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Monday, September 25, 2006
Review by Garnet Brooks
This season is the last of the very good seasons of the X-Files TV series. After this season the series changed. The Mulder character is missing for one thing. Viewers began to tune out. Seven years is a long time for a series and it continued for two more seasons. FBI agents Mulder and Scully manage to continue to be an interesting pair. Their investigations into paranormal phenomena are as fresh here as in their inception with a few exceptions.
Season Seven begins with Mulder in a neurological ward with a mysterious brain disorder. Scully goes to Africa to find answers and finds a crashed alien ship. The artifact that has made Mulder ill was a fragment of that ship. On the vessel are archaic symbols. Scully determines that they are information like passages from the Bible or scientific information like a mapping of the human genome. The X-Files was always based on controversial premises like that aliens exist and may be in a conspiracy with our government to colonize the earth. Up to this point the storytelling was good enough to make the viewer suspend disbelief. Whether or not one actually believed in aliens from outer space the story had plausibility. With the first two Season Seven episodes the suspension breaks down. Not that these two episodes are really bad but once a writer takes up the assumption that the key to everything is in something there is nowhere else to go with the story. While I always liked the X-Files these two episodes are where the series first hit a wall. Despite the wall, this season contains some great non-mythology episodes.
One of the early ones is "Millennium." It is a follow-up of the series, also Chris Carter's, which ran three seasons but was cancelled before the actual millennium. So, the story of Frank Black is taken up again and this time he encounters Mulder and Scully. The premise is that a schism faction of the Millennium group have become zombies in order to force the end time to come at the December 31, 1999 marker. Black is in a psychiatric hospital and is trying to regain custody of his daughter. This partly resolves some question people may have had about the spin off series and the outcomes for its characters. This episode is also the first kiss episode for Mulder and Scully. For years the internet buzzed about if they should have a personal relationship. This finally happens in Season Seven.
Another stand alone episode is the parody of Cops which has the "bad boys" theme and reality TV camera work of the original. This one involves another improbable premise but the quality of parody subsumes the lack of believability. In this episode Mulder and Scully are investigating a possible werewolf seen in a chaotic neighborhood. The episode is populated by eccentric and dramatic characters, take offs of the sort of people in the Cops episodes. The policemen are deadpan and unbelieving of Mulder's suggestions. It manages to good humouredly make fun of both the reality, horror, and science fiction genres.
One of the mid-season episodes features the Lone Gunmen prominently. These three nerdy and eccentric characters have air time periodically during the series. They publish a newspaper called "The Lone Gunman," named after the hypothesis that JFK was killed by a lone gunman in Dallas in 1963, a premise which the trio do not believe. They track down hidden government conspiracies and expose them. The trio put in several appearances this season and are spun off into their own series. The Lone Gunmen have invested in a high tech firm which is producing a wraparound virtual reality game. The players suit up and enter a play space in which they fight. One, then another, is killed and Mulder goes into the game to rescue the Lone Gunmen who have accidentally been drawn into the game while trying to fix it. Scully has to go in to help Mulder. This has Mulder and Scully uncharacteristically decked out in futuristic gladiator gear and toting huge automatic weapons. This episode has a great director's commentary. It was written by the same cyberpunk author who wrote "Killswitch."
In another episode, we find that Mulder and Scully actually had sex. This is background for the episode which is mostly about Scully coming to terms with a significant but secret past love relationship. In this one she is more human and vulnerable and more open to unusual possibilities. Here she believes in alternative medicine which she brings to try to heal her former love who has had a heart attack. This episode foreshadows the coming two years when Scully without Mulder becomes the believer in his stead, a time when she stands against the hard nosed approach of her new partner. Scully lets go of the old significant relationship and presumably this allows her to become more involved emotionally with Mulder.
"Hollywood A. D." is presumably a play on A. D. Skinner's name. In this funny and over the top episode Skinner is featured prominently. He has a buddy who is a screenwriter and Mulder and Scully are plagued by the man during the course of their investigation. It involves a 1960's counterculture figure who thinks he has become Christlike. He and a Catholic priest struggle over an unknown Christian text which the 60's icon has counterfeited. The FBI pair is interrupted in the investigation and it falls apart. Suspended, they go to Hollywood and are horrified to find themselves in the scriptwriter's movie barely disguised but distorted. Again, Chris Carter is working with self parody and it comes off charming and funny. It has a visit to a movie set and alternative universe Mulder and Scully characters who are played by Gary Shandling and Tea Leone (Duchovney's real wife). The episode ends in a magnificently choreographed dance of the Hollywood dead.
The season even has genii episode. She is discovered rolled up in a carpet not in some exotic desert place but in a rented storage space. This being is a tricky woman. Captured herself by an errant wish she grants wishes that invariably turn back on the person who made the wish. The hapless man who wishes to be invisible is killed by a person in a car who can't see him. His brother fares no better with his wishes. Mulder eventually gets the three wishes and his wish for world peace wipes the planet of all its inhabitants. He gets legalistic trying to craft the perfect wish and eventually finds a way to wish the genii free of her bondage. This episode is also workable and extremely funny. Season Seven is a season of great guest stars and in this one Will Sasso is great. This episode has a good commentary track.
The last episode of the season is a mythology episode. It involves characters that were in the pilot episode, abductees now older but still targets for abduction. It nicely parallels the Season One beginning episode and gives the series a symmetry. In this last episode of the season Mulder is abducted leaving Scully to fight alone and leaves her without a clue as to how to find him. There is a parallel here too to the early X-files as it was once Scully who was abducted. She was returned over the course of a few months actually just the summer break between seasons. This time the audience was genuinely unsure if Mulder would return since Duchovney's contract with Fox was up and it was rumored he wanted out. Eventually he does return-sort of. In the final few minutes Scully tells Skinner that she is pregnant. This was supposed to be an impossibility since tests on her by the alien abductors left her barren.
Despite its peculiarities, this DVD boxed set is well worth the purchase. The price of the boxed sets has gone down over the years. The series may not be old enough yet to be retro but for those who have never seen it on TV, it is well worth starting at Season One and watching the whole set.
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