"The X Files" Revelations (1995)

Director:

David Nutter

Writers:

Chris Carter (creator)
Kim Newton (written by)

TV Series:

"The X Files" (1993)

Original Air Date:

15 December 1995 (Season 3, Episode 11)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

Over the course of three years, eleven would-be stigmatics, or people who claim to have harnessed the power of God...

Plot Keywords:

Title Spoken By Character | FBI | FBI Agent | Alien | X Files

Cast

David Duchovny	...	Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson	...	Dana Scully
Kevin Zegers	...	Kevin Kryder
Sam Bottoms	...	Michael Kryder
Kenneth Welsh	...	Simon Gates
Michael Berryman	...	Owen Lee Jarvis
Hayley Tyson	...	Susan Kryder
R. Lee Ermey	...	Reverend Patrick Findley
Lesley Ewen	...	Carina Maywald
Fulvio Cecere	...	Priest
Nicole Robert	...	Mrs. Tynes

Runtime:

Argentina:60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Argentina:13

Company:

20th Century Fox Television

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Scully and Mulder make a reference to a story about St. Ignatius "in the Bible." Ignatius, in fact, is not in the Bible himself; he is one of the early so-called "church fathers."

Quotes:

Dana Scully: Mulder, would you do me a favor?
Dana Scully: Would you smell Mr. Jarvis?

Movie Connections:

References "The Simpsons" (1989)

Oh god, it's Windam Earle

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

First thing's first: the casting in this one is EXCELLENT. We have the bad guy from The Hills Have Eyes as the good guy, and the bad guy from Twin Peaks as the bad guy, and even if you've seen enough TV to guess that Owen Jarvis isn't going to be a monster purely because he looks like "Homer Simpson's evil twin", the two really offset one another. And on top of that, the boy Kevin succeeds in not being irritating. Really, that's an achievement in itself.

"Revelations" depends quite heavily on "the ineffable plan" to patch up a few holes in its story, something which became an annoyingly common theme of the show's Christianity- themed episodes. We don't particularly know why any of what's happening is happening, and Scully's out-of-character open-mindedness - extending to an alarming willingness to let heavily medicated fanatics tell her what to do - is almost all the proof we get that it wasn't all just a great bit fiasco. The thing of flipping Mulder and Scully's believer/skeptic relationship is still kind of interesting, but it's frustrating that Scully is persuaded more easily by schizophrenics than by all the evidence of the paranormal she's been shown over the last three years.

In the end, I know nothing about the Bible, and this episode is pleasingly apocalyptic for me. I've since learnt that, as is mentioned in one of the other comments, St Ignatius' bilocation is made up for the sake of this episode, and it's annoying, but not enough to spoil it. So much is left unexplained, and you are rather battered around the head with the notion that faith is a good thing, but it at least makes sense within itself.