One Breath

This is the last part of a trilogy of sorts that started with Duane Barry.

Touted as a character-driven triumph for the show, for my taste this plays like better-than-average soap, but still dull as dishwater. The X-file problem is that there is no multifaceted vision behind the whole, oh there is some noodling with dreams in this episode and the usual conspiracy that goes nowhere and we're supposed to find exciting and 'deep', but what we see in any given portion of this is crushingly pedantic.

You'll see no better example of what I'm talking about than in Scully's deathbed dreams; Scully on the boat is certainly a memorable image, but the whole layering is trite, we know exactly what is the dream's distance from reality, who is dreaming and what it means, all perfectly clear which defeats the point of wanting to know.

Further proof; the episode ends with the usual 'we have no such person working here' twist.