Our episode starts with Mulder and Scully hunting down the seller of a genuine alien autopsy video, only to discover him freshly murdered, execution style. Mulder is able to run down the karate kicking assassin, only to later discover from Skinner that he's a high ranking Japanese diplomat! "Ohhhh you stepped in it this time Mulder!!!" yells Skinner in his annoyed voice. "He must be released immediately before it causes an international incident!"
Yeah, a diplomat gets caught executing a bound American citizen with a bullet to the back of the head, and he's free to go once the Emperor of Japan makes a phone call, that's how that works. That's how that really works.
That's how diplomatic immunity is used for Dr. Doom in Marvel Comics. Make no mistake, that's the level of reality we're at here, comic book for 10 year-olds. Oh, and of course the local news doesn't catch wind of it. Not something they would report on the news, a gangland style execution murder clearly done by a high ranking Japanese diplomat. Nope, we've got county fair pictures to run.
And then Mulder sneaks around a dock, Scully finds an alien abductee support group, Mulder sneaks around a train yard, Scully does nothing of value... and we end on a cliffhanger!
So let's start with the good stuff, I think adding Japanese people is kind of neat. It takes the story someplace new, an international angle to the conspiracy, maybe different groups at odds with each other. For that, I give this episode +2 bonus stars.
And now the bad, it's more poorly executed, going nowhere Chris Carter alien stuff. To explain a little more thoroughly, the problems with this from a writer's point of view are that our characters' motivation only makes sense superficially, the story is all journey in a tale that is all about the destination, and the world we're presented with does not allow for meaningful drama.
Now let's unpack each point: The characters lack good motivation. Midway through this episode Scully decides she doesn't believe in aliens again, and says she just isn't as sure as Mulder about all these aliens. Boy it's very hard to keep track of just where Scully's skeptometer is on any given day, because it bounces back and forth like a thermometer. Anyway, and Mulder is like, come on Scully, I know there are aliens out there and I'm not going to stop until I have definitive proof!
See that's a problem, because what does that really mean? What does Mulder intend to ACTUALLY do? You don't know. I don't know. Chris Carter doesn't know. Mulder really doesn't know. He's got superficial motivation for chasing after train cars and breaking into tramp steamers, but if your life depended on you saying Mulder will accomplish "A" to be able to "B" so he can finally "C", you wouldn't be able to fill in A, B, or C with proper nouns. What does success look like to Mulder? We in the audience don't have any idea. Superficially we do: "he wants the proof of the alien and the government conspiracy, so he can show people how there's all the aliens and governments, and then that'll fix things." Which is fine, but what actually does that mean?
Is he going to go on 60 Minutes? With photos of aliens? With tapes of aliens? With an alien? Is he going to show secret video of the Smoking Man discussing helping an alien invasion of Earth to David Letterman? What exactly constitutes success here? No one, and I mean literally no one, in the audience knows beyond the most vague terms.
Next, we're watching a story that is all journey, but only cares about the destination. I gotta watch Mulder steamily sneak around impromptu government black sites for 45 minutes, what's in it for me just looking at that 45 minutes? Forget the rest of the X-Files, I never get to watch another episode of the X-Files because gray alien rebels steal them all from the local library, all I have are these 45 minutes, what do I get out of this viewing experience? Well the answer is nothing. It's 45 minutes of very slow exposition. There's some element of threat with machine gun guys running around, there's a little drama in Mulder needing to catch a train, but there's no actual tension or stakes. There's no STORY in this episode. It gives us a couple largely unuseful clues about the BIG CONSPIRACY, but that's all it's about, dropping those clues. We don't actually have an episode of the X-Files along the way.
Everything that happens is just a "and then" plot point following the last. Mulder catches a murdering diplomat, and then he finds photos of a boat, and then he looks at the boat, and then at the boatyard he sees an alien space craft, and then he sees photos of a train car, and then he sees an alien go on the train car, and then he jumps on the train car.
I enjoy finding out about the alien conspiracy actually, I really do. But that's no excuse for making bad television.
Finally, the world we're presented with has no meaningful drama. This relates back to the first point, and what Mulder's motivation and plans are. Here in this episode we are once again presented with an enemy force that is omnipotent and omniscient, can do anything, can know anything. So... what exactly is Mulder hoping to accomplish?
He's going to get evidence of the conspiracy! He's done that already, what feels like dozens of times before. They've secured alien-human hybrid cultures, brought three or four aliens to FBI headquarters, Scully stole an alien fetus from a government science facility that had a security clearance higher than the President gets (same Scully who doesn't believe in aliens two seasons later by the way), they have a strange alien virus that violates all known laws of biology, chemistry, and physics isolated from autopsy samples, Scully got abducted by aliens and had a high tech tracking device pulled out of her, Mulder tracked an alien assassin to an atomic submarine that had had it's entire crew murdered, they found a train car full of grays, or human hybrids, or gray hybrids, Mulder even saved a body from it as a souvenir, Mulder got ahold of a copy of the bad guys' entire paper trail and plan as stored by the Department of Defense, they have a photograph of the heads of the conspiracy posing together at their secret government record keeping facility and examined the facility and all the documents there. Given all the evidence they've acquired, and the exponentially greater amount of evidence they could have collected on their escapades had they actually been trying to collect it (a video tape and some tissue samples from the fetus before you turned it over Scully? Some tissues samples from the aliens who wanted your protection or from the bounty hunter you tracked and captured, Mulder?), if the bad guys are so powerful that they can STILL FOIL THE HEROES' EFFORTS then what will any new evidence do? If the people around Mulder and Scully (and perhaps including Scully) REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF A CLEAR ALIEN CONSPIRACY then what good would literally any evidence be?
If any evidence can be stolen back, destroyed, or erased, then there simply is no point in acquiring said evidence in the first place. If the supposed target audience of this evidence will discount any evidence they see as fake, hoaxed, and silly then there simply is no point in showing said audience the evidence in the first place. You see the problem there?
Chris Carter has made a world where the Syndicate is more powerful than the rest of the government combined. And the only group more powerful than them, apparently, is the aliens. So what is the credible threat to the Syndicate? If Mulder uncovers evidence who can he show it to? Congress? Nope, sorry, Mr. X told us they're all compromised. The military? Nope, they take orders from the Syndicate. The US' intelligence agencies? Nope, sorry, they're completely infiltrated by the Syndicate.
Literally Mulder's only actual recourse would have been to shoot the Smoking Man in the face when he had the chance. Everything else is pointless. There are no stakes and so there can be no drama.
So again, I'd say this episode is 5/10 stars, but adding the Japanese doctors into it is kinda fresh, so bump it up to 7/10.
Yeah, a diplomat gets caught executing a bound American citizen with a bullet to the back of the head, and he's free to go once the Emperor of Japan makes a phone call, that's how that works. That's how that really works.
That's how diplomatic immunity is used for Dr. Doom in Marvel Comics. Make no mistake, that's the level of reality we're at here, comic book for 10 year-olds. Oh, and of course the local news doesn't catch wind of it. Not something they would report on the news, a gangland style execution murder clearly done by a high ranking Japanese diplomat. Nope, we've got county fair pictures to run.
And then Mulder sneaks around a dock, Scully finds an alien abductee support group, Mulder sneaks around a train yard, Scully does nothing of value... and we end on a cliffhanger!
So let's start with the good stuff, I think adding Japanese people is kind of neat. It takes the story someplace new, an international angle to the conspiracy, maybe different groups at odds with each other. For that, I give this episode +2 bonus stars.
And now the bad, it's more poorly executed, going nowhere Chris Carter alien stuff. To explain a little more thoroughly, the problems with this from a writer's point of view are that our characters' motivation only makes sense superficially, the story is all journey in a tale that is all about the destination, and the world we're presented with does not allow for meaningful drama.
Now let's unpack each point: The characters lack good motivation. Midway through this episode Scully decides she doesn't believe in aliens again, and says she just isn't as sure as Mulder about all these aliens. Boy it's very hard to keep track of just where Scully's skeptometer is on any given day, because it bounces back and forth like a thermometer. Anyway, and Mulder is like, come on Scully, I know there are aliens out there and I'm not going to stop until I have definitive proof!
See that's a problem, because what does that really mean? What does Mulder intend to ACTUALLY do? You don't know. I don't know. Chris Carter doesn't know. Mulder really doesn't know. He's got superficial motivation for chasing after train cars and breaking into tramp steamers, but if your life depended on you saying Mulder will accomplish "A" to be able to "B" so he can finally "C", you wouldn't be able to fill in A, B, or C with proper nouns. What does success look like to Mulder? We in the audience don't have any idea. Superficially we do: "he wants the proof of the alien and the government conspiracy, so he can show people how there's all the aliens and governments, and then that'll fix things." Which is fine, but what actually does that mean?
Is he going to go on 60 Minutes? With photos of aliens? With tapes of aliens? With an alien? Is he going to show secret video of the Smoking Man discussing helping an alien invasion of Earth to David Letterman? What exactly constitutes success here? No one, and I mean literally no one, in the audience knows beyond the most vague terms.
Next, we're watching a story that is all journey, but only cares about the destination. I gotta watch Mulder steamily sneak around impromptu government black sites for 45 minutes, what's in it for me just looking at that 45 minutes? Forget the rest of the X-Files, I never get to watch another episode of the X-Files because gray alien rebels steal them all from the local library, all I have are these 45 minutes, what do I get out of this viewing experience? Well the answer is nothing. It's 45 minutes of very slow exposition. There's some element of threat with machine gun guys running around, there's a little drama in Mulder needing to catch a train, but there's no actual tension or stakes. There's no STORY in this episode. It gives us a couple largely unuseful clues about the BIG CONSPIRACY, but that's all it's about, dropping those clues. We don't actually have an episode of the X-Files along the way.
Everything that happens is just a "and then" plot point following the last. Mulder catches a murdering diplomat, and then he finds photos of a boat, and then he looks at the boat, and then at the boatyard he sees an alien space craft, and then he sees photos of a train car, and then he sees an alien go on the train car, and then he jumps on the train car.
I enjoy finding out about the alien conspiracy actually, I really do. But that's no excuse for making bad television.
Finally, the world we're presented with has no meaningful drama. This relates back to the first point, and what Mulder's motivation and plans are. Here in this episode we are once again presented with an enemy force that is omnipotent and omniscient, can do anything, can know anything. So... what exactly is Mulder hoping to accomplish?
He's going to get evidence of the conspiracy! He's done that already, what feels like dozens of times before. They've secured alien-human hybrid cultures, brought three or four aliens to FBI headquarters, Scully stole an alien fetus from a government science facility that had a security clearance higher than the President gets (same Scully who doesn't believe in aliens two seasons later by the way), they have a strange alien virus that violates all known laws of biology, chemistry, and physics isolated from autopsy samples, Scully got abducted by aliens and had a high tech tracking device pulled out of her, Mulder tracked an alien assassin to an atomic submarine that had had it's entire crew murdered, they found a train car full of grays, or human hybrids, or gray hybrids, Mulder even saved a body from it as a souvenir, Mulder got ahold of a copy of the bad guys' entire paper trail and plan as stored by the Department of Defense, they have a photograph of the heads of the conspiracy posing together at their secret government record keeping facility and examined the facility and all the documents there. Given all the evidence they've acquired, and the exponentially greater amount of evidence they could have collected on their escapades had they actually been trying to collect it (a video tape and some tissue samples from the fetus before you turned it over Scully? Some tissues samples from the aliens who wanted your protection or from the bounty hunter you tracked and captured, Mulder?), if the bad guys are so powerful that they can STILL FOIL THE HEROES' EFFORTS then what will any new evidence do? If the people around Mulder and Scully (and perhaps including Scully) REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF A CLEAR ALIEN CONSPIRACY then what good would literally any evidence be?
If any evidence can be stolen back, destroyed, or erased, then there simply is no point in acquiring said evidence in the first place. If the supposed target audience of this evidence will discount any evidence they see as fake, hoaxed, and silly then there simply is no point in showing said audience the evidence in the first place. You see the problem there?
Chris Carter has made a world where the Syndicate is more powerful than the rest of the government combined. And the only group more powerful than them, apparently, is the aliens. So what is the credible threat to the Syndicate? If Mulder uncovers evidence who can he show it to? Congress? Nope, sorry, Mr. X told us they're all compromised. The military? Nope, they take orders from the Syndicate. The US' intelligence agencies? Nope, sorry, they're completely infiltrated by the Syndicate.
Literally Mulder's only actual recourse would have been to shoot the Smoking Man in the face when he had the chance. Everything else is pointless. There are no stakes and so there can be no drama.
So again, I'd say this episode is 5/10 stars, but adding the Japanese doctors into it is kinda fresh, so bump it up to 7/10.