The X-Files returns

**sarahdita85** · 18th February 2016, 23:59

3 was my favourite too

5 was pretty good also but it did seem a little racist to me, playing on peoples fears a bit.

**bsbray** · 19th February 2016, 00:48

I didn't get that out of #5. They were talking about the pitfalls of religion, unconditional love and trying to find a common language by the end of the episode. I had the feeling that was where they were going with it much earlier, though I also had the feeling that a conspiracy was going to turn up in the plot that never quite did.

**Outlander** · 19th February 2016, 01:12

Originally posted by sandy

Not impressed at all with these X Files episodes.........nothing like the old show and quite amateurish in the sensationalism overall........comes across like less than bad rated horror movies.

It is like they are ridiculing the content through unintelligible scenes, mishmash garble and bad acting thrown in.......too bad as it leaves an icky taste in my mouth where back in the day, I quite enjoyed this TV series..

FOX screwed up - as usual

Why am I not surprised?

Perhaps the season's finale will save the day...

.................................................. .....................

**Aragorn** · 19th February 2016, 01:49

For myself, the first episode was the most interesting one, because #2 to #5 were all standalone episodes, while #1 and the upcoming #6 are actual "story arc" episodes. My impressions so far are as follows...:

#1 : Very interesting, especially with some newer angles thrown into the mix — the "Alex Jones"-inspired character, the mention of "9/11", the human/alien hybridization, Mulder's reference to Eisenhower's speech regarding the military-industrial complex, et al.

#2 : Apparently related to #1 on account of the genetic experimentation.

#3 : The humorous touch. A strange (and harmlessly herbivorous) creature gets bitten by a human being and turns into a human, i.e. the opposite of the werewolf and vampire legends.

#4 : Dark and gruesome, with a few loose ends still floating about. For instance, why did that tulpa character rip off his victims' arms and take them with him after he killed them, and who the hell was driving that garbage truck and waiting for the tulpa to return from his killing spree?

#5 : "Let's take a hot topic from the mainstream news, pour a supernatural sauce on top of it, and it'll be good for a couple more viewer ratings." In other words, I think they were low on inspiration for this one. Mulder doing a cowboy dance and addressing Skinner as "dude" when he came out of his trip was funny, as was the chemistry between the two new and young X-Files agents — a somewhat more explosive mirror image of the relationship between Mulder and Scully when they themselves were still younger and when Scully wasn't "a believer" yet. The female half of the new team — agent Einstein — is also a redhead, like Scully. Probably not a coincidence.

#6 : Return to the story arc, but as yet still unknown because we haven't seen it yet. Should be good, and will probably end with a cliffhanger.

**bsbray** · 19th February 2016, 02:12

I never watched an entire season of the old show, but I've seen a lot of individual episodes from the earlier seasons, and I get the feeling that these newer ones are taking on a lot more philosophical/moral and "big question" stuff than just weird and paranormal stuff, though the latter is still present. #3 was getting to the point that sometimes human beings are the real "monsters," rather than what we are afraid of "out there," which I thought was a great point. And now #5 is expressing the idea that we should all try to understand each other, no matter which "side" of things we think we're on.

Also the whole science vs. metaphysical way of approaching things is more explicit between Mulder and Scully, and they were really starting to tie that together at the end of #5 too. Mulder is the stereotypical holistic "right-brained" thinker while Scully is the stereotypical analytical, "left-brained" scientific type. Mulder says he sees a need for everyone to come together in love at the end of the last episode while Scully says all she sees is the negative stuff that hateful people are doing, so again their two different ways of looking at things are contrasting, but Mulder says they'll have to find a way to unite the opposites, in so many words. This is all a play on the Yin/Yang, good/evil dualistic kind of tension. In eastern philosophy, where all this yin/yang stuff comes from (as opposed to the more simplistic and black-and-white western equivalent of good/evil, ie God vs. Satan, that they criticize in #5), everything is seen to have its root in consciousness, in Hinduism for example. And then in episode #4 they were getting around to consciousness being a creative force, specifically of the monster, so there's that connection there too. So it's definitely more philosophical than the earlier episodes I remember seeing about UFOs and paranormal activity and monsters and all that classic stuff.

Maybe all that is in the earlier episodes too, and I've heard that the later seasons were already more like the newer ones, but I never watched them. I may have to go back and do so after having seen these, though.

**Aragorn** · 19th February 2016, 03:08

Originally posted by bsbray

I never watched an entire season of the old show, but I've seen a lot of individual episodes from the earlier seasons, and I get the feeling that these newer ones are taking on a lot more philosophical/moral and "big question" stuff than just weird and paranormal stuff, though the latter is still present. #3 was getting to the point that sometimes human beings are the real "monsters," rather than what we are afraid of "out there," which I thought was a great point. And now #5 is expressing the idea that we should all try to understand each other, no matter which "side" of things we think we're on.

I too have never watched the whole series, or even complete seasons. I do agree with your analysis here, though.

Originally posted by bsbray

Also the whole science vs. metaphysical way of approaching things is more explicit between Mulder and Scully, and they were really starting to tie that together at the end of #5 too. Mulder is the stereotypical holistic "right-brained" thinker while Scully is the stereotypical analytical, "left-brained" scientific type. Mulder says he sees a need for everyone to come together in love at the end of the last episode while Scully says all she sees is the negative stuff that hateful people are doing, so again their two different ways of looking at things are contrasting, but Mulder says they'll have to find a way to unite the opposites, in so many words. This is all a play on the Yin/Yang, good/evil dualistic kind of tension. In eastern philosophy, where all this yin/yang stuff comes from (as opposed to the more simplistic and black-and-white western equivalent of good/evil, ie God vs. Satan, that they criticize in #5), everything is seen to have its root in consciousness, in Hinduism for example. And then in episode #4 they were getting around to consciousness being a creative force, specifically of the monster, so there's that connection there too. So it's definitely more philosophical than the earlier episodes I remember seeing about UFOs and paranormal activity and monsters and all that classic stuff.

True, albeit that the topic of consciousness becoming a creative force had already been explored before in one of the older episodes, where a young Jewish widow creates a golem in an attempt to resurrect her husband. As I recall, there was also an episode dealing with vampires — which was more or less scientifically explained — and an episode dealing with werewolves. The latter was tied in with native American mythology.

Some of the earlier episodes also featured a role reversal scenario on account of Mulder and Scully's respective vantages, where Scully has metaphysical experiences of a religious nature — e.g. a young boy with special gifts (such as bilocation) is being hunted down by a member of a satanic cult, and Scully feels that she was "chosen" to protect the boy. She also smells roses when performing an autopsy on the boy's deceased protector, and she finds that the body does not exhibit any of the expected signs of decomposition. In that episode, Mulder is actually the skeptic one.

There was allegedly also an episode which featured a throne — i.e. one of the four angels said to carry the throne of God — who had sired four half-angels on Earth and was sent out to collect their souls, or something of the likes. However, I've never seen that episode — I've only heard about it from someone who had — so I don't really know how Mulder and Scully's vantages interacted on account of that.

Originally posted by bsbray

Maybe all that is in the earlier episodes too, and I've heard that the later seasons were already more like the newer ones, but I never watched them. I may have to go back and do so after having seen these, though.

Well, the old series was somewhat of a mishmash. It was literally all over the place with some very different themes. There was even (at least) one episode which centered completely around Walter Skinner, and his encounter with what appeared to be a demonic entity, who murders a woman Skinner had picked up in a motel and then frames Skinner for the murder.

Given how long the series had been running, the incredible diversity of topics, variation in quality, and even the focusing on a different protagonist was to be expected, of course. They had to keep on coming up with new stories, and shifting the focus onto a different protagonist (such as Skinner) allowed for a more in-depth character exploration. Mulder and Scully's relationship with Skinner also gradually evolves from him being perceived by them — especially by Mulder — as somewhat of an uncooperative bureaucrat who might be in cahoots with Mulder's enemies, over to Skinner showing himself an ally who pretends to be a bureaucrat in the face of The Powers That Be™, but who actually protects Mulder and Scully from them and wants the truth to come out.

Incidentally, this was something that I also appreciated in Star Trek: The Next Generation — as well as its spinoffs Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and the prequel series Enterprise — where each episode would center around a different character of the crew, as opposed to the original Star Trek, where Kirk was always the hero, with Spock and McCoy as his ever-bickering sidekicks. This made the original Star Trek series a lot more single-sided and predictable, and that's perfectly fine if you're watching it when you're only 10 years old, but it was quite frustrating when I saw the original series again after I had already become accustomed to the format of the newer series.

**The One** · 23rd February 2016, 10:32

Episode 6

https://www.animmex.co/video/14547/t...my-struggle-ii

**SmokeyJoe1952** · 23rd February 2016, 18:41

When you have watched it please give me your personal interpretations of the finale, ready for another film or series perhaps? NO SPOILERS HERE LOL

**bsbray** · 24th February 2016, 00:52

Aw come on, there has to be another season after an ending like that.

**lcam88** · 24th February 2016, 16:13

SmokeyJoe1952:

I finally watched the episode and have slept on it. I awoke this morning, thought about the plot and have a few words.

Plot spoiler skipped.

It seems like "they" went to an awful lot of trouble to execute something pretty straight forward and simple. The plot-line introduces unnecessary complexity being 4 or 5 linked dependencies in what is otherwise a very simple proposition for a group with that many resources available.

Historically, more direct means was employed on at least one other culling operation: small pox infected blankets handed out to a target group being the example in mind.

I will say though, the antagonists claim that the science was "so complicated" while the protagonist employing a fix that sidestepped all the complexity with a medical centrifuge was an encouraging message. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that our reality is exactly that; the unnecessary introduction of seeming complexities that actually don't matter.

Furthermore, I think we can be rest assured that we need not worry about any of the fiction presented in season 10. I will confess that I missed the last bit after the protagonists where illuminated on the bridge... I don't feel that anything that could have happened from then to the end of the plot-line could have made a difference about how I feel about the episode or any of the suggestions made.

I found episode 3 to be the most meaningful. What a let down this season has been.