The X-Files: The Sixth Extinction (Part 2/3) Rewatch

July 16, 2020 7:52 PM - Season 7, Episode 1

While Scully tries to piece together the meaning of the symbols engraved on the spaceship beached in West Africa, Skinner and Kritschgau endeavour to assuage Mulder's frenetic brain activity.
posted by orange swan (4 comments total)

lol, padded cell doctor is the incredibly prolific Warren Sweeney. I thought I recognized him from somewhere, in the role of dopiest-looking-as-possible guy (and a whole bunch of other places).

Scully yelling "Get him to a hospital! H O S P I T A L! (DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH? E N G L I S H ?)" is super wtf.

Kritschgau has epic bedhead, absolutely impressive given what he has to work with.

Absolutely unforgiveable - based on Scully's cheat sheet (regardless of her monologue) it looks like the Navajo-looking script has 1:1 correspondence to the modern English alphabet. That's lazy and insulting.

The human genome? This is the reference human genome with no annotations, no metadata, and no epigenetic data printed in 4 point font and bound. “We thought it would be great to show the public how big 3,000 million letters is!” says Kramer.

In one scene Skinner introduces himself as Fowley's boss, and in another he's rolling over for her (albeit, his guilty conscience and being blackmailed).

I guess the audience has to accept that Fowley's telling the truth to Mulder, because she's telling the audience her deep and complex characterization. Barf. Got creepy, too.

Are we to believe that the FBI is taking care of Scully's international travel? I'm vaguely worried about Mulder's medical expenses.

Is that a thing, that Scully can get say that she's his doctor and ... who's actually detaining Mulder, the FBI? For what? ... get access to him?
posted by porpoise at 9:11 PM on July 16, 2020

All I remembered from this was the t-shirt Scully wore in Africa. I only hope I look that crisp and unsweaty in Africa.
posted by acrasis at 2:30 PM on July 17, 2020

Scully suddenly had an entire capsule wardrobe of linen/cotton clothing to wear. She also had a machete -- interesting that she felt she had to arm herself. That beach tent of Scully's actually looked like a nice place to stay -- until it got swarmed by locusts, that is.

I was racking my brains trying to remember what the plagues of Egypt were (for the record: water turning to blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the killing of firstborn children), and wondering if we were going to cycle through all of them. With Scully's Biblical knowledge you'd think she'd have commented on them aloud, but I guess given that she'd already lost her firstborn she thought what the hell.

Scully has good chair game.

I didn't buy that Kritschgau and Skinner would try to treat Mulder in such a way. Surely they'd go to his doctors with any information they had rather than try to dose him themselves.
posted by orange swan at 5:50 PM on July 19, 2020

I'm pretty sure Skinner was definitely wary and gave in out of desperation; my read was that Kritschgau made a point of remembering drug names and doses - without understanding any of it - in case it was important later (at least to sound like they knew what they were doing).

They got lucky.

But knowing what kind of drug - perhaps with paradoxical effect, which happens - to use in a specific situation can be legit.

A "chronic" condition being mal-treated with the wrong pharmaceutical is definitely a thing.
posted by porpoise at 9:55 PM on July 19, 2020