The X-Files 2x11: Excelsis Dei
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tori_reviewsThe X-Files 2x11: Excelsis Dei
I don’t know if I liked this episode exactly, but I can see it trying hard, and I give it some credit for that. There are a lot of little things worth discussing, even if the whole is nothing very great.
Also, baby brunette Teryl Rothery, who I basically can only think of as not-Janet; and I will say it makes me kind of wish we could somehow get a crossover, because I think Janet Fraser would be awesome hanging out with Mulder and Scully Continuing that train of thought, I think Jack would kind of annoy them pretty quickly; Mulder might like early Daniel but Scully would prefer later Daniel, though he would probably overstay his welcome; Scully would adore Sam which Mulder would end up feeling threatened by her; and...I don’t know how they respond to Teal’c (even ignoring him being an alien); oh, and they both really like Hammond. Why it’s Rothrey and not Davis who got me thinking about this is anyone’s guess.
I do remember from last time through these episodes, that we’re now in a string of quite rapey episodes (recalling that being the reason for the rapey question section); it sort of started with the last episode, but that was kind of a warm up for the next few getting really mired in the subject. Knowing going in that it’s going to be a thing for a few episodes I’m going to pay attention to see if it seems to be done intentionally or if it feels more inconvenient that it happened this way. There is definitely a reason why it might have been done deliberately, and this episode does hint at it without ever actually acknowledging the issue; that being the question of what was done to Scully while she was taken. It’s debatable in this one if this is more a matter of her being on the side of the victims (as has been previously established), if it’s written this way only in so far as she’s a women and therefore more troubled by rape cases, or if this does touch a nerve with her that she isn’t quite ready to acknowledge as a festering concern.
Okay, maybe that is the single most interesting aspect of the episode for my purposes. The issues it tries to raise regarding elder care aren’t really something I feel like delving into. I sort of feel like the presentation of Gung is well intentioned but still kind of racist, but I don’t feel like nailing down where it falls on that spectrum any more precisely than that.
Somewhat connected with the Scully point, some of her actions during the climax are a bit strange. Did she somehow think that Stan was behind the danger or did she assume it was unconnected (as one would expect Scully to assume)? Because we don’t actually see her looking for tools to help shut off the water main, but she is very quick to send the local doc off to sedate Stan. The latter is a perfectly valid action for a doctor to take, but the way she plays it I can’t quite shake the feeling she was allowing that the situations might be connected.
I do question why, in story, there isn’t any research being done on this treatment. In terms of the meta, sure they can’t stray too far from the real world so they can’t have the world of TXF have a fairly effective treatment for dementia that doesn’t translate to the real world; but in story? It’s not as if people would be super quick to believe it opens a door to the spirit world. We are told that it contains potentially harmful ingredients, but so do a lot of medications and medical treatments, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t even consider testing it after this.
Vancouver spotting
Not-Janet counts.
Is it rapey?
Quite clearly
Are we saying it’s aliens?
Possibly-racist, quasi-mystical mushrooms allow psychic projection and open some sort of poorly-defined access to the spirit world.
Scully’s convenient miss of the week
Possibly realistic, but only done when convenient for the plot, Mulder runs ahead of Scully so he sees some ghost action, then is locked in the drowning room.
How crazy does Mulder sound?
He’s pretty dismissive of anything (not necessarily of the evidence that something happened, just that it’s anything X-files relevant) until they find the magic mushrooms, when he only goes a little off the rails with Scully and even then it is really just a little over the line of questionable reasoning. So not too bad.
I apparently found this episode much more bothersome back in the day, though not in a way that inspired a lot of talk on the subject even then.
2x11: Excelsis Dei (2016 thoughts)
(Previous status: another never seen before)
This is the first episode in a while I straight up didn’t like; although I definitely didn’t like 3, that was such an interesting failure that it gets some credit for that at least. This one, after I looked up why the nurse was so familiar (it’s baby Janet Fraser), there was just boredom mixed with confusion. This one was awfully stupid, borderline racist (possibly over the borderline, I’m not great judge of these things), and contributes basically nothing to the show as a whole aside from a moment of witty banter between Mulder and Scully at the beginning.
I’m not even sure I have anything to say about this one (the major difference from 3). It’s a pretty shallow treatment of most of the things it could have explored, but as it doesn’t seem interested in exploring any of them it barely seems aware those things exist. I really didn’t follow the plot because it gave so little to hang onto.
I guess I’ll do the usual character checks and call it good. Scully’s pretty flat this episode, no real spark there aside from some in her scenes with Mulder, not that she’s given much else to do. But even those sparks are dimmed, like GA was kind of sleepwalking through the episode but managed to be half awake for a few short scenes.
Not that Mulder shows much more character or life during this one. He doesn’t rush to believe the paranormal explanation, so he seems saner than sometimes, but that’s actually less uncommon than it used to be. I probably should call him out on eventually concluding that not-Janet was lying about being raped, and yeah that does seem a little far, but through most of the episode they just don’t believe it was a ghost and do try and find an actual culprit. It’s not well handled, but like I said nothing in this episode is all that well handled so it just becomes part of the accumulated bad.
I do have a passing thought about this season getting more blunt about rape, and how that ties in with the subtly reminding us of the abduction arc and what we don’t know about what happened to Scully, but it’s only a thought of a couple episodes now, it’ll keep until I’m through more of the season.
I don’t know if I liked this episode exactly, but I can see it trying hard, and I give it some credit for that. There are a lot of little things worth discussing, even if the whole is nothing very great.
Also, baby brunette Teryl Rothery, who I basically can only think of as not-Janet; and I will say it makes me kind of wish we could somehow get a crossover, because I think Janet Fraser would be awesome hanging out with Mulder and Scully Continuing that train of thought, I think Jack would kind of annoy them pretty quickly; Mulder might like early Daniel but Scully would prefer later Daniel, though he would probably overstay his welcome; Scully would adore Sam which Mulder would end up feeling threatened by her; and...I don’t know how they respond to Teal’c (even ignoring him being an alien); oh, and they both really like Hammond. Why it’s Rothrey and not Davis who got me thinking about this is anyone’s guess.
I do remember from last time through these episodes, that we’re now in a string of quite rapey episodes (recalling that being the reason for the rapey question section); it sort of started with the last episode, but that was kind of a warm up for the next few getting really mired in the subject. Knowing going in that it’s going to be a thing for a few episodes I’m going to pay attention to see if it seems to be done intentionally or if it feels more inconvenient that it happened this way. There is definitely a reason why it might have been done deliberately, and this episode does hint at it without ever actually acknowledging the issue; that being the question of what was done to Scully while she was taken. It’s debatable in this one if this is more a matter of her being on the side of the victims (as has been previously established), if it’s written this way only in so far as she’s a women and therefore more troubled by rape cases, or if this does touch a nerve with her that she isn’t quite ready to acknowledge as a festering concern.
Okay, maybe that is the single most interesting aspect of the episode for my purposes. The issues it tries to raise regarding elder care aren’t really something I feel like delving into. I sort of feel like the presentation of Gung is well intentioned but still kind of racist, but I don’t feel like nailing down where it falls on that spectrum any more precisely than that.
Somewhat connected with the Scully point, some of her actions during the climax are a bit strange. Did she somehow think that Stan was behind the danger or did she assume it was unconnected (as one would expect Scully to assume)? Because we don’t actually see her looking for tools to help shut off the water main, but she is very quick to send the local doc off to sedate Stan. The latter is a perfectly valid action for a doctor to take, but the way she plays it I can’t quite shake the feeling she was allowing that the situations might be connected.
I do question why, in story, there isn’t any research being done on this treatment. In terms of the meta, sure they can’t stray too far from the real world so they can’t have the world of TXF have a fairly effective treatment for dementia that doesn’t translate to the real world; but in story? It’s not as if people would be super quick to believe it opens a door to the spirit world. We are told that it contains potentially harmful ingredients, but so do a lot of medications and medical treatments, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t even consider testing it after this.
Vancouver spotting
Not-Janet counts.
Is it rapey?
Quite clearly
Are we saying it’s aliens?
Possibly-racist, quasi-mystical mushrooms allow psychic projection and open some sort of poorly-defined access to the spirit world.
Scully’s convenient miss of the week
Possibly realistic, but only done when convenient for the plot, Mulder runs ahead of Scully so he sees some ghost action, then is locked in the drowning room.
How crazy does Mulder sound?
He’s pretty dismissive of anything (not necessarily of the evidence that something happened, just that it’s anything X-files relevant) until they find the magic mushrooms, when he only goes a little off the rails with Scully and even then it is really just a little over the line of questionable reasoning. So not too bad.
I apparently found this episode much more bothersome back in the day, though not in a way that inspired a lot of talk on the subject even then.
2x11: Excelsis Dei (2016 thoughts)
(Previous status: another never seen before)
This is the first episode in a while I straight up didn’t like; although I definitely didn’t like 3, that was such an interesting failure that it gets some credit for that at least. This one, after I looked up why the nurse was so familiar (it’s baby Janet Fraser), there was just boredom mixed with confusion. This one was awfully stupid, borderline racist (possibly over the borderline, I’m not great judge of these things), and contributes basically nothing to the show as a whole aside from a moment of witty banter between Mulder and Scully at the beginning.
I’m not even sure I have anything to say about this one (the major difference from 3). It’s a pretty shallow treatment of most of the things it could have explored, but as it doesn’t seem interested in exploring any of them it barely seems aware those things exist. I really didn’t follow the plot because it gave so little to hang onto.
I guess I’ll do the usual character checks and call it good. Scully’s pretty flat this episode, no real spark there aside from some in her scenes with Mulder, not that she’s given much else to do. But even those sparks are dimmed, like GA was kind of sleepwalking through the episode but managed to be half awake for a few short scenes.
Not that Mulder shows much more character or life during this one. He doesn’t rush to believe the paranormal explanation, so he seems saner than sometimes, but that’s actually less uncommon than it used to be. I probably should call him out on eventually concluding that not-Janet was lying about being raped, and yeah that does seem a little far, but through most of the episode they just don’t believe it was a ghost and do try and find an actual culprit. It’s not well handled, but like I said nothing in this episode is all that well handled so it just becomes part of the accumulated bad.
I do have a passing thought about this season getting more blunt about rape, and how that ties in with the subtly reminding us of the abduction arc and what we don’t know about what happened to Scully, but it’s only a thought of a couple episodes now, it’ll keep until I’m through more of the season.
