The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives:  Episodes: The Beginning (6x01)

Note: this episode caused quite a stir when it first aired, partly because the feel and tone was so different from what had come before in the series, but also because of the painful clashing between Mulder and Scully, something many fans were not at all expecting after the point of closeness these two came to in *Fight the Future.  The following review was written just after the episode aired.

Mulder and Scully butt heads repeatedly in this episode, but not because they choose to. It seems to me to be a combination of the following:

• The fact that both of them are personally invested in this thing (when you deny my evidence, you deny me personally)
• The fact that, unlike in the past where there has been a lot of selfless giving--one is needy, the other supplies--now each of them direly needs something from the other one, but they are on opposite sides of an ideological divide, and what each of them needs is not something the other can give without compromising themselves
• We're probably getting a little help here from CSM's admitted (at the end) plan to break Mulder's spirit.

Many viewers' sympathies have gone with Scully, assuming that Mulder has backed off on the sentiments he voiced in the movie's hallway scene, declaring Scully's critical value to his life.  This would seem to be a natural fan reaction given that so many dedicated viewers are women.  It's like looking at a relationship where we suddenly see a friend snubbed by her boyfriend.  But I've yet to see any commentary that sees this episode's dilemma from Mulder's POV, so that is what I'm attempting to do here--not to excuse him or to posit that he's more justified or 'right' than Scully, but simply to explain his mindset as I see it, because so many fans have seemed thoroughly stumped by his behavior in this episode. 

So what exactly does Mulder see happening here? Our first glimpse is of him trying to put his files back together as if he were attempting to reconstruct Humpty Dumpty--one little hopeless chip at a time. And why is he even bothering with this? Because it's his life. It's not just his profession or his job or his assignment: this is what gets him out of bed in the morning, it's what keeps him running. It's the only possible way he can see to redeem himself from his failure to stop Samantha's abduction. It's his child, his creation. Which is why he doesn't just scrap the whole thing and go get a life. This is what he lives for. To save himself, he must save the X-files.

So he goes to the OPC review, intending to get on with his life--with the X-files. But things are derailed by the incredulity of the people on the panel, and by his own partner, who when asked for the evidence doesn't hem and haw, doesn't couch her remarks in 'not quite conclusive' or 'working toward obtaining that evidence' a la FTF: she says nothing, and lets Mulder hang himself (which I have to say seemed distinctly out-of-character for Scully.  In the five years of their partnership up to this point, she has no record of neglecting to let Mulder know--and clearly--when she can't support his theories.)

He says to her later, outside the hearing room, that the only reason he was in that room was because she'd told him they had evidence to back him up, and in response she can only offer, "I was hoping that wouldn't come up."  Scully's reaction here echoes the scene later in the motel room, where she is still trying to lie to Gibson to make things seem better than they are (not a conscious motivation on her part, just part of her tendency to avoid the hard things.) Of course, Mulder is caught in a Catch-22 in front of the review board, too: if he fails to defend what he's seen, he risks losing his project, but to defend the implausible/fantastical things he's experienced makes him look like a madman.

What could have made the difference here was Scully's backup, and it wasn't there.  Not at all to say she should have lied in lieu of presenting evidence, but that if she really didn't have enough scientific evidence to back him up, she should have made that clear, and apparently, from his remark, she didn't.  Mulder has always seen himself--fairly accurately--as one against the world... except for Scully.  But now that backup is gone; he's left floating. The hard evidence he thought he had has once again mysteriously evaporate, as it always seems to, over and over, like one of the tortures from Dante's Inferno. How much of this can a man take--even a motivated man, a driven man?

But in spite of the OPC vote not to return the X-files to Mulder and Scully, Walter Skinner comes through for them. It's interesting to note, BTW, that here Skinner actually admits to there being a conspiracy involving people within the Bureau that he knows cannot be touched. But he goes even farther, offering the evidence Mulder needs to prove his claims of aliens and planned invasion. Skinner seems to have become invested in Mulder's quest in some tangential way here. His 'no' vote in the OPC meeting comes from a soldier's experience in war strategy: know when to sacrifice yourself, and when to save yourself for an even greater good. If he had voted for Mulder/Scully's assignment to the X-files, he would have discredited himself, and therefore not been of any further use to them. As it is, he has essentially gone under cover. He is still there, privy to information like the critical file in the basement office. He can still help them.

So, file in hand, Mulder and Scully set off for the scene of the alien gestation. As they enter the house, Mulder is in the lead and goes into the family room; Scully, several steps behind, announces that they're violating state and local laws by being there contaminating a crime scene. Some see this as just another example of Mulder's headstrong, headlong methods, but wouldn't Scully have already known exactly what was going to happen when they reached the house? Hasn't she been working with this man for five years now? If it bothered her to check the house under the circumstances, why did she go along? And if she knew what would happen, why did she bother to vocalize it at all? I can't remember Scully seeming this unsupportive since The Field Where I Died.  [And revisiting this point from the distance of several years, I would say that Scully's attitude in this episode, which seems to contradict her earlier mindset and style, is just the beginning of a pattern where the writers twist Scully to the convenience of their plot, even if gives her a distinctly out-of-character flavor.]

So the scene is examined, the fingernail/claw is pulled from the wall, and they walk outside. Mulder is overwhelmed by her refusal to believe what is right there in front of her, or to give credence to what he has seen with his own eyes (remember outside the OPC room she tells him that the virus merely consumes human cells, then adds, "It creates nothing!" But Mulder has seen those gestating aliens--a number of them--and how can her remark say anything to him other than, "You're delusional. I don't believe YOU.") I think this is the frustration that builds to the "bite you on the ass" remark. How can she see it, experience it, then say it never happened and retreat to the shelter of conventionality? How could she be abducted and then deny what had happened to her? How could she know about all those dead women and say, "No, they're not. This Penny Northern is still alive"?

Scully, of course, is in a different mindset entirely. She tries to clarify, and maybe, too, to reach out for a connection to Mulder, repeating what he had told her in the hallway in FTF, that her science had saved, kept him honest. If that was true, how could she have changed now and not be that help to him? But then she goes a step farther, seeing her science as the cause of "you've made me a whole person." Now I can tell you my little red buzzer started going off like crazy at this point. Wait just a darn minute. I can bet you anything when Mulder said she'd made him a whole person--and he did say 'you', not 'it'--he didn't have her science even remotely in mind (there was a big pause before this phrase came out of him, too, if you recall.) It was Scully who had made him whole, Scully as a person and Scully with her caring who was always there to fill the emotional hollow inside him when it started to howl in its emptiness. (It's you, stupid--not the economy, not your science. It's YOU!) But Scully has conveniently removed her personal self from the equation.  [At a distance of more than ten years, I'd say that this is less characteristic of the Scully we'd come to know over the previous five years than it is of the kind of non-intuitive statement Temperance Brennan of Bones might make to her partner Booth.]

Mulder, too, makes an attempt here in front of the house to pull back to that FtF hallway scene connection. He talks about her being unconscious, over his shoulder. He could have mentioned any list of clinical symptoms, but he doesn't; he chooses instead the image of her over his shoulder: close, tender, personal connection. But it slides right by Scully. In the hallway he had taken a huge risk, especially for a man with only one person in the world he can trust. He made a naked emotional opening to his partner, admitting that he needed HER, not just her technical skills, not just her brain and her medical training. But the writing staff wants us to believe that Scully here is as clueless as Mulder himself had proved to be when he said to Scully in Season 4, "All this because I didn't get you a desk?"

Next we see our duo at the nuclear power plant, attempting to get inside. Jeffrey Spender, an Inspector Javert clone if I ever saw one (Victor Hugo's Les Miserables) with his mindless devotion to rules/the letter of the law, refuses to let them in and threatens them with disciplinary proceeding.  He even threatens Skinner. (Notice, though, that he doesn't maintain much eye contact with Mulder; most of the time he's looking down, or past him.) Scully steps in to ease Mulder away. Now I've seen many times when this was really needed, where she was his safety valve, his reality check (vending room, FTF). But somehow I didn't get the impression that his behavior or attitude was over the top here. He seemed to be backing off from what I could tell, and yet on the way back to the car she has to tell him he wasn't getting anywhere, he was only making things worse. As if he were a little kid.  Admittedly, sometimes he is. But here it just didn't seem to fit; it only accentuated how syncopated these two agents have become.

BUT... when they discover Gibson in the back seat of their car, everything changes. Suddenly they are on the same side again, on the same team, and the old rhythm is back. Mulder takes the wheel; Scully slips into the back seat with the sick boy and her natural caring, mothering instincts kick into gear. Make that high gear. They drive to the motel (an actual, real, honest-to-heck motel room that I actually slept in myself once, believe it or not; can't tell you how floored I was to see it there onscreen) and they hurry Gibson inside.  It's hard not to notice the little family tableau here: Mom, Pop, and little Gibson. Scully is concerned--as is Mulder--about the boy; I think they both care a great deal about him personally, though his strategic importance to them overwhelms the private considerations for both of them, since Gibson could prove to be the scientific proof they so desperately need. (Poor Gibson, destined to be a lab rat for whatever faction gets hold of him.) One other thing is highlighted in this scene, and that is Scully's automatic tendency to hide her feelings/thoughts. She knows intellectually that Gibson can read minds, yet she still tries to soothe him with convenient lies. He contradicts her at every turn, but she just can't seem to break out of the pattern. She even goes so far as to ask, "Communicate with what?", to which Gibson is forced to answer, "You already know. You just don't want to believe it." 

In the end Scully convinces Mulder that Gibson belongs in a hospital, but as they prepare to leave, who should show up but the enigmatic Agent Fowley. You may have noticed that Mulder has shown no personal interest whatever in her during this episode (has even gone so far as to question her motives and intentions, and none too politely at that), and yet despite his reservations, Diana dangles the one thing in front of Mulder that he's never able to refuse: a chance to capture the ever-elusive evidence, that concrete, incontrovertible proof: a living EBE. And what choice does he have? As Mulder sees it, there is no choice; there are no issues. Here is the thing he has lived for: to find palpable evidence of alien life on Earth. In his mind he is not choosing Diana, nor is he rejecting or snubbing Scully. He is simply single-mindedly pursuing the evidence Diana reminds him is "so close" at hand.

So Scully hauls Gibson off to the hospital and Mulder heads for the power plant with Diana. He is, I think, very conscious here of his tendency to follow anyone waving the possibility of an answer as readily as a trained hound takes off after a fox.  How many times have we heard him say, "You were using me all along"?  He questions Diana as to her motivations, and in return she tells him what he most wants to hear: that she took the assignment to protect the work, to have someone with a sympathetic viewpoint in charge of the work, to protect it. Mulder is not bowled over ("Why are you doing this? To convince me of your noble intentions?") Still, she is the only available means to an end he needs more than anything to reach. (Remember, similarly, that in Memento Mori he is willing to make a deal with CSM if it will save Scully's life.) He also knows that Diana will not throw sand in his face regarding what he has seen and experienced. 

So they get inside the power plant, and Mulder finds something useful (the cast-off skin from the still-developing alien, though you can bet he doesn't leave the plant with it--evidence gone again!) He sees the creature, and Gibson, although the alarms go off... which does seem awfully conveniently timed with Diana's departure to "find another way in."  Once again, Mulder leaves with nothing, and likely at gunpoint as well. At least the bit with Diana pointing a gun at him seemed to be--to Mulder's eyes--a ruse to protect the real reason they were in the plant at all. She does give Mulder a little nod when she points the gun at him, and he seems to respond, as if this is a cue between the two of them. 

But in the end, of course, the fact that Mulder is caught inside the power plant is the last straw for the review committee, and Mulder and Scully are ordered, on pain of immediate dismissal, to have no further contact with the X-files whatever. So the child is taken away and given to a pair of sinister-seeming foster parents: Fowley and Spender. Is Mulder simply going to shrug and comply? Reality check!  Just as Scully tried to get custody of Emily, even in the face of looking unbalanced to the social workers, we next see Mulder right where we first found him, trying to put those little X-file scraps back together again. (BTW, for anyone steamed by his little remark to Scully about closing the door, my take on this was that he was attempting to let her know that he was not giving up, that their reassignment hadn't changed his devotion to the project. He didn't snap at her, didn't give her a look. Take another peek at the footage.) "...shut the door" is just a lead-in to "I'm not stopping." I don't believe he meant to exclude her; in his typical way, he was not noticing her--not aware--in his rush to get to work on the evidence. Scully, however, is acutely aware of his "what I was told." "What we were told," she replies. She is still in this with him, though perhaps with more than a tinge of bitterness over the fact that his project has once again cost her, both personally and professionally.

Scully has seen something big, and ominous, lurking in the shadows of Fowley's report, however, and she isn't about to let her sometimes-blindered partner be destroyed by it: Diana's report clears everyone except Mulder. Because of a trip Diana originated, Mulder was caught--disgraced again--and the two of them have been definitively shut off from the X-files, the last door slammed closed and locked. She broaches the subject gingerly, knowing the reaction she is likely to get. Mulder's buttons are pushed by her remark... and from his standpoint, for two very good reasons. First, he needs to know that someone--anyone--is out there protecting his only child, and Diana has given him assurances that this is exactly what she is doing. Didn't she take him to the power plant at great personal risk to herself? Secondly, he has been stung throughout this episode by Scully's apparent betrayal, not in her dependence on science, but by her denial of what has happened to both of them personally--denial of things he has seen with his own eyes. "And no matter what you think, she's certainly not going to go around saying that just because science can't prove it, it isn't true," he shoots back at Scully. This is the deep wound, from Mulder's POV: that Scully has denied him. How could she stand there in that hallway outside OPC and say the virus created nothing? He has (again, from his POV) never objected to the science she can prove, only to her knee-jerk doubts of anything that can't be catalogued, categorized or easily referenced. 

Each of them here, of course, desperately wants the other's trust. Mulder sees himself as already cut off from Scully, so when she asks for his trust, he sees it as a choice between someone who believes him (he needs someone to believe him; possibly, he needs to know he isn't crazy) and someone who doesn't. Scully, concerned about Fowley's possible stake in how events have turned out, and about the ragged disconnect between herself and her partner, asks for his trust. Trust me; I'm looking out for you. 

Neither of them, however, is ready to trust the other if the price of that trust is giving up something they are so very dependent on. "Not if that contradicts what I know to be true," Mulder tells her. He does not say it angrily; he is not confronting her. He simply means that he is not willing to deny what he has seen--experienced first hand--in order to buy the comfort of her support, in much the same way that Galileo endured years of house arrest rather than publicly capitulate to the Roman church's official position that the sun revolved around the earth, when he knew from personal observation that this wasn't the case. Scully would have been no more eager--indeed, shows herself throughout the episode to be equally unwilling--to give up her hard scientific perspective to buy Mulder's support. So heads have butted throughout the episode, and we are all left with the painful bruises therefrom. 

In the end, though, Scully hands him a folder: scientific evidence he can use. There is this slight look, the glimmer of admiration he shows in the Dallas field office--the same look he gets when she says she won't quit, and how many people can they save? Just a thin thread of connection, but at this point it is better than nothing. Much better. 

NOTE: In retrospect *The Beginning turned out to be just the first of a series of episodes that hit me as puzzlingly 'alt' for the X-Files universe we'd known up to that point.  The sudden, deep rift between Mulder and Scully; the snatching away of the project that had been Mulder's life without it having any discernable emotional impact on him; the sudden, extended series of fantasy episodes: all these things frustrated me (as they did most of the 'philes I knew and had discussions with at the time.)  By November of that year, my continuing puzzlement over the lack of any emotional impact on Mulder due to this turn of events had driven me, in the way writers typically do, to begin exploring the topic in story form just to satisfy my own curiosity.  My written explorations evolved into Paradise Lost, which became the first book of the Sanctuary trilogy.

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