The X-Files Season 4, Episode 5: The Field Where I Died

I think we're in a stretch of episodes I don't really get?

This one is pretty bizarre, and as in some others, ends with a complete failure by Mulder and Scully to actually save any potential victims (and there are a LOT in this one) but only a lot of philosophical poetry recitation on Mulder's part.

Actually, it starts with the philosophising, doesn't it? (And ends with it.)

I'm pretty sure the field they used to film this is the same location they used for 'Home', which is a little distracting. Thankfully, though, the episode is nowhere near as gruesome.

In fact, 'The Field Where I Died' is pretty tame when it comes to violence, since most of the deaths are from poison and not physical assault. So this did turn out to be more Jonestown than Waco.

And there's no resolution, really. Everyone dies and Mulder is sad, because it turns out that he knew Melissa in their past lives, which crossed paths in the 1860s. WHAT.

No, really, what? Is this going to be a Thing now? Mulder believes in regression hypnosis and past lives, but it's never come up before, and for all I know, it never will again. He's clearly got a connection to these past lives, and other people's past lives, but why and how and does it matter? In a somewhat Wizard of Oz moment, he sees people from the past represented by people from the present - his sister is there, as is Scully, as is the Cancer Man (one of these days I'll write a filk about him to the tune of Candy Man) in the form of a Nazi officer, leading Mulder to claim that evil returns as evil. And given what we know about the Cancer Man's involvement in Operation Paperclip, perhaps the Nazi analogy isn't very far from the truth.

Melissa certainly seemed to access her past lives, and I guess Melissa she did have Dissociative Identity Disorder, which allowed her past lives to manifest in her, as opposed to Mulder, who does not, and therefore never actually slips into another personality, even if they are all represented in him all the time anyway. At least that's what I took away from it.

But again, this was an episode highlighted by the interactions of Mulder and Scully, specifically the scene right after he undergoes the hypnosis. I like that Scully thinks the past lives, whether they're present or not - and we'll get to that in a second - aren't really relevant. She says she wouldn't do anything differently, minus the Flukeman - and who can blame her? - even if she had known she and Mulder shared a past. She's very much into this whole 'free will' concept.

But before she sees the process work, she's obviously skeptical. She believes, and maybe rightly so, that introducing the hypnosis will only further traumatise Melissa, but seems to be hesitant about accepting the idea of regressing her to past lives, and Mulder naturally criticises her skepticism because she so obviously witnessed Melissa already accessing those lives, thoughts, and memories.

Once she sees Mulder under the hypnosis, she is both appreciative of his story and seems to be willing to believe that such a thing is even possible, so maybe she's making progress on the whole blind skepticism thing. And actually, despite my not really understanding very much about this episode (since hey, again, they didn't really solve anything) I really liked the whole hypnosis scene. It was extremely well acted by Duchovny and Anderson, and maybe in hindsight feels out of place in an otherwise strange episode.

And then the final scene repeats the opening, with Mulder reciting poetry that seems to bear some relation to this episode, but I doubt has any significance in the future. (I hope it doesn't - like 'Syzygy', I think the events of this one are best just dumped on the floor and forgotten.)