The X-Files - Babylon
The X-Files
Season 10, Episode 5
Babylon
Five episodes deep, and still surprisingly unsure what to make of the resurrected X-Files franchise. After the first three episodes, I was mildly disappointed that it was going the way I inwardly predicted - lost, reference-laden, outmoded, awkward in a bad way. The disappointment was capped at mild partly because it was expected, but also partly because I knew I'd be watching them all regardless of any perceived decline in quality or relevance. Nine seasons of stories, tales spun from many kinds of yarn; whose dimensions span orders of magnitude. Narratives ranging from the seemingly throwaway 'Monster of the Week' types, to those that wrestled with the dauntingly epic over-arching mythology. A decade of character development and a world so believable it is occasionally unsettling. The ease with which one can imagine our world augmented by the vectors at play in the X-Files' world is just another facet of my unerring admiration of the show. Let's be honest, I've been left with something akin to unconditional love - for a TV show. I think we do give away small pieces of our hearts to great stories, whatever medium or conduit they should be conveyed through, to us.
Last week's episode (S10E04) - the Band-Aid Nose Man, and this week's - both demonstrated that there is still great potency in the X-Files as a storytelling platform, to elicit those dusty, mothballed sensations - allusions to real mystery, followed swiftly by unanticipated and unpretentious wisdom - often in the form of musings about the world at large; yet rarely connected in an obvious way to the story's subject matter. I can only surmise that Chris Carter et al. know this, and I can only hope that they tap that nebulous, almost transcendental characteristic which defined the X-Files for me, how it effortlessly constructed and presented so many new perspectives on accepted norms, embedded ideas, cognitive as well as social and cultural biases and really just leaving that door to the mysterious and the unknown so close to closed, that only the most subtle of truths and possibilities can cross that interface. I'll end with two quotes, both from this week's episode, the first is a quote of a quote - attributed to Albert Einstein, which I think succinctly summarises the element of beauty that can be found within such stories, and the second is scripted dialogue.
- Albert Einstein (Living Philosophies, 1931)
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
MULDER:
I saw things, though, Scully...
MULDER:
Powerful things; I saw deep and unconditional love.
SCULLY:
I saw things, too.
SCULLY:
I witnessed unqualified hate; that appears to have no end.
MULDER:
Yeah.
MULDER:
But how to reconcile the two? The extremes of our nature.
SCULLY:
That’s the question.
SCULLY:
Maybe the question of our times.
That’s the question.
Maybe the question of our times.
- Dana Scully (The X-Files: Babylon, 2016)