I watched this episode on Tuesday and started writing this review on Wednesday, but then I spent far too long last night and today reading while snuggling with Scully. It’s been a very dreary rainy day, and tomorrow looks to be the same sadly.
Anyway, I’m finally actually finishing this review late Saturday evening. I thought this was a really, really good episode, and a truly fabulous season finale. This episode finally feels really like we are laying the foundations of the show’s mythology as it connects to aliens and government control/manipulation over the people. For the most part, the writing does a really good job of telling us just enough to keep us interested without going too far (a bit of the science explanation is…questionable, but not terribly egregious fortunately). And the pacing of the episode overall is excellent. Felt like a miniature action movie, with a conclusion that truly leaves you wanting more. In 1994, viewers would have to wait 4 months for more, but fortunately, if you are watching along or even just reading, you only have to wait two weeks. I have decided to do a little Season 1 retrospective summary next week for a tiny little “break”, and then we’ll jump into Season 2.
Well. Let’s get on to the review, shall we?
Epic Car Chase
The episode begins with a truly EPIC car chase and shootout, which is what introduces us to our case of the episode. Seriously, how did either of those cars survive the landing of those jumps? That didn’t damage the alignment or suspension? How different were cars in the 90s?
Question I have here is: How much did the first officers that were chasing down this man know about who he really was? One of the officers tells Mulder that they were chasing him due to a “moving violation”, and well, there definitely are a fair number of cops who are definitely willing to chase (and shoot…) a man for running a stop sign, so I am sure those first officers doing the car chase were 1) Happy to have something to do, 2) Happy to engage in a thrilling car chase, and 3) Very happy to beat a man who they believed “just” ran a red light (or similar). And, granted, the escaped man does assault and beat the officers himself as he tries to get away, so the tasing and subsequent shooting is more justified by that point.
But still, I have to wonder how much honestly any of the law enforcement agencies were told about why this one man was so important to find, and ensure was actually dead. It’s a lot of money and manpower to put divers in the bay (or wherever they are) for several days trying to find a body (that honestly could have floated away…why do they think he’s still there…)
I’m going to get ahead of myself a little bit here, but to summarize the “case” here, and presumably why someone told all these law enforcement agencies to find that man at all costs:
The man the police are chasing is named Dr. Secare. He willingly participated in a government experiment that injected alien DNA into humans. Willingly, because he was already dying of cancer, so what did he have to lose, right? As it turns out, almost nothing—this alien DNA treatment cured Secare’s cancer, but also gave him other new traits, like the apparent ability to breathe underwater and apparently very toxic blood.
The government is…pleased (?) that the research worked, but they still need to ensure that no word of these experiments gets out. Dr. Secare either needs to be contained somewhere, or killed. The government, naturally, opts for the latter.
Now, what is a bit unclear here is where exactly Dr. Secare escaped from or how the government became aware of his location? The original “E.T. gene therapy” (as Deep Throat calls it) occurred in New Mexico at some…unstated time. Was it recent? Several years ago? How long has Secare been living a “relatively normal life”, and where? For that matter, how was the original scientist on the project (Dr. Berube, we’ll get into him a bit more later) seemingly allowed to move on to a different research job, apparently taking some of the alien DNA with him? Although, I suppose we are never actually given confirmation of what this “Emgen Corporation” is. Could also be government related.
So many questions!
Cat and Mouse: Mulder and Deep Throat
SCULLY: You don't know that this isn't just a game with him. He's toying with you. Rationing out the facts.
MULDER: You think he does it because he gets off on it?
SCULLY: No. I think he does it because you do.
Well. As it is, the information that I gave you just now is lightyears beyond what Deep Throat gave to Mulder at the start of the episode.
Poor Mulder is just cryptically told to watch “Channel 9”, and really all he has to go on is the car that was involved in the chase, and with that he gets lucky really that Dr. Berube (who the car belongs to) had a sticker on his windshield that the people who switched the car neglected to notice. If they had, I’m sure they would’ve added the same sticker to their decoy car to throw Mulder off further.
Really though, that car does end up being enough on its own, as it leads Mulder to Dr. Berube and his research, which if Mulder would just spend a little bit more time looking into, he’d get to the core of what is happening here. And he does get there, but only with a bit more prodding from Deep Throat on a late night visit.
I definitely understand both Mulder and Scully’s frustration here, as there is seemingly so very little to go on. But, I also very much understand why Deep Throat couldn’t give Mulder much at the start in this case.
Earlier in the season, such as in E.B.E., it definitely was the case that Deep Throat was giving Mulder incorrect information to keep him interested but also throw him off, and later higher up government “shadow people” will do the same. They absolutely do think it is fun to toy with Mulder, and use his desire to find any proof of alien life to their advantage. Give the “cat” a glimpse of the mouse tail before pulling it away; keep the cat desperately scratching at that same spot while the mouse is really off somewhere else. Somewhere Mulder (the cat) isn’t looking.
But that’s not what happened here. I genuinely do not think Deep Throat is playing a game with Mulder in this episode. He really could not give them too much at the start, and tip off other “shadow government people” that Mulder was on their trail. It is clear that in this episode Deep Throat is fully going against the orders of whatever people he works for/is associated with, and in a very big way—leading Mulder to their deepest secret, the conspiracy they are currently working on.
“I’ve been the dutiful son”
Now, does Deep Throat enjoy having Mulder at his disposal, and does Mulder enjoy having someone to “please” with his work?
100% yes. Scully is not far off in saying Mulder “gets off on this”, though perhaps not in the way she means or is insinuated in that line.
There is definitely a father-son vibe between Deep Throat and Mulder…which Mulder pretty much explicitly states, though he doesn’t mean it literally.
Last episode we got the briefest mention of Mulder’s father, so this doesn’t hit so hard at the moment. But soon we will learn the “truth” of Mulder’s father (two truths…it gets very confusing), and how much Mulder wanted to please his father, who was never really there for him in his childhood, and still isn’t in his early adulthood. Not doing it consciously, Mulder is definitely treating Deep Throat as a stand-in for his father, someone who he can work for and make happy and ask questions. He is all too willing to go off on wild goose chases for Deep Throat, a man he barely knows and who has lied to him before.
Anyway, this will carry through the rest of the series. Mulder attaches himself to several men (including his real father) who are really just playing games with him, because he is so desperate for some older male figure to please.
Dr. Berube
Just briefly here, because Dr. Berube is an interesting character. Clearly slightly shady if he is involved in government experiments on humans, but he also cares enough that he doesn’t want one of those test subjects killed. Unclear if he was cool with the other test subjects (presumably?) getting killed though, since they weren’t his friends.
Also, side note that I would be pissed if some randos walked into my lab while I was clearly in the middle of an experiment, asking questions and poking at my test subjects (his monkeys).
And, a quick note on his death: The government agent tries to stage it as a suicide, but does a pretty poor job at doing that, I think. Really, killing Dr. Berube is what got Mulder and Scully to keep investigating and allowed them to discover the “Purity Control” container.
Though I will also state that Mulder was a bit presumptuous in his “this guy would never commit suicide!” spiel. It ends up being true, but come on, Mulder. You talked to this guy for maybe two minutes. You do not know him, what he was working on, or if he might have had a reason to kill himself.
Purity Control
OK, first, I just need to point out that “Purity Control” would have been a much better name for this episode. I am really not sure where the writers thought they were going with naming their finale after a piece of lab glassware, one that I have to say isn’t actually used all that often? I will grant that it is indeed used to culture bacteria, as is done in this episode, though I don’t think it’s quite so common anymore. I work in a lab and we own one Erlenmeyer flask, which I only use sometimes to store buffers for brief periods of time. They can’t really be used to measure anything, and there are much better vessels to perform reactions and experiments in.
Does “Erlenmeyer Flask” sound cryptic and creepy to the general public?
For those of you who have watched the series before and have even vague memories of later plotlines, I also feel the need to point out that “Purity Control” in this episode is not the same as the alien virus “Purity” that we will see later. Though they are suspiciously similar in how they work…
Anyway. What is this cryptically named “Purity Control”.
Apparently, it is a culture of bacteria…but a culture of bacteria that is found nowhere on earth, and apparently contains new DNA nucleotides. Not just new combinations of nucleotides or new genes, but completely alien nucleotides 😱
This apparently alien bacteria is how the “E.T. gene therapy” is being accomplished: injecting human subjects with alien bacteria that contain a virus (it’s actually unclear if the bacteria or virus is alien…or both. Because I feel the bacteria has to be alien with what the university doctor was apparently able to view very clearly under an electron (?) microscope). Through this, the alien genes are transferred into the human subject, and essentially that human is now able to create alien proteins and, presumably through that, develop certain alien traits.
Such as, apparently, blood that is basically chlorine gas?
(Note: this is a very very highly simplified explanation of gene therapy and how it works. A lot more here, if you are interested)
Scully’s trust in science
What is interesting and a bit frustrating in this episode is that by the end of the episode, it seems like this should be the end of Scully’s “skeptic” character, but, spoiler, it very much ends up not being that.
Scully is the one who takes the bacteria sample to the lab, and she herself is able to see the alien structure and DNA of the viruses. Presumably, this analysis is done by a scientist she trusts, and she has no reason to believe that what she is seeing was manufactured or is fake. Because it is scientific proof of some form of extraterrestrial life. Perhaps only bacterial life, but still. The genetic proof is visible right in front of her eyes.
Later in the episode Scully is also one that retrieves the creepy alien fetus/original tissue sample, though this one I could accept more Scully not believing is real. Yes, she holds it in her hands and everything, but I myself would probably be thinking “this has to be fake, right?” if I were her.
The entirely new DNA nucleotides though…
It really feels like Scully should fully believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life to some extent at this point, doesn’t it? Not believing in UFOs or “little green men” or anything near as deep as Mulder, but…she has proof of something beyond nature right in front of her!
I will just say here that, frustratingly, it still takes Scully quite a long time after this to believe in extraterrestrial life, and even longer than that to accept that the government is behind all of this. I mean, I get that they do need Scully there to counter Mulder’s often extremely crazy (and sometimes wrong!) ideas, and to act as a stand-in for the viewers to some degree. But come on. Let her at least say “extraterrestrial life is real” by now.
Government Conspiracies: Human-Alien Hybrids
I’m not going to dwell on this too much here because I’ve already addressed the “E.T. gene therapy”, its process, and what it apparently resulted in (Dr. Secare) above.
But I do want to dig a little bit deeper here into this fact: The government is testing on its people. We are supposed to believe the first group of test subjects were all voluntary, suffering from fatal diseases. But Deep Throat later tells us that a group of children was injected with the alien DNA when getting vaccinations.
Yikes.
This is where The X-Files starts to get too real, because uh…the government has done this sort of shit before, experimenting on unknowing people (see: Tuskeegee Experiment, MKUltra, Operation Midnight Climax, just to name a few). Some of what happens on The X-Files, particularly as it relates to government coverups, secret government organizations, and experiments on human subjects is…wayyyyyyyy too possible.
And that is at the core of what makes the show frightening still, I think, because it asks the questions: What is the truth, and who can we trust? To some extent, you do have to trust the government and particularly medical science but…history definitely has shown the ugly truth.
That being said, I need to put a disclaimer here since Deep Throat mentioned vaccines. I don’t think vaccines were quite so controversial in 1994, since the now retracted “autism and vaccines” study was published in 1998. I would hope that the writers wouldn’t now make such a casual reference to vaccines being unsafe or used for nefarious purposes, but regardless, let me say it here:
Vaccines are extremely safe and necessary for a healthy population. Vaccines are a marvel of medical science, and it pains me how much skepticism still surrounds them decades after the autism paper was retracted. COVID vaccines did not introduce microchips into anyone (what needle could hold a microchip anyway?) and the mRNA inside the new vaccines cannot alter your own DNA in any way. Please trust your doctors. Ask your doctors questions if it makes you comfortable, and listen to them explain the science.
Deep Throat
Alas, poor Deep Throat. He was so helpful in this episode, and he truly put his life on the line here, actually giving Scully access to the alien fetus (or whatever that is) which produced the original alien bacteria.
I do kind of feel like he had to know he was going to be killed for what he did here, right? He had to know. Everything he did in this episode went completely against the orders of whoever else he works with. This wasn’t just Deep Throat sneaking off to give Mulder little tidbits of information, or play the game of distracting Mulder with wrong information that is dangerously close to being right.
No, he directly gave Scully access to that military facility. Even if the other “shadow people” had no idea of exactly how much Mulder and Scully had discovered about their experiments, there was no way Deep Throat would be allowed to live after betraying the location of one of their alien samples like that.
He probably did know, and that’s why he insisted on doing the handoff to get Mulder back. Otherwise, Scully would have been shot, most likely.
The End of the “X-Files”?
The episode ends with the official closure of the “X-files” unit, with Mulder and Scully being assigned to other areas. They got too close to the truth, and in fact really did discover some secrets this time. That cannot be allowed to continue…at least until the “shadow people” figure out some other way to toy with Mulder, keeping him close but just far enough away.
Anyway, just as a slight spoiler here: The “X-files” unit remains closed and Mulder and Scully remain largely separated for the first 7 or so episodes of season 2. And, uh, because of that, let’s just say the first four episodes of the next season are not great.
Now, here’s a question I do have: when the writers/Chris Carter began the season, were they planning on having the “X-files” closing at its conclusion? Mulder and Scully stay mostly separated for those first episodes of the next season because Gillian Anderson was pregnant (and the costumers quickly run out of ways to disguise that), so they needed a way to keep Scully on the show but not on camera too much. Ultimately, needing a new storyline for Scully led to a really great new direction for the show to go in, and I hope Chris Carter ended up grateful for that.
Our “Completely Platonic Coworkers”
All I’ve really got here is that Scully runs to Mulder first when she sees Deep Throat get shot. I mean, he did get shot directly in the chest and probably wasn’t going to survive that. But…he was the one with a very clear and obvious SEVERE injury. And yet Mulder is examined first.
The 90s™
OMG. There were VCRs that could print photos?! Like, you just pause the tape, and it prints you out a photograph of that moment?! An old-school screenshot!
I am fascinated by this, and I love it so much!
Nice job, 90s! This is actually super cool!
Goofs/Bloopers/Fun Facts
OK, I do understand that the writers had to explain DNA and gene therapy to the viewers (especially in the early 90s), but I am still annoyed that they portrayed Scully as largely clueless about DNA. “I think they’re genes”. Come on, guys, she went to medical school. I know her undergrad degree was in physics, but she still would’ve learned about genes and such in med school! Let her explain all this to Mulder instead of having it explained to her, so she doesn’t seem so out of touch even though she’s a doctor.
Related, OH MY GOD why would Scully think that monkeys in what is clearly a research lab are friendly?! She is a doctor!!! Stop making her seem stupid! 😭
Pretty much every crime/science TV show does this, but: There is no way that alien bacteria was sequenced that quickly. What, in a couple of hours? In early 1994? Nope. Did not happen.
This is the first episode that has a different phrase at the end of the credits: “Trust No One”
Overall Thoughts/Summary
Episode rating: 9.5/10. This really is a very strong episode. A little bit of the science gets questionable, but since the writers don’t try to explain it too much, it is pretty good for a sci-fi show. Just enough there to be believable. The episode also doesn’t drag anything out—the pacing is really very good, keeping us moving and asking questions along with Mulder and Scully right to the very end. I definitely end the episode with wanting more, which is exactly what you want from a season finale. Some answers, but still a lot left to explore.
X-files cases “solved” to date: This one is a little bit tricky, as in the eyes of the FBI, I don’t think they “solve” anything. But, for themselves, they do solve Dr. Berube’s death/murder, what “Purity Control” is, and begin to really uncover what the government is doing. And, ultimately, that’s why the “X-files” gets shut down.
So, I’ll give them a “half solved”. Definitely the best of their “alien related” cases so far.
20/24 cases solved for the season.
…It is now definitely nighttime, and I should definitely be getting to bed. My Scully kitty is actively yelling at me for not being in bed for her to sleep on right now. This is why I try to write these reviews earlier in the week or at least earlier on Saturdays, but I just could not put down my book earlier 😅 Hopefully this (long-ish) review is still coherent.
Reminder now at the end, that next week will be Season 1 Retrospective. We will start season 2 on Sunday, 3 March.