7:08 a.m. - 2018-01-07
X-FILES 2018
I had looked forward to another short encore season of one of my all-time favorite series, "The X-Files," but was disappointed by the first episode of 2018. In it we learn, or are told, at least, that the Cigarette Smoking Man supposedly impregnated an unconscious Scully with alien DNA, and that the child we thought was Mulder's was actually the product of this bizarre experiment.

We should, of course, keep in mind that CSM is anything but a reliable source, and that he might have his own obscure and sinister motives for fabricating such a story. Nevertheless, the idea of Scully being impregnated against her will and without her knowledge is not only creepy in the extreme, but even more jarring given the revelations of the actions of Harvey Weinstein and others and the subsequent #metoo movement looking beneath the rock to reveal the sexual predation that seems far more prevalent in our society than many of us would have guessed.

This strange and unwelcome plot twist is unfair to Scully, who in the 1990's was a role model for women thinking about careers in the natural sciences: ahead of the emphasis on STEM classes that we hear so much about today. With a bachelor of science degree in physics and a medical degree from Stanford, Scully was arguably one of the most intellectual FBI agents in the bureau. Paired with "Spooky" Mulder, she was the voice of reason and logic meant to balance her partner's willingness to accept any legend, urban myth, or conspiracy theory that came his way.

"I want to believe," was Mulder's philosophy; Scully demanded facts and hard evidence, seeking a rational explanation grounded in science and the physical world. Of course the dichotomy was never meant to be real; Chris Carter, the creator of the series, chose to go the way of the credulous latter 20th Century, and Scully's point of view became gradually less relevant as the series narrative progressed. (Sadly it seems as if our society has evolved along similar lines with "The X-Files," as the media are filled more and more with programs about ghosts, Bigfoot, and other phenomena that can most charitably be described as highly speculative.)

Unless the CSM is lying (and this is still a strong possibility), Scully's fall from the voice of reason and scientific skepticism to victim and pawn is one of the worst character arcs in television.

At the series beginning, Scully represented Left Brain Logic while Mulder represented Right Brain Imagination. Carter set these two in apparent opposition, while all the time he was aiming at No Brain acceptance of things that gullible people only want to believe.

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