4 d x files

One of the smarter aspects of 4-D is the willingness to cede the episode over to Doggett and Reyes while still exploiting the formidable ensemble that the show has built up around them. When the time comes for a secondary character to take out Lukesh with a bullet to the head, it is Follmer who steps up to the plate.

While this is probably not what fans at the time would want, The X-Files needs to let Scully go. The ninth season might have done well to treat Scully as a supporting player on par with Skinner or the Lone Gunmen or Deep Throat.

He can talk the talkie, but can he walk the walkie? When Reyes confesses to meeting with Doggett at the time alt! Doggett was shot, Scully tries to counsel her. In ninety-four my father passed away… and that night… at the very moment that it happened he came to me. I like to believe that he came to say goodbye.

This is, of course, a reference to Beyond the Sea. However, it is also a nice exploration of how much Scully has grown in the last couple of seasons. It is a nice piece of character continuity, suggesting Scully has come a long way. In that small scene, Scully feels as much a mentor figure to Reyes as Mulder had to Doggett in Empedocles or Vienen , suggesting a handover from one generation of X-Files characters to another.

Even the emotional arc of 4-D seems to obliquely hint at the conflict at the heart of the ninth season. Reyes is confronted with a terrible choice; in order to save her own Doggett, she must take alt!

Doggett off life-support. In order for the show to survive, it needs to let go of the alternate version. For Doggett and Reyes to survive, the show needs to be willing to part with Mulder and Scully. This is a replay of the central metaphorical conflict in DeadAlive.

There, the key to saving Mulder was to take him off life-support. To be reunited with her love, Scully had to accept his mortality rather than fight to preserve his life.

The show needed to learn to let go of Mulder. It was a very important theme for the eighth season, which was largely about transitioning from a show led by Mulder and Scully to a show led by Doggett and Reyes. Still, given the difficulties with the first three episodes of the season, it is not a bad idea to revisit the theme. While the episode focuses on the relationship between Doggett and Reyes, the supporting cast can take care of the more routine procedural elements.

It means that everybody has something to do. After watching the show awkwardly contort in order to integrate Scully into the first three episodes, there is something refreshing about the clarity of 4-D. Even Follmer works better in the context of 4-D than in any other episode of the season.

There is something quite fun in seeing Follmer and Skinner play off one another, building off their brief interaction at the climax of Nothing Important Happened Today I. Similarly, it is great to see Skinner in an interrogation room. He has spent so long playing a stern father figure on the show that is nice to see Mitch Pileggi stretch beyond that. Watching Skinner interact with Lukesh allows the audience to see another side of the character, one slightly removed from the morally compromised authority figure.

While the viewing figures for Nothing Important Happened Today I and Nothing Important Happened Today II suggested that the writing was on the wall, the ninth season might have been better remembered if it produced more episodes like this. Maybe, in some alternate universe, it did. If only there had been a way for Gillian Anderson to get out of season 9, Carter would have left, I believe. It would have been interesting to see an alternate season 9 run by Maeda, Schnauz, Amann and MacLaren with maybe Gilligan and Spotnitz overseeing the transition.

Could have been a pretty good, albeit completely different, show with, as you point out, similar themes and styles to Fringe, Breaking Bad, etc, which were seeping in anyway.

I think there were rumblings about Spotnitz taking over in that gap. This would have been interesting, I think. It might have been nice to pass to a new generation behind the scenes at the same time as passing the baton on screen. To be fair, I think there may have been scheduling difficulties getting Patrick. Gish is grand.

Reyes is the least developed of the four main characters. Five, if you count Skinner. However, the ninth season never makes it a priority to flesh Reyes out in the same way that the eighth season did with Doggett. Minor gripe though in an otherwise strong episode. Writing Doggett as ignoring his own eyes and making out as though a guy puking up his own body weight in pink goo is just a clever trick just cheapens the character.

Even early Scully would have admitted something was going on there. I mean, every strong episode in the ninth season comes with a caveat that strength is relative. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Email Address:. Sign me up! Blog at WordPress. WP Designer. In many ways, the ninth season begins with 4-D. A close shave…. Mirror universe…. Does not compute…. Born to be Brad…. Read all Agent Dogget has been shot and hospitalized. The team sticks together to solve the case of being in two places at one time. Director Tony Wharmby. Chris Carter Steven Maeda executive story editor.

Top credits Director Tony Wharmby. See more at IMDbPro. Photos Top cast Edit. Angela Paton Mrs. Lukesh as Mrs. Ming Lo Dr. Kim as Dr. Tony Wharmby. Storyline Edit. Add content advisory. Did you know Edit. Trivia During the intro sequence, the words "The truth is out there" are shown in reverse mirror effect in a play on the title 4-D, aka the fourth dimension. Goofs A number of times throughout the episode Follmer gives orders to Skinner as if Follmer is his superior, which he is not.

Quotes Monica Reyes : Hey! Monica Reyes : Wow. Skinner tells Reyes that Erwin Lukesh claims to have heard a gun shot and found Reyes leaving the alleyway. Lukesh was diagnosed with a delusional disorder and spent four months in a sanitarium years ago.

Reyes suggests that Doggett was investigating Lukesh. Follmer demands that Skinner bring Reyes to talk to Doggett at the hospital. She goes in to see the injured man and Doggett explains through the computer that Lukesh killed her and tried to kill him. Elsewhere, Lukesh slips away in the night with his straight razor.

The air shimmers around him as he disappears. Reyes talks with Doggett about how she could be at a stakeout with him and he could be in her apartment with her at the same time. While Lukesh has no criminal record, Doggett claims he has killed many women and managed to escape every time somehow.

Reyes theorizes that since Lukesh disappeared the second Doggett looked away, the man can somehow travel between parallel universes. This is how he got behind Doggett and how Doggett appeared here in this universe. He accidentally went through the portal. Going through pushed the Doggett of this universe into the other one.

In interrogation, Erwin Lukesh plays with Skinner and Follmer as they ask about the injured Doggett's claims that Lukesh enjoys killing women with a straight razor and cutting their tongues out. They try and convince him to submit to a gun-shot residue test but he refuses.

When Skinner brings up the idea of the FBI going to speak with his mother, he gets extremely angry. He runs into Reyes on the way out and she confronts him about being able to switch between worlds. She suggests he needed a place where he could act out his sick fantasies but it couldn't be this world. All that anger needed a place to be expressed. He leans in close to Reyes and tells her how much he enjoyed killing her. Erwin Lukesh's mother, Miriam Lukesh , has taken his gun from the drawer and asks him about it.

She tells him. Erwin Lukesh holding a razor blade to Monica Reyes ' neck. Crying at the world, where he could pretend to be normal, shattering, Erwin Lukesh takes out his razor blade and kills his mother. Back in the hospital, Doggett tells Reyes that he believes her theory and think if she pulls the plug, the other Doggett would return. She refuses to do it and suspects Doggett just wants to die. Skinner calls Reyes and informs her that they found Miriam Lukesh and that Erwin Lukesh may come after them now.

Follmer, Scully, and Skinner watch Reyes from the surveillance van. She patrols her apartment until Lukesh grabs her and puts the razor to her throat. Reyes returns to Doggett's hospital room and holds his hand. She carefully turns off the alarms on the life. Monica Reyes lets go of the hand of the dying John Doggett.