I already get the sense, two episodes in, that season three is going to be where this show goes from merely 'great' to 'fucking phenomenal'. The stakes are high immediately, the writing is solid, the characters grow (well, sort of) and the conspiracy deepens.
Season 3. It seems to be when a lot of shows hit their stride, doesn't it?
OK, first of all, I have to get this out of the way.
Scully, you have SEEN aliens. You have witnessed evidence that something was done to you after Duane Barry kidnapped you. You have been in a mine with millions of records, including one for the mysteriously disappeared Samantha Mulder. HOW ARE YOU STILL REFUSING TO BELIEVE THESE EXPERIMENTS WERE REAL? Jesus H. Christ, Scully, even I believe them now. At least in the context of the show.
OK, there. That felt better.
Also, the combination '2-7-8-2-8' shouldn't work because that's not e. e ≈ 2.71828...
Anyway. This is probably going to be rather rambly.
This two-parter to kick off season 3 picks up more or less at the end of 'Anasazi'. But not quite. We still don't know what happened to Mulder for a little while, during which time we see that Scully cannot find Mulder, believes him to be dead, and then is suspended from the FBI and walks all the way to her mother's house for a completely heartbreaking scene (though far from the most shocking or painful in either episode).
Of course, Mulder turns out to be alive (how could he not?) and unfortunately, they seem to leave out the part about how he actually made it out of the box car, but I guess seeing the alien or hybrid skeleton in his hiding place would indicate there was some exit from the box car into the ground. But that's the only hint we even get of it, I kind of wish they'd gone into more detail there (maybe they will later).
I think the real meat of this story is in the second episode, 'Paper Clip', which really explores not only the conspiracy of the Death Eaters and Cancer Man, who is clearly not the one in charge in that group, but certainly has enough influence in the FBI to angrily yell at Skinner about his unwillingness to make deals. I think William B. Davis's acting kind of falls down here, unfortunately. He's good when he's dark and quietly menacing, but whenever he has to play anything other than calm and creepy it comes off as so exaggerated it's a little distracting. This, as opposed to his later scene when he hears of Krycek's survival and rather amusingly plays out the other side of a completely different conversation to hide his disappointment from the Death Eaters.
Skinner again proves himself to be a total badass in these episodes, despite being ambushed and physically taken down by Krycek and another henchman. His scene at the end with Albert Hosteen is excellent, and whether or not he's bluffing, Cancer Man clearly knows he can't risk it, which means Mulder and Scully should be safe, at least for a little while.
Speaking of Skinner, his final scene with Scully in 'The Blessing Way' and leading in to 'Paper Clip' is another of the many excellent scenes in these episodes. Scully is so certain he's there to kill her, though to be fair, he hasn't exactly given her many reasons to trust that he's not entirely in with Cancer Man, so she kind of has cause for her actions. His lack of fear (or at least lack of visible fear) is pretty amazing, too. I guess I should expect that from someone who managed to achieve the rank of assistant director at the FBI. Still. Bad. Ass. (Wait, that means something different, doesn't it? Oh, you know what I mean!)
In terms of the actual plot, we get the highly fictionalised story of the otherwise very real Operation Paperclip (it's one word, even though the episode title is two), which is horrifying enough as a real thing that happened, and interestingly twisted into the conspiracy of The X-Files. As far as we know, the real Operation Paperclip did not involve human or alien experimentation, but given the nature of the experiments the Nazis did on human subjects, I certainly wouldn't put it past them to at least be interested in such a thing after the war ended.
And of course it is Operation Paperclip that has Mulder and Scully running around trying to prevent a
Though in Scully's case, it wouldn't really have mattered where she was, since it seems that when she was abducted in season 2, someone implanted a tracker in her neck. In a way, she should thank Skinner for suspending her, otherwise she never would have had to walk through the metal detectors at the front entrance. Now she not only knows that she had some kind of tracking device in her, but she can at least more safely assume that maybe not every single one of her movements is being followed. Yes, she's probably still being stalked and watched by Death Eaters, but at least they can't just find her by looking at a computer.
One of the other interesting (and disturbing!) bits of information we get through all this is not just that these experiments are very real and files (lots and LOTS of files!) on millions of people are contained in a secret vault in an old mine in West Virginia, but that the abductions of both Samantha Mulder and Dana Scully are connected to them. We learn, in a heartbreaking scene with Mulder's mother, that his father inadvertently sold out Samantha, and she was taken as a means of threatening Bill Mulder and maintaining his silence. (Though it is also implied that she is not dead, so yay?)
It makes me think that none of the 'alien' abductions - Duane Barry, Samantha, Scully - have actually been at the hands of aliens or that anyone was taken aboard spaceships at all. These abductions were all carried out by the government for their secret projects in Operation Paperclip, and we're starting to get a picture of exactly why these people were chosen. Cancer Man even alludes to it in 'One Breath', when he indicates specifically that Scully was 'returned to' Mulder. If there was a reason for returning her, there was probably a reason for taking her, too.
And speaking of Scully, and family, there's the third super heartbreaking sequence of these episodes, the mistaken murder of Melissa Scully by incompetent professional killers, where we see Scully's helplessness as she cannot visit her dying sister (not to mention a good bit of survivor's guilt since she knows she was the intended target). And Skinner, who really finally does seem to care about these people. He's not Cancer Man, who simply uses people until there's no more use for them.
Like Krycek. Oh man, I have no idea what his future story will hold, but I'm pretty sure if he has any outlet now it will be the FBI. I guess he just has to convince them not to arrest him, and to do that, he'll probably have to give them some information on Cancer Man and the Death Eaters. Will we find out his name? His past? Does Krycek even know any of that, or are these people like the actual Death Eaters from Harry Potter, where only one or two knew any small part of a plan that would all come together with Voldemort's say so? It seems that organisations like this would operate in as 'safe' a way as possible. Losing a person means losing only part of the plan, and having someone turn against them only reveals a small part of the plan.
Of course, we've seen inside the lair. And it's a disturbing lair, and Cancer Man is clearly not as respected in that organisation as he is within the FBI. But we, as viewers, will get to see the whole plan long before Mulder and Scully and Skinner (and Krycek?) figure it out.
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