So why did the psychic get hurt? She probably would have had the best chance of finding out what happened.

Right at the very begining, I was thinking what an iresposible Mother she was being, she had him out of her site for a long time, and that is not acceptable.

So what's the deal? Was the kid a ghost or what? If so how could they take blood from him and such?

That's one of the "Unanswered Questions" so common on this show. Didn't you listen to Scully at the end of the episode? [the plot reminded me a little of the girl ghost in The Sixth Sense--who talked to Cole to save her sister]

No baby mention :-( not even an oblique one. So which episode is on next week? The preview did not look like the spoilers I've heard for "Via Negativa".

Nice to see more of Doggett. A thought concerning him: while he doesn't look a bit like Mulder, he can do the shocked, hurt, vulnerable face almost as well as DD. How do the creators chose these wonderful actors?

BTW, I want to make a prediction. Assuming that this is the last season of X-Files (who knows?), I predict that Agent Doggett will die. Goodness knows I hope I'm wrong, I like him a lot, but I just have a feeling about him. Something about the kind of guy he is and the way his relationship with his parter is shaping up.

Speaking of which, was anyone else listening closely enough to tell me whether they have dropped the "Agent"? I seem to remember both using last names without it, but I was focused on other things this ep.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

Let's see here. This episode kept me guessing a lot, and I was a little surprised on some of the events. While ordinarily that is good, it's not good when it's purely done by sloppy writing.

WHY does the kid stab the knife in the mattress? WHY does the psychic get attacked? WHY does Cal suddenly decide to grab another kid at that moment?

I like how they didn't have Doggett do a Meaningful Monologue (TM) to Scully about the person he lost. I seriously am hoping that they do not have Doggett's sibling (?) end up an alien abductee. Please.

I love the character of Doggett and Robert Patrick, but they should have had him all the way back in the second season when Mulder was briefly partnered with Krycek. Scully should have had Doggett as a partner, and can you imagine the interesting stuff from there? That way, a great character and actor would have been around at the peak of the show's powers.

I think this episode was too quickly tied up in the end and nothing explained by either Scully or Doggett. The episode title was "Invocation" so I was half expecting the mom to have had someone invoke some unnatural force to retrieve Billy. Other than the mention of praying for getting him back, that was it. So Billy just came back to settle a score? Why wait for 10 years?
I, too, was wondering why the psychic wasn't able to channel for Billy since he seems to be wanting to communicate. And why the bad vibes between Billy and Josh? Was Billy keeping a watchful eye on little brother Josh when he went in with the knife?
Nice that Doggett now has shown us his quest ... a son or a brother gone missing? I kinda think it's his son 'coz he seemed sympathetic to the dad. Wonder if Scully is going to start digging up the dirt on Doggett. I'm amazed she hasn't already gone to snoop into Doggett's past ... didn't she or Mulder do that with Krychek ... but I guess she's learned that all is not what it seems eh. I miss Krychek ... where is he now?
Someone please confirm, did Billy have his backpack on him when the mom went in to take him away from Doggett? Didn't Doggett pull it away from him when Billy tried to reach for it?
Yeah, that mom was very irresponsible.

I think that the reason Billy came back was because he knew that guy was going to go after Josh. He probably knew that it would help them find his grave and to bust the guy.

I'm pretty sure Doggett lost his kid, not sibling, just from his attitude in this ep--and I'm betting it was a normal abduction by someone like Cal, a kid-killer, and that's why Doggett was so set on finding whoever did it, to keep them from striking again.

MikeC, Billy came back when he did to prevent his brother from being killed. I think the best explanation would be that as a ghost (or whatever) he knew something of the future. Yes, he was guarding his brother when he went into his room that night, as well as leaving a message. "Be careful, or what happened to me will happen to Josh too." Hence the placement of the knife and the presence of Billy's blood on it.

Good point about the psychic--I can't figure that out, unless the combined forces from Doggett and Billy were too much for her to handle...?

This episode reminds me of "Conduit," with the male partner taking the case too seriously because of the loss of someone he loved, the mysterious kid who won't really talk but does drawings, with the return of the kid's sibling, etc.
Deliberate parallel to Mulder here? Careful, CC.

Sarah, I seriously hope it was just a normal abduction. I mean that.

As for the child aspect, I find that a tantalizing idea as well.

If Doggett lost a son, don't you think Scully would have read this in his files? And that she would have been a little more sensitive in this episode?

Murray, maybe it's not on file ... Doggett must've called in a favor to hide this info. Besides, Scully didn't seem any more interested in finding out after the psychic hinted on Doggett losing someone. Maybe once their back at the office she'll ask him.
Like I said before, I'm amazed that Scully hasn't gone digging already or at least have the Lone Gunmen use their infiltration skills.

When Billy reappears at the school, there are a dozen or so adults(teachers and administrators, presumably) standing in a group as his mother approaches, who part to reveal the boy. I find it very odd that none of them appeared to have been facing Billy, keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn't disappear again. (Considering how often in this episode he did disappear when people took their eyes off him for just a moment, it seems even stranger.)

We get a glimpse of a missing poster for Billy, giving a date of disappearance of September 23, 1990. However, the scene where he disappears is dated September 21.

If I recall correctly, Samantha's disappearance didn't have any Supernatural Overtones until late in the first season (possibly the second). Before then, when Mulder told Scully about her it was a straightforward disappearance. So who knows what they will do with this?

As for Scully not looking at Doggett's background files maybe she has. In the previous episode she saw him laughing with several agents outside her door, at her she assumes. If she were about that time to have looked at his record and read about his missing relation she might believe that it was some sort of setup and that any reaction on her part would just have been more fodder for the laugh mill. But I agree that she should have checked with the Lone Gunmen.

Sorry, SDonaldson. The third (I think) episode of the 1st season, "Conduit," introduces us to the Samantha arc (if it isn't mentioned in the Pilot!) and ends with Scully listening to tapes of Mulder's regression-hypnosis sessions, through which he remembered that Samantha's abduction was not by humans. It was part of Mulder's crusade in the X-Files from long before he met Scully.

He did mention her disappearance in the Pilot (or in one of the first few episodes) but the original version was he, Samantha, and their parents all went to bed as usual, but when they got up the next morning Samantha was gone. This is a very far cry from just the two of them playing Stratego and watching television when Mulder sees something (someone) take her that we've got every other time since. This is a major Changed Premises in my book.

This episode reminded me of the first season episode about the killing clone girls who resulted from a genetics program. Those little girls really gave me the creeps. It was the first X-File I saw and started me watching. This little Billy really gave me the creeps too. But then it had a twist. For me, a classic X-File.

Re: the "conduit" discussion. Actually, if anything, I found this ep to be slightly derivative of "the calusari", at least until Billy turned out to be good after all.

What I couldn't figure out was, if Ronnie was just another victim, why'd he grab Billy in the first place? It seemed like he went to the fair with the deliberate intent of kidnapping a child for Cal -- why? Stockholm syndrome? Fear? He couldn't have lied and said that he didn't have a chance, that there were too many people watching?

Not that I'm deriding this particular episode at all. It was the most effectively creepy show since before the movie, at least.

Eminem must have looked like that kid when he was young.