Every week there’s a new monster (MOTW) where all the evidence for outsiders disappears, or there’s the mythology where the government is covering it up.
I’m a huge skeptic in almost everything, but if I saw what she saw, I would clearly believe. That’s plenty of evidence for me, and I’m an actual scientist (well PhD engineer. I definitely did real science in school though)
The shit’s clearly real in their universe.
(Sorry, just been watching the first season of the x-files for the past few weeks)
Iirc it becomes progressively more obvious to her. Character development and audience relatability
It does not. She is stalwart in her skepticism.
I’ll grant your recollection a bit of leeway because when she’s part of the action, she does believe. That was true from the very beginning though.
She just writes it off at the end and continues to be skeptical about every new weird thing. After a few monsters, I would start believing whatever Mulder thought.
He’s not always right because he always jumps to aliens, but if she came to realize that monsters are real in her universe, she’d be a much better scientist.
Edit: I’m glad this got the support it needed. This response was pretty far down voted for a while. I know Internet forums can (and hopefully should) never be the arbiters of our understanding of truth, but positive communication is very important IMO.
By season 8 she’s so convinced she’s essentially Mulder. She has times where she’s more or less convinced until then, but it’s a trajectory towards believing until she does. It just takes her a really long time.
Then, the next episode, she doesn’t believe.
Every. Single. Time.
literally sees a man go invisible and then gets choked by invisible man
“There’s got to be a rational explanation!”
“Yeah, Scully, and I think the rational explanation is that he really can go fucking invisible!”
True. True. (90s reference).
I don’t remember that episode of the x-files. It fits with the theme, but it’s also the plot of the classic invisible man.
Any way, you’ve made some positive contributions to this discussion. I appreciate it.
There’s something to be said about the whole “wanting to believe” thing for Mulder. While Scully may be rational and skeptical, there may also be a part of her that “doesn’t want to believe” something outlandish.
If so, both Mulder’s and Scully’s gut instincts are technically irrational (because it doesn’t make sense to “want to” believe something or not), but hers has a lifetime of reinforcement that is hard to break, even for an otherwise rational person.
I like the want to believe vs not want to believe interpretation. Extremely good point.
This is a way more interesting answer than I expected. Respect.
just been watching the first season of the x-files for the past few weeks
Oh boy do you have some fun coming up.
I see most of X-Files filmed from Mulder’s POV. There are some filmed from Scully’s POV and you understand why she doesn’t believe Mulders theories.
S3A:E12 is a good one from Scully’s POV
Maybe I should have said rewatch.
I watched this growing up (in the before times, when if you missed an episode, you never saw it), and have rewatched it twice since the streaming era.
Anyway, definitely a good show.
What about, like, the “COPS” parody episode where Scully, completely separated from Mulder, sees another doctor she is performing an autopsy with start manifesting symptoms a deadly disease mere moments after mentioning it and scaring her (the supernatural thing was making your fears come true)? He didn’t see it, even though I would say that episode was clearly from Mulder’s point of view (and IIRC, Duchovney was the director on that one, as he did with a lot of the more humorous episodes) if not from the POV of the cameraman following them around (again, cops parody; it was filmed like an episode of cops). Did he just make shit up?
I misread cameraman as Cartman and it was a funny visual! 🤣
There’s a fan theory (that became my headcanon as soon as I heard it) that the episodes we see are the minority of their cases that are actually supernatural. Most of their cases have mundane explanations so Scully is always skeptical because she’s usually right.
Just because you had aliens last week doesn’t mean that you can have Bigfoot this week. Blurry photos and poorly substantiated ravings don’t become good evidence of things until you get a lot more genre savvy.
And just because the thing you have matches Bigfoot on points one, five, and six doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be like Bigfoot on points two through four. Especially if there’s not a unifying theory of Bigfootness behind them and they’re just a list of aforesaid poorly substantiated ravings.
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I’m not angry. I’m trying to get inside Scully’s head.
Scully was legit abducted by aliens in her universe and met up with a whole room of people who had similar alien artifacts removed from them.
The easiest answer is that the plot and themes required it. The same way horror movie victims do stupid things like splitting up or checking on noises in a dark basement. It’s necessary to advance the plot or maintain the status quo of the character relationships. Mulder needed a foil to his eagerness to embrace aliens and conspiracies as the explanation.
Right, but honestly, she’s the star. Mulder is the foil. (I mean. I’m sure any literary scholar would agree with you, but I empathize with her more. I suppose that’s why I asked this question)
In any case, the current top post suggests that a lot of people don’t actually remember her character continuing to be skeptical at the beginning of every episode.
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I think you are right : in this universe and since her character is described as rational, because of all the evidence she should come to believe.
Now of course, from a scenarist’s perspective, for the plot, it is necessary to have someone at the center which is forever skeptical and one who wants to believe.
Yeah. I suppose that goes along with the general theme as well. Just like the unresolved sexual tension and fabulous chemistry between Mulder and Scully.
Anyway. This is just a TV tropes kind of question. I wasn’t expecting any sort of complex analysis. I just wanted to post about the x-files on a Sunday afternoon now that I’m done with all that I needed to accomplish.
Vince Gilligan also met Bryan Cranston on this episode. It’s a good one btw.
They would later collaborate on a small time show.
Oh. And the stock radio chatter that is in every episode and sim city.
I’m showing my age.
Edit: found it 28 seconds in or so.
Edit 2: I’m watching the eve 6 one. They use it multiple times there.
Has the series aged well? I haven’t seen it yet, but wondered whether I would like it.
If you were a 10 yo boy sci-fi geek when it started, it ages very well.
Or girl. I knew more girls who loved the show than I did boys.
My sci-fi love came later. During the X-Filed age I rather watched Buffy.
I never watched Buffy. I think my wife did though. I’ll see if she wants to rewatch.
Currently in season 3 on my Buffy rewatched. Has aged okay, but there’s also a lot of nostalgia at play.
I just asked my wife if she wanted to rewatch. She said no, but she is trying to take a nap and our son is bugging her.
There’s pretty good in-universe explanations that are probably more in line with what you wanted out of an answer but also, it’s clear that it is because it is her role both literally within the FBI, but also for writing purposes, to be a foil to Fox Mulder.
It actually worked really well in the early episodes. A classic duality, characters of opposing extremes brought together. Dana continually see things that challenge her rationality and she has to grapple with that while maintaining what she sees as a duty to remain grounded and offer the possibility of the explainable amidst the seemingly inexplicable. The apparent erosion of this level-headed front in the face of the extraordinary and supernatural week after week was initially a point of interest and development in the show.
The problem is that this established the dynamic between Fox and Dana and it was that, that made the show great so they had to keep it up but as there seemed to be no over-arching multi season arc planned they had to keep this going long after it still made any sense. This is especially evident when you see that attempts were made to carry on whole season long arcs while at the same time keeping the Monster of the Week episodes in between story episodes, so Dana would, in one week acknowledge her own direct personal experience and go all-in on taking down the conspiracy and seeing them aliens, and in another week somehow be totally skeptical of Fox’s latest crazy supernatural crime solving theory as if it were the first season all over again.
Where are you watching these episodes at? I think I watched the first episode on some streaming service a long time ago, and never got around to watching the rest.
Currently on Hulu.
Do they include the inbred redneck episode?
Oh yeah… that’s a pretty gross one.
