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Tuesday 1 March 2016

The X Files 10.5 "Babylon" Review

                                          Image result for the-x-files-season-10-episode-5-babylon photos
Two Muslim suicide bombers blow an art gallery in Southern Texas due to a painting it was displaying.  Leading up to this, one bomber, the one that survives, Shiraz (Artin John) is shown at prayer and then eating peanut butter afterwards, before he meets up his companion to carry out the dastardly deed. Showing how normal life is for him, until he's not really normal at all, but a terrorist. He's the one who survives and is in a coma in hospital.

Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) meet younger versions of themselves, there's no way else to put it.  Agents Miller and Agent Einstein, as Scully lets the into the office, "nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted."  She waited 23 years to say that.   Miller (Robbie Amell) is the Mulder of the pair and is willing to keep an open mind and believe.  Einstein (Lauren Ambrose) is the Scully, the sceptic and the scientist.  Einstein being a distant relative.  They ask Mulder what advice he has for communicating with the terrorist so they can gain information about the cell.  Einstein doesn't believe it can be done but later she offers her help to Miller and meets him in Texas.  She's got a plan in mind especially after her experience with her mother int he last episode.

Einstein is called by Mulder who has his own suggestions about how she can get information out of him.  She turns up at the office and he talks to her of magic shrooms.  She laughs off his idea of him getting high on them and being able to communicate with the man.  Mulder and Scully find themselves attempting to keep the terrorist alive as they're approached by two agents claiming to be from Homeland Security and wanting them to leave.  Miller hearing them speak Arabic.  He takes out his phone and snaps their photos, prompting them to leave.

Mulder takes the pills and later disappears from the hospital.  He walks out high and waving to people, whilst ending up doing some line dancing, donning a cowboy hat and gambling with the Lone Gunmen, as well as Einstein as a dominatrix.  He finally sees himself on a ship being steered by the Cigarette smoking Man (William B Davis) as he whips Mulder.  Finally he spots the man with a woman who cradles him in his arms.  He whispers something to Mulder in Arabic.  Mulder wakes to find himself in the hospital, as Einstein denies giving him the pills, but only a placebo in front of Skinner (Mitch Pileggi).  Who mentions the rodeo.  Topical for him as he was in the new Dallas.

Miller communicates with the man in Arabic as he was stationed in Iraq and Scully notices his brainwaves increasing.  Also another agent turns up telling them they have a responsibility to keep him alive and the nurse (Janet Kidder) turns off his life support, until Einstein enters his room. Mulder is released from the hospital and sees a woman trying to get into the hospital.  He says he knows her and lets her in.  She's his mother, Noora (Nina Nayebi) and the woman he saw in his induced state.  She speaks with him but can't tell them who he was in contact with.  She can't believe her baby would even do something like this, since he could never kill anyone.  Mulder tells them he heard him whisper to him but he doesn't know Arabic, finally recalling he said, 'Babylon Hotel' as translated by Miller.  Where the rest of the cell is taken down.

Einstein has a change of mind as they head back home and how she's curious of mysteries now. Whereas Mulder and Scully talk of unconditional love and how to deal with unqualified hate.  Mulder also has a change of mind as he talks of the bible and God even being real.  As we hear the sound of trumpets, Mulder asks if she hears that, looking up at the sky.  So what's with the holding hands, as Einstein surmizes the only way Scully puts up with Mulder is cos she's "clearly in love with him."

Of course there were references to the Pilot in this episode as with our first meeting between Scully and Mulder.  Also with mention of Scully's thesis: "Einsteins Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation."  Mulder tells her "that's a credential, rewriting Einstein."  To the point where we get an Agent named for him, ha!  Scully's quote here was first uttered by Mulder when she knocks on his office for the first time.

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