The X-Files: Scully’s Journey (Fight The Future)
It’s Summer, 1998! South Park has already become a pop culture phenomenon (and my second dearest love). Deep Impact and Armageddon are competing to see who can milk the most fear out of rocks from spaaaace, while a little show called The X-files has made its way to the big screen and it blows them both out of the water by spotlighting the scariest, most dangerous, most hated thing known to man…
Those poor bastards who carry epi-pens wherever they go, they already knew, but the rest of us finally realized the true scourge of the universe! But I’m getting ahead of myself…
First, I want to thank the good people of Tumblr for properly tagging their gifs. I am spoiled for gifs, just spoiled rotten and I love it!
Second, I’m trying something a bit different with this recap. I’ve decided an EXTREMELY ACCURATE script will give it that certain cinematic flavor.
In a nutshell…
We last left off with our poor duo standing in the smoky shell of The Basement of Bro… Burnt Dreams.
Sad, I know. But get out your popcorn because it’s movie time!
North Texas, BC
Cave Men: Hey, free cave!
Alien: I don’t think so!
Black Oil: Hi!
North Texas, 1998
Kid from Slingblade: Hey, free underground cave!
Black Oil: Hi, there.
Fireman 1: I’ll save you, Kid!
Black Oil: Well, hello to you, too!
Fireman 2: Hey, what’s going on down there?
Black Oil: I’m making so many new friends!
Government Schlub: We need to hide the bodies!
Dallas, Later…
Agents are checking a threatened government building while our fearless duo are searching a building across the street.
Scully: Why are we searching the wrong building?
Mulder: *Flirt, monologue about infinite possibilities, bedroom eyes*
Scully: *Bedroom eyes X infinity*
Flirting continues…
Downstairs… flirting continues.
Mulder: I found a bomb.
Scully: Okay, I’m going to order everyone around.
Mulder: Please be a total bossbitch about it.
Scully: You know I will.
Mulder: *Panic*
John Locke: *busts in* Okay, everyone out. I’ll Macgyver this shit.
Scully: *drags Mulder out*
John Locke: *has staring contest with bomb*
Outside…
Mulder: Hey, something’s bugging me. Let’s go back into the exploding building.
Scully: Are you f*cking kidding me?
FBI Headquarters…
Blythe Danner: So we’ve decided to blame you guys for being in the wrong building, even though we wouldn’t have gotten it evacuated without you having been in the wrong building.
Mulder: *shows up late* That is such bullshit.
Blythe Danner: Yeah. We’re total douchebags like that. We’re blaming you for the firemen and the kid from Slingblade, too.
Mulder: The who now?
Blythe Danner: Get out, Mulder.
Outside…
Mulder: This is such total bullshit.
Skinner: Dude, I know.
This is why I love them!
Scully: They’re splitting us up.
Mulder: But… but… no!
Scully: I know. If we can’t be together…
A Bar…
Mulder: Drunken rantings and ramblings about aliens.
Bartender/Glenne Headly(!!!!): Yeah. Bye, now.
Martin Landau: Hey, I knew your dad.
Mulder: Which one?
Martin Landau: The dead one.
Mulder: Which one?
Martin Landau: Look, the firemen and the kid were planted and John Locke let that building go boom.
Mulder: You’re crazier than I am. Bye.
Scully’s place…
Scully: Are you drunk?
Booty call? Sadly, no.
Mulder: Let’s go look at some bodies. The dead kind.
Scully: Oh, I have the life of a princess! (I stole that line from Daphne in Frasier.)
North Texas…
Goverment Schlub: Science, bodies, host, gestation.
Old Smoky: Yeah, yeah. Let’s test the vaccine and burn the poor bastard.
A Morgue…
Military Type: I’m not letting you in.
Mulder: Oh, yes, you are! I’m an experienced bullshitter.
Military Type: You sure are, sir. Have fun.
Downstairs…
Scully: I hate this sh… Hey, a weird corpse! Get me some gloves to snap on.
Mulder: I will, of course, run off while you deal with the body instead of being lookout or anything smart like that.
Scully: Yeah, go on. I’m used to it.
Martin Landau’s place…
Mulder: What’s all this?
Cop: We’re framing this guy for kiddie porn.
Mulder: I’m just here to borrow a book. Later.
Outside…
Mulder: I read your book in the last few seconds. You’re a crackpot.
Martin Landau: Conspiracy, virus, FEMA, plague, conspiracy. Look… Basically, the DoM has been working with aliens.
Mulder: Even though this is all right up my alley, I STILL think you’re a crackpot.
The Morgue…
Soldiers search while Scully hides with the bodies. Mulder (of course!) picks that time to call.
Scully: I’m busy hiding with corpses.
Mulder: Great. Just letting you know we’re going to Dallas now.
Scully: But…
Mulder: Have fun! Scully? Are you having fun? Scully?
Scully: *hides under a gurney with dripping goo*
I present to you some gag reel…
Dallas…
Field Agent: What are you doing here again?
Mulder: Waiting for that glorious creature.
Scully: Yeah, I came, you jerk. So… bodies, tissue, protein code, ickiness.
Mulder: Want to look at my bone fragment?
Scully: Are you drunk again?
Mulder: Fossils, Scully.
Mulder: Yeah. We’re going to the site. But first we’re going to gaze at each other longingly. Ready?
Scully: As ever.
North Texas…
Government Schlub: Vaccine, patient, science, gestated.
Men: What?
Alien: Hi!
Men: Never mind. Got it. Bye. *trapping him in*
Government Schlub: Assholes.
England…
Well-Manicured Man: I am a normal human with a life and a family.
Phone rings.
Old Smoky: No, you’re not.
WMM: I hate this job
Somewhere else in England…
Mafia Man: Virus, mutation, aliens, infection.
WMM: I really hate this job.
WMM: So… Let me get this straight: the alien virus turns us into incubators and not hybrids now? Are we okay with this?
Old Smoky: Look, this is all too convoluted for a new audience. Let’s focus on how Mulder is nosing around instead.
And this gif progression is not my wishful thinking at all. It’s RIGHT FROM THE MOVIE. They know it, we know it, everyone knows it. The shipper vs. noromo war is won! Scully is “that with which he cannot live without.” (And that line is that which begs for an editor — I wish @sydneyeditor1 had been in on this script. She would have never let that mess slide.)
North Texas…
Scully: I’m still pretty sure you dragged me out here for a complicated booty call.
Mulder: That’s crazy talk. Let’s go harrass some kids.
Mulder: We’re FBI superheroes, so spill. Which way did the Department of Mysteries go?
Cut to the car…
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere…
Scully: I’m so done with this. You know we’re getting fired, right?
Mulder: But… conspiracy, bomb, conspiracy.
A train goes by, with suspicious tanker trucks and they follow, led to a cornfield.
SCULLY: Any thoughts as to why anybody would be growing corn in the middle of the desert?
MULDER: Well, those could be giant Jiffy-Pop Poppers.
Mulder must be jet-lagged. He could have easily gotten a boob joke out of these, too, under normal circumstances.
Inside…
Yes. Run. Run from the most horrifying creature known to man.
Then run some more…
Then trip for the gag reel…
And don’t forget to feed the memes…
Can we just talk for a second about how the DoM was all “Oh, it’s so worrying that the aliens have a gestational version of black oil. Oh, what does it all mean? Have we been played for fooools?” Yet they just get it into some bees like it’s some kind of default mode for them. Find something new? Put it in bees immediately!
Maybe I’m just mad at what’s coming. Anyhoooo…
FBI Headquarters…
Scully: I know. I’m late, but I have bone fragments.
Blythe Danner: And what does that mean?
Scully: I honestly don’t know.
That bar…
Mulder: Experiment, tanker trucks, jiffy pop, running, virus.
Martin Landau: Wow. Now’s the time to tell you I pretty much don’t know what any of that means.
Mulder: Great! Thanks for putting me through all this.
Martin Landau: Any time!
Mulder’s place…
Scully: Everything went super great. They’re sending me to Mormon country where they outlaw coffee. I super quit this bitch.
I present to you this scene, almost entirely in gif form…
MULDER: You wanna tell yourself that so you can quit with a clear conscience, you can, but you’re wrong!
SCULLY: Why did they assign me to you in the first place, Mulder? To debunk your work, to rein you in, to shut you down.
I interrupt this moment to bring you quotes from the actual script:
Suddenly, a physical intimacy we’ve never seen. A heat and passion that can’t be denied. The opportunity for the inevitable has presented itself.
The moment of truth has arrived. Mulder is staring at Scully as she’s looking back at him. His head moves slightly toward hers — as one of his hands moves up to her neck, drawing her to him. Where there is hesitation on her part, there is also desire.
Okay, back to the scene…
You know, I remember everyone laughing in the theater when they started leaning in, possibly noromos predicting that us poor shippers were about to get our hopes up, only to be denied so hard. Anyway, I interrupt this moment again to bring you a quote from director Rob Bowman:
It’s not out of lust, it’s not out of any obvious reasons or typical reasons. It’s out of just absolute overwhelming respect for one another. Out of that respect comes an emotional response, where you transcend, sort of, logic and thinking and it becomes more visceral and human. The only place for him to go in my mind, to express the next thought is to kiss her.
I just want you to know that I don’t just want to believe, but truly believe this was building up to something beautiful. Okay. Back to business…
…or not.
Okay. Let’s make ourselves feel better with the gag reel version…
…or maybe the slightly more serious version from the blu-ray…
They almost take away the sting (pun intended).
Back to the film in progress…
Mulder: Bee sting. That sucks. Now, back to that kiss…
Scully: I don’t think so.
Medical!Doctor Scully helpfully gives us her symptoms all the way down while Mulder calls an ambulance… except it’s a DoM one, and the driver shoots at him and grazes his head. The real one picks him up.
Somewhere with planes and tanker trucks…
Old Smoky: *staring at unconscious Scully dispassionately*
A hospital…
I just want you to know this movie had yet another thing that we poor viewers were deprived of:
Mulder: Where’s Scully?
Gunmen: You almost died.
Mulder: Where’s Scully?
Gunmen: We found this bee.
Mulder: Where’s Scully?
Skinner: They’re trying to kill you.
Mulder: Scully! Sculllaaayyy!
Gunmen: Fine, we’ll help you.
… and poor Byers is deprived of his clothes and forced to switch places with Mulder, while Mulder looks for Martin Landau.
The Only Bar In DC…
WMM: Hi, there.
Mulder: Hey, where’s Martin Landau? Wait. No. I want to change my question… Where’s Scully?
WMM: I’ve made a Heel-Face Turn, so I’m going to help you save her. Please step into my luxurious towncar.
WMM: Well, it’s also the original inhabitant of this planet, apparently, so it’s a very terrestrial extra-terrestrial kind of virus. Your sister was taken and cloned to become a hybrid that could survive and your father wanted you scarred for life so you would uncover all this someday. Never mind if that’s convoluted and confusing. We are never going to make sense of any of this malarkey, not even with four more seasons. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to kill my driver. A nasty business. You go save your bewitching partner while I blow into a million pieces. Off with you now!
*Sigh* I’m gonna miss him and his very British distaste for the dirty work. That’s not just my Anglophilia talking. He was the only one of those DoM bastards that ever reacted in a way that seemed human in light of the atrocities they were committing. Anyway…
WMM: *EXPLODES*
Mulder: Holy shit. Anyway… Scully! Scullaaaayyy!
Somewhere in Antarctica…
Mulder: Sculllaaaayyy!
Mulder: Sculllllaaaayyyy! Scu… Whoops!
Mulder: Hey, an alien craft. Anyway… Scullllaaaaayyy! Sculll…. Hey!
Mulder: Scully? Sculllaaay? Oh, there she is! *breaks the pod like a boss and administers the cure*
Meanwhile, on the surface…
Old Smoky: Mulder has the vaccine!
Old Smoky: Oh, well. I’m enough of an asshat to leave my own biological offspring to die. Off we go!
Back in the ship…
Also, Mulder gives Scully his snowpants and coat and socks. It’s so cute!
Mulder: Scully, there’s a ship! Scully? Do you see it? Scully?
Scully would much rather cuddle you to keep you warm, thank you very much.
By the way, the rescue tally is at 17/11.5 as of this film. Well done, Mulder, for saving Scully from that chest-burster, but I don’t think you will catch up… pretty much ever.
FBI Headquarters…
Blythe Danner: Your near-death is super hard to put in my report, so we’re just gonna ream you some more.
Scully: You guys really are the worst.
Blythe Danner: We know.
Meanwhile…
The fossils are stolen, corn fields are burnt, suspicious tanker trucks are… being suspicious.
Back at the FBI…
Scully: Does it help that I have the bee?
Blythe Danner: Not in any way that will effect us torturing you guys next season, no. Also, everybody everywhere hates those bastard bees so much now, so bees never help anything ever.
Scully: Well, I tried.
Outside…
Mulder: Are they still being douchebags?
Scully: Yup.
Mulder: You were right to want to quit! You were right to want to leave me! You should get as far away from me as you can! I’m not going to watch you die, Scully, because of some hollow personal cause of mine. Go be a doctor. Go be a doctor while you still can.
Scully: I can’t. I won’t. Mulder, I’ll be a doctor, but my work is here with you now. That virus that I was exposed to, whatever it is, it has a cure. You held it in your hand. How many other lives can we save?
Great. No one’s quitting. So remember in the hall?
You guys, remember? You were gonna do something?
Gazing is in the right general direction, but can’t you…
You guys?
Seriously?
Fine. See you next season… Maybe!
Oh, yeah. The DoM is still doing stuff, I guess.
Scully’s Journey…
Now is a moment to stop and address those who might think less of this movie for having Scully in damsel-in-distress mode. Well, I want to point out that my rescue tally has Scully in the rescue lead in the series so far (17/11.5 — so heavily in the lead that Mulder may never catch up). As for the DoM making Scully’s state of damsel-hood all about Mulder… The shipper in me is all…
Scully is that thing Mulder can’t live without, y’all!! Could you die?!
But other than that I got nothing. But you know… As much as that DoD guy in Gethsemane made it seem like her cancer was all about manipulating Mulder, I see that as a natural progression of events that were easily retold to tug at Mulder’s guilt-bone after the fact (Scully was abducted by Duane Barry because she had Duane’s chip, which she was investigating, Scully’s cancer was a fail-safe that targeted all of the abductees who removed their devices). This instance was very much Scully being taken away from Mulder, like she was some nice thing he wasn’t allowed to have anymore, as punishment for being super nosy and annoying to the DoM. So, yeah. Not a fan of that. But yet…
Scully does take her autonomy back by the end, as a doctor and a scientist, thinking of all the people they could help with what they now know, if they can just get back to the work and the journey that’s now become hers just as much as it has ever been Mulder’s. So I can’t think of this as a failing of the film, but as a failing of the DoM, of their failed logic in seeing her as nothing but a way to manipulate Mulder. They don’t quite see it yet, that Scully is a force to be reckoned with all on her own. It will come into play later.
Hair Check-in…
Let’s all take one last moment to enjoy The Scully, immortalized in film, because it is about to undergo unapproved (by me, at least) modifications from a timeless, perfect bob to a super nineties suburban mom helmet. We’ll mourn for it at the appropriate time, but let’s celebrate it in all its bouncy, sleek glory for now.
Ship Check-in…
So we all agree that bees are the scourge of the planet, right? I mean, it was so close! Of course, on an overall ship story level, I’d say that it all means nothing. Our duo have long since acknowledged that they’d like more from this partnership. Mulder, for all his flirting before, realized it in a concrete way in season four. And Scully caught up to it in season five (understandable, since she was dealing with life and death issues up till then). These two crazy kids have yet to be on the same page at the same time, but they know there is no one else for either of them and they have all but said the words. That doesn’t mean they are ready to toss all caution to the wind and take it to the bedroom. There’s always something in the way, damn it, and more important doings afoot. This puts us into a Will They/Won’t They kind of HELL that the show will spend most of season six milking — trying the patience of both shippers and casual viewers because I think everyone is like…
…by a certain point. We’ll get there.
Other Notes…
Gary Grubbs shows up again as a casting repeat offender/HITG as does Michaud/John Locke/Terry O’Quinn.
I also really love this film for giving Glenne Headly a cameo. She’s one of those HITG types that I love. Distinctive look, chameleon voice (whether she’s playing it US or UK on the accent side), and just someone who deserves more work than she gets.
RIP, WMM. It can’t be said enough. The DoM has lost it’s brightest… nay… only true shining star!
Also RIP, John Neville, as of November, 2011. You brought a certain level of class and panache to those dull men in suits, sitting around and morosely deciding the fate of the world, and don’t think we didn’t notice.
Next up: Back to those regular recaps with Season Six.
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All images from The X-Files are property of 20th Century Fox Television and Ten-Thirteen Productions. I can’t even begin to catalog the ways I rabidly hunt down gifs, but I get a large number of screencaps here.
