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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- Scully's Release, 14 December 2006 Author: Muldernsanta from Washington Terrace, Utah
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All Souls is a poignant episode that helps resolves Scully's concerns over losing Emily, her daughter, earlier in the season. The music by Mark Snow immediately clues us in that this will be a religious episode, with the choir singing. It helps to set the mood and tone for the episode. What I like about this episode, that makes it a little different from other episodes is the misdirection. For most of the episode, you believe that Father Gregory is the villain, killing the girls, when it turns out that he is actually trying to save them. And the social worker, who appears to be helping Mulder and Scully, is actually some kind of devil, intent on taking the girls' souls. It's funny to see the little nod to Mulder's porn addiction, having him duck into an adult theater, while telling Scully that he is trailing a suspect. The one thing that gets me about these religious-themed episodes is that Mulder always suddenly becomes skeptical. He does an about-face and doesn't believe the events to be paranormal in anyway. And, of course, Scully suddenly believes that science holds no explanation for the events at hand. One more thing that bothered me about this episode was using the stereotype of a very deep distorted voice for the devil and a shadow with horns on it. Come on, we can guess that the guy is evil and demonic without reducing him to a stereotype of having red horns and a pitchfork. That being said, I still find All Souls an interesting and enjoyable episode that helps Scully come to peace with losing Emily.
12 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :- All Souls, 12 February 2007 Author: Magellan Grey from New York City, New York
All Souls is one of my most favorite episodes of the X-Files. Of course, this is the writer's spin on the legend of the Nephilim. The story of offspring of "fallen angels" go much further than what the X-Files presented. The global accounts of "giants in the Earth" is part of the Nephilim story. The writers of the bible called these "giants" the Nephilim. In other parts of the world and other cultures these "creatures" were called by other names, but described in the same manner. There is "talk" that the nephilim are still amongst us. All in all, the story is very touching and in some parts very heart wrenching. Gillian Anderson gave a stunningly superb performance here.
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :- Father forgive me for I have sinned., 22 July 2008 Author: Sanpaco13 from Sandy, UT, United States
All Souls is a story about Scully helping to save the four Nephalim from the devil. The Nephalim are a religious myth dealing with four deformed girls who have the souls of angels that were sent down from heaven to earth. The Nephalim are saved by the Seraphim, an angel with four faces of various beasts. It is literally a race between the Seraphim and the devil to find all four girls and claim their souls either for heaven or hell. Religiously this episode makes no sense and is not recognized by many as scripture. It does make for an interesting and entertaining episode about religious myth though. I like that the devil is portrayed as a social worker. This is somewhat humorous to me because my father is a social worker and I can definitely see how some might think of them as the devil occasionally (sorry Dad :)). I also enjoy the actor that plays the devil. He was great in 24.The episode is done in the style of The Usual Suspects with Scully in confession explaining the story of what happened throughout the episode. This is a great episode for Scully emotionally and it comes right after the episodes where we learn about Scully's daughter Emily. Throughout the episode, as Scully is trying to find the girls to save them it is apparent that she is making emotional connections to saving her own daughter. At the end she finally finds that fourth girl and tries to keep her from entering the Seraphim's glory but the girl changes to a vision of Emily telling Scully to "let me go mommy, please". Scully makes the difficult decision to betray her science and give into the faith that the girl and symbolically her daughter will be safe with God and to let her go. This is Scully's struggle in the confession as well. She is already doubting whether she did the right thing and says that she let an innocent girl die because she was emotional issues.I have one problem with this episode. If the Seraphim's glory is so great that it consumes all who behold it, then why didn't Scully burn her eyes hollow when she saw him in the parking lot? Answer me that. Otherwise a good episode. 9 out of 10.
Revelations II, 18 June 2008 Author: n-town-smash from United Kingdom
Picking up more or less where the third season episode "Revelations" left off (thematically; it's not a sequel or anything), we're back in X-Files Christianity Land. So, no rational explanations, ever, and Scully being persuaded to just go along with what any lunatic says, with okay maybe a little soul-searching but not much.It's not that that's a bad thing, but these episodes really do feel like a whole other show. "All Souls" - a story about the "collection" of the souls of polydactic girls by some Heavenly agent, stemming from some part of the Book of Enoch - balances Scully's foray into open- mindedness a little more this time. The bulk of the episode takes the form of flashbacks, told by a tear-strewn Scully into the gauze of the confessional, as she struggles to reconcile her behaviour in allowing the final girl's soul to be taken.It's actually pretty powerful stuff, if you can get over that, brilliantly acted by Gillian Anderson. The real letdown is Mulder, to be honest; for no apparent reason, he's been transformed into a total arsehole, and what makes it worse is that he's barely even needed in this episode. It would've been far easier to just use another detective, who might actually HAVE the kind of sneering, dismissive personality that Mulder displays in this episode. It's true that Mulder has shown perverse skepticism in the previous religious episodes, but it never got much less jarring over the years.
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