The X-Files FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Global Conspiracy, Aliens, Lazarus Species, and Monsters of the Week by John Kenneth Muir

Author:John Kenneth Muir [Muir, John Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: pop culture, television
Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
Published: 2015-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Sein und Zeit.” Written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. Directed by Michael Watkins. Airdate: February 6, 2000.

“Closure.” Written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. Directed by Kim Manners. Airdate: February 13, 2000.

Mulder asks Skinner to investigate the disappearance and missing person’s case of a little girl, Amber Lynn Pierre, in Sacramento, California. A ransom note left at the scene oddly mentions Santa Claus and mirrors a nearly identical note in another case involving a missing child, from 1987.

Mulder questions Kathy Lee Tencate (Kim Darby) in prison, the mother in the older case, and also learns that his own mother, Teena (Rebecca Toolan), has died in an apparent suicide. Devastated, Mulder feels he can no longer see the case clearly. Soon, with Scully’s help, however, a child murderer who runs a Santa Claus village in California is apprehended for crimes going back more than three decades.

A psychic named Harold Piller (Anthony Heald) contacts Mulder and then presents his theory that Amber Lynn, like other children in danger, including Kathy’s son, were actually spirited away by supernatural beings called “Walk-ins.” Having lost a son himself, Harold suggests to Mulder that this is what happened to his own sister, Samantha. Mulder goes to an Air Force base in California and finds evidence that Samantha lived there for a time with the Cigarette Smoking Man, until she disappeared one night without a trace. . . .

In the epic two-part presentation “Sein und Zeit”/“Closure,” a television inside Agent Mulder’s motel room in Sacramento plays important imagery from Planet of the Apes (1968). In particular, orangutan scientist and Protector of the Faith Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) warns the human astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) not to seek the truth about his people, about humanity. “Don’t look for it, Taylor,” the simian urges. “You may not like what you find.” When asked by Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter) about what Taylor will find on that mysterious shoreline stretching to the horizon, Dr. Zaius replies, cryptically, “his destiny.” This is actually the second time that footage appears on The X-Files. The first was in “War of the Coprophages” in Season Three.

This quotation from a sci-fi cinema landmark underlines the thematic through-line of this emotionally affecting X-Files two-parter, which explicitly concerns the idea of “seeing.” The narrative revolves around the way that people, even good people, tend to see only what they desire to see. Even honorable and decent men such as Mulder, who believes he is seeing through conspiracies and secrets, tends to see the world as it conforms to his particular worldview. This isn’t a critique of Mulder so much as it is an observation about human nature. It’s just how we, as thoughtful, emotional beings, operate.

As is also often the case with The X-Files, “Sein und Zeit”/“Closure” commences with reality, and with a real-life event from the 1990s as context, and then beelines straight into the unexpected, or the supernatural. Here, the action starts in Sacramento when a cute-as-a-button, six-year-old girl, Amber Lynn La Pierre, disappears from her bedroom, never to be seen alive again.

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