The X Files / Soft Light / Notes

 Poor Tony Shaloub. Stuck in a damned cell, strapped to a chair, showered in the face with consistent light, a lab animal with a small tear trickling down his face because he's now a "product of some shadow government". And X being there with a doc in a lab coat, seemingly excited (in a doctorly, clinical, cold way) about how Shaloub will be a source of experimentation for a "long, long time" just created this eerie sense of dread because the secret source of information Mulder was meeting after Deep Throat was assassinated might not actually be help but something far more dangerous. And we have seen X kill a man before, doing so again, in the case of Shaloub's fellow scientist (McNulty), who had planned to turn him over to whoever "they" was supposed to be. I guess most didn't figure X would be "them".

If you are a friend of Mulder and Scully and serve in some form of law enforcement or agency, you're screwed. Much like "Ghost in the Machine" when it was Mulder's former partner on Violent Crimes, Scully's former pupil, Detective Kelly Ryan (Twa) is killed, too. It was inevitable the moment that poor girl requested Scully's help on her first big case, a missing persons case her superiors dumped on a "rookie". I do like a conversation where Mulder and Scully talk about the "old boys club" in regards to Ryan doing the best she can to get ahead and be successful when a lot of the police force is men. Scully wanting to help her makes sense considering she had (and continued to be) in a similar situation with the FBI. Mulder, to his credit, doesn't fight with Scully about that or bicker...he continues to help Scully find the killer, understanding that results would help Kelly Ryan. Sadly, her ambition and courage gets her killed by the shadow of a brilliant physicist whose experiments with dark matter had rather horrifying results. A shadow that kills because of a successful experiment of dark matter that "shot into" Shaloub...only on the X Files.

Mulder telling X that they were through was a cool moment to me, for some reason. X telling him that "now isn't the time to go it alone" had a sinister tone to it. Considering how the second season has went, Mulder was lucky and fortunate to be alive and in one piece. The truth crusader Mulder is, X's threat should certainly be taken under advisement.