Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – The Beginning… Again

The first episode of season six did not air until November 8, 1998. Five months after the film, Fight the Future, was released in theaters. Five months of waiting to see if Mulder and Scully were successful in getting the X-Files reopened. In the context of my life, that five months saw me packed up and moved two states away as I started college in Minneapolis that fall. Normally, that five months would have been an exhausting wait but with starting college and being on my own for the first time, it flew by in a flash.

I wasn’t the only one who made a big move. The X-Files, at the request of David Duchovny who wanted to be closer to his wife, moved from Vancouver to Los Angelos to film. This marked the first time that the series filmed week to week on location in parts of the U.S. that it didn’t have to fake for the most part. I’m of course referring to the season two finale Anasazi where show runners painted rocks to make Canada look like New Mexico. New storylines in season six used the California desert well as this episode featured a case where Mulder and Scully investigated a creature in the Arizona desert, but not after Mulder sits in front of an FBI panel about the events that transpired during the movie.

In what always reminds me a bit of Ridley Scott’s Alien, this episode features more of the black oil being ingested by a scientist who later has an alien burst out of his chest. The alien then attacks the man’s coworker when he arrives. The Cigarette Smoking Man informs the Syndicate of the existence of this alien creature in hopes that they will be able to kill it.

Mulder is approached by Skinner as he, Mulder, is trying to rebuild the X-Files after the fire at the end of season five destroyed all his casework. Skinner informs him that he and Scully have been denied reassignment to the X-Files but that Mulder should seek out a folder left on his desk in his old office. When Mulder arrives there, he discovers Agent Spender and Agent Diana Fowley (Mimi Rogers) have taken over the X-Files. After stealthily removing the file folder from the office, Mulder takes his feelings of betrayal by Fowley and seeks out Scully. The folder contains information about the gestated alien from the beginning of the episode.

The Cigarette Smoking Man seeks out Gibson Praise, a boy Scully and Mulder had protected in season five. Smoking Man brings Praise to the house where the deceased man who was home to the gestated alien is being investigated by Mulder and Scully. The alien is long gone and kills another person at a nuclear facility where Agents Spender and Fowley keep Mulder and Scully from the crime scene. Gibson Praise has escaped the Smoking Man and finds his way to Mulder and Scully’s car.

By the end of this episode, Scully has taken Gibson to the hospital where it is discovered that he has alien DNA and that all humans do except with Gibson, the DNA is active. The boy is abducted by another member of the Syndicate, the Black-Haired Man who takes him to the nuclear facility where the man is attacked but Gibson is unharmed. Mulder, after witnessing this, is ordered to stay away from the X-Files and reassigned to Assistant Director Alvin Kersh. Gibson, still trapped with the alien, watches as the alien sheds it’s skin and finally appears as the gray skinned aliens with slanted eyes we are used to seeing in abduction stories.

This episode accomplishes two things. One – it segues us to the new Los Angelos location with one bright shot at the very beginning of the episode. The sun blinding us before we see the new surroundings. We aren’t in Vancouver anymore. Two – it manages to delicately continue the story of both the movie and the season five finale by including Gibson Praise and Agents Fowley and Spender. Familiar faces in an unfamiliar filming location. One of my favorite parts of this premiere is how they handled this move by keeping familiar faces and storylines but also refreshing it for the new season. I’ve always felt seasons four, five, and six are the strongest of the series. It’s a testament to the producers that they managed this while also switching to such a different location.

The imagery of the gray alien is such a large part of our culture that it is used in books, movies and television. Wanting to know we aren’t alone in the universe can be told in so many different ways that filmmakers have been using it to tell stories of first contact for decades. Star Trek views this in a positive light, giving our society a way to come together for a common good. The film Independence Day also used this trope of society coming together for a common good, but in this instance it was to save ourselves from annihilation as the aliens attacked us. Both The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits also used this multiple occasions.

Today, though, happens to fall during a summer when Steven Spielberg brough us another film about aliens. His prolific film career included Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, and War of the Worlds. The first tells the story of how aliens used musical tones to make first contact as the return many abducted humans back to Earth and let Richard Dreyfuss go along for a ride. The second tells the tale of a small boy’s connection with an alien who was left behind when his family left Earth. Both of those show how the government tries to control the narrative when it comes to these types of experiences. The third film, starring Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, and Miranda Otto, shows what happens aliens attack and use humans as fuel only to have the microbes living on our planet be their downfall. Each tells the human experience of coming into contact with alien beings.

Now, in 2026, Spielberg brings us yet another alien film in Disclosure Day. This one takes similar tropes about a coverup to control the narrative on aliens here on Earth and how these aliens connect with humans. In a similar storyline with The X-Files, the film follows characters who want the truth to be known that the worst humans among us have been experimenting on these aliens. Have harmed them. Killed them. And covered it up because they feared that if society found out we weren’t alone in the universe that it would be our demise as a society. In the end, it is the media who spreads the word about the truth and the film ends with a single word. Listen.

How easy it would be to just listen to each other, yeah? Such a simple thing that so many have such a hard time doing. And it’s the one thing that could bring us together. When I watched that movie in the theater, I kept thinking about The X-Files. About how Mulder and Scully fought so hard to have the truth heard. How so many refused to listen because it was easier to believe the lies and the false narratives when they tell us what we want to hear. I’ll leave you with that final thought.

Until next week, the truth is out there.