We have reached the seventh season finale. It is a pivotal point in the series. As the script was being written, the creators were unaware of the future of the show. It was certain David Duchovny was going to depart. His contract was up, there was some bad blood with the breach of contract lawsuit he had filed against 20th Century Fox the previous summer, and his willingness to gripe about being stuck on the series to the press spelled that out quite obviously. No one knew if The X-Files would be cancelled, continue on as a series with another actor, or move to the big screen, possibly with Duchovny agreeing to participate with the final option.
I will write more about what finally happened tomorrow when I begin reviewing the eighth season. For now, I will deal with the effects on this particular episode. It had to be written as a possible series finale, but with some possibility of carrying on with The X-Files in some form. Writer Chris Carter, who was not given the two hours for the episode he requested, brought back every recurring character to the setting of the Pilot in order to bookend the series. He left the two final pages to be written at the last possible minute to allow time for the network’s decision on The X-File fate.
Carter had a plan either way. If the series was cancelled, the final two pages would have featured Mulder encountering his father onboard the space ship after his abduction. Considering the cynical and/or ironic endings to many episodes, it would have been fitting to conclude Mulder’s search for alien life by being taken by them. If the show was going to carry on, Mulder’s fate would have been a mystery. The final pages would be the reveal that Scully is pregnant. At the last minute, the series was renewed, and Duchovny agreed to become a recurring character towards the end of the eighth season, so Scully wound up pregnant and the mystery of what happened to Mulder went in full swing. But those are the final two pages. The rest of the script has very much a sense of finality to it.
‘Requiem,’ which is a chant or song in remembrance of the dead, begins the X-Files office being audited. The agents have racked up quite an expense budget over the years. Mulder adopts an ambivalent attitude at the possibility of their travel being curtailed in favor of localized intelligence gathering instead. The auditor’s rationale, one which Mulder seems to agree, is that he now knows Samantha’s fate and the Syndicate is gone, so what is left, anyway? Scully is interviewed separately. She is surprisingly more adamant in her defense of the work than Mulder. The switch between the two previews the tone for the final two seasons in which Scully is far less the skeptic when working the X-Files than she ever has been. Nevertheless, you feel like this is the end.
When the auditor leaves, Mulder gets a call from Billy Miles, the Oregon abductee the agents investigated in the Pilot. A deputy has disappeared while investigating a possible UFO crash. In spite of being under budgetary scrutiny, the two travel to Oregon to look for the deputy and space craft.
Maria Coverrarubias appears at a prison in Tunisias where Alex Krycek has been held for months. Krycek has had a habit of popping into the series without explanation since he was first exposed as a spy, but this appearance is the wildest, most inexplicable of them all. The Cigarette Smoking Man, who arranged for his arrest in the first place, wants him in Oregon to look for the space craft, too. Krycek agrees, but for her flimsiest of reasons just to conveniently make him a bigger part of the story.
The agents’ Oregon adventure is a nostalgia trip. They find all the teenagers they met seven years ago have gotten over their abduction experiences and moved on with their lives. They even finsd the “X” spray painted on the road, though I am skeptical paint would have lasted all these years. Like I wrote earlier, Carter is throwing it all in there in case this is the series finale. Billy Miles thinks the space craft, which allegedly collided with an Aitr Force fighter, is still out there. He thinks his detective father is helping cover the incident up. He is right--his real father is dead. The one he is dealing with now is the Alien Bounty Hunter in disguise.
Mulder gets distracted by Scully in two ways. One, she passes out twice in Oregon, once after encountering the invisible space craft, though neither knows that, and another time in the missing deputy’s house. The other way is that he watches her playing with the deputy’s baby while his wife retrieves some medical files. The incidents remind him of all scully has lost while working with him. It brings back the old pangs of guilt from the middle seasons which were my favorite interpretation of the character. He was very protective of her then. Now that he is falling in love, he wants her off the X-Files because of the toll it has taken on her.
They find nothing, so they head back to Washington for the sole purpose of utilizing the Lone Gunmen’s expertise in analizing secret data given to skinner by Krycek as to where the space craft is and what the aliens are doing. Why has Krycek, who was following Mulder and Scully in Oregon, suddenly decide that, yes, he is angry enough at the CSM to stop working for him and help the good guys? Your guess is as good as mind. Carter appears to chalk it up to Krycek’s mercenary personality and leaves it at that. Well, okay.
The aliens are rounding up former abductees, presumably never to return them this time. Mulder plans to prevent this. He refuses to let Scully go since she is a former abductee, but she insists he take Skinner. They have their second tear-jerking shipper moment of the episode--this one does not involve them cuddling in bed like the other--and mulder heads to Oregon with Skinner. There was a possibility skinner would have become a more prominent character should the series be renewed, so his emotional involvement here is a potential set up for that.
Let behind, Scully sullenly examines the medical records of the abductees and learns they have had similar brain function disorders such as mulder suffered at the beginning of the season. This is the point she realizes she was rejected by the space ship when she passed out earlier. The aliens want Mulder. Unfortunately, she passes out again before she can tell anyone. Too bad, because Mulder is taken away right before Skinner’s eyes, along with the other abductees.
Before we learn Scully’s fate, there is an intervening scene in which Krycek allegedly kills the now wheelchair bound CSM down a flight of stairs. As the CSM will not show up again for two years, fans could do nothing but assume this was the lackluster end for a character who should have gone out in a far better blaze of glory. This is a guy who has survived all sorts of ends that no one else could have over the course of the series. Surely Carter could have done better than throw the guy down a flight of stairs. Thankfully, he did. But for two years there...ugh. What an awful idea.
In the end, Scully reveals her health issue is she is pregnant even though she is barren. She and skinner vow to find Mulder. You can say this is the beginning of the super-soldier mythology, but since the terms makes X-Philes cringe as badly as Trekkies at the term Xindi super weapon, we shall hold off on that as long as possible.
“Requiem” is not a bad episode, but it has far too many flaws to have potentially sent the series off. At times, it looks like the x-Files are going to be closed for budgetary reasons, then that Scully might quit. Onr minute, she and Mulder are partners, the next they appear to be in love. There is not a solitary lick of logic in krycek’s appearance, or actions. If Mulder is targeted for abduction for his former heightened brain activity, why not the CSM, since he had brain surgery to experience it, too? The Lonegun man have two minutes of screen time. Really, they are just there to call an ambulance for Scully. It is all very sloppy. It does not surprise me that a lot of fans did not return in the fall. ‘Requiem” is definitely a must see for X-Philes, but deflate expectations.
Rating: *** (out of 5)
We have reached the seventh season finale. It is a pivotal point in the series. As the script was being written, the creators were unaware of the future of the show. It was certain David Duchovny was going to depart. His contract was up, there was some bad blood with the breach of contract lawsuit he had filed against 20th Century Fox the previous summer, and his willingness to gripe about being stuck on the series to the press spelled that out quite obviously. No one knew if The X-Files would be cancelled, continue on as a series with another actor, or move to the big screen, possibly with Duchovny agreeing to participate with the final option. 
