Sorry, folks, the administration tools screwed up again, and I forgot to check if the Add Message form had showed up last night. I will try to check this from now on.

Hmmm, I remember necromancy being banned by Moseic Law and agaist natural law. It centainly isn't in any Christian tradition except demonlogy.

I kept expecting Mulder to do something with the salt he stuck in his pocket. Why didn't he?

ScottN, he did. He used the salt to make a circle to keep the zombies at bay. What I don't get is why the zombies didn't pounce on him when he sat down, which was how Frank found him right? The circle of salt he made wasn't that big was it?

Why did Mulder leave his car in plain sight when he went into the necromancer's house? Shouldn't he have moved it so as not to let the necromancer know he's there? Oh yeah, if he didn't do that then Scully wouldn't know he's there eh?

Someone confirm this for me, Frank fired 5 shots at the basement right? Didn't he have 6 bullets in the gun? I'm not familiar with guns so I could be wrong.

Since this episode is set at the start of 2000, does this mean the next episodes will be in the "future" now? Well, at least M&S started the year with a kiss. ;-) I wasn't paying much attention but what was said after that?

Darnit, Wong, you abducted my post! I got a file locking error and couldn't post.

When Black get the gun, it clearly shows six bullets loaded. He fires three shots at the first zombie; struggles with the second; Mulder fires two more at the second zombie; then, click-click at the third one, giving Scully some action for this episode. It's possible that Black fired once while struggling with the second zombie, and I missed it in the confusion.

Although Carter refers to this as a resolution for Frank Black, they never resolved if he got custody of his daughter. I can't see how checking yourself out of the hospital and confronting some more Millenium Group nonsense would improve your standing. It was nice to see a conclusion of sorts for the group, tho'.

Darn it, I knew I shouldn't have seen what the problem was when my kids called me!

Someone confirm this for me, Frank fired 5 shots at the basement right? Didn't he have 6 bullets in the gun? I'm not familiar with guns so I could be wrong.

Well Wong and Mark seem to be confused with the gun and think there should have been another bullet, right? Well, I'm sure others might be confused too so let me clear it up: Frank shoots the first zombie three times. That is bullet #1,2, and 3. Frank is attacked and drops the gun. Mulder shoots the next zombie 2 times....Bullets #4 and 5....when the last zombie appears he fires one shot and misses the head...he fires again and by then all bullets have been discharged...I was keeping a close eye on the shots fired...I was looking for a nit pick....:-) I was expecting Mulder to keep shooting even after the bullets would have run out...you know how the hollywood types try to get away with that stuff...;-)
And for the person who missed what was said after Mulder and Scully kissed, Mulder said "The world didn't end..."
Scully: No it didn't...
Mulder: Happy New Year, Scully.
Scully: Happy New Year, Mulder.
The end of the world comment was referring to both the doomsday sayers...and the X-Philes fans who have been against a M/S kiss thinking it would ruin the show, etc. It was a nice, new years kiss. Loved it! :-)

I doubt Notre Dame will be playing in a bowl game in December 1999, unless Frank was watching a videotape.

Hans, you're right. Notre Dame *can't* play in a bowl game this season. They finished at 5-7, and they would have needed at least 7 wins to be bowl-eligible.

Confronting Black on his "first and eighteen" comment, Mulder says "It's not football, it's Revelations." Actually, the name of the book in the Bible is Revelation. Then again, lots of people make this mistake, so maybe it's just being true to life.

I do have to question Black's strategy for gaining custody of his daughter. Checking himself into a mental institution seems tailor-made to give his wife's parents the upper hand in a court fight. ("How can he possibly be a fit father? He admits he's crazy!" Or words to that effect.)

Seeing the salt bag made me wonder: when resurrecting the dead, does the salt *have* to be kosher? ;-)

Yet again, we see Fox Mulder walk into a dark basement with a weak flashlight, and not even feel around for a light switch. It's the Obligatory Spooky Search Scene(OSSS) we all know and love.

And just to roil the waters a little ... Scully didn't look remotely thrilled by that kiss, did she?

Now that's more like it, campers.

"Millennium" was thankfully, not a gimmick show, taking an unused script from the off-the-air program, and inserting Mulder and Scully. Rather, it was a very nice, suspenseful episode.

Frank Black was used very nice. He didn't take over the show, but he was used in all the right ways (and it was very scary at the end to see him smile cheerfully). Whoever was playing the necromancer also did a terrific job--just his facial expressions were marvelous.

Random Thoughts

*The show did the impossible--make "Millennium" actually look like a reasonably understandable program.

*Nice to hear the "Millennium" theme. Aside from Lance Henriksen and Terry O'Quinn, that was my favorite part of the show.

*The plot was very puzzling at first, but gradually became quite understandable. I'm not really quite sure just how bringing back the dead was going to kick off the End Times, but--I don't think the guy had all his marbles intact.

*Did Dick Clark do an audio cameo (because the blurb mentions the millennium) or was that faked somehow?

Is it really that green outside in DC in late December? I guess we'll find out next month if they got the weather right.

Dan R.--I respectfully disagree. I was watching, and Mulder didn't fire anything at the third zombie. Fortunately, Scully was there to save the day.

Chris - well it didn't all take place in DC...most of it was in rural maryland...scully later says its somewhere in the northwest of MD. Which is really closer to PA then me here in DC>

Mark-
He did fire at the third one. I taped it and went back and counted the shots over.

Oh, all right. But I was sure all he did was click at the thing. And you had to ruin it by looking at the actual evidence....

I meant to mention, but didn't: nice call on the double entendre of "the world didn't end." I know some people (Scott) around here (Scott) fear a relationship will end the series (Scott), forgetting that this is probably the last season (Scott), despite what Fox executives seem to think.

ROFL. Sorry about ruining it...for some reason I thought he used that last bullet to shoot the necromancer. I don't know why. I guess it's cause when I first saw the episode I predicted Frank would pull the gun on the necromancer...so...I had to review the tape myself!!! ;-)

I was so happy they finally kissed. A nice romantic, but still friendly kiss...they're not gonna hop into the sack and change everything around. So I was happy they finally kissed. :-)

Oh a nit on the dead folks clothes too:
Mulder said something about the necromancer wearing the dead's clothes...I THOUGHT that the undertakers don't actually dress the dead like you would think...I thought I read (and possibly learned from a mortuary) that they cut the dress or suit down the back and slip on the clothes...because rigormorits and all that makes it almost impossible to get the dead dressed.
Am I hallucinating or does that really happen? I could be wrong, but I thought they cut the clothes in the back...

On the walking dead sherriff in the morgue...

Don't they cut off the clothes so they have a naked corpse before starting an autopsy?

-12-

Dan R.:
Rigor mortis only lasts for a few hours, so that's not a reason for them to cut clothes.

I'm not saying they don't (because I haven't looked into it), but rigor wouldn't be the reason.

It would make sense, however, for them to sew the clothes back up to make it easier to move the body into the casket (no fuss, no muss, and fewer unfortunate accidents if someone goes poking at the clothes during viewing).

As for the kiss, Scully had a speculative look on her face after, as if she was surprised and didn't know what to make of it. Was she completely clueless as to how Mulder felt about her? He certainly hinted enough.

Liked the milennium music, liked the kiss, didn't understand all the mumbo-jumbo related to revelation or anything surrounding the dead guys.
Why do they have to commit suicide to be resurrected? Why does the one dead guy only get moving when the necromancer is chanting that prayer, but the others didn't seem to need to hear it to get hot-steppin? I wondered about the kosher salt, too. And why did the necromancer save scully? They mentioned that the necromancer didn't have any meaningful relationships-I guess that his being the guy you're entrusting your resurrection with doesn't qualify as a meaningful to some, but it would be to me.
That's about all. Hate those crunchy zombies.

Greetings, First Advisor! C'mon, you wanna post over at Religious Musings. Sure you do.

I wondered about the prayer, too. I thought it was a low-grade spell of protection, or maybe he just said it to keep his focus around the recently-departed-but-still-ready-for-the-party.

However, I would think that consorting with dead guys and Revelations fanatics would hardly qualify as a "meaningful relationship."

Quote of the day: "Nobody likes a math geek, Scully." I expect to here some versions of that in the near future....

Dan R. - You're right, of course, about most of it taking place in Maryland, but my point about the weather is still valid. I wouldn't think that it would tend to be much warmer in nortwestern Maryland than in DC.

Nope. It wouldn't. Especially tonight! Tonight it is 30 degrees with a wind chill of 10 degrees. Which mean NW MD would be slightly more chilly than us. So I don't think it'd be that green. ;-)

I'm told that when the Bible talks of necromancy, it's not talking about reviving the dead or communicating with the dead, but about divination using human entrails.

Re: dressing the dead
I'm told by my mother who has some experience, that it is really hard to dress the dead, even without rigor mortis, because they are just "dead weight", no pun intended. And that undertakers do usually just cut the clothes up the back to put them on.

I found their interpretation of the book of Revelation to be really unintelligible, with no relation at all to the real thing, and particularly to nothing christian. But then I guess making them wackos allows you to have them believe whatever.

The Kiss worked for me. And Mulder walking Scully out with his arm on her shoulder was a nice touch. I did expect something more, or different from Scully, but she did smile. And that is very Scully to be sort of on the blase side.

My question though, was why was the dead sherrif wearing clothes when he reanimated? He was in the morgue for an autopsy. Don't coroners do the autopsy on a naked body?

-12-

He wasn't wearing clothes. I just reviewed the tape again and when scully is shooting him he is quite naked. :-)
Donna: Thanks for the info! I KNEW I wasn't crazy and knew i had to have heard it somewhere.

Hello, benevolent overlord-
one more nnit-they were wondering why Mulder wasn't answering his cell phone, and from my experience, when the phone is out of range, you don't get rings or busy signals, you get a recorded message telling you the customer is out of range or their phone is not in service.
Tomorrow I'll go to Religious musings. Tonight, I need my sleep-I have to get up at 4:30 am for a military physical tomorrow.
catch ya later

Head shots, people, head shots.

Shane--Since Frank voluntarily checked himself in for psychiatric help, he could argue in court that he was trying to get better. Also, positive psychiatric findings would bolster his case. That's why Frank was so dead-set against helping M&S; he didn't want any mention of conspiracy theories coming up in his report.

As to winding up the Millenium storyline, that didn't happen. The necromancer and the 4 ex-FBI agents were an off-shoot of the Millenium group. Whatever the Roosters and Owls are up to was not discussed in this episode. Remember, their plan for the Apocalypse revolved around a plague, not a bunch of zombies.

Isn't it odd that M&S didn't ask Frank's former FBI partner (sorry, I've forgotten her name) to help them? She should have been able give them some insights into Frank's situation.

The opening scene showed the necromancer waiting for the zombie's phone call in a torrential downpour. Yet when Mulder is examining the grave, the sides are as neat as if dug out with a machine. Wouldn't the rain have caused the sides to collapse, at least a bit?

Speaking of digging, just how energetic is the necormancer? He single-handedly excavated a 6' deep by 3' wide by 7' long hole in one night, with a just a shovel. Anybody who's ever dug a hole knows thats pretty much impossible.

But he's the Necromancer! Ever hear of Zombie army of slaves? Grave diggers at discount price :-> Opps put ideas in the lesser overlord'sd head (Call yourself that again and its Galactic Court for Name Resolution time.)

Actually Saul communicated with the Shade of Samuel through ..... a witch of Endor of all places. As you can imagne, Samuel was quite annoyed Saul broke God's law. Of course God allowed the communication since some magic words and herbs ain't going call up the dead.

Kosher Salt: proberly not, All evil things hate salt for some reason. Too pure. That's why you throw it over your shoulder, to hit the devil in the eyes.

But he's the Necromancer! Ever hear of Zombie army of slaves? Foolish of him not to keep one or two around to make his foursome for bridge when Mulder took one out. And any reasonable Overlord keeps minions around he can cattle-prod into submission. Although nanobots don't grumble about the pay rate as much--one molecule a day, and they're happy.

Point about the rain: as anyone who's ever dug a hole to just have it rain on you knows, there should have still been mud in the bottom of that grave. Rain and hole-digging is like rain and roof-building--inevitably connected....

P.S. Matt--where's that story from? I don't even own a bible anymore, much less any really good Hebrew myth books.

Frank Black was admitted for years? I had not remained with the series until its abrupt conclusion, thus I could be missing something. However, I was always under the impression that the two series existed on the same time schedule. Happy holidays!

Re: the biblical story of raising the dead--let's hear it for the Internet! It's 1Samuel 28:8-19. However, it's unclear from the passage if it is the raising of a body, or just a spirit. Nowhere in the story does Samuel then become dangerously psychotic, held off only by kosher salt....

I know I'm coming along with this a bit late, and no one is probably even going to see this message, but I'le say it anyway.

The gun that was used to shoot the zombies looked pretty old. I wouldn't have expected it to have a double action trigger. However, I don't suppose the overall design of such guns has changed much in the past 100 years, but it still seemed odd to me.

The following is from Wrapped in Plastic magazine #45 (Feb. 2000) by John Pierce (page 19):

"As for the Millennium crossover issue, evidently most XF fans didn't follow the other show on a regular basis. Millennium had a really elaborate mythology, in which the world was threatened by an imminent apocalypse unrelated to that in XF. Moreover, the Millennium Group was as powerful in its world as the Elders in XF; in the second season finale, it had apparently set off an earthquake and a major plague. While the latter was scaled down to almost nothing in the third season, the implication remained that the Group had all the power it needed to bring off an apocalypse. But in the XF crossover, most of the Group has disappeared, and all this one holdout can come up with is a corporal's guard of zombies - not exactly Night of the Living Dead! As for the Morley cigarette and Jose Chung, those teases had been contradicted by an episode in which 'Kill Switch' is playing on somebody's TV set. Perhaps Millennium was taking place in a parallel universe in which Chung also lived and Morleys were a brand. In any case, this was not a crossover that 'had to be'."

This theory would also take care of the XF/Homicide nit. There would be two universes - In the Homicide universe, XF is a fictional show. In the XF universe, there happens to exist a Homicide character (perhaps based on the "real" one from the other universe). Well, so much for linking XF to other shows (i.e. XF to Homicide to St. Elsewhere to Cheers).

Since I was NOT a regular viewer of Millennium, are Pierce's comments valid? Maybe, Chris Carter should have concluded the UFO storyline and then incorporated Millennium's "mythology" into XF. I always thought Millennium had untapped potential (similar to another spin-off - Star Trek Voyager).

The following is from Wrapped in Plastic magazine #45 (Feb. 2000) by John Pierce (page 19):

"As for the Millennium crossover issue, evidently most XF fans didn't follow the other show on a regular basis. Millennium had a really elaborate mythology, in which the world was threatened by an imminent apocalypse unrelated to that in XF. Moreover, the Millennium Group was as powerful in its world as the Elders in XF; in the second season finale, it had apparently set off an earthquake and a major plague. While the latter was scaled down to almost nothing in the third season, the implication remained that the Group had all the power it needed to bring off an apocalypse. But in the XF crossover, most of the Group has disappeared, and all this one holdout can come up with is a corporal's guard of zombies - not exactly Night of the Living Dead! As for the Morley cigarette and Jose Chung, those teases had been contradicted by an episode in which 'Kill Switch' is playing on somebody's TV set. Perhaps Millennium was taking place in a parallel universe in which Chung also lived and Morleys were a brand. In any case, this was not a crossover that 'had to be'."

This theory would also take care of the XF/Homicide nit. There would be two universes - In the Homicide universe, XF is a fictional show. In the XF universe, there happens to exist a Homicide character (perhaps based on the "real" one from the other universe). Well, so much for linking XF to other shows (i.e. XF to Homicide to St. Elsewhere to Cheers).

Since I was NOT a regular viewer of Millennium, are Pierce's comments valid? Maybe, Chris Carter should have concluded the UFO storyline and then incorporated Millennium's "mythology" into XF. I always thought Millennium had untapped potential (similar to another spin-off - Star Trek Voyager).

Here's something no-ones picked up yet - watching all the episodes on DVD in sucession may drive you to be sitting next to Frank, watching Notre Dame, but it does help occassionally.

When Skinner shows Mulder and Scully the Oroborous symbol, they both stare at it blankly before Mulder says what it is.

Yet, three years ago, in Never Again, what symbol did Scully have tattooed on her back?
Unless of course Scully never allowed pictures to be taken of it and had it removed when we weren't looking, they both should know what it looks like (and even then, Scully probably should, even if Mulder doesn't, seeing as she asked for it to be done) - would have been nice to have had a reference back to that, but I guess the writers forgot about it ;).

In the X-Files guide, the Chief even made reference to the tattoo being Millenium's symbol.