SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

Recap by Buffangel

MEMENTO MORI – Remember to die, remember death, and remember you must die. Screw you Chris Carter!

This is the episode that began it all. I whined and whined about how Jessica should recap this one last episode of the X-Files and someone in the TWOP Meet Market told me to do it myself. Needless to say, I am scared shitless. First of all, this is my first recap ever, and secondly, it is my first proper review of any kind of film material in over twelve years. The only other film reviews I’ve done are of The Glass Menagerie and The Shawshank Redemption in my ninth grade English class. Anyway, that is neither here nor there, so onwards and upwards.

This episode is the end of an unofficial three-parter (in my opinion) that begins with Never Again, flows into Leonard Betts and ends with Scully and cancer. Maybe CC and 1013 are trying to say that if Scully has sex she will die. Which is why we never got to see her and Mulder do it. Or is it? Either way, this is a popular storytelling choice in the Sci-Fi/Horror genre; the reasons for that continue to elude me.

It is my understanding that the episodes were actually aired so that Leonard Betts came before Never Again, but that was just result of the collective Fox/1013 crack-pipe sharing shenanigans talking, so I am going to pretend that never happened. Kind of like most of seasons 8 and 9 -- aka the Adventures of Dog and Moron.

Hmm, at the rate I’m going I think this recap is going to be an expression of my own megalomaniacal cosmology.

So we start off with darkness and a rectangular shaped light glows in the center of the screen as Gillian Anderson/Scully begins her heart wrenching voice-over. In the background, the incomparable Mark Snow (who may face any real competition only from Christophe Beck and Bear McCready) plays some tune that can only be described as the sounds of impending sympathetic character death. This is a triple whammy y’all: the music, the image, the voice-over. Ten Thirteen are out to make you cry like a baby -- no doubt about it -- and they won’t settle for anything less than you curled up in the fetal position screaming, “This is not happening”! I surreptitiously fumble for the Kleenex; I am nothing if prepared. I mean the last episode had an actual cancer-eater tell Scully she had something he needed. Gulp! I reach for my cell-phone and have my finger poised on ‘Mom’. What? She can make this all better. So what if it’s 3 am Canadian time? Parenting is a full-time gig!

So anyway, Gillian Anderson’s voice-over has begun and I wonder with a heavy heart where these poetic sounding words are going to take us in this episode.

“I feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in its passage.”

The white rectangle comes into focus and we see a solitary figure with its back to the camera in a hospital gown.

“I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me. Knowing that you will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other.”

The figure is clearly Scully and she’s studying an X-ray.