Rewatch Extra: Fight the Future Part One (1/2)
Best movie title sequence ever? PROBABLY. I’m sorry, I don’t care if it’s a movie based on a TV show, and thus, isn’t really considered A Movie, because people are snobs. The wavy black oil is aces--crisp, classy, evocative, understated. Along with Mark Snow's spooky orchestration, it perfectly sets the scene in the same way the TV credits do, only with a bit more sparkle.
At least it starts with two dark, lone figures tromping through the snow. Sadly, they’re cavemen wearing shaggy pelts, and they’re going to be on our screen for the next five minutes or so. (This movie is all about getting what we want metaphorically.)
SOMEBODY WAKE ME WHEN MULDER AND SCULLY GET HERE. In the theater, I remember my insane excitement gradually waning with every second they didn’t show up.
This is too action-sci-fi. I like the quiet, cerebral, creepy grays who are in cahoots with the Syndicate, not these toothsome ones who will disembowel you with the swipe of a claw.
The black oil effect: always, always perfect.
We're 5:45 in when dumb ol’ Stevie gets the wind knocked outta him. (You know, if you were counting along to see how long it takes for Mulder and Scully to show up.)
I love the iconic shaft of light and the turn of the translucent skull to reveal the gaping hole.
This dustiness is getting us ready for season 6.
“What about mah meeeen?”
Guys, it’s already 10:53 and we’re in Dallllllas, watching helicopters fly around and Terry O’Quinn sport a hilarious 'stache.
Finally! It’s Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully! And she’s wearing an FBI jacket on the top of a building and saying, into her phone: “Mulder, it’s me.” If you were 17 and watching this in a theater, you might make muted squealing sounds at this point. I’m just saying.
A minute later, Mulder appears, making sweaty look very, very good. Scully agrees with me. (Muted squealing sounds become…less muted. Hypothetically.)
“I hear it’s free beer night at the Astrodome.” The second time in five years he’s asked her out on a professional sports date. Scully, he really, really wants to take you to a stadium or arena of some sort. LET HIM. Have a few Bud Lights, some nachos and a giant soft pretzel. I promise you, it will turn out well.
Yeah, so these two are the cutest. "I had you." “No, you didn’t.” “Oh, yeah. I had you big time.” Understatement of the decade.
For some reason their conversation has not progressed from the time they left the roof to the time they get off of the elevator. I mean, I get it, but what were they doing in the elevator? Probably just staring deeply and longingly into each other’s eyes. As usual.
“When I panic, I make this face.”
Panic face! Seriously, they’re adorable. Scully’s joking around, Mulder’s poking fun at himself!
Mulder, looking through his pocket for change, flips a scrap of paper onto the floor. DON’T LITTER, Mulder, even if it’s just some paper! Or a ticket stub. From a movie you went to with Scully but didn’t watch, because you were making out in the back row. WHAT.
This movie is absolutely gorgeous. Even when it’s a shot of vending machines, the composition is utterly lovely. ROB BOWMAN!
Everybody, let’s take a minute for David Duchovny’s 1998 sideburns.
Look, Scully got a fancy manicure! Remember in season one, when her nails were all plain and kind of ragged and unpainted? Sigh. As much as I love glossy, coiffed, lipsticked Scully, in her jet-black suits, I kind of miss old Scully, who had more important things to think about than whether or not her nails were purty. She was too busy rewriting Einstein to go to the nail place!
“DON’T THINK! JUST PICK UP THAT PHONE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!” Bitches get shit done. I am reminded all over again why she’s my hero.
Michaud’s welding goggles are hilarious. I think it’s a combination of those little round lenses and his pencil thin mustache.
“THERE’S NO TIME!” All right, Scully, settle down! Mulder gets this hilariously disinterested look on his face in response.
I wish they wouldn’t have used such obvious stock footage for the establishing shot of the FBI. Even if I wasn't such a nerd that I recognized it from other episodes, it’s summer, yet the trees are bare.
Mulder is chomping on an unprecedented number of sunflower seeds in this movie. Has everyone noticed? Do we all understand that’s his thing, now? Yes? (My note here was “this movie’s all sunflowery” and I had NO IDEA what I was talking about when I went back to look at it a day later. Luckily, meatfight and I have communication like that, unspoken, and she knew I meant that Mulder was going a bit overboard with the seeds. Sadly, I did not mean what truemyth suggested I might: "Forsooth, Skinner's head doth shine like the sun and his manner is as sweet as that of a flower." But it does, and it is.)
“They’re asking her for a narrative. They want to know why she was in the wrong building.”
“She was with me.”
“They want to blame us?” Mulder, they ALWAYS want to blame you! Why so surprised? I mean, they’re reaching more than usual here, but still.
“If they want somebody to blame, they can blame me. Agent Scully doesn’t deserve this.”
“She’s in there saying the same thing about you.”
They don’t even think about it, they’re both willing to take the fall, to save the other.
Gillian is really too short to pull off a skirt that long, but it’s still a super hot suit. A suit that, you know, maybe somebody who's 5'8" could probably pull off... I also covet her shoes, because they appear to be similar to the ones she wears at the end of "Amor Fati," and I've been looking for a reasonable facsimile of those bad boys for about 9 years. I dare to dream. Anyway, they really, really upped the tailoring budget for this thing. Also, for being shot a full year before, it doesn’t look dated at all, and it sort of…sartorially flows with seasons 5 and 6.
“But they’re the ones who put us together.”
“Because they wanted me to invalidate your investigations into the paranormal. But I think this goes deeper than that now.”
“This is not about you, Scully. They’re doing this to ME.” Apart from Mulder just being his regular, poor-me self, think about it-he’s saying that Scully being reassigned is being done to him. Because he cannot live without her. Like him being without her would be more painful for him than it would be for her to get a new assignment at some bland field office.
Hang on, Scully’s about to expositionize a little bit! “Mulder, I left behind a career in medicine because I thought that I could make a difference at the FBI.”
“…it just doesn’t hold the interest [IE, YOU] it once did. Not after all I’ve seen and done [tragically, NOT YOU].”
Both of you should quit! Ride off into the sunset right now and save yourselves some awful tragedy! Trust me, guys. It’s going to get worse.
God, it’s a little thing, but I absolutely love when she hands him his jacket, but won’t look at him. He’s staring at her, she knows it, but she won’t meet his eye as she says “good luck.” Like she knows that she can’t quite trust her resolve if she looks at him.
It’s kind of endearing that Mulder can’t really hold his liquor. (Still, he sobers up more quickly than anyone I’ve ever seen.)
Please, no one ever say the word “poopy” again, okay? Thanks.
So. Mulder’s exposition speech. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard (at least we get to hear the hilarious phrase “shit storm of alllll time”), but..do these things actually work for non-viewers? Anyone who saw this movie before seeing any episodes: did it help, or could you have followed things okay without it?
For a long time I thought “86 is your lucky number” meant that his tab was $86. Which is a lot of money, even if you’re getting top shelf shots. (Also, who has that kind of cash in their wallet? Not this girl.) But recently someone brought to my attention the idea that it probably refers to “eighty-sixed,” as in, “get out of the bar, you’re depressing the rest of the patrons, G-man.” Am I the only one who was confused by this?
Look at him in his sexy blue shirt. He looks good. I love all the blue shirts in this movie-I think this might actually be the first appearance of the blue shirt. Don’t quote me on it, but I can’t remember any earlier episodes where he wears one.
THERE IS WAY TOO MUCH PEEING GOING ON RIGHT NOW.
“I heard you come in here now and again, figured you’d be needing a little drinkie tonight.” This line always strikes me as silly, because it’s pretty much canon that Mulder drinks pretty rarely, right? I mean, the only times we see him drinking to DRINK are this and in "Syzygy," which doesn't really count. So while he certainly does his fair share of moping, I don’t buy that he’s ever moping into a glass of scotchy-scotch-scotch.
Chris Carter’s demonization of FEMA: how prescient! It’s cute, though, how FEMA in the ‘90s was apparently well-organized enough to be part of this huge conspiracy. How things change.
“I think you’re full of shit.” I want them to curse more!
Scully, all sad and awake, wearing lipstick and a bra with her silk PJs. She gets a briefly confused look on her face when she hears the knock. I’m not sure why. He’s been interrupting her beauty sleep for five years now. Although when she opens the door, she gives this nice, resigned, “I’ve been expecting you” look.
Listen, I love this scene. It’s one of my favorites. “What are you implying?” IMPLY AWAY! But no, sadly, he wants you to put clothes on, not take them off. Boo. But I just love the quiet urgency as he’s trying to convince her to get dressed and she’s trying to get him to tell her what the heck’s going on.
So. They’re pumping the black oil from the ground? But here’s what’s confusing. If they’re presumably using the black oil to infect people in an attempt at developing their vaccine, what of the bees and the cornfields? Because getting infected by the black oil doesn’t seem to…cause an alien to gestate in your belly. Whereas the bee does.
The translucent, jellied body is a great effect. (Which will later be kind of ripped off by Fringe in the opening of the Pilot. In a scene that was, itself, ripping off "Tempus Fugit"/"Max.")
“Listen, son, we don’t have time to dick around.” YES! For some reason, I really love the condescending “son,” and of course, “dick around.”
“There’s been some kind of cellular breakdown. It’s completely edematous.” I love that Mulder knows that all he has to do is get her there. She might be initially reluctant, but once she sees, say, a gooey body that has not been autopsied, she’s all, HAND ME THAT SCALPEL. Also, Scully, please remember: he always, always knows what’s up before you get there. Still, it’s nice that he has the decency to at least seem sheepish about what he was withholding.
“Negotiating a planned Armageddon” sounds really cool. But this is where the plot starts to go off the rails for me. I think Kurtzweil is saying that the Syndicate will release the virus, even though they have no vaccination for it yet. Why wouldn’t they just wait until they have the vaccination? Because what good is it to THEM if they do this? They’ll die, too. Or when he says “the timetable has been set,” is he just saying that the date has been set by the aliens, and the Syndicate has to release the virus on this agreed upon date, whether or not they’ve managed to come up with a vaccination? Why would they have agreed to that? Was it either that or...the aliens take over whenever they want?
“I NEED you there with me. I need your expertise.”
“I’m way past the point of common sense here.”
When Scully’s hiding underneath some gurneys, some yellow goo drips down to the floor.
The LOOK they share when she walks into the field office in Dallas. It’s like, everything else fades into the background as they focus on each other.
I adore the microscope eyebrow. It is the eyebrow against which all others must be measured.
It’s nice how the kid clambers up the slide to give the camera movement a motive. (HA HA, production classes, you were not a complete waste!)
Okay, Bronschweig is a real dope. When you realize that an alien has GESTATED-in a human host-and then birthed itself by exploding from said human host’s torso, maybe you shouldn’t hang out down in his underground lair, acting like it’s your cat that’s hiding under the couch.
“So much for little green men.” Here’s the thing: did they think it would be a gray? Why are this alien and the alien in “The Beginning” the only violent, clawy aliens we ever see? (Am I right about that?) Is he surprised it's not a "little green man"?
There’s a nice, eerie silence after the alien goes nuts and Bronschweig jabs him with the vaccine. But wait. Isn’t the vaccine supposed to be used on people, to prevent them from being infected, or to cure them of the infection? (The infection being the virus/alien.) I guess a vaccine theoretically still works if given directly “to” the virus itself, separate from a host?
Nice transition from the Laboratory of Horrors Where Your Friends Bury You Underground With A Murderous Alien to the wee British boy screaming.
But what’s up with the broken leg? I mean, who cares, right? Is it just so Well-Manicured Man can then be all, “I believe that children are our fuuuuture!” and give Mulder the vaccine?
Old dudes in a musty library! Because what do the kids love more than that in a summer blockbuster?
Apparently the virus has mutated, into a “new EBE.” But if that new EBE is Claws McGee, then was the original caveman alien something different?
The aliens were “using us all along.” This is something I’ve wondered often: how the hell does the Syndicate actually communicate with the aliens? Phone? Letter? Telepathy? meatfight and I decided recently it was probably through LJ. (your_alien_overlord.livejournal.com, obviously)
meatfight: "Dear sir or madam, I will leave you my child in exchange for the cure. You won't kill him, right?"
thelittlespy: "Uh...yeah! He will definitely survive! No worries."
meatfight: "Okay, see you at the hangar, your infinite alienness!"
thelittlespy: "LOL sounds good!"
meatfight: "Dear sir of madam, I am being burned up in a fire and I am very displeased with this turn of events. This was not what was agreed upon!!! x-("
thelittlespy: "This user has deleted his journal."
“No one believes Kurtzweil or his books. He’s a toiler. A crank.” “Mulder believes.”
“Kill Mulder, we risk turning one man’s quest into a crusade.” Looking at it from the writers' point of view, this is sort of the most perfectly elegant solution to why Mulder can’t ever be killed. Since we're always pretty sure a main character in a TV show isn't going to be killed, it's smart to have such a simple reason why. He's more valuable to the bad guys alive than dead. His death could potentially hurt their cause more than his meddling does.
“Then you must take away what he holds most valuable, that with which he cannot live without.” CUT TO SCULLY. (PS, add some more words to that sentence, please, Armin Mueller-Stahl. It still halfway makes sense, and somehow I don't think "sense" is what you were aiming for with this line reading.)
This is a gorgeous, dusty shot of the kids on bikes, talking to Mulder and Scully, with the sun dropping yolkily to the horizon. (The cap doesn't do it justice, but you know what it looks like.)
“Wanna buy a badge?”
Ooh, Mulder, give yourself more braking time when you’re approaching a stop sign! The brakes of your Lariat rental car thank you! (This public service announcement brought to you by my parents, who still get a little nervous riding in the car with me.)
Mulder makes a charming, scrunched up face as they’re trying to decide which way to turn.
“You’ve got two choices. One of them is wrong.” He gives her a really hot look here. Hotter than usual, I mean.
“Five years together, Scully, how many times have I been wrong. Never. Not driving, anyway.” I love this. It kind of reminds me of “I seem to recall you having some pretty extreme hunches.” “I never have.”
Keep your eyes peeled for Part II: thwarted kissing, car bombs and handily layered outerwear.
At least it starts with two dark, lone figures tromping through the snow. Sadly, they’re cavemen wearing shaggy pelts, and they’re going to be on our screen for the next five minutes or so. (This movie is all about getting what we want metaphorically.)
SOMEBODY WAKE ME WHEN MULDER AND SCULLY GET HERE. In the theater, I remember my insane excitement gradually waning with every second they didn’t show up.
This is too action-sci-fi. I like the quiet, cerebral, creepy grays who are in cahoots with the Syndicate, not these toothsome ones who will disembowel you with the swipe of a claw.
The black oil effect: always, always perfect.
We're 5:45 in when dumb ol’ Stevie gets the wind knocked outta him. (You know, if you were counting along to see how long it takes for Mulder and Scully to show up.)
I love the iconic shaft of light and the turn of the translucent skull to reveal the gaping hole.
This dustiness is getting us ready for season 6.
“What about mah meeeen?”
Guys, it’s already 10:53 and we’re in Dallllllas, watching helicopters fly around and Terry O’Quinn sport a hilarious 'stache.
Finally! It’s Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully! And she’s wearing an FBI jacket on the top of a building and saying, into her phone: “Mulder, it’s me.” If you were 17 and watching this in a theater, you might make muted squealing sounds at this point. I’m just saying.
A minute later, Mulder appears, making sweaty look very, very good. Scully agrees with me. (Muted squealing sounds become…less muted. Hypothetically.)
“I hear it’s free beer night at the Astrodome.” The second time in five years he’s asked her out on a professional sports date. Scully, he really, really wants to take you to a stadium or arena of some sort. LET HIM. Have a few Bud Lights, some nachos and a giant soft pretzel. I promise you, it will turn out well.
Yeah, so these two are the cutest. "I had you." “No, you didn’t.” “Oh, yeah. I had you big time.” Understatement of the decade.
For some reason their conversation has not progressed from the time they left the roof to the time they get off of the elevator. I mean, I get it, but what were they doing in the elevator? Probably just staring deeply and longingly into each other’s eyes. As usual.
“When I panic, I make this face.”
Panic face! Seriously, they’re adorable. Scully’s joking around, Mulder’s poking fun at himself!
Mulder, looking through his pocket for change, flips a scrap of paper onto the floor. DON’T LITTER, Mulder, even if it’s just some paper! Or a ticket stub. From a movie you went to with Scully but didn’t watch, because you were making out in the back row. WHAT.
This movie is absolutely gorgeous. Even when it’s a shot of vending machines, the composition is utterly lovely. ROB BOWMAN!
Everybody, let’s take a minute for David Duchovny’s 1998 sideburns.
Look, Scully got a fancy manicure! Remember in season one, when her nails were all plain and kind of ragged and unpainted? Sigh. As much as I love glossy, coiffed, lipsticked Scully, in her jet-black suits, I kind of miss old Scully, who had more important things to think about than whether or not her nails were purty. She was too busy rewriting Einstein to go to the nail place!
“DON’T THINK! JUST PICK UP THAT PHONE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!” Bitches get shit done. I am reminded all over again why she’s my hero.
Michaud’s welding goggles are hilarious. I think it’s a combination of those little round lenses and his pencil thin mustache.
“THERE’S NO TIME!” All right, Scully, settle down! Mulder gets this hilariously disinterested look on his face in response.
I wish they wouldn’t have used such obvious stock footage for the establishing shot of the FBI. Even if I wasn't such a nerd that I recognized it from other episodes, it’s summer, yet the trees are bare.
Mulder is chomping on an unprecedented number of sunflower seeds in this movie. Has everyone noticed? Do we all understand that’s his thing, now? Yes? (My note here was “this movie’s all sunflowery” and I had NO IDEA what I was talking about when I went back to look at it a day later. Luckily, meatfight and I have communication like that, unspoken, and she knew I meant that Mulder was going a bit overboard with the seeds. Sadly, I did not mean what truemyth suggested I might: "Forsooth, Skinner's head doth shine like the sun and his manner is as sweet as that of a flower." But it does, and it is.)
“They’re asking her for a narrative. They want to know why she was in the wrong building.”
“She was with me.”
“They want to blame us?” Mulder, they ALWAYS want to blame you! Why so surprised? I mean, they’re reaching more than usual here, but still.
“If they want somebody to blame, they can blame me. Agent Scully doesn’t deserve this.”
“She’s in there saying the same thing about you.”
They don’t even think about it, they’re both willing to take the fall, to save the other.
Gillian is really too short to pull off a skirt that long, but it’s still a super hot suit. A suit that, you know, maybe somebody who's 5'8" could probably pull off... I also covet her shoes, because they appear to be similar to the ones she wears at the end of "Amor Fati," and I've been looking for a reasonable facsimile of those bad boys for about 9 years. I dare to dream. Anyway, they really, really upped the tailoring budget for this thing. Also, for being shot a full year before, it doesn’t look dated at all, and it sort of…sartorially flows with seasons 5 and 6.
“But they’re the ones who put us together.”
“Because they wanted me to invalidate your investigations into the paranormal. But I think this goes deeper than that now.”
“This is not about you, Scully. They’re doing this to ME.” Apart from Mulder just being his regular, poor-me self, think about it-he’s saying that Scully being reassigned is being done to him. Because he cannot live without her. Like him being without her would be more painful for him than it would be for her to get a new assignment at some bland field office.
Hang on, Scully’s about to expositionize a little bit! “Mulder, I left behind a career in medicine because I thought that I could make a difference at the FBI.”
“…it just doesn’t hold the interest [IE, YOU] it once did. Not after all I’ve seen and done [tragically, NOT YOU].”
Both of you should quit! Ride off into the sunset right now and save yourselves some awful tragedy! Trust me, guys. It’s going to get worse.
God, it’s a little thing, but I absolutely love when she hands him his jacket, but won’t look at him. He’s staring at her, she knows it, but she won’t meet his eye as she says “good luck.” Like she knows that she can’t quite trust her resolve if she looks at him.
It’s kind of endearing that Mulder can’t really hold his liquor. (Still, he sobers up more quickly than anyone I’ve ever seen.)
Please, no one ever say the word “poopy” again, okay? Thanks.
So. Mulder’s exposition speech. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard (at least we get to hear the hilarious phrase “shit storm of alllll time”), but..do these things actually work for non-viewers? Anyone who saw this movie before seeing any episodes: did it help, or could you have followed things okay without it?
For a long time I thought “86 is your lucky number” meant that his tab was $86. Which is a lot of money, even if you’re getting top shelf shots. (Also, who has that kind of cash in their wallet? Not this girl.) But recently someone brought to my attention the idea that it probably refers to “eighty-sixed,” as in, “get out of the bar, you’re depressing the rest of the patrons, G-man.” Am I the only one who was confused by this?
Look at him in his sexy blue shirt. He looks good. I love all the blue shirts in this movie-I think this might actually be the first appearance of the blue shirt. Don’t quote me on it, but I can’t remember any earlier episodes where he wears one.
THERE IS WAY TOO MUCH PEEING GOING ON RIGHT NOW.
“I heard you come in here now and again, figured you’d be needing a little drinkie tonight.” This line always strikes me as silly, because it’s pretty much canon that Mulder drinks pretty rarely, right? I mean, the only times we see him drinking to DRINK are this and in "Syzygy," which doesn't really count. So while he certainly does his fair share of moping, I don’t buy that he’s ever moping into a glass of scotchy-scotch-scotch.
Chris Carter’s demonization of FEMA: how prescient! It’s cute, though, how FEMA in the ‘90s was apparently well-organized enough to be part of this huge conspiracy. How things change.
“I think you’re full of shit.” I want them to curse more!
Scully, all sad and awake, wearing lipstick and a bra with her silk PJs. She gets a briefly confused look on her face when she hears the knock. I’m not sure why. He’s been interrupting her beauty sleep for five years now. Although when she opens the door, she gives this nice, resigned, “I’ve been expecting you” look.
Listen, I love this scene. It’s one of my favorites. “What are you implying?” IMPLY AWAY! But no, sadly, he wants you to put clothes on, not take them off. Boo. But I just love the quiet urgency as he’s trying to convince her to get dressed and she’s trying to get him to tell her what the heck’s going on.
So. They’re pumping the black oil from the ground? But here’s what’s confusing. If they’re presumably using the black oil to infect people in an attempt at developing their vaccine, what of the bees and the cornfields? Because getting infected by the black oil doesn’t seem to…cause an alien to gestate in your belly. Whereas the bee does.
The translucent, jellied body is a great effect. (Which will later be kind of ripped off by Fringe in the opening of the Pilot. In a scene that was, itself, ripping off "Tempus Fugit"/"Max.")
“Listen, son, we don’t have time to dick around.” YES! For some reason, I really love the condescending “son,” and of course, “dick around.”
“There’s been some kind of cellular breakdown. It’s completely edematous.” I love that Mulder knows that all he has to do is get her there. She might be initially reluctant, but once she sees, say, a gooey body that has not been autopsied, she’s all, HAND ME THAT SCALPEL. Also, Scully, please remember: he always, always knows what’s up before you get there. Still, it’s nice that he has the decency to at least seem sheepish about what he was withholding.
“Negotiating a planned Armageddon” sounds really cool. But this is where the plot starts to go off the rails for me. I think Kurtzweil is saying that the Syndicate will release the virus, even though they have no vaccination for it yet. Why wouldn’t they just wait until they have the vaccination? Because what good is it to THEM if they do this? They’ll die, too. Or when he says “the timetable has been set,” is he just saying that the date has been set by the aliens, and the Syndicate has to release the virus on this agreed upon date, whether or not they’ve managed to come up with a vaccination? Why would they have agreed to that? Was it either that or...the aliens take over whenever they want?
“I NEED you there with me. I need your expertise.”
“I’m way past the point of common sense here.”
When Scully’s hiding underneath some gurneys, some yellow goo drips down to the floor.
The LOOK they share when she walks into the field office in Dallas. It’s like, everything else fades into the background as they focus on each other.
I adore the microscope eyebrow. It is the eyebrow against which all others must be measured.
It’s nice how the kid clambers up the slide to give the camera movement a motive. (HA HA, production classes, you were not a complete waste!)
Okay, Bronschweig is a real dope. When you realize that an alien has GESTATED-in a human host-and then birthed itself by exploding from said human host’s torso, maybe you shouldn’t hang out down in his underground lair, acting like it’s your cat that’s hiding under the couch.
“So much for little green men.” Here’s the thing: did they think it would be a gray? Why are this alien and the alien in “The Beginning” the only violent, clawy aliens we ever see? (Am I right about that?) Is he surprised it's not a "little green man"?
There’s a nice, eerie silence after the alien goes nuts and Bronschweig jabs him with the vaccine. But wait. Isn’t the vaccine supposed to be used on people, to prevent them from being infected, or to cure them of the infection? (The infection being the virus/alien.) I guess a vaccine theoretically still works if given directly “to” the virus itself, separate from a host?
Nice transition from the Laboratory of Horrors Where Your Friends Bury You Underground With A Murderous Alien to the wee British boy screaming.
But what’s up with the broken leg? I mean, who cares, right? Is it just so Well-Manicured Man can then be all, “I believe that children are our fuuuuture!” and give Mulder the vaccine?
Old dudes in a musty library! Because what do the kids love more than that in a summer blockbuster?
Apparently the virus has mutated, into a “new EBE.” But if that new EBE is Claws McGee, then was the original caveman alien something different?
The aliens were “using us all along.” This is something I’ve wondered often: how the hell does the Syndicate actually communicate with the aliens? Phone? Letter? Telepathy? meatfight and I decided recently it was probably through LJ. (your_alien_overlord.livejournal.com, obviously)
meatfight: "Dear sir or madam, I will leave you my child in exchange for the cure. You won't kill him, right?"
thelittlespy: "Uh...yeah! He will definitely survive! No worries."
meatfight: "Okay, see you at the hangar, your infinite alienness!"
thelittlespy: "LOL sounds good!"
meatfight: "Dear sir of madam, I am being burned up in a fire and I am very displeased with this turn of events. This was not what was agreed upon!!! x-("
thelittlespy: "This user has deleted his journal."
“No one believes Kurtzweil or his books. He’s a toiler. A crank.” “Mulder believes.”
“Kill Mulder, we risk turning one man’s quest into a crusade.” Looking at it from the writers' point of view, this is sort of the most perfectly elegant solution to why Mulder can’t ever be killed. Since we're always pretty sure a main character in a TV show isn't going to be killed, it's smart to have such a simple reason why. He's more valuable to the bad guys alive than dead. His death could potentially hurt their cause more than his meddling does.
“Then you must take away what he holds most valuable, that with which he cannot live without.” CUT TO SCULLY. (PS, add some more words to that sentence, please, Armin Mueller-Stahl. It still halfway makes sense, and somehow I don't think "sense" is what you were aiming for with this line reading.)
This is a gorgeous, dusty shot of the kids on bikes, talking to Mulder and Scully, with the sun dropping yolkily to the horizon. (The cap doesn't do it justice, but you know what it looks like.)
“Wanna buy a badge?”
Ooh, Mulder, give yourself more braking time when you’re approaching a stop sign! The brakes of your Lariat rental car thank you! (This public service announcement brought to you by my parents, who still get a little nervous riding in the car with me.)
Mulder makes a charming, scrunched up face as they’re trying to decide which way to turn.
“You’ve got two choices. One of them is wrong.” He gives her a really hot look here. Hotter than usual, I mean.
“Five years together, Scully, how many times have I been wrong. Never. Not driving, anyway.” I love this. It kind of reminds me of “I seem to recall you having some pretty extreme hunches.” “I never have.”
Keep your eyes peeled for Part II: thwarted kissing, car bombs and handily layered outerwear.