In 1947, a rancher who lived near Roswell, New Mexico found metallic and rubber debris near Roswell Army Air Field. The government announced and then retracted having possession of a flying disc. They then said the debris was from a military balloon train that was operated out of Alamogordo Army Air Field as part of Project Mogul which intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests. No one believed this, however, and rumors swirled of a coverup of an alien craft which was further enflamed in 1978 when a retired Air Force officer admitted that the weather balloon story was a coverup. In the 1990s, the Air Force released what it said was evidence that the debris was in fact from the weather balloon and not a UFO, but by then, the trope of the conspiracy was so engrained in pop culture that no one was going to believe anything other than it being a UFO.
The X-Files used Roswell as a backdrop multiple times including the season six episode The Unnatural. The episode is equally inspired by both location in 1947 and by baseball. More to the point, it revolves around an alien who landed her and pretended to be a baseball player because he loved baseball. I mean, fair. I’d do the same because I love baseball too. And so does David Duchovny who directed this episode.
This episode also fights a little bit of racism as Josh Exley’s (the alien) baseball team was a mixture of black and white men and they are attacked by the KKK during a game. The players fight back and when the leader of the KKK is unmasked, it is revealed that he is an alien. Apparently they have been walking among us and causing chaos for a while.
What brings Mulder and Scully into the mix is when they are looking through old newspaper articles from Roswell and come across an article showing Arthur Dales. The character has appeared a couple times before, both the actual Arthur Dales and his brother also named Arthur Dales because the original actor who played him had a stroke in real life two days before filming.
Dales tells the story of first meeting Exley which is told through flashback. There were suspicions that Exley was an alien. Someone had seen his reflection in a window and the reflection was an alien. He was also knocked out by a pitch and babbled incoherently in an unknown language. It was the green ooze the flowed from Exley’s head that was the real evidence, though.
When Dales investigated Exley’s family, he realized that the real Exley had vanished several years previously and that the alien had used the name so he could play baseball. After being confronted, Exley explaines that he isn’t allowed to intermingle with humans and he just wanted to play baseball. He chose the negro leagues to avoid detection.
Then the alien bounty hunter shows up, pretends to be Exley, and murders a scientist investigating the green ooze that Dales had found. Dales warns Exley that he is now a wanted man and he goes into hiding. It is revealed that the KKK alien was there to kill Exley who refuses to turn into his alien form before dying. Problem is, Exley bleeds red blood when he dies. Is this ending essentially saying the story Dales tells is a fabrication? A fairy tale? Probably. Did Exley get what he wanted in being human? Maybe.
Both David Duchovny and Chris Carter wanted to do an episode about baseball for several years and I’m glad they did. While I’m not a huge fan of reusing the Arthur Dales character, I am a fan of showing fans of the show how long the aliens had been among us. How far they were willing to go to hide their presence. That in and of itself was a scary concept. They also took inspiration from Jackie Robinson’s life as the first black player to be accepted into the Major Leagues in the 1940s. It was Duchovny’s idea to make Exley black and to have the story be around when the leagues were just starting to integrate. Using that dark part of American history as a backdrop for when aliens began to hide among us was a wise decision as it would make it easier for them to pretend to be human if men who weren’t used to being around other cultures or races were suddenly thrown together for the sake of baseball.
At one point, Mulder asks if all great baseball players were really aliens, and Dales playfully says that the likes of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Willie Mays are all aliens. Of course they are. The 1997 film Men in Black also uses this to explain away famous people, even joking that Dennis Rodman isn’t a great disguise. I remember thinking about that movie when this episode aired a couple years after its release. As far as The X-Files goes, there was a wry humor about the episode that felt refreshing when it aired and it feels refreshing upon rewatch. A welcome change to the seriousness that often comes with the season finales and at this point in season six, it was coming up fast.
The show Roswell premiered in 1999. While the series wasn’t really my jam at the time because it was so teen oriented (not sure why, I was a teen myself), it did represent a timeline during which the Roswell UFO exists and aliens hide in plain sight as a trio of high schoolers. It was like Twilight if the vampires were aliens and I’ve never understood why aliens or vampires would want to live out high school. Especially the vampires. If I had immortality, I wouldn’t be retaking calculus or going to prom for the 300th time. Anyhoo, the show did take the Roswell UFO trope and run with it during a time when Chris Carter had made alien conspiracies mainstream, which says a lot about the staying power of The X-Files.
Until next week, the truth is out there.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
In 1947, a rancher who lived near Roswell, New Mexico found metallic and rubber debris near Roswell Army Air Field. The government announced and then retracted having possession of a flying disc. They then said the debris was from a military balloon train that was operated out of Alamogordo Army Air Field as part of Project Mogul which intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests. No one believed this, however, and rumors swirled of a coverup of an alien craft which was further enflamed in 1978 when a retired Air Force officer admitted that the weather balloon story was a coverup. In the 1990s, the Air Force released what it said was evidence that the debris was in fact from the weather balloon and not a UFO, but by then, the trope of the conspiracy was so engrained in pop culture that no one was going to believe anything other than it being a UFO.
The X-Files used Roswell as a backdrop multiple times including the season six episode The Unnatural. The episode is equally inspired by both location in 1947 and by baseball. More to the point, it revolves around an alien who landed her and pretended to be a baseball player because he loved baseball. I mean, fair. I’d do the same because I love baseball too. And so does David Duchovny who directed this episode.
This episode also fights a little bit of racism as Josh Exley’s (the alien) baseball team was a mixture of black and white men and they are attacked by the KKK during a game. The players fight back and when the leader of the KKK is unmasked, it is revealed that he is an alien. Apparently they have been walking among us and causing chaos for a while.
What brings Mulder and Scully into the mix is when they are looking through old newspaper articles from Roswell and come across an article showing Arthur Dales. The character has appeared a couple times before, both the actual Arthur Dales and his brother also named Arthur Dales because the original actor who played him had a stroke in real life two days before filming.
Dales tells the story of first meeting Exley which is told through flashback. There were suspicions that Exley was an alien. Someone had seen his reflection in a window and the reflection was an alien. He was also knocked out by a pitch and babbled incoherently in an unknown language. It was the green ooze the flowed from Exley’s head that was the real evidence, though.
When Dales investigated Exley’s family, he realized that the real Exley had vanished several years previously and that the alien had used the name so he could play baseball. After being confronted, Exley explaines that he isn’t allowed to intermingle with humans and he just wanted to play baseball. He chose the negro leagues to avoid detection.
Then the alien bounty hunter shows up, pretends to be Exley, and murders a scientist investigating the green ooze that Dales had found. Dales warns Exley that he is now a wanted man and he goes into hiding. It is revealed that the KKK alien was there to kill Exley who refuses to turn into his alien form before dying. Problem is, Exley bleeds red blood when he dies. Is this ending essentially saying the story Dales tells is a fabrication? A fairy tale? Probably. Did Exley get what he wanted in being human? Maybe.
Both David Duchovny and Chris Carter wanted to do an episode about baseball for several years and I’m glad they did. While I’m not a huge fan of reusing the Arthur Dales character, I am a fan of showing fans of the show how long the aliens had been among us. How far they were willing to go to hide their presence. That in and of itself was a scary concept. They also took inspiration from Jackie Robinson’s life as the first black player to be accepted into the Major Leagues in the 1940s. It was Duchovny’s idea to make Exley black and to have the story be around when the leagues were just starting to integrate. Using that dark part of American history as a backdrop for when aliens began to hide among us was a wise decision as it would make it easier for them to pretend to be human if men who weren’t used to being around other cultures or races were suddenly thrown together for the sake of baseball.
At one point, Mulder asks if all great baseball players were really aliens, and Dales playfully says that the likes of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Willie Mays are all aliens. Of course they are. The 1997 film Men in Black also uses this to explain away famous people, even joking that Dennis Rodman isn’t a great disguise. I remember thinking about that movie when this episode aired a couple years after its release. As far as The X-Files goes, there was a wry humor about the episode that felt refreshing when it aired and it feels refreshing upon rewatch. A welcome change to the seriousness that often comes with the season finales and at this point in season six, it was coming up fast.
The show Roswell premiered in 1999. While the series wasn’t really my jam at the time because it was so teen oriented (not sure why, I was a teen myself), it did represent a timeline during which the Roswell UFO exists and aliens hide in plain sight as a trio of high schoolers. It was like Twilight if the vampires were aliens and I’ve never understood why aliens or vampires would want to live out high school. Especially the vampires. If I had immortality, I wouldn’t be retaking calculus or going to prom for the 300th time. Anyhoo, the show did take the Roswell UFO trope and run with it during a time when Chris Carter had made alien conspiracies mainstream, which says a lot about the staying power of The X-Files.
Until next week, the truth is out there.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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