I was an avid watcher of the early X Files seasons when they first aired but for some reason I can't recall I stopped watching at a certain point around season 5. I am now catching up on the full series despite knowing the show declined in its latter years.
Which brings me to this episode from S7, "Closure'. Reading the other reviews it seems that the episode has its fans but I'm not one of them. The mistake with the 'abducted sister' storyline was that it went on too long, as the production notes seem to indicate. When you have Chris Carter telling DD that he'll only have to play this truth-seeking brother one last time due to his frustration with the whole extended saga, it doesn't bode well. The other mistake is that they conflated the alien mythos series storyline with a typical paranormal one in 'Closure'. A more prosaic resolution would have been best, I feel.
So now it turns out that the clones of his sister Mulder had been chasing were not the real thing. Certainly she had been used as a guinea pig for the hybridisation experiments but the truth of Samantha was that she had escaped the Cigarette Smoking Man and his home on the air force base, but was then taken to join the starlight children. Yes, you are reading that correctly.
Trying to stitch up the alien plot with a paranormal one just doesn't work. We're told that these 'walk-ins' take children who have or are suffering. In that case, you have to wonder where these spirits were when the 24 dead kiddies killed by Santa Claus and buried in his backyard were suffering their fate. Playing with the reindeer, maybe? Of course, we also get the spectral tipoff from beyond about where the bodies are. Even Mrs Mulder manages to tipoff Fox despite committing suicide and not actually joining the Starlight Foundation herself. All very strange.
Probably the worst aspect of this silly storyline is the rank sentimentality of how it's filmed. Mulder gets lead by ghostly children towards the clues and then there is a final scene of him watching these star kids all happily playing together in the forest. Pretty amateur. As awful as it would have been for Mulder to deal with, it probably would have been best to simply have something horrific but entirely earthbound happen to his sister - she died during experimentation, she was hit by a car after escaping, etc. He could mourn her loss but accept that in his brutal line of work, redolent with human-on-human savagery, this was the fate that befell her. I think it was clear at this point that Duchovny was tiring of the role and with story lines like this one you can see why.
Which brings me to this episode from S7, "Closure'. Reading the other reviews it seems that the episode has its fans but I'm not one of them. The mistake with the 'abducted sister' storyline was that it went on too long, as the production notes seem to indicate. When you have Chris Carter telling DD that he'll only have to play this truth-seeking brother one last time due to his frustration with the whole extended saga, it doesn't bode well. The other mistake is that they conflated the alien mythos series storyline with a typical paranormal one in 'Closure'. A more prosaic resolution would have been best, I feel.
So now it turns out that the clones of his sister Mulder had been chasing were not the real thing. Certainly she had been used as a guinea pig for the hybridisation experiments but the truth of Samantha was that she had escaped the Cigarette Smoking Man and his home on the air force base, but was then taken to join the starlight children. Yes, you are reading that correctly.
Trying to stitch up the alien plot with a paranormal one just doesn't work. We're told that these 'walk-ins' take children who have or are suffering. In that case, you have to wonder where these spirits were when the 24 dead kiddies killed by Santa Claus and buried in his backyard were suffering their fate. Playing with the reindeer, maybe? Of course, we also get the spectral tipoff from beyond about where the bodies are. Even Mrs Mulder manages to tipoff Fox despite committing suicide and not actually joining the Starlight Foundation herself. All very strange.
Probably the worst aspect of this silly storyline is the rank sentimentality of how it's filmed. Mulder gets lead by ghostly children towards the clues and then there is a final scene of him watching these star kids all happily playing together in the forest. Pretty amateur. As awful as it would have been for Mulder to deal with, it probably would have been best to simply have something horrific but entirely earthbound happen to his sister - she died during experimentation, she was hit by a car after escaping, etc. He could mourn her loss but accept that in his brutal line of work, redolent with human-on-human savagery, this was the fate that befell her. I think it was clear at this point that Duchovny was tiring of the role and with story lines like this one you can see why.