they revealed the green blood, it pretty much spelled the end for Emily. You knew she was going to die, but yet like I said before, Mulder and Scully are in a race to save her life. Its similar to those horror movies where teens are being chased by a killer, so they run upstairs and end up being cornered, rather than exit the house. They're dumbed down to further the story, just like Mulder and Scully have been dumbed down to advance the plot of this episode.

The moment I didn't like is when Mulder confronts Emily's doctor and threatens him with his gun. Scenes like that work best in dark parking garages when mysterious gun men are being threatened by X or Mulder, but when it involves Mulder doing it in someone's office, it can only be described as hokey. All of Scully's tests on Emily are pointless too, because its obvious she doesn't have real blood; the girl has that bubbly, green alien blood. That's why her weirdo doctor only said she had "anemia" as a code for those experimental treatments he was doing on her. Though it makes me wonder how nobody noticed the green blood before that. Kids are always running and playing and sometimes they fall down and scrape their knees, so did her parents just ignore the weird goo oozing from her knees? In classic X-Files style, just ignore the minor details like that. Yet, I do have one other complaint with this episode. I think it would have been better if the morphing Alien Bounty Hunters would have just stabbed Emily with their stilettos and killed her themselves. It seems to me their presence in this episode was as a "clean-up crew", just like in Season Two. The clones can do Syndicate work in secret, but once it hits the media, the bounty hunters are alerted and its "bye bye clones." The mom comitted suicide, which brought Scully to the case and also meant Mulder would be appearing eventually, so the aliens were getting rid of the evidence. They killed the father, then her doctor, and should have just killed Emily too. Instead, television shows and movies never kill kids. Its like some untouchable tv taboo; so instead Emily goes into a coma and then disappears. Oh well. Despite some gripes, I really do like this two-part story. It's like an extention of Redux/Redux II because it references several seasons' worth of plots and tries to tie them all together into a single story.

"Christmas Carol"

"There is no right or wrong; life is just a path. You follow your heart and it'll take you where you're supposed to go."
Originally Aired 12/7/97



I figured a post-cancer Scully Christmas get-together with Dana, Bill, and their mother would obviously lead to a discussion where her family blames all of their grief, sadness, and loss on Dana's career choice of the FBI. Ever since she joined the FBI, The X-Files specifically, they've lost a father (indirectly), a daughter, suffered through Scully's abduction, and now her bout with cancer. This episode of The X-Files did not do that; instead they gave us "their" version of the obvious- mysterious men in cars, needle punctures, and mysterious children all wrapped around an unsolved murder. "It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma."

Scully is my favorite character on the series so its a nice change that she gets an episode all to herself, especially one that reminds us that even though the story arcs about her abduction and cancer may be over, she's still dealing with the fall-out. I'm not totally into this story, but I do recognize and appreciate the effort. I actually wish it would have been more of the supernatural tale that appeared to be at the start with ghostly phone calls, then Scully would be visited by "Ghosts of Christmas Past" (and Future) that cause her to reflect on why she chose the FBI and what would have happened if she didn't. I assume Scully's life would be a lot more mundane without The X-Files, probably even bordering on depressing. Mulder would probably have been a victim of the conspiracy without her. This is what I meant when I said The X-Files didn't go for the obvious and present their version of "It's a Wonderful Life."

Scully doesn't believe it's a suicide, so she uses her FBI contacts to order blood tests, an autopsy, and other sciency things, which made me believe that working with Mulder has rubbed off on her more than she may realize. I like how everything she thinks is a possible lead, like the needle punctures, has a rational explanation to it. The episode appears over, then (cue the ominous music)...the mysterious, suited men in the car appear again! All will be revealed next week; same X-Files time, same X-Files channel.

Honestly, while I do enjoy more of the spotlight on Dana Scully, this episode is just okay. Its a necessary episode to follow up on Scully's past stories and possibly resolve any loose ends, but I still think the "It's A Wonderful Life" episode would be a much more memorable one. I guess I'll have to settle for the flashbacks to younger Danas that are relevant to future Dana, such as the scene where Melissa tells her life is a path and her interactions are what's most important.