X-Files: Space

X-Files Season 1, Episode 8 – Space

This episode is really about Mulder, I think.  He’s like a little kid when he arrives at NASA.  He tells the ex-astronaut, Col. Belt, “I stayed up all night when I was fourteen to watch your space walk.”  Afterwards, Scully asks him “Didn’t you want to get his autograph?”  Of course, Mulder’s boyishness is a big part of the series.  After all, his obsession with the unexplained began with a childhood incident, the abduction of his sister.

In some ways, Mulder’s idealization of Belt and the space program will be challenged by this adventure.  Belt is a rather jaded figure: “You make the front page today only if you screw up.”  He lies to the press.  And, of course, he’s possessed by a space ghost – the fate of so many brave astronauts, one presumes.

The ghost is almost a cliché – a white smudge, like something out of Victorian-era fiction.  But isn’t that the essence of ghostliness? … the blurring of humanity, the inversion of a shadow, the uncertain hint of life or consciousness.  The specter is actually quite intriguing set against the high-tech world of NASA.

The episode really makes good use of architecture and décor.  In a way, it’s the fabric of the series… government installations, file cabinets and data banks, consoles, cubicles.  Such things represent the vague menace of institutional existence, the overabundance of data that clouds the truth, the labyrinth of conspiracy and bureaucracy that Mulder and Scully will have to navigate.

A lot of shows might end with the triumphant return of the space shuttle.  But the X-Files wraps up this episode with a (second) official lie and an astronaut suicide.   Then, at last, there is the close-up of the stars on the coffin – because outer space is woven into the very essence of the American flag.  That hint of hopefulness, of dream, of possibility amid the terrible realities – that’s what makes the X-Files so powerful.

Image: National Air and Space Museum Suit + Hubble Image of Mars