found drama

As Season Five of The X-Files comes to a close, Mulder and Scully are getting split up, the X-Files is getting shut down, and (in that respect) the Syndicate’s conspiracy has “won”.

Fight the Future ¹ feels like a long episode with a little more weight in the climactic moments.  On many levels, this works.  Scenes and dialogue are constructed in a way that you could “get” the film without having seen the preceding 117 hours ² of X-Files footage, though certain things will make more sense and will have more of an impact if you led up to them gradually and in the right order.  This helps to keep the narrative focused.  At the same time though, it almost seems as though the writers succumbed to the temptation to re-write or re-invent aspects of the narrative.  These minor discontinuities include such things as:  (1) the Black Oil goes from being an organism of its own to being a virus ³; (2) the FBI that broke up Mulder and Scully when they broke up the X-Files puts them to work on anti-terrorism together; and (3) Mulder’s new-found skepticism seems to have left him all together again.

The film’s story works as part of the overall arc though it has a few bits that are over the top ⁴ and others that don’t feel quite right ⁵.  The ending is pretty typical for The X-Files though:  Mulder and Scully have literally traveled to the ends of the Earth as part of their Search, only to have circumstances dictate the last-minute Total Escape of any evidence or proof that they might have sought.

We’ll let that sink in before resuming with Season Six.

1. That works as the title.  Let’s go with that.[↩]
2. Give or take; there are 117 episodes in Seasons One through Five.[↩]
3. I’m a bit iffy on this though because it’s never really established within the boundaries of The Series that anyone really knows what the Black Oil is.  The fact that they’re trying to develop a “vaccine” for it should be evidence enough that they (the Syndicate, at least) consider it to be a virus or like a virus.  But I’ve never seen a virus crawl across the floor before in a motile mass, either.[↩]
4. E.g., those alien mutant things; how could such base, atavistic organisms have gotten into the galactic colonization game?[↩]
5. E.g., Mulder and Scully’s almost-kiss; e.g., when Well-Manicured Man blew himself up.[↩]

About Rob Friesel

One Response to X-Files: Fight the Future