Audrey Pauley (17 Mar. 2002)
"The X Files" Audrey Pauley (original title)

Reyes is seriously injured in a car accident and finds herself in a hospital similar to purgatory with other hospital patients suffering from serious traumas. Slowly they all begin to disappear. Meanwhile, in the real world, Doggett refuses to accept his friend's 'mortal' wounds and uses a bizarre hospital employee to both connect with Reyes in the other-world and capture a 'Dr. Death.'

Director:

Kim Manners

Writers:

Chris Carter (creator), Steven Maeda

Stars:

Gillian Anderson, Robert Patrick, Annabeth Gish

Cast

Episode credited cast:
Gillian Anderson	...	Dana Scully
Robert Patrick	...	John Doggett
Annabeth Gish	...	Monica Reyes
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jack Blessing	...	Dr. Jack Preijers
Tracey Ellis	...	Audrey Pauley
Michele Harrell	...	Mrs. Murdoch
Ana Maria Lagasca	...	Barreiro's Daughter (scenes deleted)
Esther Mercado	...	Mrs. Barreiro (as Esther 'Tita' Mercado)
Joe Nieves	...	Barreiro's Son
Cynthena Sanders	...	ER Nurse
Stan Shaw	...	Stephen Murdoch
Vernee Watson-Johnson	...	Nurse Whitney Edwards (as Vernée Watson-Johnson)
Del Zamora	...	Mr. Barreiro

Storyline

Reyes is seriously injured in a car accident and finds herself in a hospital similar to purgatory with other hospital patients suffering from serious traumas. Slowly they all begin to disappear. Meanwhile, in the real world, Doggett refuses to accept his friend's 'mortal' wounds and uses a bizarre hospital employee to both connect with Reyes in the other-world and capture a 'Dr. Death.'

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Plot Keywords:

hospital | living will | illusion | dog person | injected in neck | 

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 March 2002 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Stage 5, 20th Century Fox Studios - 10201 Pico Blvd., Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

20th Century Fox Television, Ten Thirteen Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

60 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Audrey Pauley: Your name is John, right? She has a message for you. She says you're a dog person.
John Doggett: Wait. Where did you get that? Who said that to you?
Audrey Pauley: I told you. She's not gone.

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Crazy Credits

In the main title for the ninth season, a piece of paper flashes across the screen listing "FBI Contacts: Witnesses and Contributors." The names on the list are screen names of the series' on-line fans. For episodes #9.01-#9.11, the names were randomly picked from various X-Files message boards. For episodes #9.12-#9.19, the names came from contest entries.

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Soundtracks

"Back to Life"
Written by Mark Snow
Performed by Mark Snow

User Reviews

DOGget is a DOG person? Really...

The teaser for this episode was pretty interesting. I mean first you have Doggett and Reyes car scene where Reyes may have well have been saying "make out with me please please please" instead of talking about dog people and Doggett is just kind of like "well maybe later." I think he regrets this so much later because if he had just kissed her then she wouldn't have left and gotten hit by that drunk driver which by the way was one of the coolest things I've ever seen on this show. I think they must've done an actual wreck with some superb camera placement in order to do this. Then you have Reyes walking around in the hospital that is floating around in some kind of space bubble. By the way my first thought about escaping the place was that they were gonna have to jump and well what can I say? I don't like to brag but I was right.

The idea for this episode was pretty good I thought but poorly handled. I can see this kind of episode being on The Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits. The main problems for me were the convenient writing inconsistencies such as the other two patients in the Audrey Pauley hospital were in hospital attire but Reyes wasn't. also Reyes appeared to have been untreated for her injuries but Mr. Barreiro's head had obviously been stitched up through surgery and he and Mr. Murdoch were not wearing the clothes they arrived at the hospital in. There may be a reasonable explanation for this but it was not given. Also Tracey Ellis always seems to get the same part in X-Files episodes. She played the mentally disturbed oubliette in the episode titled the same and frankly she didn't do too bad a job in that one but in this episode she doesn't.

Another problem with the writing for me was we never find out what the doctor's motive is for killing these people other than "he gets off on it" which is a pretty lame way of saying "I can't be bothered to explain this in a highly complicated episode already". Maybe it would have been better if they had done the same episode without the doctor at all and all these people were trapped in coma world or something like that. I also don't like how Doggett takes things that could be easily seen as normal such as the moment of brain silence for Reyes as some kind of unexplained event. He even says to Scully that if he can find out what happened at that moment maybe they can reverse it. I actually said out loud that the most obvious explanation of what happened at that moment was death. Despite this I still enjoyed Doggett's acting in this episode. I also have a serious problem with Reyes. I don't know if its her acting or bad writing or a combination of both but she always comes up with these off the wall assumptions based on some coincidental connection and she ends up of course being right because of the writer but not because she's any kind of sleuth. I think Mulder had the same kind of character but Duchovny was so much better at delivering these lines convincingly. The example in this episode of this is how Audrey Pauley says she can't read and Reyes jumps on that and assumes that the floating hospital is in Audrey Pauley's mind because the words on the notepads are jumbled and missing from the soda machine.

So many other things I could say about why I didn't like this episode but I'll leave it by saying 5/10.