X Files - The Odds Stacked

 

I wanted to believe but the tools have been taken away. The X-Files have been shut down. They closed our eyes. Our voices have been silenced... our ears now deaf to the realms of extreme possibilities.

You know, on the blog it is quite noticeable that when I "jump start" my X Files phases, so often it ends with the first season last episode, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", where I will go on hiatus, taking a bit of a breather. Then I'll typically seem to restart with the first episode of the second season, "Little Green Men". While "Little Green Men" has never been my favorite episode, I think I'd have to say that it is up there at least in my top five. If just because it has all the ingredients that make me the fan of the show I am today.

It is Mulder's journey through the Cancer Man's interference, the blockade of government subterfuge, the barrier of resistance available to inherently intervene on those who never want the truth out there. Mulder gets close, but not close enough. Scully has her medical background and expertise to be the top of the field at Quantico and craft, teach, prepare, and train young minds looking to move through the FBI to be the scientists of the future the government might use according to whatever benefits can be achieved. Mulder is stuck in a room, with his bag full of sunflower seeds, listening to the conversations of criminals talking about lap dances, his young mind dulled slowly into a puddle of disenchantment. Keep Mulder in that room where he can be of no use to the cause that matters most to him. When Senator Richard Matheson (Raymond J Barry; he would only be in two more episodes) brings Mulder to his office, knowing "they might be listening", he fulfills a certain duty Deep Throat no longer can: giving him breadcrumbs. Going to Puerto Rico to the Arecibo observatory, left to closure (due to an amendment to disregard attempted contact through a High Resolution Microwave Survey), Mulder could finally get some actual evidence.

The scenes that mean the most to me are often the very human moments between Mulder and Scully. Grounded by Cancer Man and his powers, under the strict command of Assistant Director, Skinner, Mulder feels obviously squeezed into a bubble because his passion is dangerous to certain forces wanting him actually dead. Cancer Man always considers Mulder as a martyr even more threatening, so he continues to thwart his every move. Such as the Blue Beret UFO retrieval team. There is always some military team, undercover or plain clothes agents Cancer Man throws at Mulder and Scully so he can determine their every move and stomp out any potential threat of exposure. This episode is no different. Mulder gets breadcrumbs, follows them, has an actual encounter -- though Scully, upon avoiding agents following her at an airport, is able to safely make it to Puerto Rico, finding Mulder at the observatory unconscious, questions whether he actually saw an alien or if it was all in his mind -- and before actually compiling the hard evidence he needs is once again interrupted by the aforementioned Blue Beret team, sent to use any means necessary in order to keep out any information from the public that might have been recorded. And Mulder and Scully barely escaping in one piece proves just how badly Cancer Man wanted nothing to leave that observatory.

There are a lot of folks who might consider Mulder today a conspiracy theorist who would be outright condemned as a crackpot needing to be put in his place. Today a Cancer Man could thrive I think. For Mulder, he recollects losing Samantha to abduction, though in times past his remembrance of this night doesn't quite align with what we ourselves actually get to see in this episode. And even this is later called into question as Mulder must consider his sister was abducted and killed by John Lee Roche (Tom Noonan) later on in the episode, "Paper Hearts".

I think why this episode just reaches out to me over and over is the story isn't all that convoluted or too entangled in a lot of heady, labyrinthine plot. It is Mulder leaving behind a case he had already solved in three days, with Cancer Man getting in his face in Skinner's office to gloat about how he was defeated, and Skinner, certain to have earned cheers from the audience, telling Cancer Man to get out of said office. It was about Mulder ascending upon this little-known observatory, surrounded by jungle, consumed by the tropical climate, looking for whatever information was available inside the building. It was about actually seeing an alien. And Mulder actually seeing an alien. Yes, his home, in his recollection, Mulder had a visitation and his sister was taken. But to be at the observatory as a storm was raging, giving us some good atmosphere with Mulder by himself once a local is found in the jungle dead from fright, a call was actually answered when the Voyager's "message" actually "made contact". And Mulder realizing he couldn't trust just anyone...but he could trust Scully. And the possibility was there that Mulder and Scully had a new ally...Skinner.

But the show was impactful because Mulder so often faced that uphill battle, having to remain vigilant, defiant, refusing to bend the knee. And that wasn't always easy.