2x10 "Red Museum"

[wendelah1]

This episode is confusing. There are so many plot elements and red herrings that when Scully says it's "kind of hard to tell the villains without a scorecard," you'd best believe her. But when I found out that "Red Museum" was originally intended to be a cross-over with the CBS series Picket Fences until the network vetoed the idea, it all made sense. This was a fast re-write, designed to clear all references to someone else's universe, which never quite gelled.



Writer: Chris Carter
Director: Win Phelps
Originally aired: December 9, 1994

Synopsis:
When several teenagers from a small town in Wisconsin are kidnapped and returned with the phrase "he is one" written on their backs, Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate.

Most Memorable Quote:
Scully: So, you started to tell me about walk-ins but I'm not sure if I grasped the finer points.
Mulder: Well, it, it's kind of a new age religion based on an old idea. That if you, uh, lose hope or despair and want to leave this mortal coil, you become open and vulnerable.
Scully: To inhabitation by a new spirit.
Mulder: A new enlightened spirit. According to the literature, Abe Lincoln was a walk-in. And Mikhail Gorbachev and Charles Colson, Nixon's advisor.
Scully: But not Nixon?
Mulder: No. Not even they want to claim Nixon.

Links:
Transcript
Fences X'd Out
Sarah Stegall

Fanfiction:
There are a few stories at Gossamer. Of those I've read, I can recommend "Camera Lucida 01 - Latency" by tree and "Camera Obscura 01 - Latency" by A. Kelley Nolan

Comments

[ruuger]

The 'other half' for this was the Picket Fences episode "Away in the Manger", which apparently did have some nods to The X-Files (I can't actually remember it myself, though, because I saw it long before I saw "Red Museum").

I always forget that "Red Museum" was a mytharc episode - if I understood correctly, the kids were in injected with the same serum that Scully discovered in "The Erlenmeyer Flask". And I keep confusing it with "Our Town".

[wendelah1]

It is supposed to be a myth-arc episode but that's the last we hear of "Purity Control" as far as I know. But TXF never was big on continuity...

This was interesting:
Although Chris Carter stripped out all the references to Picket Fences from Red Museum, David E. Kelly seems a little more blaisé. One of the main characters on the show, Coroner Carter Pike, shows up after the credits to offer a succinct summary of the events of Red Museum. Suggesting aliens, he protests, “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a nut. The FBI’s been all over Delta Glen for the last week. They first thought the cows were being injected by some bovine growth hormone, turns out it was something else.”

And this:
“There were two murders up there last week,” Officer Maxine Stewart suggests. Pike continues to offer a plot summary of Red Museum for those who didn’t pop over from Fox. “Plus a mysterious plane crash with a doctor who was injecting kids with some mysterious vitamin drug that turned some of them into teenage rapists.” Later on, when Agent Morrell arrives, Pike demands an explanation for all this “… and the people in the red frocks who won’t eat meat, I want answers!”

LOL. Good luck with that.

But this was the sentence that blew my mind: "The X-Files... has been updated for high definition, while most of Picket Fences is still unavailable on DVD." Since when? I'd read they were working on it. I hadn't read they'd actually begun broadcasting it, in Germany yet. I WANT MY BLU-RAYS NOW. Dammit. The early seasons look so crappy on my HD TV even though I maintain the original ratio when I watch them.

[wendelah1]

Oh and thanks for the links to the Irish movie blog. Naturally, that's never popped up on any of my search engines. I'm reading all of their episode reviews. They even have reviews of the old comics.

I'm probably the only person here who reads TXF reviews. But I'm interested in what people were saying about the show back in the day as well as more recently.

Anyway, that's a goldmine.

[seren-ccd.livejournal.com]

A crossover with Picket Fences? Holy crap! Do you know, I think I missed this episode the first time around...

[wendelah1]

Yeah, if you look at ruuger's comment, there's a link to a review of the episode that talks about the Picket Fences episode. It's very enlightening, about both series.

What a great opportunity to watch it now!

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

Ayup Duckies! Well, I am way, way WAY behind on this rewatch, so much so that I guess I'll never catch up (I think I'd just started watching Duane Barry when the tornado that is my J.O.B. whisked me away from Texas. Real Life: it is some bitch Dorothy).

So, Red Museum from memory: people in weird red turbans. Something to do with cows. That infamous shapeless beige coat. Scully packing heat. Mulder wiping BBQ sauce off the corner of Scully's mouth and Scully shooting him a glance that said "at this very precise second I'm picturing you naked Spooky Boy". Even the thirty something Noromo that I was back then could pick up on THAT gaze.

Do not even bother arguing this point with me. What happened over those plates of ribs was the X-F equivalent of Michaelangelo The Creation of Adam's finger touching business, only, you know, like, with eye sex.

[write-out.livejournal.com]

Ah, so this is the ribs ep? That's about the only thing I remember. Must find time to rewatch this weekend.

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

That's about the only thing I remember

Priorities: You have them straight. *empathic nod*

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

Texas *rolls eyes* I meant Kansas. Ruby Cowboy Boots, not quite the same...yeeha.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Y'know, we were still hearing the CC mantra: NO ROMANCE. And I was not young but still wanting some vicarious action. And I saw that wiping off of sauce and I said to my not-all-that-interested husband: "Would regular guy partners do that wiping off thing?" And I don't really think he answered. I think he didn't care.

I cared! CC was allowing and extending the tease. He saw how it excited the fans.

Oh. Boring ep. That walk-in thing didn't take, and when they brought it back after Samantha's death it really didn't take.

Samantha deserved better. Even as a perverted seductress as in Iolokus.

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

If we'd known back then that all those lovely intimate and professionally inappropriate moments were going to amount to the Great Ship Debacle of S8/9. *sigh*

CC I swear, was both the best and worst thing to happen to this show.

I want to grind my teeth to dust and spit them out just hearing that word "walk-in". You are absolutely right. Samantha deserved a hundred times better than this cockamamie about bloody starlight as a send off.

Yes, even the perverted seductress of Iolokus did her better justice, I agree.

[zinnia03.livejournal.com]

De-lurking as I am finally catching up on all the posts for this month's XF love-fest. Thank you, thank you, thank you to mods and contributors alike.

I love reviews. When I first had regular access to the Internet among the first things I read were Autumn Tysko's reviews. I read A.V. Club's stuff and love to find sites previously unknown to me. And if I knew that tidbit about an XF / "Picket Fences" crossover, I'd long forgotten it.

If anyone gets "Chiller" (basic cable, sister to SciFi), they've been running XF from the beginning though it seems to be on hiatus for horror month, aka October. I hope they pick it back up again -- they've pulled this before.

When I started re-watching again I found the comment about walk-ins interesting. And then they are never mentioned again until S7, in a slightly different context.

[wendelah1]

I love reviews, too. And there are so many of them now I can't keep up. I can't imagine what it was like back in the day. Everyone rewatches the show at some point, I think.

I don't think we get Chiller. But I have the entire series on DVD. And when it finally comes out on Bluray, I'll have that, too.

When I started re-watching again I found the comment about walk-ins interesting. And then they are never mentioned again until S7, in a slightly different context.

It's bizarre what Mulder is willing to countenance and what he dismisses out of hand. It's so...inconsistent.

[fueschgast]

It bothers me a bit how the Red Museum people seem so pointless. Maybe it's because their biggest role was being a red herring. I feel they deserved something better.

[wendelah1]

That's a good point. They do get to provide sanctuary for the children who'd been subjected to the experiments. Nice bit of irony there, right?

[mosinging1986.livejournal.com]

This episode is confusing.

Oh, good. I thought it was just me!

But when I found out that "Red Museum" was originally intended to be a cross-over with the CBS series Picket Fences until the network vetoed the idea, it all made sense.

I vaguely recall the title of that show, but never watched it or had any idea what it was about. And this is the first I am learning of this XF cross over!

I found the ep online. (Link below.)

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Cows carrying and bearing human babies?! I tried and tried, but I just couldn't take it seriously. And yet I don't know why. It's not that much crazier than story lines that XF or other shows have done. I'm torn here.

That said, it did set the stage for a lot of ethical dilemmas. I found it heavy-handed in its execution. But it was a courtroom setting, so I can give it some leeway there. (Though they did the usual thing of using emotional arguments instead of logical, ethical or legal ones. Drives me nuts.)

The frustrating thing is that once again, Hollywood writers prove they have zero knowledge about or interest in researching the biblical worldview. They really do act like those who hold to this worldview believe a bunch of stuff that has zero evidence behind it. They never bother researching that evidence, so of course they can't write characters, dialogue and story lines that present that evidence.

Well, at least they're consistent. They're still as clueless today as they were then.

And how utterly bizarre. If these had been women, the court might've ruled to murder the unborn infants. But because it's a cow... they did not? That's Hollywood for you!

Wow. Now I am trying to see how exactly this would've tied in with XF. I think XF would have made things more ambiguous? Maybe suspect that cows were being used in this manner, but never stating it outright? But then the PF story line wouldn't have taken place.

Wow. I wish it had all come together, to see what they would've done with it.



http://www.vidbull.com/xaywuiyvjozp

[chinapatterns.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a fic where Scully is undercover and someone is watching her through a mirror/camera. Mulder finds out and has to play the role of a boyfriend who is very demanding / beats her up.

Aside from that the episode is just confusing. I forgot that DT's killer is shot in this episode. Confused? Yep... Nice to know I'm not the only one

[wendelah1]

The fanfic is not coming to mind. Maybe it's not one I've read.

It's very confusing.