TV - The X-Files Season 7, Requiem
The episode, Requiem, had all the hallmarks and feel of an earlier X-Files episode when the show was at the height of its powers, and with good reason. Chris Carter, the incredible visionary that had dreamt up this journey all those years ago, was back on writing duty. The episode was originally to be the final ever episode and so confronts a lot of the story arcs and mythology that had been created over the previous 160 episodes but half way through the season as the script was being written it was decided, some say by the producers some say Fox, that The X-Files would indeed be picked up for another year. This left some questions for the crew and cast alike.
David Duchovny had already picked up other commitments and was not going to return for a full season, Carter had planned everything to end in a two-hour long special or lead into a movie but now a last minute re-write led to a cliffhanger that would lead into Season 8 and, despite all the behind the scenes turmoil, Carter pulled off a traditional X-Files episode that was certainly the best that the seventh season had offered.
David Duchovny had already picked up other commitments and was not going to return for a full season, Carter had planned everything to end in a two-hour long special or lead into a movie but now a last minute re-write led to a cliffhanger that would lead into Season 8 and, despite all the behind the scenes turmoil, Carter pulled off a traditional X-Files episode that was certainly the best that the seventh season had offered.
Oregon, and a police detective is on his way to the scene of an air crash. As he approaches the electrics cut out in his car and the vehicle crashes. The detective escapes the vehicle but is carrying an injury when he discovers the Deputy Sheriff unconscious in his jeep but another man, who is the exact likeness of the Deputy Sheriff, is also in view, bleeding a strange green fluid and expressing that he is an alien bounty hunter. A short while later, two teenagers want to investigate the crash site but the now recovered Deputy states that nothing had occurred, before one of the boys is shaken physically by an invisible force. An abductee, Billy Miles, from the area that Mulder had investigated years before, calls Mulder and informs him of the strange occurrences and that he believed the abductions had started again leading Mulder and Scully to travel out to the scene. They discover Billy is now a policeman, his father is missing and his wife Theresa, another abductee victim from seven years previously, also goes missing whilst they visit the area. Scully becomes ill and also gets physically shaken as the teenage boy had but Billy meets the alien bounty hunter in a confrontation at home and also goes missing.
Elsewhere Krycek gets released from a foreign prison by Marita and returns to the United States. After a meeting with The Cigarette Smoking man, Krycek, Marita and Walter Skinner decide to talk to Mulder and Scully and convince them that CSM is trying to locate the crashed alien craft and restart The Project. Krycek explains about an energy field that would be hiding the ship and Mulder calls in the Lone Gunmen for help in discovering the craft’s exact location. Mulder won’t let Scully go due to her failing health but is convinced to take Skinner back to Oregon with him to find the ship and investigate all the disappearances. Mulder and Skinner discover a force field in the woods and, as they pass through it, find all the other abductees and the alien ship. Mulder is attacked by the bounty hunter and the ship takes off leaving only Skinner behind. Mulder, Billy, Theresa - all gone. After hearing of the failure upon Skinner's return, Krycek is livid and pushes the wheelchair bound CSM down the stairs in the Watergate complex. Scully's health fails again and she is hospitalised leading her to tell Skinner she doesn’t know how but she is pregnant.
Bringing Billy back was a masterstroke for a final ever episode, taking the show full circle to Scully and Mulder's first investigation together. The CSM apparently meeting his doom by the hands of the now good guy Krycek, at The Watergate home of government conspiracy being outed in public, would have been an excellent end to a show where Mulder finally gets abducted by aliens never to return. Alas the show would go on and the Scully pregnancy was written just days before shooting as a lead into an eighth season that wouldn’t have Duchovney permanently attached.
What could have been the best send off in television history finally became the stick with which even the most die hard fan would beat the show with. Shame.
Image - XFiles Wiki.
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