b: 17-Mar-02 pc: 9ABX13 w: Steven Maeda d: Kim Manners
NOTE: This episode marks the 50th time that Kim Manners has stepped behind the camera to direct an X-Files episode, making him without a doubt the longest serving director on the show. His debut was for season 2's 'Die Hand Die Verletzt'.
Great KMYF moment in the beginning with Reyes and Doggett.
An interesting episode, if a little predictable at times. I really felt that the killer doc was something that didn't really need to be there. I mean enough people die in a hospital without needing to have a doctor doing it on purpose. It just seemed a bit out of place and we really weren't given any motivation why he was doing it. That haven't been said, was this show anything more than an excuse to hit us over the head with the fact that Doggett loves Reyes?
I feel sorry for the next two agents that get assigned to the X-Files. It seems to be the Love Boat position. Everyone one that gets assigned to it falls in love with thier partner, except Agent Spender and whatshername that Mimi Roger's played, but they were evil so they don't count I guess. :-)
This is a very Stephen King-esque episode, from the title on down...
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They didn't really bring it out, but it's suggested, or I interpreted, that the doctor was making people brain dead so that they could harvest their organs.
Great episode with a good guest performance from the person playing Audrey Pauley. I'm not sure if I like the subtext here--that it's wrong to take organs from people, and that doctors can make money off it. The scene with Doggett talking to Audrey, and confessing that he doesn't know what to do hit me very hard.
And the teaser...cheesy in a way...but it did inject the requisite "What The Heck?" thought.
I wonder once again why the FBI does not arrest suspicious persons immediately - in this case, the doctor. When doggett shows scully the files of his patients, she agrees that this is strange. Yet neither of them thinks of arresting or even watching the doc, so he can calmly kill audrey pauley. Or did the writers think it would be more poetical this way - one person dying, so another one can live?
After doggett turned reyes down the first time, leading indirectly to her accident, then grieving about the choice and missed chances, reyes is being brought back to life and he gets another chance - only to turn it down again! what is it with him? I found that kind of strange or unbelievable.
I agree that the ending was fairly annoying, especially after John's daydream of kissing Monica. I also wasn't all that convinced that Monica would be up, walking and well enough to go home within three days.
Maybe the doctor panicked, but he must have known that two of his staff dying within such a short period of time would raise questions and bring about much more intense post mortems which would probably reveal the injections. Why did he think he could get away with it?
A large part of this episode seemed to be a pretty direct rip-off of Coma.
Who was it who instructed Audrey to build the hospital? I am presuming that she was saying it was God, but then why did He not give any opportunity for the other characters imprisoned to escape? I could understand if there had been a way within the 'hospital' and the others just weren't able to find it ("Bad luck chaps, you die now") but otherwise the only way out was to kill Audrey. So, it seemed to be saying God is cruel enough to put you in a horrible place, just to wait your time to die. I would rather have not known anything. He only gives one chance for people to escape as well, and after that....What happens? If Audrey had died before Rayes and Doggett had turned up, there would have been no escape at all. An episode that really didn't add up all round.
Must write out a hundred times, "It's only a TV show....."