SIXTH EXTINCTION - PART ONE

AIR DATE: November 7, 1999
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Kim Manners

        The Sixth Extinction Part One" seemed to be an episode running in place to get to the next level. We have Mulder still vegged out in the hospital with annoying ESP powers which is something that never should have been done: making Mulder into an X-Files. The show worked a lot better when Mulder was a normal person looking for an answer to his sister's disappearance and what the government was covering up. By making him an X-File it takes him out from being a doer to a subject which is what he was throughout this whole episode. This is why it worked better when Mulder was losing it in "Anasazi" because it was more believable with it being drugs and the strain it put on Mulder and Scully's partnership. Also, there was much more sense of danger in "Anasazi". Oh yeah, somewhere during this episode we had Diana Fowley saying she loves Mulder even though there is absolutely no chemistry between them. Fowley is someone who Chris Carter and gang never knew what to do with so they throw something like this to give some reason to her character. But this is more of a situation of too little, too late.

        The other problem with "The Sixth Extinction" was Scully was a million miles away from Mulder. As we know, an X-Files episode works best when Scully and Mulder are together working on a case. Do we get this? No, we have Scully in the episode sitting around going over photos of the outside of the ship finding out that aliens wrote the bible, Koran and anything else remotely religious and let's not forget the basic human DNA or whatever it was. Oh, I don't want to forget Scully's profound voiceovers. At the end of the episode did she come back with any proof of what she found or anything to help Mulder? As far as I can tell she didn't come back with any proof or help. So was the point of her going out there to shake her belief that there isn't any alien involvement in what is going on because if they are still doing that old routine I can't believe it. How much longer are they going to get us to believe that Scully doesn't even believe a little bit in aliens considering everything that has happened to her. Time to move the story along and stop introducing new things into the show without wrapping up old things first.

        Now on to some miscellaneous comments on "The Sixth Extinction - Part One":

- The last thing I would want to do if I saw my tent filled with locusts is enter it and turn down the one lamp that has bugs crawling all over it. Right, Scully, by doing that I'm sure all those bugs will leave the tent.

- I'm glad Scully chose the weapon of choice in Africa which of course is the machete.

- Are there seagulls in Africa or is that the sunny California coastline we were seeing?

- I especially liked Mulder's new haircut. Must have been the hospital that did it to him. No wonder he was still out of his mind.

- Mulder must be staying in the same hospital as Scully in "One Breath" since they too did not cover up his feet while he was in bed. I guess he was lucky they even gave him a blanket.

- What? Was there no pad of paper nearby for Mulder to write on instead of Skinner's hand, but that wouldn't have been as dramatic.

- I'm a little confused, wasn't Dr. Barnes totally against what Scully was discovering and killed to cover it up. Now he shows up saying this is what he has been trying to prove his whole life. Also, the part of the episode that I hated the most was after Scully whacked Dr. Barnes with a chair she runs away like a scaredy-cat. Where is F.B.I. trained Scully who chased Luis Cardinal and captured him and chased an alien bounty hunter into a dark alley? Dr. Barnes wasn't exactly in the best of shape and she should have been able to take him down.

- Of course, if she stayed behind and captured him then we wouldn't have that scene with the Primitive African Man who tells Scully, "Some truths are not for you". A friend of mine got a big laugh out of that line just like I did. If Scully and Amina Ngebe were heading to the city then why did Scully tell her to turn around since they were already heading to the city where she would pick up transportation.

- Loved the security at the hospital where Skinner and Kritschgau can not only take Mulder out of his hospital room they can also break into the hospital drug supply. And later on bring in computer equipment with no one asking what they are doing.

- So Skinner is still Fowley's boss. What has she been doing since "One Son"?

- I'm still trying to figure out why an alien ship would have stuff written on the outside of it . Also, I'm wondering why Scully didn't get a crane or something to get the thing lifted out of the water so they could easily see what is on the bottom of the ship. I understand she is in a foreign country and these things might not be readily available, but there should have been some hint she was attempting to get the equipment. Also, why weren't they trying to get into the ship? This stuff was all done for plot convenience. If Scully had gotten the ship out or was able to enter it then that man wouldn't have been burned by boiling water and the sea wouldn't have turned red and it would have made her work a lot easier. Since we found out from Amina Ngebe that the discovery is all over the internet it isn't really that much of a secret.

- Scully must be so well known in the F.B.I. that she doesn't even need a name tag as she walks through the building to Skinner's office.

- Why do I find pretentious Scully's comment to Mulder that she found the answer to everyone's questions and they have the key. Hmm, let me get this straight, you leave everything you were working on back in Africa and to everyone else Mulder is just plain nuts and you have the key. How?

        Don't get me wrong "The Sixth Extinction" had its moments, it just had too much plot convenience and wordy nonsense from the pen of Chris Carter. Trust me when I write that I hate writing bad things about an X-Files episode. As I have written before after the Fourth Season episode "Terma" I realize they didn't know where they were going with the mythology episodes and the movie turned the mythology into a conveniently alien invasion story (an unbelievable and been done before alien invasion story) so the mythology episodes lost their appeal. "The Sixth Extinction" wasn't helped by going nowhere fast in mythology or character development.

Claudia

E-Mail: Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

11/9/99

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