The X-Files Season 5, Episodes 6/7: Christmas Carol/Emily

NOPE. A world of NOPE. I have no idea what the hell is going on or why. This was a very uncomfortable hour and a half.

I'm not into children. I don't really get people's obsession with reproduction or young kids. I don't find them particularly cute, and feel no parental instinct at all. These are just some of the many reasons I will never have children. And while I can understand, at least on an academic level, the desire of people to have children and their disappointment if they find out they can't, I still can't really identify with it, because I'd have the opposite reaction. If I found out I was unable to impregnate anyone, I'd be thrilled.

So while these episodes were good and interesting, and yes, heartbreaking at times, I felt there was something I just couldn't connect to. I just can't respond to these two episodes the way I'm sure a lot of people probably did.

Otherwise, there was a lot here to digest. The shape-shifters are back, and it seems they've orchestrated pretty much everything, at least in this particular storyline. Given that we don't see the Cancer Man or any of his associates, I'm now beginning to think there are several different conspiracy threads going on with different goals and different methodologies. Maybe they are all working together, but right now, it looks like they're two (or more) arms of a large conspiracy, each of which is responsible for a small piece. The people who abducted Scully are not the same people running this operation, but they're obviously in limited contact and share certain things. Like Scully's ova.

Which, by the way, how the hell did Mulder know that and Scully not? Does that strike anyone else as kind of disturbingly creepy? She seemed truly shocked when he announced it, and regardless of how he came by that information, maybe he should have shared it with her first and let her decide what to do with it? I know he said he thought he was protecting her, but it seems like an awfully sexist way to go about it. Not to mention, in the entire scene with the man they were talking to about the custody case, Scully did not speak once. Mulder spoke entirely for her. I get that she was shocked, but again, if she had known all this information herself, then maybe she could have been the one to bring it up?

And the more I see Scully's family, the more I dislike pretty much all of them. Except Dana herself, that is. Bill is a total jerk, and he'd probably prefer the term 'old-fashioned' to 'misogynistic', but seriously. Every time he was on the screen, I pretty much shouted, "SHUT UP, BILL!" because he kept trying to tell Scully he knew better than she did what she wanted or what she should do.

And their mother is really not much better. Over the past several episodes she's appeared in, she's acted extremely selfishly regarding her daughter's life. She's not trying to be quite as outwardly controlling as Bill is, and she at least seems a bit more accepting of some decisions, but on the whole, she just seems to be handling things in a rather unpleasant way.

The actor playing Emily definitely helped play into the notion that children on The X-Files are not to be trusted. She was good in the role, but still a little bit on the creepy side. Obviously she was innocent in all of this, unlike some of the children in past episodes like 'Eve'. And I don't think the intention was ever to mislead us into thinking she was anything but innocent. Maybe it all goes back to my lack of interest in young children that what some people would find cute I might find creepy.

These episodes also served as a pretty huge reminder that while we've seen many bits and pieces of various nefarious schemes coming together throughout the show, we don't really know the end goal (there are still five, maybe six now, distinct but somewhat adjacent storylines). We've heard the term 'colonisation' thrown around a lot, and we know there have been genetic experiments, egg harvesting, cloning, dental implants, shape-shifting bounty hunters, and a mysterious black oozing goo that doesn't seem to be particularly related to this plot.

So maybe someone is building an army? A smallpox immune army to be able to withstand the smallpox delivering bees and create a surviving race of super soldiers? Knowing the goal might help Mulder and Scully better fight the enemies, but it seems the people (or aliens) behind this plot are always two or three steps ahead.

And then there's the whole matter of Scully getting these mysterious phone calls from inside the housethat are traced to the Sim home, but were never placed by anyone there, and just happen to lead Scully to the crime scene. What I liked about this development at first was that in 'Christmas Carol', Mulder appears in only one scene, so the entire episode, Scully is the one playing his usual role and being treated as he typically is when he acts on suspicion that something is not what it seems.

Given the rather far-reaching implications of the plots of these episodes, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of these artificial breeding experiments and any associated horror that goes with them.

Also, perhaps it wasn't a big deal in 1997, but now it seems the last name, 'Sim', would be a rather unfortunate one to have. (I also initially thought 'Emily Sim' could be an anagram, and then considered how much cooler it would have been if her name had instead been Emily Sams (or Emily Mass, I suppose), which would anagram to 'my Melissa', providing yet another disturbing connection to Scully and her family.)