This is quite possibly one of the worst pieces of television ever made.
It starts off with a pompous pre-credit sequence designed to have the audience laughing in derision as the credits role.(The Smoking Man faked the moon landing!)And then it goes downhill from there, as it becomes clear that Chris Carter had no idea how to get out of the corner he wrote himself into at the end of the last series...so he writes off the previous season's finale as a dream.Yes, really.And just when you think it can't get any worse, Mulder starts doing voiceovers.I'd like to think this is a deliberate pastiche of film noir detective stories but given how ponderously serious the rest of the episode takes itself, it's probably not meant to be as funny as it is.
Sadly, two of the worst parts of The Dream are apparently true.The Cigarette Smoking Man is alive and Monica Reyes is working for him.The latter feels like an attempt at camaraderie with everyone who thinks Season 9 isn't proper X-Files.("Hey, that character you hate for not being Mulder or Scully has turned evil!")But it's a slap in the face for anyone who followed the show loyally.The only thing this character has in common with the kindly quirky Mulder-substitute of the original run is that they're played by the same actress.Fan favourite Skinner isn't treated much better, abruptly being shady and untrustworthy.Meanwhile, likable new additions Einstein and Miller are reduced to a cameo, as if they only had the actors for a day and wanted an excuse to put them in the credits and pretend this is a continuation of the previous episode.
On the plus side, the mythology is starting to at least vaguely resemble that of the original run and it looks like we can write off the non-sequiturs of the previous season premiere as another smokescreen like Gethsemane/Redux.And the idea of two ex-Syndicate members creating a rival conspiracy to the Smoking Man is intriguing.But there's no plot, no story, just exposition that may or may not be contradicted later and action sequences thrown in to make sure people are awake.At the end, having neither learned nor achieved anything of significance, Mulder and Scully just shrug their shoulders and decide to investigate some unrelated cases.
Oh, except it's not over as we get a final revelation to make us all groan in disbelief as Chris Carter once again decides to explain something he's already explained differently.And it's an explanation that people joked about 18 years ago then waited to hear what the real story was.Honestly, how many times is the Cigarette Smoking Man going to be proclaimed as someone's father?This is at least the fourth.
It's the 21st century and The X-Files still doesn't have a clue where it's going.
It starts off with a pompous pre-credit sequence designed to have the audience laughing in derision as the credits role.(The Smoking Man faked the moon landing!)And then it goes downhill from there, as it becomes clear that Chris Carter had no idea how to get out of the corner he wrote himself into at the end of the last series...so he writes off the previous season's finale as a dream.Yes, really.And just when you think it can't get any worse, Mulder starts doing voiceovers.I'd like to think this is a deliberate pastiche of film noir detective stories but given how ponderously serious the rest of the episode takes itself, it's probably not meant to be as funny as it is.
Sadly, two of the worst parts of The Dream are apparently true.The Cigarette Smoking Man is alive and Monica Reyes is working for him.The latter feels like an attempt at camaraderie with everyone who thinks Season 9 isn't proper X-Files.("Hey, that character you hate for not being Mulder or Scully has turned evil!")But it's a slap in the face for anyone who followed the show loyally.The only thing this character has in common with the kindly quirky Mulder-substitute of the original run is that they're played by the same actress.Fan favourite Skinner isn't treated much better, abruptly being shady and untrustworthy.Meanwhile, likable new additions Einstein and Miller are reduced to a cameo, as if they only had the actors for a day and wanted an excuse to put them in the credits and pretend this is a continuation of the previous episode.
On the plus side, the mythology is starting to at least vaguely resemble that of the original run and it looks like we can write off the non-sequiturs of the previous season premiere as another smokescreen like Gethsemane/Redux.And the idea of two ex-Syndicate members creating a rival conspiracy to the Smoking Man is intriguing.But there's no plot, no story, just exposition that may or may not be contradicted later and action sequences thrown in to make sure people are awake.At the end, having neither learned nor achieved anything of significance, Mulder and Scully just shrug their shoulders and decide to investigate some unrelated cases.
Oh, except it's not over as we get a final revelation to make us all groan in disbelief as Chris Carter once again decides to explain something he's already explained differently.And it's an explanation that people joked about 18 years ago then waited to hear what the real story was.Honestly, how many times is the Cigarette Smoking Man going to be proclaimed as someone's father?This is at least the fourth.
It's the 21st century and The X-Files still doesn't have a clue where it's going.