TV - The X-Files Season 2, The Top 5
After the excitement of The X-Files debut season had calmed down I started to have my usual worries when I discover a new show I really like. How do they top what they have already done? When are the Executives going to cancel it? Let's be fair it was on Fox! Luckily the latter wouldn’t occur for another eight or so years and as for topping what had come before, Chris Carter and his writing team just went bigger, better and darker. Season 2 would be important for many reasons but for me it was the introduction of new characters that would become integral to the show that pleased me most. More on that later, but for now the difficult challenge of listing my top five episodes. Such is my love for this particular season the list changed endlessly so I decided to just list five I liked on this particular day.
5 - Die Hand Die Verletzt.
Mulder: Did you really think you could call up the Devil and ask him to behave?
Scully and Mulder are called in by a local New Hampshire Sheriff when there is evidence of a satanic cult operating in his town. One teen has already died and paranoia has now gripped everyone there. There is little doubt that a group of teenagers did go off into the woods to perform some type of ceremony but Scully in particular scoffs at any suggestion they were anything more than kids acting out. As the investigation progresses however it becomes apparent that some of the staff are involved in devil worship but the danger it turns out lies outside the group.
4 - Sleepless.
Dana Scully: [perplexed] This body has all of the secondary, but none of the primary symptoms of having been in a fire! It's almost as if...
Fox Mulder: What?
Dana Scully: It's almost as if his body believed that it was burning.
Mulder is partnered with a young FBI agent, Alex Krycek, in the investigation of mysterious deaths. An apartment dweller called emergency services to report a fire outside his door but firemen arrive to find no fire and the owner dead with a spent fire extinguisher nearby. Scully's autopsy finds that the dead man's internal physical condition resembles that of someone who has been in intense heat, even though there are no visible burn marks. A second death gives them a connection between both men as they had served together in the Marines in the early 1970s. They subsequently learn that a man by the name of Augustus Cole has somehow escaped from a high security facility and that, incredibly, hasn't slept for 24 years. Mulder concludes that Cole is seeking revenge.
3 - Anasazi.
Albert Hosteen: In the desert, things find a way to survive. Secrets are like this too. They push their way up through the sands of deception so men can know them.
A man known as "The Thinker" has hacked into the U.S. Department of Defense mainframe and uncovered 50-years-worth of proof that the Government has been dealing with aliens. Mulder and Scully race against time to distinguish truth from lies, uncover the secrets, and survive them.
2 - Colony.
Mulder: Three identical men are dead. A fourth identical man is alive and on the lam. If the pursuit of this case seems like insanity to you, feel free to step away from it.
Mulder and Scully decide to investigate when they anonymously receive three newspaper obituaries for three men who appear to be identical. All of them worked in abortion clinics and they were not brothers. Unbeknown to them, an alien craft immobilized a US submarine patrolling under the Arctic ice and there is now an alien bounty hunter on the loose committing the murders. Mulder's world is turned upside down however when he receives an urgent call from his father telling him to come home. Once there, he finds a young woman in the living room talking to his mother. It's his sister Samantha, who was kidnapped by aliens 11 years ago. She tells him they are being hunted by an alien and that her life is in danger. Scully is surprised when Mulder calls her - because Mulder is standing in the room with her.
1 - Duane Barry/Ascension.
The Cigarette Smoking Man: You have no rights, only orders to be carried out. If you have a problem with that, we'll make other arrangements.
Mulder is called in to act as a hostage negotiator when a mentally unbalanced convict, Duane Barry, takes four people prisoner. Dwayne believes he's an alien abductee and he believes aliens are coming back to get him. He's also a former FBI agent. Mulder contacts Scully and she does a bit of research for him. What she finds calls into question everything Duane has said. By this time however, Mulder has become a hostage in exchange for one who has been seriously wounded. When it's all over and Duane is back in the hospital, they discover strange pieces of metal in his body.
Mulder sets out with agent Alex Krycek to find Scully, who has been kidnapped by Duane Barry. He's getting very little support from his superiors, including Assistant Director Skinner who wants him out of the case. Mulder believes Barry has kidnapped Scully to offer her to his alien abductees in the hope they will leave him alone. Mulder thinks he knows exactly where he is going but it soon becomes obvious that there are some who will go to great lengths to stop him. Skinner for his part makes a fateful decision.
Yes another two parter at number one and for that I offer no apology. As I have stated the above the list could be different on any other day, with the exception of the Duane Barry story, which would always be at number one.
Image - XFiles Wiki.
Quotes, and episode description - IMDB.
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