#txf roadrunners

[that--funny--feeling]

Why Existence is the perfect conclusion to TXF: my take on S8

William's storyline is the last X-File of the season (of the entire serie for some) and I think that it contains the essence of the show and the characters and that's why S8 should have been the last one in my opinion.

This analysis will aim to examine both positive and negative factors of S8. I'll try to do my best, but this is also a very personal meta. I ask you to hang on with me, if you can.

S8 overall impressions

I concluded S8 one week ago now and I had time to reflect with a cool head. I still think this is the worst season of the show (if we don't include 9 to 11 and I'm not going to talk about them here and I'd like to keep ignoring them :D ). Mulder's absence heavy influences the season obviously, the atmosphere is tragic and dramatic. It's a bit of a shock for the fans, since the light and fun air we had in season 6 and especially 7. Even though I liked Doggett and Reyes and I'm glad they joined the team, the mytharc episodes were way more then usual and as usual not handled well (starting with Within/Without), also some episodes were really just bad (Badlaa) and other make suffer Scully again and again uselessly (Roadrunners). How many times can Scully be afraid to have a miscarriage? She's pregnant and alone ffs, she had enough. All the fixation on her baby and people who wanted to hurt him or both of them really made me sick at some point.

Mulder's return makes things better, if we ignore his OOC behaviour in Three Words. I get his PTSD and feeling out of place in a world that went on without him. And I expected him to be territorial about the X-Files with Doggett, but he talks to Scully like he resents she's moving out of work because of her pregnancy. He'd be the first one to explode with joy for her (for them both), finding out she's going to have a baby. I'm glad he behaves normally from Empedocles on. Mulder's resurrection in This is not happening/Deadalive is a bit all over the place (they think he's dead but in the end he's not but meanwhile they buried him for three months? And then they need a vaccine for him to not turn into an aline but in the end they don't? O-ok. What's going to think Maggie Scully about all of this? Poor soul) but ok, let's go on.

Scully's pregnancy

Through all the season, we don't exactly know what to think about Scully's pregnancy. She wasn't supposed to have children after her abduction. Then Mulder tells her he found the vial with some of her ova. She takes them to Dr. Parenti and he says she has a chance. We also find out Dr. Parenti seems to be involved in aliens' experiments. In the end IVF doesn't work. So it seems whatever he tried to do with her, he failed, but the question remains: how is possibile for Scully to be pregnant?

Even Mulder doesn't know what to think. And I don't think his confusion is about the who's the daddy stupid topic, but about how it was possibile for her to carry a child in the first place. He's worried someone is using her again and she will suffer again. I don't think he has doubts that, experiments aside, he's the only one that can be the father of that baby. And even though he wasn't the biological one, he'd accept the role as the father all the same.

Aside from that, I think this baby is the first chance in Mulder and Scully's life to find their own normalcy, to start a life aside from work, to step aside from their save-the-world-responsabilities. They suffered enough for a lifetime afterall.

Getting out of the damn car

Mulder isn't in the FBI anymore. Scully is in maternity leave but she's not sure she'll be back. The X-Files were hard to leave behind for both of them, but they realized they would reach an end of the road sooner or later. And the end is now. We see a switch from Mulder's moment of closure about Samantha. He feels free and lighter, the atmosphere in S7 is fun and playful. As I tried to show in my fanvid, I think not only Scully, but Mulder too seeks a simpler life (maybe normalcy wasn't the right term. Neither Mulder nor Scully were ever proper afterall). At the end of S7 they both are getting there:

But even before Mulder's abduction, there's always the dilemma: Mulder's personal quest may be over, but what about looking for the Truth? Unmask the corrupt government and its secrets? This quest is maybe endless and both Mulder and Scully know about it.

Will the duty always be before the personal happiness?

Doggett & Reyes

Here they come, a skeptic and a believer again, to achieve the needed balance. I liked how the writers didn't try to replace Mulder with a similar character. Doggett is way different: he's an old school policeman, he seems reliable and tough. The sheriffs respect him and don't go as far away as possible from him like it happens with some other spooky and weird guy. He has male friends and does manly things. But he's also lonely and he's lost somebody he deeply cared for because of something he can't explain. So he's drawn to the X-Files in more ways than one.

Reyes always smiles and that made me fall for her. She's a breath of fresh air in a dark and melancholic season. She doesn't know well Scully, but she's ready to help, because she trusts Doggett and that's enough for her. She respects Mulder even before knowing him, because Scully does and that's enough for her. She's ready to do everything for a cause that she cares for and her amazement and sense of justice really reminded me of the feeling of the first season.

I adore how Scully and Doggett's trust is built case after case, I love how Scully sees something of herself in him (his need to find practical proofs and his stubborness on not believing the fantastic) and viceversa (Doggett is protective of her and her child because he doesn't want her to go through what happened to him). I love how Scully likes Reyes from day one, because she's fun and weird and she reminds her of her dead sister (this really warms my heart).

I love how Mulder obviously is territorial about his department with Doggett but then starts to respect and trust him enough with the X-Files. I love how Mulder sees how spontaneous and stubborn Reyes is and says she'd be useful in the X-Files.

The way both Mulder and Scully pass the baton to them really does things to me. Because maybe the quest to the truth really is infinite, but they understand they can find people honest and passionate about that just like them. And after all these years, they can rest, knowing that someone is still out there fighting.

William

As I anticipated, many things are said about this baby. He may be an hybrid by the aliens, he may be a supersoldier by the army, he may even be a real miracle by God. But I like to think it's none of these things.

William is really the union of Mulder and Scully. When the IVF fails, Mudler says:

Mulder, the furthest man from religion, says it to Scully, because that's what he does best: he believes. He never gives up no matter what (he neither did when Scully had cancer). He knows she needs to hear it and he needs it too. He's ready to believe in a miracle for her.

I don't think William is a miracle in the christian sense. I think he's a miracle, because it's the most improbable but plausible thing that could happen in a sea of paranormal possibilities. What if there was a 1% chance for Scully to become pregnant in a conventional way and they fell in that 1%? He's the essence of both their genetics and their points of view. What if he is just a normal boy?

Because it's theirs, their baby, their miracle. And if I have to choose what to believe, I want to believe that.

The end.

My TXF posts and videos.

[x-files-scripts]

The X-Files - “Roadrunners”

Written by Vince Gilligan

September 11, 2000 (PINK)

An uncomfortable moment as Scully and Doggett start to feel out their professional relationship...

Cut beat: Scully stomps on the slug tail...

Scully almost confesses her secret to Doggett...

[backintimeforstuff]

Eighteen miles from the state road in the middle of Utah, ignorance has never been quite so hellish. Surrounded by cultists in her last moments, Scully wishes Mulder would come for her. But this is the first time in her life that he isn't going to save her.

___

Rewatched Roadrunners, had a breakdown, wrote an angst fic. Enjoy. ❤

[benoitblanc]

the alien bounty hunter is kind of an incredible character because he's just so cartoonish and it's so funny. the smoking man has his whole god complex thing, krycek needs to be morally ambiguous to keep up the whole homoerotic deal he's got going on with mulder, the syndicate are all a bunch of ineffectual old men, but the alien bounty hunter has one job and that job is to fuck up mulder and scully as much as possible. and by god he's going to fucking do it

[thexfilesbracket]

The Goldberg Variation - A man is tossed off the top of a 29 story building by gangsters. Amazingly, he gets up and walks away unscathed. Mulder and Scully investigate when Mulder suspects this man may have paranormal abilities. The man in question may just be the luckiest man on Earth.

Roadrunners - Doggett is a little dismayed when Scully investigates a murder in a barely inhabited town in Utah without him. When Scully's car breaks down and she finds the town people aren't as sweet as they seem she struggles to find a way out of the demented town.

[ren3gade]

scully is amazing in this freakishly weird episode

she sits this guy down is like, ok. bad news. you have a parasite in your spine. i have no idea what it is, or what to do about it. the people taking care of you are a bunch of weirdos and i'm pretty sure they're going to kill you. (all this after she pulled a piece of the thing off with like pliers or something, uuuugdsalsdjf;aksdf)

the guy's like, wow ok. this is a lot to take in. (suspiciously calm)

scully's like listen i'm gonna look around, do you know how to use a gun?

THEN SHE GIVES HIM HER GUN

scully girlfriend

love of my life

you better thank your lucky stars mr. dogett is on his way to arrive just in time to cut a parasite out of you cause you are definitely not making it out of this one solo!!!

[teenie-xf]

Top 5 episodes of TXF that you dislike

Thanks for asking @scullys-scalpel! I had to go through the episode list to remind myself of the ones I didn't like, and there were more than I was aware of (looking at you seasons 9 and 11...). BUT I was asked for my top 5 dislikes, so I went with the ones I have a visceral negative reaction to.

1. #Gender Bender (#s1e14)

I first watched this episode when I very, very young (like we're talking 10 years old) and I just thought it was so fucked up on so many levels LOL. Not only did the whole sex-pheromone/handing touching thing weird me out but I was also very unsettled by Scully throwing up after escaping Brother Andrew's seduction (I mean, I get it). I have a weird phobia around vomiting and combined with this ep's weirdness my anxiety was ratcheted up, so it's not one that I have revisited.

2. #The Gift (#s8e11)

Which brings me to this ep lol. I just can't. I could barely get through the first airing and haven't watched it since.

3. #Firewalker (#s2e09)

I am putting this ep on my list because of how much it terrified me as a kid. I was about 11 years old when it aired and it gave me such nightmares LOL. I had built it up so much in my mind that I avoided it in syndication and hadn't watched it since its first airing. That is, until I was showing the series to my husband and he made me watch it. Now, as an adult, it is much-less scary than I remembered but I nevertheless still turned my head when the spores burst through people's necks. The scene that absolutely terrifies me (still to this day) is when Scully finds an infected Jesse who is making those inhuman gasping sounds. It's a shame that this episode resides in my fear-centre as I completely missed the fact that Bradley Whitford played Trepkos until this most recent viewing.

4. #Roadrunners (#s8e04)

The saving grace of this episode is, of course, Gillan's acting but that's really about it. I remember thinking "what the hell did I just watch?" after it aired. The concept is just so bizarre and I thought it was ill-timed what with Scully's pregnancy. I'm sure that the writers thought that it only enhanced the urgency of the storyline by putting her and her unborn child's life in peril, but after having just come off the nail-biting season premiere, I thought it was too much, too soon to put Scully through that trauma. Not to mention that such physical trauma would likely put her pregnancy in serious jeopardy. It was just such an ill-conceived episode.

5. #En Ami (#s7e15)

I immediately disliked this episode from the first time it aired as it raised very serious questions about Scully's consent and bodily autonomy, that weren't really dealt with (until that infamous, completely inappropriate, retcon job in season 11, which was such a cop-out IMO). I was well into highschool when this aired and even then I remember being so disturbed by the implications that Scully was drugged and later undressed (and god knows what else) by CSM while she was unconscious. Not only that, but I thought the whole 'adventure' was completely out of character for her and such a slap in the face to Mulder. Sure, he's ditched her countless times before without rhyme or reason, but what she did was beyond the pale: no matter her so-called 'for humanity' motivation, she went off with the ONE PERSON who has SINGLE-HANDEDLY orchestrated so much destruction in Mulder's life. Obviously this created some very serious tension between them (that, I have to admit, is handled so deliciously in fanfic), but I found it jarring that there could be this level of betrayal in one episode (so shortly after Mulder lost his mother and put the mystery of his sister to rest) and a (presumed) consummation of their relationship a mere two episodes later. It just doesn't compute for me. I understand that the impetus for this episode was Bill Davis wanting an opportunity to work more with Gillian, and kudos to that I guess, but the storyline and its implications are so problematic that I just can't respect it.

And there you have it! My top 5 most disliked X Files episodes. Thanks for reading :-)

[moiraiinesedai]

THE X-FILES | Dana Scully in Roadrunners (8x04)

[freckleslikestars]

Telling Mom

Follow up to A Shoulder to Cry On - I’d recommend reading it, but it’s not 100% imperitive. Scully tells her mom about her pregnancy and Mulder’s disappearance after the rather awful date Maggie sends her on.

@xfilesbingo prompt: Maggie Scully

Rating T, implied MSR

1930 words, read here on AO3

She felt sick as she sat in her car outside her mom’s house, trying to figure out how she was going to explain everything she’d been hiding. She desperately didn’t want to go in there, didn’t want to see her mother’s disappointment. But she’d called earlier in the day and asked how the date went, suggested they discuss it over dinner. And she couldn’t exactly decline.

She was going to have to do it at some point, she knew; couldn’t exactly hide a baby forever. But, God, she had hoped she could put it off for a few more weeks at least, maybe another month or so. She shook her head and took a deep breath before turning the ignition off and stepping out of the car, looking up at her mother’s house with a sense of dread. It had always exuded a warmth that made her feel safe, but now...scared maybe wasn’t the word for it, but she certainly wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation about to take place.

Ten steps up the front path, and she was knocking on the door; fists balled tightly at her sides as her heart pounded with anxiety. The door was pulled open, warm light spilling out and her mother smiling down at her, ‘Dana, come in, come in.’

‘Hi, mom,’ she gave a weak smile, followed her through to the kitchen, ‘how’s your week been?’

Her mother started puttering around, laying the kitchen table and removing a casserole from the oven, pouring two glasses of red wine and serving two portions, ‘oh, so-so. Bill rang; he’s being deployed again, so he was thinking I might like to spend a couple months in San Diego helping Tara with Matty and the new baby. You have got time off to go visit them when the baby’s born, haven’t you?’

Crap. She’d forgotten about the impending arrival of a new niece or nephew, ‘I, uh...no. Things have been...I’ve been dealing with some things, and it completely slipped my mind. Sorry.’

‘Well, I’m sure you can talk to Fox about covering for you so you can take a week or two off; heaven knows you work hard enough to deserve it.’

Her chest tightened, and she croaked out a quiet ‘Mom, I-‘

‘Now, tell me about Thursday night. How was it? Were you nice?’

‘Mom-‘

‘Dana, please tell me you were nice to him?’

She cringed, nodded half-heartedly, picking at a dinner roll, ‘yeah, I was nice, but it’s not going anywhere.’

Her mother gave an exasperated, disappointed sigh, ‘did you even try?’

She swallowed, shook her head, ‘no, Mom. I didn’t try. He’s a nice guy, but he’s not-‘ he’s not Mulder, ‘he’s not for me.’ She took a breath, ‘Mom, I have to talk to you about something. Something important. And I need you not to interrupt, and I need you to accept what I’m going to say without overreacting,’ her voice quavered slightly, and she stood up to pour herself a glass of water, keeping her back to her mother and her fist clenched on the edge of the counter. ‘I...’ she hesitated, inhaling sharply, ‘I’m pregnant. And I’ve known for about a month now, and I wanted to tell you, I did, but...I just didn’t know how to. I mean...we didn’t even think it could happen, all the doctors said it couldn’t, but it did, and I was in the hospital for about a week, and I wanted to tell you then, but I also wanted to be sure, because it’s impossible. And then...I just couldn’t.’

She jumped when her mother’s hand covered her own, ‘that’s wonderful news, Dana.’ Scully nodded, the floodgates breaking as she dissolved into sobs. ‘Oh, come here, Darling,’ she was engulfed in her mother’s arms, shaking violently with her tears, ‘what’s the matter, Baby?’

‘Mulder’s missing,’ she cried into Maggie’s shoulder, ‘and everyone thinks he’s dead, and he can’t be, he can’t be dead because I never even got to tell him, and we tried so hard, and I don’t know how to do this alone.’

‘Oh, Dana,’ she sighed, combing her fingers through her daughter’s hair, ‘Sweetheart, what do you mean, missing?’

‘They took him, Mom. They took him like they took me,’ another wave of sobs wracked through her, ‘I was supposed to be with him, and I wasn’t, and-‘

She cupped her daughter’s cheek, and kissed her crumpled brow, ‘it’s going to be okay, Honey.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Well, why don’t we start by putting the kettle on? We’ll have a cup of tea, and maybe things will look a little better.’

She gave a wet, garbled chuckle and snuffled noisily, ‘I’ve been trying that for a month, and it’s not worked.’

Maggie gave a sympathetic smile and tucked a strand of fiery hair behind her ear, ‘it won’t be a miracle cure, I’ll give you that, but at least it will calm you down,’ she released her and started bustling around the kitchen, filling the kettle and covering over the abandoned casserole. A tub of rocky road ice cream was dug out from the back of the freezer, and two spoons were fetched, whilst she told Dana to choose a mug and tea from the cupboard. By the time their tea was steeping, they’d settled on the couch with the tub of ice cream balanced between them, and Maggie was studying her daughter’s profile as she dug into the tub. ‘There’s something else bothering you.’

‘Isn’t Mulder being missing and being pregnant enough?’ she grumbled.

‘Yes, it’s more than enough to deal with. But there’s something else on your mind.’

‘No.’

She gave a weary sigh, ‘don’t lie to me, Dana. What’s wrong?’ She mumbled something Maggie couldn’t hear. ‘Speak up, or I can’t help.’

‘You’re disappointed in me.’

‘What? Why would I be disappointed in you, Dana?’

Scully gave a non-committal shrug and cringed in on herself, not meeting her mother’s eye, ‘because. Because I’m pregnant and unmarried, and I’m gonna end up a single mom, and I didn’t tell you, and I didn’t tell you about Mulder and I and-‘

‘Dana, do you really think I care?’

‘What?’

‘Do you really think I care that you’re not married?’

‘But...I thought-‘

‘You thought what? That you’d turn up on my doorstep, pregnant and unmarried, and I’d, what, disown you?’ she shrugged, and Maggie sighed, ‘I don’t know. Maybe...maybe if I hadn’t lost so many of my children already, maybe if you were younger and it had come out of nowhere, I would have been angry. Yes, maybe even disappointed. But you’re thirty-six, Dana. You’re having a child with a man with whom you’ve been very close for seven years.’ She took a long sip of her tea, furrowed her brow as she tried to formulate what she wanted to say, ‘Dana, you have been through so much hardship these past years. If this is what you want, I’d never be disappointed in you for it.’

‘What if Mulder’s never returned?’

She took her daughter’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it, ‘you were returned to us. I’m sure Mulder will be too.’

‘I don’t think it’s the same, Mom.’

‘Well, in that case, if he isn’t returned, you just have to keep going. Day by day until it gets a little easier. You keep going because your child needs you to. You forget that much of your childhood I spent worrying that your father wouldn’t come home to us. We’d have months of radio silence when we’d never hear anything, and every news report of something happening at sea would haunt me until I heard from him. It won’t be easy, but that’s what you’ve got me for. Tara, too, understands. It’s not exactly the same, but we’ve got enough experience of our husbands being away for extended periods with no contact that we can empathise.’

‘Thank you, mom.’

‘That’s quite all right. I promise, Dana, that whatever happens, I’m not disappointed in you.’ She dropped her head to her mother’s shoulder and tried to stifle a yawn. ‘I don’t want you driving home tonight, Sweetheart. Stay here, and I’ll make you pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. How does that sound?’

‘It sounds really good, Mom, but I’ve got work tomorrow. I’m flying out to Utah to consult with the local coroner. I’d have to leave here at five to go back to my apartment, get my bag and get to the airport on time.’

‘I don’t mind waking early. I’ve been meaning to bake some brioche anyway, and it needs quite a long time to prove, so it’ll be good to start it early.’

‘Mom, no, you don’t want to be awake and making pancakes at half four. I’m okay to drive, really.’

‘I’ve said no, Dana. You’re staying here. If you want, I’ll call you a cab to take you to the airport tomorrow, and I’m sure there are enough clothes that you’ve left over here to make up a couple of days’ worth of outfits at least.’

Her eyes were drooping as she yawned again and she felt herself relenting, ‘sure. I guess a little bit later of a start, and a couple of pancakes won’t hurt anybody.’

Maggie gave a satisfied hum, ‘I’ll go up and put some fresh sheets on your bed and dig you out a suitcase.’

By the time she returned downstairs, Dana was fast asleep on the couch, curled in on herself and snoring lightly. Not having the heart to wake her, she tucked a blanket over her and pressed a kiss to her forehead, dimmed the lights and tidied up around her, tea mugs in the sink and melting ice cream in the freezer, the untouched casserole wrapped with clingfilm and stored in the fridge for tomorrow, before she headed up to bed herself.  

She woke, three hours later, to her daughter’s anguished screams, her partner’s name on her lips as she sobbed. For the first time in years, Maggie Scully ushered her daughter into her bed and held her as she cried herself to sleep. She woke, not long after that, to Dana stumbling from bed, stubbing her toe as she tripped her way to the en suite, purging her stomach of its meagre contents. After a glance at the clock, she followed suit, kneeling at her daughter’s side, holding her hair back and rubbing soothingly up and down her spine.

‘Is it really wise to go to Utah when you’re feeling like this, Honey?’ she asked as Dana slumped back into her with a groan.

‘I’ll be fine after I’ve eaten something. Besides, they’re expecting me and I need to keep working. If I stop, I don’t know what will happen.’

‘I have a bad feeling about it, Dana, that’s all.’

‘I’ll be fine, Mom. What time is it?’

‘Ten to four. Do you want to sleep or do you want to shower whilst I go down and start on pancakes?’

Her stomach gurgled and she chuckled, ‘pancakes sound really good.’

‘Okay. You go and fetch some clothes from your room, and I’ll bring you a towel, and when you’re ready there will be pancakes waiting for you.’

She held herself still for a moment after her mom helped her up, waiting just in case another wave of nausea hit, sighing with relief when it didn’t. She looked up as Maggie was leaving, ‘Mom?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you. For everything.’

Maggie just smiled, ‘that’s what I’m here for, Darling.’

tagging @today-in-fic

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

watching people become increasingly ride-or-die for Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D., is something that can actually be so personal

[thats-h0w-th3-light-g3ts-in]

Scully

green aesthetic

All Things

Je Souhaite

Roadrunners

Surekill

[backintimeforstuff]

people always talk about Home being the most unsettling and grim episode of txf but I've just rewatched Roadrunners and it nearly killed me

[enigmaticxbee]

S8 Rewatch - Favorite Moments

[scullydubois]

put 3 txf eps you think are underrated in the tags!! there’s so many that rarely get attention, let’s show them some love :)

[dunhamhairograpy]

Roadrunners, Script Notes

She touches a hand to her stomach -- an unconscious gesture, one protective of her unborn child. If only one viewer in a hundred gets it, fine.

Bless you, Vince Gilligan.

[bunnywand]

x-files writer #1: hmm.. what if we did an episode abt a town who think jesus has come back as a Big Slug, and they kidnap ppl and put the Big Slug in their spine??

x-files writer #2: that sounds So so stupid

x-files writer #1: it’s actually one of the best ever episodes 😎