Providence
- Episode aired Mar 10, 2002
- TV-14
- 44m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
2.5K
YOUR RATING
Scully's baby becomes a bargaining chip for a psychotic UFO cult that feels the baby is ultimately connected to a UFO they have uncovered.Scully's baby becomes a bargaining chip for a psychotic UFO cult that feels the baby is ultimately connected to a UFO they have uncovered.Scully's baby becomes a bargaining chip for a psychotic UFO cult that feels the baby is ultimately connected to a UFO they have uncovered.
Christian Svensson
- Soldier #2
- (as Christian Hastings)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDenis Forest - who played the UFO cult leader - died suddenly of a massive stroke eight days after this episode aired.
- GoofsScully refers to Lt. Josepho's Bible verse (about the four angelic visitors) as "Ephesians," a New Testament epistle by Saint Paul. The quotation is actually from Ezekiel, a prophetic memoir from the Old Testament.
- Quotes
Dana Scully: [to Comer] Now, tell me who sent you to kill my son or I will take that pillow from under your head and make them the last breaths that you take.
- Crazy creditsIn the main title for the ninth season, a piece of paper flashes across the screen listing "FBI Contacts: Witnesses and Contributors." The names on the list are screen names of the series' on-line fans. For episodes #9.01-#9.11, the names were randomly picked from various X-Files message boards. For episodes #9.12-#9.19, the names came from contest entries.
- ConnectionsReferenced in The X-Files: The Truth (2002)
Featured review
What does god need with a starship?
These episodes and the story actually makes sense, if you pay attention:
Not just to this episode, but to the entire arc which includes the god spaceship from S6/S7, Skully's pregnancy, Mulders brain disease, his abduction, return, recovery, and finally his disappearance (and then final reappearance), but most importantly, the last two episodes of season 8 where the super soldiers can't decide whether to kill baby William or to treat him as Jesus. They are always veering from one extreme to the other, all the way to season 11, where the William story finally gets finished. What's the one thing that the season eight finale showed us was that exactly how many super soldiers there were. These guys are all over the X-Files universe, and in this episode we get to see how one of them has gotten implanted into the FBI and is the actual reason why Kirsch does certain things, he is not an actual control of his post.
There are elements of every single one of these arcs in these two episodes, and if you paid attention to those previous episodes, then what Agent Comer (The great character actor Neal McDonough) says, Will just fall right into place and make sense.
But the thing you have to consider about both Agent Comer and the person who runs the alien cult "Josephus-o", they are both not only completely misguided, but 100% totally wrong.
And to tell the truth the only person who really understood the god spaceship was the man who had gone crazy at the beginning of season seven, when he figured out the life-giving qualities and went ape-crazy with the machete on his poor driver.
Because when you think about it, it's not the metal of the spaceship that was resurrecting these people or healing certain people- it was the words written on the spaceship, the words copied onto the rubbing, The words on the tiny slivers of alien metal that come into contact with Mulder and causes his brain to go whack, the words on the piece of metal that baby William has direct control over. The words that eventually became text for various earthly religions and which also contains our very genome. And as Skully often says about these artifacts, "they are powerful", "They are power", "They have power".
And this was the thing that Josephusio did not realize about William, because Josepho was in a big hurry trying to break in to the alien god ship using conventional tools. How well did that work out? Totally wrong approach, and apparently he didn't know about this power aspect that Skully was aware of- she knew how dangerous this thing was, how dangerous those words are. But Josepho did not.
The concurrent story here is that these super soldiers are alien replacements, but they are also a government experiment. These two theories of their existence "coexist" throughout the last two seasons of the X-Files. Why should not both be true? That's the one thing that both Mulder, who believed that they were aliens, and Doggett, who did not believe that they were aliens, never considered: that both situations were true. These guys are both aliens and government experiments. The other person who understood what the super soldiers were was Alex Krycek- Who had an opportunity to do the right thing but he just had to slip back into his duplicitous self. Remember, Krycek had access to that DAT tape from Anasazi during this whole time. So of all of the people in the X-Files, he knew the most. But he made dire mistakes with his decisions about what he wanted to do with that stuff. Particularly the decision to taunt and torment A. D. Skinner, which backfired on him spectacularly.
And although this is possibly the last we will see of the god spaceship (Sir, excuse me, what does god need with a starship?), this is not the last we will see of the power, which obviously William Mulder can tap into and control, or, will be able to control- 17 years from now...
Not just to this episode, but to the entire arc which includes the god spaceship from S6/S7, Skully's pregnancy, Mulders brain disease, his abduction, return, recovery, and finally his disappearance (and then final reappearance), but most importantly, the last two episodes of season 8 where the super soldiers can't decide whether to kill baby William or to treat him as Jesus. They are always veering from one extreme to the other, all the way to season 11, where the William story finally gets finished. What's the one thing that the season eight finale showed us was that exactly how many super soldiers there were. These guys are all over the X-Files universe, and in this episode we get to see how one of them has gotten implanted into the FBI and is the actual reason why Kirsch does certain things, he is not an actual control of his post.
There are elements of every single one of these arcs in these two episodes, and if you paid attention to those previous episodes, then what Agent Comer (The great character actor Neal McDonough) says, Will just fall right into place and make sense.
But the thing you have to consider about both Agent Comer and the person who runs the alien cult "Josephus-o", they are both not only completely misguided, but 100% totally wrong.
And to tell the truth the only person who really understood the god spaceship was the man who had gone crazy at the beginning of season seven, when he figured out the life-giving qualities and went ape-crazy with the machete on his poor driver.
Because when you think about it, it's not the metal of the spaceship that was resurrecting these people or healing certain people- it was the words written on the spaceship, the words copied onto the rubbing, The words on the tiny slivers of alien metal that come into contact with Mulder and causes his brain to go whack, the words on the piece of metal that baby William has direct control over. The words that eventually became text for various earthly religions and which also contains our very genome. And as Skully often says about these artifacts, "they are powerful", "They are power", "They have power".
And this was the thing that Josephusio did not realize about William, because Josepho was in a big hurry trying to break in to the alien god ship using conventional tools. How well did that work out? Totally wrong approach, and apparently he didn't know about this power aspect that Skully was aware of- she knew how dangerous this thing was, how dangerous those words are. But Josepho did not.
The concurrent story here is that these super soldiers are alien replacements, but they are also a government experiment. These two theories of their existence "coexist" throughout the last two seasons of the X-Files. Why should not both be true? That's the one thing that both Mulder, who believed that they were aliens, and Doggett, who did not believe that they were aliens, never considered: that both situations were true. These guys are both aliens and government experiments. The other person who understood what the super soldiers were was Alex Krycek- Who had an opportunity to do the right thing but he just had to slip back into his duplicitous self. Remember, Krycek had access to that DAT tape from Anasazi during this whole time. So of all of the people in the X-Files, he knew the most. But he made dire mistakes with his decisions about what he wanted to do with that stuff. Particularly the decision to taunt and torment A. D. Skinner, which backfired on him spectacularly.
And although this is possibly the last we will see of the god spaceship (Sir, excuse me, what does god need with a starship?), this is not the last we will see of the power, which obviously William Mulder can tap into and control, or, will be able to control- 17 years from now...
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