by Chelsea Doyle, Editor

For those of you just seeing this, I’ve been watching The X-Files for the first time. It was one of the very few parts of geek fandom I never became a part of, and now I’m discovering it for the first time. So far it’s been an amazing journey. I want to believe … and to be Dana Scully.

This wasn’t what I’d call a good episode. It’s interesting as I’m watching this that I can see where my bias comes in. For episodes that play on tropes I really like, I’ll forgive an episode flaws, but if it’s something I don’t care for I end up less forgiving. I guess that makes sense, but it seems really obvious as I go along and examine every episode. I’ll be honest, one of the reasons I was nervous about watching this show is because I’m not hugely enamored by aliens. I don’t find a lot of the movies about them interesting, not in the traditional way. I like Doctor Who and Star Trek since they’re more about exploring alien worlds in a positive light, but conspiracy theories? Not usually something I’m into. You can see why I was concerned. But I’m happy to report so far I’ve been really positive about those themes here. I hope that stays true.

Sooooo on to the episode. This one takes place in space and involving NASA. Lt. Commander Belt used to be a famous astronaut and now he runs missions for NASA. Years ago when they were investigating Mars he was possessed by some creepy alien force of some kind. There’s this mysterious picture they have of Mars with a face on it, but that’s chalked up to conspiracy or just something bizarre. The current mission is extremely important but they keep aborting at the last minute. A woman named Michelle who works on the project contacts Mulder and Scully and shows them designs that implicate sabotage is possible. She says she’s coming to them because while there is some kind of evidence, sabotaging the shuttle would be pretty much impossible so she can’t figure out how it would happen. Her fiance is going up there, so she has an emotional investment. Mulder’s a fanboy of NASA, naturally, and of Belt in particular. He’s excited to investigate. Luckily the lift off goes well after all … except they lose communication soon after.

The machines aren’t working well and Belt helps them get out of a hot spot (literally, the sun was involved), but he insists they go ahead with the mission because if this goes poorly, the entire thing might get canceled. This could be the end of their missions and he’s trying to look at the big picture. He’s also possessed, so there’s that. He lies to the press that all is well. When Michelle is driving home, she gets attacked by the weird flying possession ghost thing, and more things start to go wrong with the shuttle. It looks pretty disastrous. Eventually the alien force leaves Belt to go attack the shuttle directly, with the astronauts literally seeing it themselves, and Belt starts going into seizures. He manages to save them at the last moment though, and they land after all. He commits suicide at the end out of guilt for the sabotage he did and to probably keep the possession from happening again. Aw.

I wouldn’t say this is a terrible episode either. It’s pretty solid. I like the NASA stuff and it was interesting to hear him talk about things have changed and they used to be heroes but mostly ignored now. And that’s true twenty years later, right now. You rarely hear about astronaut being a big thing kids want to do. Unless something big happens, or something bad happens, it’s mostly ignored. It was nice seeing Mulder fanboy over him. I think one of the problems was that Scully and Mulder weren’t exactly active. They had no bad guys they could fight or much to investigate outside of the obvious. They were passive protagonists in this one. Overall it was mediocre, and not one I think I’ll remember after time. Plus the CGI was clearly bad, and I usually can overlook that, but yuck. Look at the image above. I’m supposed to be creeped out by that, right? And not laughing at it?
Rating: – It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, and not very  memorable either. They can’t all be winners.

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