The X-Files Season 11, episode 5 was a disappointment for some horror fans, but that was a good thing. Also, many X-Files romance❤ fans who have been ❤dying to meet
William were disturbed to see him depicted as being romantically involved with two girlfriends at the same time. And even worse, tricking the two girls into a nearly fatal knife fight. View this through your Sci Fi-tinted glasses: William had discovered that he could make any girl fall in love with him "simply" by taking control of their mind and allowing them to see him as their ideal heart throb.
For me, this mid-season episode was an unexpected opportunity to meet William, an event I did not expect to arrive until episode 10, right at the end of
Chris Carter's meandering mess of a 25-year-long
Sci Fi story. We learned that William has a superpower: he can telepathically control minds and make other people either see exactly what they want to see,
or, exactly what William wants them to see.
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| William can control minds. |
I may only be seeing what I want to see, but I'm going to assume that we were not lied to about the DNA test:
Scully got to meet her son. We finally know that William is now known by the name "Jackson", the first name given to him by his adoptive parents.
Questions
Is Scully only Jackson's birth mother, or is she also his biological mother? And, does it matter? Even
Mulder refers to Jackson as "our son", so maybe the CSM lied when he claimed to be William's father.
More Questions
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| message in a bottle |
I also have to assume that Jackson knows about the remnants of the Syndicate (including the
CSM) who are looking for him. Can we say that Jackson
USED his two girlfriends in an attempt to
create an X-File case? Was this his way to attract Mulder and Scully and get a chance to say "hi" to his mother before he drives off into hiding at the end of episode 5?
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I was dead,
but I got better. |
If the CSM is his father, we must ask: is Jackson a reckless
user of his lady friends ("
cheating garbage teen"), just like his dad (the CSM)? There are many questions that need to be wrapped up by the end of Season 11. Are the CSM and Scully and William all immortal beings? And how much telepathic ability does spooky Mulder have?
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| He's not dead, Dana. |
Reyes
Will we ever get an explanation for why
Reyes is involved with the CSM? I wish Reyes had made an appearance in episode 5. All we got was the CSM telling Skinner that Mulder is getting close and saying that Mulder will lead them to William.
But not if Mulder can help it. Mulder knows that he is being followed and he tries to hide clues about William/Jackson that are on the boy's computer (after Mulder has used his "superpower", his new-found ability to
hack into computers).
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| Mulder destroys crime scene evidence in order to protect William/Jackson from the CSM. |
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| William/Jackson can make anyone see the Ghouli. |
I guess it is still possible that Reyes and Scully are related, so when Mulder says that there is a similarity in DNA between Jackson and Dana, it does not entirely rule out the possibility that Jackson is also related to Reyes. There may have been a long-term link between Reyes and the Syndicate, with not much more than
hints to the connection being provided to viewers. Did the CSM always keep his operatives and "friends" planted close to Scully?
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| shared vision |
Rather than get an info dump from Reyes, we got to meet Jackson's shrink who confirms that Jackson shared Scully's vision of the Spartan Virus apocalypse ("
My Struggle II"). We still don't know if this shared vision is a scene from the future or if it might be a nightmare that Jackson had after he hacked into DOJ files and learned about the Spartan Virus. Stay tuned for "
My Struggle IV". Knowing Chris Carter, he's already forgotten about that mysterious spaceship; after all, it was just "a dream", right?
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| William: master of disguises. |
Going to Jackson
At the start of this episode, Jackson has been telepathically linked to Scully for some time, but apparently he does not fully understand his relationship to her until they meet. It is a strange meeting because Dana believes that he is dead. Jackson has become a "master of disguises": he can make other people "see things". In this case, he makes Dana "see" a gunshot wound to his head. She believes that he is dead and so she conveniently gives a speech about how she is his mom. But William/Jackson is not dead, laying there on the autopsy table, he's listening to Scully's tear-jerker speech.
Visions of the Future
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mercifully, Mulder does not have to have a
fist fight with the two evil dudes,
they just trade snarky verbal jibes |
In episode 5, Scully has two visions of the future that take place during times when she is asleep. The nature of these visions remind me of of the film
Next. If Jackson can "view the future" and select the correct course of action so as to avoid danger and threats to his life, then Scully's "dream" of being chased through a maze-like house might be a vision of the future: of the future time when Jackson is being chased through his home by the two shady characters who kill his parents (image to the left).
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experiment #17, Jackson
(Miles Robbins) |
The second "dream vision" experienced by Scully during this episode is more controlled. When Jackson is leaving the hospital he implants in Scully's mind a vision of where they will again meet in the near future. Are there any limits to Jackson's blooming telepathic abilities?
If William was part of a series of experiments that involved mixing human and alien DNA, the result of the experiment might have been the creation of "alien-human hybrids" with strange telepathic abilities. Imagine a collection of children such as
Gibson,
Kyle and Jackson (+
Emily?) who don't fully understand their plight, but they have an instinct for survival and can protect themselves. Members of the Syndicate tried to control those children, but failed, so they abandoned the alien-human hybrid project. Now they have noticed that Jackson is still alive, and they are trying to capture him and gain control of his amazing abilities. Or do they simply intend to kill Jackson?
I was worried that episode 5 (Ghouli) was only going to be a "monster of the week" episode with no relevance to William. I did not need the gratuitous dead-animal-covered-with-magots scene right when I sat down to eat dinner, but I was pleased that this episode was mostly a thoughtful Sci Fi investigation about the implications of telepathy rather than just a mindless horror show. I'm very happy with the way that the
science fiction content is flowering in Season 11.
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| Investigating William, master of disguises. |
During episode 5, Fox and Dana were working together like a well-oiled investigative team. Scully was on edge emotionally and Mulder was playing the calm/cool anchor of the duo. After leaving the FBI office at the start of the show, they had to work out of a series of coffee shops during the rest of the investigation.
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| in an parallel universe |
In these shops the running gag was Fox using the name "Bob" so he would not have to explain the name "Fox" for the millionth time to shop workers.
Where Next?
Is William/Jackson going to hide from the evil Syndicate in order to avoid being hunted down and captured? A part of episode 5 that I did not understand was that "government documents" were found on Jackson's computer. Somehow Jackson has learned about "
Project Crossroads" and his origins. Putting that together with the Malcolm X quotes, it would be more interesting if William now went on the offensive. He might finally have enough control of his telepathic abilities to attack the CSM. May the alien-DNA-derived telepathic force be with him.
Related Reading:
Season 10
Next:
episode 6
Check-out time...
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I think the folks at FOX have already checked out of The X-Files.
The intern who posts the Youtube videos does not even watch the show. |
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