EPISODE REVIEWS SEASON 3

Episode 3x01: The Blessing Way (Pt 2)

Category: Grays/Elders/gvmt/abduction ·  Rating 5 of 5

Contents Synopsis: Whe Scully is on her way back from New Mexico, she is being stopped and the files are taken by the military, but she doesn't have the DAT disk. When she checks Mulder's office, the disk is gone. When scanned by the metal detector at the FBI HQ entrance, a small metallic implant that looks like a computer chip is discovered in Scully's neck. Meanwhile, Mulder is found by the Navajo near the train car under some rocks - he got to the surface via a tunnel. They care for him, and he undergoes an Indian ritual, the Blessing Way. During his coma/dreams meets his father and Deep Throat. But will recover, and he speaks to Scully in her dreams. Back in Washington, at Mulder's funeral, Scully is approached by a man who seems to know her (he is called The Well- Manicured Man). He claims to be a member of a Syndicate that wants to control the future 'by creating it'. He warns her that she will be killed, probably by someone she knows. Later on, Melissa wants to meet her. When Scully goes to her apartment to meet Melissa, Skinner takes her to Mulder's apartment. Meanwhile, Melissa is killed by Krycek and another man who thought she was her sister. Back in Mulder's appartment, Scully thinks that Skinner would be the one who would kill her, so she threatens him with a gun. In that moment, another person enters the room.

Episode 3x02: Paper Clip (Pt 3)

Category: Grays/Elders/gvmt/abduction ·  Rating 5 of 5

Contents Synopsis: Mulder enters the room. After some initial difficulties, Skinner can explain to them that he has the disk and that he will protect it. Scully and Mulder meet Victor Klemper, an old Nazi scientist they have identified from a photo. He leads them to an old mining company where they find an archive in which lots of people are entered, also Scully. Suddenly an outside noise disturbes them, Mulder goes to check it. While he watches kind of a spaceship launching off, dozens of strange alien creatures cross Scully's path. A sweeper team arrives, but they can escape. They are met by Skinner who tells them that they should give the tape to CSM. Mulder doesn't like the idea, but Scully wants to visit her sister who's lying in a hospital, guarded by Hosteen. When they get to Klemper, the meet the Well Manicured Man who tells them about project Paper Clip that brought Nazi scientists to the US in exchange for their research results. The DAT disk is stolen from Skinner by Krycek and another man. When a car bomb doesn't kill Krycek as it was supposed to, Krycek tells CSM that he would have the DAT tape. - Skinner wants to make a deal with CSM, but CSM says that Skinner is bluffing. But then Skinner lets Hosteen enter the room, and the Navajo recites the beginning of the files stored on the copy-protected DAT tape. Hosteen had several other coder talkers memorize the disk too, so Skinner has created a life insurance for his agents. Melissa dies, and Scully was too late.

Review: The best so far, and the show finally has its pace. In this three-parter, great losses had to be endured, and seemingly nothing or just a little was gained. The low-tech resolution is a brilliant anticlimax, reminding me of the resolution of Star Trek TNG's ep. 4.01, 'The Best of Both Worlds, Pt. 2' in its effectivity and simplicity.

July 7th, 1998 / September 24th, 1999

Episode 3x03: D.P.O.

Category: control  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Episode 3x04: Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose

Category: single case  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Episode 3x05: The List

Category: single case  ·  Rating 4 of 5

Episode 3x06: 2Shy

Category: single case  ·  Rating 3 of 5

Episode 3x07: The Walk

Category: single case  ·  Rating 3 of 5

Episode 3x08: Oubliette

Category: single case  ·  Rating 4 of 5

Episode 3x09: Nisei (Pt 1)

Category: hybridization  ·  Rating 4 of 5

Contents Synopsis: A tape of an obduction of an E.B.E. that ends in the assassination of the obductees, leads the agents to Allentown, Pennsylvania. They find the guy who taped the video dead, the killer is a Japanese. Mulder takes him into custody, but they have to release him. But Mulder keeps some dochuments from him. The Japanese is killed by his own men. Scully meets some women there who claim to know her from somewhere, from her abduction. All of them have an implant like Scully's, all of them show it to her. They tell her that a colleage of theirs is going to die because of what has been done to her, that they all are gonna die this way. Mulder follows the tracks of the documents, which lead him to a ship that transported something to the states. Senator Matheson tells him, that there has been a series of murders of Japanese officials in the US. Mulder is told to return the satellite photos he obtained with the documents. Mulder finds the train car that would contain the object all of this was about: Some kind of test person. X tells Scully that Mulder shouldn't enter the train. She tells him that, but he enters the train anyway.

Episode 3x10: 731 (Pt 2)

Category: hybridization  ·  Rating 4 of 5

Contents Synopsis: At some kind of camp, some kind of ill people are collected and assassinated by the military. When Scully arrives there, she finds out that this was a lepra colony. She finds a survivor, who leads her to the execution scene, but he is killed. A man belonging to the Syndicate meets her, referred to as First Elder. She remembers the man from the video: A Japanese doctor that conducted the medical experiments duruing her abduction. Back in the train car, the Japanese doctor is murdered, and Mulder finds himself in a train car with a man, who claims to be working for the NSA. Mulder gets control over the situation. The chamber in the back of the car contains a person that looks like a human that had been genetically altered - an alien-human hybrid. There's a bomb on the train, but Scully finds out the exit code for the train in time via the video. But then Mulder is knocked down by the NSA guy, who is shot by X when trying to leave the car. X looks at the creature in the back and recovers Mulder in time before the train car explodes, but he doesn't tell Mulder about it.

Review: This continuation of the 'Duane Barry' three-parter contains some great scenes, like Mark Snow's music for the last scene of part one; and the scene in the train wagon. Apart from those, it is still overshadowed by the Anasazi trilogy.

July 7th, 1998 / September 24th, 1999

Episode 3x11: Revelations

Category: single case  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Episode 3x12: War of the Coprophages

Category: single case  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Episode 3x13: Syzygy

Category: single case  ·  Rating 3 of 5

Episode 3x14: Grotesque

Category: evil  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Contents Synopsis: FBI Agent Patterson at last finds a serial killer whom he had been hunting for years. But although the killer is kept in captivity, the killings do not stop. He arranges for Mulder to join the investigations. The killer, drawing grotesque faces, tells Mulder that not he had done the killing, but 'it', that he had been possessed by it, that he couldn't stop it, that it might find someone else. The assumption that the second killer could be a copycat doesn't hold, and so there it seems that the original killer must have had a partner - which would contradict the profile. Soon Mulder's efforts to understand the killer lead to him getting as possessed with the case as Patterson did. As the murder weapon suddenly has Mulder's prints on it, Scully goes afer him, suspecting the worst. But it turns out it had been Patterson - and when he had chased Mulder some time ago and is chased by him again now, it seems his shape is resembling one of the grotesque images the original killer drawed. Patterson, too, ends up in a cell, claiming it hadn't been him who did the killing (see also Discussion).

Review: This is perhaps my favorite X-Files episode, a very dark and desperate piece about the nature of man and evil. For a more complete review, see Dark Matters, pt. 4.

July 7th, 1998 / September 24th, 1999

Episode 3x15: Piper Maru (Pt 1)

Category: Black Oil  ·  Rating 4 of 5

Contents Synopsis: Some divers try to recover a sunken airplane in the ocean when one of them is being infected by some black oily slime. The slime changes its symbiont to the French diver's wife. The black oil can be seen in the eyes of the infected. The infected seems to have the ability to send out radiation that can burn people, that's why the other divers had severe radiation burns. Scully is informed by an old friend of her family that there had been an operation linked to that diving operation, that the divers wanted to investigate the sunken plane, that the plane contained an atomic bomb. Meanwhile, Skinner tries to find the people responsible for Melissa's death but is shot down, and Mulder tries both to get the DAT tape back and to find out what this diving operation was about. He follows a woman who works at the company responsivle to Hong Kong. There he finds her, but she is killed by Krycek, who was about to sell secrets from the DAT tape he has. Mulder finds him and forces Krycek to go with him. At the airport, Krycek has to use the restroom. The diver's wife enters the room and the oil transfers to Krycek.

Episode 3x16: Apocrypha (Pt 2)

Category: Black Oil  ·  Rating 4 of 5

Contents Synopsis: The episode starts with an interrogation of a man lying in a hospital. He is questioned about events that led to a mutiny on a submarine that was to salvage the sunken plane. One of the people questioning the man is Mulder's father, the other CSM. The year is 1953. Back in the present, Mulder and Krycek are intercepted on the road. Krycek escapes and asks CSM about a certain location. The Syndicate is worried about a security leak. When Skinner is transported to the hospital, the assassin wants to kill him, but Scully can arrest the man. He tells her where Krycek is. Mulder and Scully arrive at the location, an abandoned missile base in North Dakota. But they are intercepted by CSM. Meanwhile, Krycek lets the black oil return to its ship, but he stays locked in the base.

Review: Again a conspiracy two-parter which falls short from expectations. The Black Oil is introduced, and we get to see "rat boy" Kryczeck again. The glimpse into the past is also quite revealing, but still I wouldn't quite give this a higher rating. These are great episodes, but in contrast to other ones they could've been better.

July 7th, 1998 / September 24th, 1999

Episode 3x17: Pusher

Category: single case  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Episode 3x18: Teso Dos Bichos

Category: single case  ·  Rating 1 of 5

Episode 3x19: Hell Money

Category: single case  ·  Rating 2 of 5

Episode 3x20: Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"

Category: single case  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Episode 3x21: Avatar

Category: single case  ·  Rating 4 of 5

Episode 3x22: Quagmire

Category: single case  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Episode 3x23: Wetwired

Category: control  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Contents Synopsis: A man kills several people including his wife because he thinks they are a Yugoslavian war criminal. Mulder gets an anonymous message to investigate the case. They find out that manipulated television signals exaggerate the fears and anxieties of the watchers. Also Scully gets affected while watching the tapes recovered at the crime scenes and thinks Mulder works for CSM. Mulder isn't affected because of his red-green blindness. Finally, the message that told Mulder to investigate came from X, but Mulder was too late, X had already killed the men responsible as it had been his order. Afterwards, he talks to his superior - CSM.

Review: Again a claustrophobic piece about paranoia, with a very dense and dark atmosphere. One of my favorites.

July 7th, 1998 / September 24th, 1999

Episode 3x24: Talitha Cumi (Pt 1)

Category: SEP/Colony/Bees  ·  Rating 5 of 5

Contents Synopsis: At a fast food restaurant, a man gets crazy and kills someone when the police arrive. Another man had tried to calm him down and now heals the wounded with the palm of his hands. When the police try to question him, he's gone. - Mulders mother had a stroke after meeting with CSM at the Mulders' beach house. She leads Mulder there and he finds one of the devices designed to kill the shapeshifters. When they try to locate the man at the restaurant, his name is revealed as Jeremiah Smith - and he exists various times. They try to question him, but says he doesn't remember. Another version of Jeremiah Smith is captured by CSM and questionned in a holding cell. Smith is going to be executed, but CSM seems to make a deal with him - to heal CSM's lung cancer? Smith meets with Mulder and Scully at an abandoned factory, but at this moment the bounty hunter arrives.

Review: see part 2

July 7th, 1998 / September 24th, 1999