The X-Files

Season 2 Episode 12


Aired Sunday 9:00 PM Jan 06, 1995 on FOX
out of 10
User Rating
324 votes

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Episode Summary


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  • . is not the right age

    The old woman was raped and got pregnant back in 1945. In 1995, his son would be 50 years old, and yet the granddaughter, looks way past her forties.
  • Aubrey

    Aubrey was a superb and very entertaining episode of The X-Files. I really enjoyed watching because the story was intriguing, dark, and had some great elements. The acting was great and the character development was good. There were some pretty great scenes, like the old woman trying to defend herself from being cut again. It was interesting to watch every thing play out and the ending was pretty decent. I look forward to watching what happens next!!!!!moreless
  • Getting worse and worse.

    This episode was completely unoriginal and uninspired. Again, the only thing that kept me alive were the funny little quips between Mulder and Scully. I suppose it was suspenseful when Mulder was almost killed by BJ, but then I was just creeped out because I have a thing about possessed voices. I felt that our dynamic duo were picking on an old man who had done his time, surely still evil but barely able to breathe and just biding his time in front of the tv until he died. There was also an interminable amount of time, it seemed to me, of the agents just staring at pictures and sitting in the hotel room or the lab, thinking. Not much action beyond driving and that last scene. I can't decide if the woman who played BJ was good or terrible. Either she was overacting or she was convincing, but it isn't really clear to me because I was distracted by her growing and disappearing rash on her face. Was that supposed to be like the one on Cokely's face? Again, a big fan of continuity..moreless
  • Mulder and Scully chase after a woman who has clairvoyant experiences

    For the most part, I've had issues with Season 2 of The X-Files. When the show is focusing on its normal extraterrestrial cases, they're superb, but there's something about the random case-orientated episodes that bother me. They feel less energetic and interesting as the ones from the first season and I can't help but thinking about how much I want to be watching Mulder and Scully chase conspiracies during these episodes. However, this one wasn't bad at all. There was an interesting case, plenty of twists and for once, I felt like everything sort of made sense.

    Mulder and Scully investigate a woman who seems to be experiencing dreams where she is in the body of a man who is burying people... it turns out that the people she's seeing buried are men that have been missing for nearly forty years. As Mulder and Scully begin investigating, Mulder brings up the idea of genetics and that somebody in her past may have been doing this, which makes her predisposed to it. An interesting idea, and one that drives the episode forward.

    For me, this was typical classic X-Files: a case that doesn't feel lame, that stands alone from the conspiracy stuff without feeling boring or uninteresting and the usual Mulder/Scully back-and-forth banter that other sci-fi shows and procedurals have aped ever since. It was odd to see Terry O'Quinn in something other than Lost, but overall, everything flowed pretty well. The episode today was truly creepy, unlike the last couple of weeks, which have been sort of lame for me.

    Not bad though.. I'm looking forward to seeing where the second half of Season 2 goes.moreless
  • This one just goes to show that when the X-files was in its prime, its average episodes were THAT much better than anything else on TV.

    This episode is not pivotal to the series. There were no great reveals or conspracies. Have it or don't, it makes no difference to the over arching mythos of the show. So why is it so damn good?

    There's a good, and seemingly average murderer running around. The story is at times scary, at times heart breaking, and also really makes you think.

    Detective BJ Morrow is having an affair with her married boss (Terry O'Quinn in his first of many appearances, and characters on the show). While waiting for him at some far off motel to discuss the ramifications of her pregnancy, she has a 'vision' of sorts. She runs off to an open field and... digs up the corpse of a FBI agent who had been missing for over 50 years.

    Well, that's just odd. Enter Mulder and Scully, classic as ever in this ep. I won't ruin the surprise, or give away any of the shocks, but if you find the mythology to be just to much and like the stand alone episodes THen this ep is perfect.

    Hell, watch it anyway.moreless
Deborah Strang

Deborah Strang

Detective B.J. Morrow

Guest Star

Morgan Woodward

Morgan Woodward

Harry Cokely

Guest Star

Terry O'Quinn

Terry O'Quinn

Lt. Brian Tillman

Guest Star

Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions


  • TRIVIA (6)

    • Since Cokely is hooked up to an oxygen tank he certainly shouldn't be smoking, as that could make the whole thing explode. It's surprising that no one even commented on this.

    • At 37:11, when Mulder gets out of the car. There is a visible reflection of the boom-mic and operator in the car door.

    • This one's a small continuity goof - in the scene where BJ wakes up to discover she's been slashed, first she sits up in bed and we see her in medium profile with the bedroom lights out - the room looks completely black. In the next shot, a closeup, as she discovers she has some foreign substance on her, it looks as if the lamp has already been turned on - the wall behind BJ is slightly lit and you can see that it is brown. In the next shot, back to the profile, the room has gone back to being pitch black, then BJ reaches over and switches on the lamp, at which point the wall looks brown again.

    • When Scully is looking over the file on Agent Chaney, the shot over her shoulder shows the page turned over but from Mulder's point of view it is not.

    • Agent Chaney's body was awfully close to the surface so surely it would have been discovered sooner, especially if the field had been cultivated or slashed in the last 50 years.

    • When BJ is digging the basement for the second body and Mulder and Scully run down the stairs, watch closely and you can see that Gillian trips on one of the stairs and David grabs her to steady her.

  • QUOTES (7)

      Scully: Waldo?

    • Mulder: Well, I don't want to jump to any rash conclusions, but I'd say he's definitely our prime suspect.
      Scully: But Mulder, the man we're talking about is 77 years old.
      Mulder: George Foreman won the heavyweight crown at 45. Some people are late bloomers.
      Mulder: Anyway, this still doesn't explain BJ's connection to all this.
      Scully: What if it's cryptamnesia?
      Mulder: You mean consciously forgotten information?

      Mulder: What are you talking about?
      Scully: Well, the Motel Black would have been the perfect meeting place -- away from town, away from his wife ...
      Mulder: What do you mean?
      Scully: It's obvious BJ and Tillman are having an affair.
      Mulder: How do you know?
      Scully: A woman senses these things.
      Mulder: Aw...


    • Mulder: Have you ever, um, have you ever had any clairvoyant experiences? Premonitions, visions, precognitive dreams, things like that?
      Tillman: What the hell kind of question is that?

    • Scully: What's your interest in this case?
      Scully: Believing in the paranormal?
      Mulder: Exactly. There's another mystery.
      Scully: Which is?
      Scully: I guess that's why we're going to Aubrey.

    • Mulder: Well, that's a pretty extreme hunch.
      Mulder: I never have!

  • NOTES (4)

    • The movie that Cokely is watching is the 1940 film His Girl Friday.

    • Terry O'Quinn´s appearance as Agent Darius Michaud in The X-Files movie confused some viewers who mistook him for his character Peter Watts from Millennium and who were, no doubt, unused to the concept that an actor may play several roles within one series/fictitious universe. O´Quinn reappears in season 9 as yet another character, aptly named Shadow Man.

    • Terry O'Quinn starred as Peter Watts in Chris Carter's Millennium and also as General Omar Santiago in Carter's short lived series Harsh Realm.

    • Mulder's fascination with women named BJ probably has something to do with David Duchovny's then girlfriend Perry Reeves playing a woman named BJ on Doogie Howser M.D..


    • Scully: I don't think Mendel had serial killers in mind when he developed his theory on genetics.

      Mendel was an Austrian monk who is considered the father of genetics. He discovered, through a study of pea plants in 1856-1863, that there is a particulate inheritance of traits that follow certain rules. The meaning of this discovery was only fully comprehended at the turn of the 20th century.

    • Mulder: Jung wrote about it when he talked about the collective unconscious.

      Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who is considered the father of analytical psychology. Jung believed that one could understand the psyche through an extensive analysis of dreams, art, mythology, religion and philosophy.

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