In Scully's notebook, the word "adenine" is spelled with an M instead of an N. Now, I realize that they might simply have mistransliterated it, but shouldn't Scully, a scientist, know the proper spelling of the word? (And if it really is "ademine," someone needs to tell the authors of my biology textbook.)

Oh, and first nit of the new season.

Continuity nits clustered around Skinner this episode. First, the nosebleed Mulder causes while choking him starts in his right nostril(our left), then, when Skinner stands, shifts to his left(our right). Next, when Mulder writes Kritschgau's name on Skinner's palm, it starts off going level with the left side of his hand, with widely-spaced letters. When we see it completed, it slants up Skinner's hand, and the letters are crowded.

With Mulder hooked up to all those monitors, wouldn't there be alarms wailing when Skinner and Kritschgau disconnected him?

I find it impossible to believe that an alien language is a simple letter-for-letter transposition of English. That's not a foreign language, it's merely a foreign alphabet, and English didn't exist when these aliens did their work.

Scully says there are 24 panels on the spaceship, corresponding to the chromosomes in the human genome. There are 46 human chromosomes.

My nitpicks are as numerically proceeds:
1) Special Agent Fox Mulder being physically restrained by the ward personnel appeared all too choreographed.
2) Darn you, Mr. Tourtellotte. I absolutely knew someone would notice this obvious nitpick. Oh well, who wishes to hear another description? As Special Agent Fox Mulder is strangling Asst.Dir. Walter Skinner, Skinner's nose conspicuously bleeds from his left nostril. From this point on, though, the blood is emanating from his right nostril.
3) Special Agent Fox Mulder is restrained to his bed with Velcro bands? This hardly seems logical. With enough muscular exertion one may rip through the Velcro.
4) That medical dosage Michael Kristchgau persistently injects into Special Agent Fox Mulder is one heck of a fast-acting remedy. Asst.Dir. Walter Skinner had not fully injected it into him prior to its effect on the cerebral anomaly.
5) Special Agent Dana Scully attempts to convince the African-American woman in the car seat beside her that an elderly tribal African-American man materialized momentarily in the same car seat. She adds, "The man was standing in your sit." Since when does such a verb as standing apply to the act of sitting?
6) A Hispanic FBI agent glances at Special Agent Dana Scully with his face looking forward just as Dana is returning to FBI headquarters. In the sequential scene the Hispanic FBI agent is already beyond her and now glancing at her from behind.

Just who is paying for Mulder's hospital stay?

Caution: Spoilers. However, these spoilers are fully endorsed by the FOX network!

I just love those previews that give away everything for next weeks episode! Oh, look! It's Deep Throat! Oh, I see... Mulder's sick because he was infected with the black goo! And finely... (deep breathing) Obi-wan never told you thw truth, did he? Fox... I am your father!

Was that Deep Throat? I didn't get a good look.

And yes, the adenine issue is funny indeed. It's a nice thought that aliens, who apparently designed our genome and are responsible for our entire mythic culture, would fail freshman Bio.

What are the odds on CSM cutting off Mulder's hand? I've been offered 10:1 and am placing nickels.

Ah, Fox toys with us during November sweeps. Mulder sleeps with Fowley! Luke, I am your father! Deep Throat returns from the dead! Bobby was showering for the entire season!

Ahem. I'm just wondering how much of it's going to be a dream sequence or other such foolishness.

While abiogenesis--the origin of life from non-life--is considered by some scientists to be an important step in our understanding, I'd hardly call it "the answer to every question ever asked." Hawking doesn't even claim that for quantum gravity, the so-called theory of everything.

When Scully looks up the letter "e" in her handy Alien to English notebook, it appears that each English letter takes several alien symbols. Assuming that holds true for most of the letters, the alien spacecraft wouldn't hold very much information.

Apparently the nature vs. nuture argument has now been answered. The aliens not only programmed us to develop DNA, but they were able to program our languages into us. They must have taken hints from some aliens over on Star Trek....

Nitpick for D. Stuart: Both the biology professor and the now-you-see-him-now-you-don't figure are Africans, not African-Americans.

I assume that the title of this ep refers to the five mass extinctions of life that have occurred so far...

Actually, this episode felt more like it was simply setting the stage for next week...

At the end, when the African lady (whos name escapes me) shows up with the Red Berets, is the spacecraft gone? What happened to the pix that the crazy doctor was picking up when he went out to check on the dead guy?

Why would reanimating fish or a dead guy cause an earthquake like effect?

Next week - Deep Throat returns, and Cancerman pulls a Darth Vader. Remember, PREVIEWS ALWAYS LIE!

-12-

How come Skinner wasn't fired or at least suspended by the Bureau?

When Mulder wrote the note to Skinner, at first I thought Mulder was referring to Krychek.

When Kritschgau tests Mulder for the first time, he stops Mulder after eight guesses. He then tells Mulder that he is 5% accurate. Let us go back to our 5th grade math classes. Hmmm, 5% of 8 is..... 4/10. So somehow Mulder was able to take a .4 guess to get to that 5%. Actually, it looks like he gets at least 2 of his guesses correct (a few of the guesses are shown from behind the screens). That would mean he got at least 2/8 of them right, or 25% which is what Kritschgau said was the best he had ever seen.

When Mulder makes the guesses, especially the faster time, it looks very choreographed.

This was interesting...maybe not good, but interesting.

Too bad Dr. Barnes couldn't have stabbed himself to prove his theory about life. Then, the actor would have had the distinction of trying to kill himself in two classic sci-fi shows (the same guy was Krola in the "TNG" episode "First Contact").

Seriously, was every performer taking "Shatner Pills" or something? Kritschgau and Barnes seemed way over-the-top, as did Mulder's doctor.

Mulder's doctor certainly seems to care about Skinner. Mulder is choking the life out of him, and for a while, all the doctor says is: "He can't breathe!" Well, duhhhhh...

Does Mulder really trust Kritschgau? I mean, the guy seemed mildly untrustworthy in the Redux trilogy two seasons ago. Then again, Mulder can read minds--of course, it did seem like Kritschgau decided to pull something near the end of the episode.

Isn't Barnes a moron? He stabs his driver to death, apparently trying to prove his theory about life. Then, when he apparently succeeds, he runs out there, apparently believing his driver is going to welcome him with open arms or something. Of course, the driver promptly stabs Barnes to death.

Finally, wouldn't we all like to see the return of the creatures from "Teliko" during this Africa sojourn?

In both "Biogenesis" and "Sixth Extinction," the written Navajo language is referred to as being "ancient."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that WRITTEN Navajo DID NOT EXIST prior to the 1940's! The U.S. government deliberately selected a language with no written alphabet and invented one, with the idea that such a code would be impossible for foreign intelligence to crack.

Furthermore, why was it so startling when Scully and the African woman discovered passages from the Koran? They'd already discovered passages from the first chapter of Genesis, which predates anything in the Koran by a couple of millenia.

Biology nits:

Yes, each cell has 23 pairs of human chromosomes. (Humans should have two copies of every autosomal gene). However, the X and Y chromosomes carry different genes. So logically there should be 24 panels (22 autosomal + X + Y).
Estimates of the number of genes in a human range upwards of 100,000. Each gene may contain a few thousand base pairs. That's at least a billion bits of data. Now, assumming that the aliens engraved all of this data, using a exceptionally thin stylus, how would Scully know that this billion bit dataset contains human genes, and not the genes of a Chimpanzee?. After all, the Homo sapiens genome differs by less than 1% from that of Pan troglydytus...

Hmm....maybe the purpose of the hybrids was to get us *more* like chimpanzees to facilitate the takeover. The aliens had actually planted chimp DNA but, by some freak accident, got us instead! (Remember, The Creators are Always Right.....)

Scully actually wasn't that taken aback by the Koran; the point was probably just to establish that the African woman was Islamic.

The drug that Mulder is given, Phenytoin, is a real drug. The brand name for this is Dilantin, it is a Hydantoin anticonvulsant.

It is usually given to epileptics or to patients that have just had brain surgery to keep them from having seizures.

I can see how anti-seizure medication could help if is brain is in overload, but at one point it actually seems to CAUSE a seizure.

Causing seizures is not one of its side effects; however slurred speech, dizzyness, mental confusion, twitching, double vision, depression, headaches, tremors, nystagmus (twitchy eye movements), and irritability are all listed as some of the most common side effects.

It should also be noted that it usually comes in pill form and the normal "maintainance" dose is 300-400mg. I believe that Mulder got WAY more than that, but it's hard to say since it is an injection.

Also, you should slowly drop the dosage or it can cause seizures.

Looks like Mulder has quite a bit to look forward to. :-)

Skinner realizes that there's more to Mulder's condition than meets the eye when Mulder, whilst ostensibly trying to kill his boss, slips a *written* plea for help into Skinner's pocket. Yet when Skinner returns to the hospital to talk to Mulder, he asks "Can you write?". Admittedly Skinner doesn't have the same benefit of brain-enhancing insanity that Mulder is experiencing, but the obvious answer to this question would seem to be . . . YES!

Did it seem to anyone else that Scully looked just gorgeous in this episode? Must be that African sun...

I was impressed with her sunscreen - as far as I could tell her coloring didn't change despite days in the African sun.

Re: "She adds, "The man was standing in your sit." Since when does such a verb as standing apply to the act of sitting?"

Scully was freaking out - people often don't use the right grammar from day to day, and even the best of us can slip when under pressure.

Gillian Anderson's considerably amplified visage may be a splendid outcome of the work of her coiffeur or coiffeuse, as I was previously attempting to state not too long ago.

Friseur is another term for hairdresser. Let us face it, a majority of us our aficionados to aesthetics and centrally to philogyny. Personally, I feel there is this pulchritude and charm to Gillian Anderson, or at least that of her character.

For those who don't understand D. Stuart's big words, here's the translation.

Gillian Anderson is a Hottie!

Looks like I'm way-late in finding this site. Okee, I'm just watching these silly X-Files lately (for the first time) because my girlfriend likes the show (there's no accounting for taste). She has the DVD box sets and we're going through them a little at a time, in order... so this is all new to me, and as such, I will respond as if they were first run on the "Fair and Balanced network (yay Al Franken) last night.

Does anyone think that Chris Carter really has a plan with all this crapola? After watching 6 seasons, I think not. I think he created a "round-robin" situation in which all the writers etc. contribute to, and since he's the boss, he takes on the writing chores of the episodes he likes or the ones for the main story arc. I use the term "story" very loosely.

Okay, so these aliens write on the outside of their space ships just for the fun of it? And what were the little chunks of the tablets... chunks off the ship? And if they swooosh together when they are in each others close proximity, why didn't they do that after they came apart? Oh I know: "The power that broke them was soooo strong that..." And this is the very same power that makes the ship fly... and... bull.

And they use ancient American Indian "letters" to spell biological names and chemicals that hadn't yet been named by scientists when the ship was constructed? Oh of course... the aliens named all the components of "American" biology... and the indian's had 26 letters in their alphabet? How convenient.

Skinner lets Mimi boss him around??? What a wimp. I guess he's afraid of the Scientologists too... prolly for good reason.

These 3 episodes are really pathetic soap opera non-linear nonsensities

Isn't anyone else really tired of Krycek and his smug pretty boy face and bad acting yet?

good 1215401774674

Shane: Scully says there are 24 panels on the spaceship, corresponding to the chromosomes in the human genome. There are 46 human chromosomes.
I believe she was referring to the pair of 23 chromosomes including both X and Y.

D. Stuart: That medical dosage Michael Kristchgau persistently injects into Special Agent Fox Mulder is one heck of a fast-acting remedy
Not only that but the second time we see the injection Kristchgau fills the entire syringe! But you can clearly see there is no liquid in it. This isn't a complaint but why do you always give the entire title and name of the characters?

Geoff: They'd already discovered passages from the first chapter of Genesis, which predates anything in the Koran by a couple of millenia.
Very true. Also, large portions of Gensis was taken from, and I'm sure I'll spell this wrong, Zorastronism.

TMD: Gillian Anderson is a Hottie!
Agreed! She seems to get better as time goes on. Was this really filmed in Africa?