AIR DATE:  April 13, 1997
Written by David Greenwalt
Directed by James Charleston

	I'm a sucker for a good time travel story.  I don't know why, but
I just usually enjoy them.  Of course, it only took me about 5 minutes to
figure out "Synchrony" was going to be a bit of a time travel story so it
got me wondering how they were going to use the well-worn plot line of
someone coming back to fix the future.  As a time travel story it wasn't
bad though it didn't really explore the theme too much.  As a X-Files
episode it didn't really go anywhere with Mulder and Scully except it used
Scully's graduate thesis as the basis of the episode. 

	I can't help thinking that the whole idea for the episode came
from someone pitching the idea of using Scully's thesis in an episode and
having Mulder keep referring to it throughout the episode.  I have to
admit I barely remembered what Scully's thesis was in the first place. 
Something about Einstein or something and since we never got to read it,
the only information we know about it comes from Mulder.  It was kind of
funny how Mulder kept coming back to her thesis and Scully kept saying
that she was only 23 years old when she wrote it meaning she thinks she
was a bit arrogant in her thesis.  Other than this Scully and Mulder
didn't really have much to do in this episode though I don't think every
episode has to revolve around them, but it sure doesn't hurt the story.

	So with Mulder and Scully basically having nothing much to do in
this episode the only way to make this episode interesting is the
supporting characters, and their story.  The basic story is an elder Jason
comes from the future to stop himself and others from developing the
technology which makes time travel possible.  As we see, he fails
miserably from the start, if anything he is responsible for it all
happening in the first place since it was he who knocked over the other
guy which made his papers fall out of his briefcase.  In the story we end
up with a whacked out time traveling person (and isn't that always the way
with these time traveling people), and his fellow scientist friends who
develop some type of cryo thing which the elder Jason is trying to stop
from happening. There isn't really much to this story since nothing has
changed and we never get a clear idea of what a horrible future will
happen if this group of scientists are allowed to continue.  In the end it
appears Scully's thesis is correct (as Mulder explained it) and that there
are infinite ways the universe can go, but only one conclusion. 
Personally I would have found it funny and ironic for elder Jason if Dr.
Yonechi had lived and not burned to death, and it would have only proved
more of Scully's thesis.  Also, it was kind of arrogant on elder Jason's
part to think only he and the other two scientists were working on this
type of project.  Another thing wrong with elder Jason's thinking is he
can't be sure even if the other guy had lived, he couldn't be sure his
younger self and the woman doctor wouldn't continue with their research.

	Some miscellanous comments on "Synchrony":

- I had a bad feeling about this episode right from the start when the bus
that kills Jason's fellow scientist isn't even a bus from the MBTA, the
mass transit system used in Boston.  It was so obvious the bus was from
Canadian transit with the big CT written on the bus.  I let it go when the
buildings weren't right because I know the show is filmed in Vancouver and
there isn't much they can do about those things, but you would think they
would take the time to make sure one bus would look like a T bus.  I was a
bit surprised they were sloppy in letting this kind of detail get by them. 
Gee, it isn't as if this is taking place in anywhereville, USA.  I won't
even get into the fact if Lisa Ianelli was heading into downtown Boston
(that is of course if she wasn't heading into downtown Cambridge,
Brookline, Brighton or any of the other many cities surrounding Boston),
that she would have taken the subway and not the bus.  Hmm, I got a
feeling Vancouver doesn't have a subway system.  Damn, I can't believe
such a little detail would bug me so much.  At least they had the generic
police uniforms and cars handy for the episode.

- Did anyone else think of "Back to the Future" when Scully pulled out the
picture of Jason, Lisa Ianelli and Dr. Yonechi?  I kept expecting them to
slowly disappear in the picture since the elder Jason had changed the
future by killing Dr. Yonechi, so the picture shouldn't exist since the
event will never happen in the future.

- Well, it looks like once again we get the amazing Mulder and his
abilities to figure out from a single picture that it is a future Jason
doing all the murders.  If Mulder had said something after they had
verified the picture hadn't been taking in the past then it would have
been alright.  Instead we get the Mulder who puts everything together from
a single picture.  I can believe Mulder is so quick to figure things out,
but there wasn't any basis for him to thinking it was an elder Jason doing
the murders.  The only thing he had was the younger Jason saying some
crazed old man told him the other person was going to be killed by a bus
and knew his name which could mean many things.  Lucky for the plot Mulder
can do these things. 

- The security at that science lab is kind of lax since the guard just
lets elder Jason go into it without any picture ID on him other than his
handprint.  Oh, and let's not forget the campus security guard who doesn't
put into handcuffs an apparently deranged old man.  Also, I kept expecting
the frozen body of the security guard to fall down and scatter into a
million pieces like that guy's head from the first season's episode
"Roland".

- Elder Jason didn't seem too bright of a person since he couldn't even
think of a fake name to tell Dr. Yonechi.  I just cracked up when he tells
Dr. Yonechi in response to what his name is, "Someone who admires your
work".  Let's see I know I'm going to go up to Dr. Yonechi under false
pretense so I won't think of a fake name.  Just another reason why he
failed.

- Also, I couldn't help thinking of that old Simpson's episode where Homer
goes back to prehistoric time and he doesn't listen to the warning of not
touching anything if he didn't want to risk changing his future.  Of
course, Homer, being Homer, he kills a bug and when he goes back to his
own time he finds out he has changed his future, so he keeps going back
trying to fix what he did, only making it worse.  Quite a funny take on
the old time paradox question.  Maybe the elder Jason should have watched
this old Simpson episode to figure out why he would fail.

-  I don't know about anyone else, but everytime I see an X-Files episode
rated TV14 I expect it to be kind of gruesome.  There wasn't anything too
gruesome in "Synchrony" except the burning bodies especially Dr. Yonechi.
Otherwise it was kind of tame for a X-Files episode. 

- We don't get any date in this episode (I didn't see one) so we can only
guess this episode is supposed to take place after "Max" which means we
still have cancerous Scully.  I know it will bother others if it isn't
mentioned since it is a major deal for her, but Dr. Auschlander had liver
cancer for the 6 years on St. Elsewhere and it wasn't mentioned on every
single show.  Of course, St. Elsewhere was an ensemble show which X-Files
isn't, but her cancer isn't something that needs to be mentioned in every
episode.  She still has a job to do which is to investigate weird things. 

	"Synchrony" was another one of those X-Files episodes where
nothing really much happens except a few people die and Mulder gets to
show his amazing investigation abitilies.  As I wrote before I like a good
time travel story, but there wasn't anything interesting about this time
travel story since we never really got an idea of what the future was like
from the elder Jason.  The only thing we learned was it was bad and there
was no history because of what they did in the present.  Just another one
of those X-Files episodes that I consider to be just there, neither bad
nor good.


Claudia
E-mail:  Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

4/14/97