Picking up more or less where the third season episode "Revelations" left off (thematically; it's not a sequel or anything), we're back in X-Files Christianity Land. So, no rational explanations, ever, and Scully being persuaded to just go along with what any lunatic says, with okay maybe a little soul-searching but not much.
It's not that that's a bad thing, but these episodes really do feel like a whole other show. "All Souls" - a story about the "collection" of the souls of polydactic girls by some Heavenly agent, stemming from some part of the Book of Enoch - balances Scully's foray into open- mindedness a little more this time. The bulk of the episode takes the form of flashbacks, told by a tear-strewn Scully into the gauze of the confessional, as she struggles to reconcile her behaviour in allowing the final girl's soul to be taken.
It's actually pretty powerful stuff, if you can get over that, brilliantly acted by Gillian Anderson. The real letdown is Mulder, to be honest; for no apparent reason, he's been transformed into a total arsehole, and what makes it worse is that he's barely even needed in this episode. It would've been far easier to just use another detective, who might actually HAVE the kind of sneering, dismissive personality that Mulder displays in this episode. It's true that Mulder has shown perverse skepticism in the previous religious episodes, but it never got much less jarring over the years.
It's not that that's a bad thing, but these episodes really do feel like a whole other show. "All Souls" - a story about the "collection" of the souls of polydactic girls by some Heavenly agent, stemming from some part of the Book of Enoch - balances Scully's foray into open- mindedness a little more this time. The bulk of the episode takes the form of flashbacks, told by a tear-strewn Scully into the gauze of the confessional, as she struggles to reconcile her behaviour in allowing the final girl's soul to be taken.
It's actually pretty powerful stuff, if you can get over that, brilliantly acted by Gillian Anderson. The real letdown is Mulder, to be honest; for no apparent reason, he's been transformed into a total arsehole, and what makes it worse is that he's barely even needed in this episode. It would've been far easier to just use another detective, who might actually HAVE the kind of sneering, dismissive personality that Mulder displays in this episode. It's true that Mulder has shown perverse skepticism in the previous religious episodes, but it never got much less jarring over the years.