"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.