The X-Files/Headscratchers

At the joint U.S. military/FBI sham trial in series finale "The Truth", telepathic mind reader Gibson Praise is called in to offer defense for Mulder, affirming that he indeed can read people's thoughts. The judges panel is shown blinking confusingly while the prosecutor looks incredulous and then it just moves on. Alright... But then later, Agent Reyes testifies that Scully's Baby William demonstrated telekinetic powers and the prosecutor baits her to produce the child to prove these powers, something she cannot do as the baby was given up for adoption by this point of course. So why didn't the prosecutor ask for a demonstration of Gibson's telepathy then? It shouldn't have taken too much convincing. And why didn't Mulder's defense give that demonstration, which would have been a clear example of the paranormal and provided at least some incontrovertible evidence for their claims? Even if they were trying to protect Gibson, he had already voluntarily exposed himself to protect Mulder, so proving his powers was the next logical step in defending his testimony. Yet this isn't even considered? Unbelievable. Seems like just another arbitrary way the writers could prevent Mulder and Scully from actually presenting the proof they worked so hard to uncover, but in this case the failure to even mention it drives it in to clear Wall Banger territory.

Not really a complaint, and since I've only watched five episodes, but how do the rest of the FBI (or other government agencies) handle the information on Aliens and Monsters and AI and blahblahblah...

• Yes, it's a stupid question, I know.
  • It's probably handled the same way as all odd claims. Forgotten, covered up, and thrown away.
  • Or just toss it in the basement and let that weird guy down there take care of it.

Why does Mulder always drop his gun? It seems like every single time he confronts the alien/monster/mutant of the week he always drops his gun. It always made me wonder why he even bothered to carry the stupid thing.

• Rule of Drama, probably.
• This is actually lampshaded in the episode Nisei, where Mulder is kicked to the ground, disarming him in the process. He then proceeds to whip out his throw-down (a back-up pistol in an ankle holster). Mulder even states he got this because he "got tired of losing his gun."

There's a 5th season episode, "Travelers", that's always bugged me. A man in the 1950's had been surgically grafted with a spider-like creature that lived inside him and crawled out of his mouth and into other people's mouths to eat their internal organs, making him a Body Horror vampire thingy who angsts over his condition. But the spider's not physically attached to him. And when they did an autopsy of another man who killed himself after the procedure was done to him, his spider-thingy was still alive. So... why doesn't he just walk away when his pet spider's crawled out of his mouth and is doing its digesting thing? The episode always cut away as the spider was emerging and crawling back in, so we never really saw how that works. He doesn't need it to stay alive, and it apparently doesn't need him either (it survived for days inside the other guy's body). Does the host go catatonic or something? Is his brain somehow linked with it so that he needs it to be conscious? But this was the 1950's, and the episode described the experiment as gruesome, fairly primitive grafting surgery done by former Nazi doctors. It's a minor plot point in a Monster of the Week episode, but I still can't figure it out.

• Okay, now that I think about it, maybe he could be a little more heroic and grab, capture or just squash the spider thing rather than just running off, but still... for that matter, what would've happened if one of his victims had managed to throw the thing away, or trap it under a box or something?

• The episode "Calusari" really is starting to bug this troper. Why is the grandmother so secretive about all this? Why don't the Calusari explain? Why doesn't Charlie's mother simply overrule her son and actually talk to the doctors? The whole thing is almost like an episode of Rescue Me when it comes to bad decisions!
  • Who would have believed the grandmother, or the Calusari? That would just sound like crackpot superstition to most people. As for why the mother doesn't talk to the doctors before she takers her son home...yeah, I got nothing. That was just dumb on her part.

Scully's skepticism about aliens is established in the pilot when Mulder asks her "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?" Scully answers "Logically, I would have to say no. Given the distances need to travel from the of reaches of space the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilities." Which is a valid point, but it doesn't answer his question. He's asking her if she believes in life on other planets, not if aliens are interfering with this one.

• She does clarify this later, in "War of the Coprophages", when she says she finds the idea of life on other planets in general too far-fetched, as life on this one came about because of a very unique sense of circumstances unlikely to occur anywhere else.

The fact that Mulder and Scully aren't very good at actually doing anything to close their cases. They usually figure out what's going on, or at least advance a theory that's basically correct, but half the time the monster has already either killed a bunch of people or survives the end of the episode, which makes one wonder what happened after they've left the area. Did the fluke man in "The Host" just...stop killing people, or leave? At the end of "Ghost in the Machine," the AI is clearly still alive, looking right at the jerk FBI agent who tempts fate by saying "I'm gonna figure this thing out if it kills me!" Did the AI just change its mind? Two of the inbred hicks in "Home" got away, and it's pretty much stated outright that they're going to start again somewhere else. You'd think Mulder and Scully would pay more attention, unless the monsters of the week who aren't quite dead just stop killing people and mysteriously vanish.

• Yes, these The End - or Is It? endings bear some serious Fridge Horror if you think about it.
• But, wouldn't you say that being unable to completely close cases is a theme--not in those exact words, but think about? When there are only two people trying to solve the mysteries of the world and dozens of other people trying to keep them quiet, what do you do? Despite, the open-ended cases, they realize that if it weren't for them, those people have no one. Even if it isn't absolute closure, there are still answers. It is scary that some of these monsters are still alive and kicking, but Mulder and Scully can only do so much--they are superheros and they don't have all the answers.
  • Exactly. Plus, watch each Monster of the Week episode. I like to try and figure out what would have happened if Mulder and Scully hadn't been there. Quite often, even in the times the Monster gets away, the pair do save lives! There would often be many more deaths if they hadn't shown up. You reference Home - that still means that only two of them got away. Mulder and Scully do make a difference, just...as much as two people with all odds stacked against them can.

I'm really confused about "Ice." How did the lady who ends up infected with the parasite get infected? Mulder was attacked by the infected dog (though it didn't break the skin), Scully and the one doctor were exposed to infected blood, and the geologist was handling the ice cores. How was she exposed? When?

• It's based on The Thing. In that movie, the audience doesn't get to know who is infected and how they got infected, either (at least for some characters). That's the whole point, and greatly amplifies the horror. At the end, you really don't know if the last two survivors are infected or not.

My major mystery of the last two seasons: did nobody working on the show realize that the alliterative words "super soldiers" sounds really silly when said over and over and over again? "So-called super soldiers" is even worse!

In Fallen Angel where does Mulder get the sudden knowledge to criticize the cover-up team's tactics? For all he knows this alien is the extraterrestrial equivalent of a serial killer and hunting it down is the reasonable reaction.