Deadalive

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For the 1992 movie named "Dead Alive", see Braindead (film).

"Deadalive"
The X-Files episode
In a darkened room, a deceased man is lying in a coffin. His face is cracked and weathered; the effects of being buried for three months.
The exhumed three-month-old body of Fox Mulder. The scene featured a double wearing a mask of David Duchovny's face.
Episode no.Season 8
Episode 15
Directed byTony Wharmby
Written byChris Carter
Frank Spotnitz
Production code8ABX15[1]
Original air dateApril 1, 2001 (2001-04-01)
Running time44 minutes[2]
Guest appearances
Episode chronology
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"Three Words"
The X-Files season 8
List of episodes

"Deadalive" (or "DeadAlive") is the fifteenth episode of the

Emmy Award, for Outstanding Makeup
.

The season centers on

nanobot
infection in Skinner's blood and a vaccine to save Mulder as leverage to make him kill Scully's unborn child. Eventually, Mulder is revived and reunites with Scully.

"Deadalive" was a story milestone for the series, re-introducing Duchovny after his abduction by aliens planning to colonize Earth in the seventh-season finale "Requiem". Spotnitz and Carter deliberately wrote and structured the episode in such a way so as to imply that Duchovny had been written out of the series. "Deadalive" featured several elaborate-make-up scenes, which head make-up effects artist Matthew Mungle was given only six days to complete. The episode has been analyzed for its themes of disease, suffering, healing, salvation and resurrection; Mulder seemingly rising from the dead has been seen as an allusion to the resurrection of Jesus.

Plot

Background

Main article: Mythology of The X-Files

In the

Jeremiah Smith's (Roy Thinnes) healing powers to treat the abductees. Scully headed to their compound, only to discover Mulder's deceased body in the woods.[6]

Events

Three months after Mulder's

buried alive. When the casket is opened, a decomposing Mulder, contrary to all scientific expectations, shows weak vital signs. Meanwhile, Scully notices that Miles (now on life support
) has two heartbeats.

Deputy Director

her baby
for reasons that he does not disclose. Later, alone in his hospital bed, Miles regains consciousness and takes a shower. While doing so, his decaying flesh falls away, revealing a healthy body beneath. Miles tells Scully and Doggett that the aliens who abducted him are trying to save humanity. Scully, however, receives a lab report which reveals that Miles's DNA has substantially changed; he is now a new being. Skinner later tells Scully that there is a cure for Mulder's disease, but does not explain Krycek's demands.

From her medical findings, Scully discovers that an alien virus is keeping the abductees alive long enough to cause a radical genetic transformation to take place, similar to the one that Miles experienced. After Scully tells Doggett about the transformation, he visits Absalom, who believes that the abductees are being resurrected into aliens who will eventually conquer Earth. Skinner — torn by his decision — pulls Mulder off life support so that Krycek does not get his way. Doggett, however, catches Skinner in his attempt. Skinner explains Krycek's demands, but Doggett argues that both options are unreasonable because either Scully's child will die, or Mulder will succumb to the virus. Doggett tries to locate Krycek in the parking lot of FBI Headquarters, but Krycek nearly runs him down with a car and destroys the vaccine before escaping. Dejected, Doggett returns to the hospital and tells Skinner he was right not to trust Krycek.

Doggett finds Scully preparing Mulder for the now-destroyed vaccine; she tells Doggett that keeping Mulder on life support was hastening the virus, and that Skinner effectively saved Mulder's life by pulling him off. She states that she will be able to use a combination of antiviral drugs to kill the virus if they can get him and his temperature to stabilize. Later, Scully sits by Mulder's bedside when he regains consciousness. He stares blankly at Scully, and asks, "Who are you?" At first, Scully thinks that Mulder does not remember her. However, she quickly realizes that he is actually playing a practical joke. They laugh, and Mulder asks, "Did anybody miss me?" Scully responds with tears. Later at the FBI, Kersh expresses his disappointment that Doggett did not take his advice to abandon Mulder's case and rescinds his offer to promote him. Doggett indicates that he will continue to work on the X-Files with Scully and Mulder.[7]

Production

Writing

The image is of two men sitting at a table signing items. The one on the left is wearing a golden shirt and has brown hair and a mustache. The one on the right is looking up and has white hair.
Executive producer Frank Spotnitz (left) and series creator Chris Carter (right) co-wrote the episode.

At the beginning of season seven, several cast and crew members felt it would be the show's last.

series' pilot for the season finale "Requiem"; this included most notably Billy Miles, played by Zachary Ansley. After an eighth season of the show was confirmed, the mythology of the ongoing alien story arc for the series changed for both practical and artistic reasons.[9] Former series lead David Duchovny left full-time participation in the series after a lengthy lawsuit during the previous season.[10] To replace him, the show's producers hired Robert Patrick, although Duchovny eventually agreed to return for half of season eight's episodes. As such, "Deadalive" was one of the first episodes that Duchovny participated in full-time.[11] Further, Frank Spotnitz, executive producer and co-writer of "Deadalive", noted that the original mythology of the show had been "wrapped up" much earlier in "One Son" and "Closure".[12] To create a "new chapter" in the mythology, and to work around Duchovny's absence, the storyline for the eighth season focused largely on the search for Mulder in the first half and the introduction of Super Soldiers in the second.[9][13] Due to the change in style and actors, Carter felt that the eighth season of The X-Files was the end of the "Mulder-Scully era".[9]

Spotnitz wanted "Deadalive" to open in a way that would shock viewers and make them watch the entire episode. He concluded that the best way to do this was to show Mulder's funeral. He felt that "the death of the hero [of the series] was shocking enough", but that no one expected "Deadalive" to blatantly open with a funeral.[14] He elaborated, "But here we are actually burying the man ... just pushing something as far as you possibly can because the audience can't quite believe you're doing it."[15] The funeral was expensive to film; several actors, such as Sheila Larken, who played Scully's mother, needed to be flown in specifically for the scene. Spotnitz later said, "It's a lot of money to spend but, you know, you just couldn't really do Mulder's funeral without having them there, so we did all that."[16] Despite the fact that the show was filmed in California and under "huge financial pressure", real snow was used for foreground shots[17] and the background was painted white in post-production.[18] Spotnitz later called the sequence "a fun scene to write and stage" and "a great tease".[19][20]

On Duchovny's request, Spotnitz and Carter wrote a larger role for Skinner than usual,

moral dilemma" of whether or not to kill Scully's unborn child or Mulder.[22] In the end, Spotnitz called the effects of his actions, particularly the aftermath of taking Mulder off life support, a "nice sort of unexpected turn".[23] Scully's role in "Deadalive" was partly based on the 1954 film Magnificent Obsession, in which a young man's behavior causes him to accidentally blind a woman. To atone for this turn of events, he becomes a doctor to cure her. Spotnitz noted, "that movie was on my mind and not in a good way when we were imagining Scully in this operating room where Mulder was being worked on."[24]

Filming and effects

"Deadalive" was the second episode directed by Tony Wharmby, after the Spotnitz-penned "Via Negativa". Spotnitz later praised the directing of "Deadalive" as "fantastic".[25] The majority of the episode—like others from seasons six to nine—was filmed in and around the Los Angeles area.[26] Spotnitz managed to secure sufficient funds to enable the fishing trawler scene to be filmed off the Los Angeles coast, a situation with which he was "very pleased".[27] He also said that after the series' move from Vancouver following the fifth season, the J. Edgar Hoover Building set became more important to the show than before. For this reason, the scene in which Skinner collapses was filmed almost entirely on an FBI hallway set. This sequence recalls the sixth-season episode "S.R. 819", which featured Skinner being poisoned with nanobots by Krycek.[28]

The image is of red strawberry jelly.
Strawberry jam, among other things, was used to create the effect of shedding flesh.

Make-up effects artist Matthew Mungle was responsible for portraying the decomposition of Mulder's and Miles's bodies. Spotnitz was particularly impressed with Miles's autopsy scene, calling it "something new to do [in the] late stage of the game".

PG-rated film.[31][33]

Because of Duchovny's contract, he was only available for filming on certain days. Spotnitz commented on the irony of "paying all this money to get [Duchovny's] services for a limited time" only to have him spend most of the episode "in a hospital bed, semi-dead".[34] He later lamented the limited access to Duchovny as it prevented the "most satisfying use of the actor or character".[35] Due to Duchovny's unavailability, a stunt double who wore a mask of the actor's face was used when filming the scene in which Mulder is exhumed; head make-up artist Cheri Montesanto-Medcalf later noted that the effect was "brilliant, because nobody knew" it was not actually Duchovny in the casket.[36] For the shots of the stunt double as well as of Duchovny later in the episode, she used egg whites and a facial mask to give Mulder's skin a "really cool, old, dried-up cracked skin effect."[31]

Themes

Jesus Christ
's resurrection.

"Deadalive", along with other eighth-season episodes, explores the themes of "human resurrection and salvation ... disease, suffering, and healing".[37] These emerged in the season's premiere, "Within", when Scully is shown Mulder's tombstone. The arc would continue in "The Gift", which explored the implications of Mulder's inoperable brain tumor and featured the resurrection of a temporarily deceased John Doggett. In "Deadalive", the theme of resurrection reappears in full force: Billy Miles is found dead but revives. Likewise, Mulder is buried for three months, but is brought back to life. This sub-theme would continue into the ninth season in episodes such as "Audrey Pauley".[37]

The episode is one of many to feature Mulder as a Christlike figure. In We Want to Believe, Amy Donaldson writes that the episode is the most dramatic of Mulder's "multiple resurrections".[38] She compares his resurrection to Jesus's, who Mulder "outdo[es]" by "staying in the grave for three months instead of simply three days."[38] During Mulder's funeral the minister reads John 11:25–26: "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die".[39] According to scripture, Jesus spoke these words when he raised Lazarus of Bethany from the dead, and many biblical scholars note that the verse foreshadows his own resurrection. Previously, in the seventh-season's "Millennium", the verse was used by a necromancer, but for the wrong reason. The necromancer wanted to raise the dead by reciting the verse, but only their bodies returned as zombies. In "Deadalive", Mulder returns from the dead in both mind and body.[39]

Donaldson also draws parallels between the eighth season of the show and the

Gospels, and between the ninth season and the Acts of the Apostles. In the Gospels, Jesus is brought back to life but then leaves his followers, allowing them to spread his message; this is recorded in Acts, the fifth book of the New Testament. In The X-Files, Mulder follows a similar course. After returning to life in "Deadalive", he investigates several cases before disappearing at the beginning of season nine in "Nothing Important Happened Today". During the ninth season, his quest is continued by Scully, Doggett and Monica Reyes.[39]

Reception

Ratings and release

"Deadalive" premiered on American television on April 1, 2001.

Nielsen household rating of 7.3 with an 11-percent share, meaning it was viewed by 7.3 percent of all television-equipped households, and 11 percent of those watching television.[40] It was watched by 12.4 million viewers overall.[41] It won for Outstanding Makeup For a Series at the 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards in 2001;[42][43] it would be the last Emmy win for The X-Files.[43] "Deadalive" was first released as a single-episode DVD in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2001, for Region 2.[44] On November 4, 2003, the episode was released as part of the eighth season DVD box set.[45] The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 4 – Super Soldiers, a DVD collection of episodes in the Super Soldiers story arc.[46]

Reviews

A man with dark brown hair is smirking and looking near the camera.
Many critics were happy with the return of David Duchovny as Fox Mulder.

The episode received mixed reviews; many critics praised the return of Fox Mulder, although others felt that the episode had various plot holes and was overcomplicated. Robert Shearman, in his book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, gave "Deadalive" a full five stars, applauding the episode for being a "slice of sci-fi hokum, with action scenes, bits of grisly horror [and] a reexamination of the show's mythology".[47] Jessica Morgan from Television Without Pity gave the episode an "A−" and wrote, "Never go away again, David! I take back everything bad I ever said about you! I love you as much as ever!"[7]

Likewise George Avalos and Michael Liedtke of the

Contra Costa Times praised the on-screen return of characters such as Mulder and Krycek. They felt so many eighth-season episodes worked well because "Chris Carter seems to be taking an even more active role in the series that is most closely identified with him."[48] Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "B+" and wrote that, "it’s a measure of a show’s effectiveness to see how convincingly the writers can threaten a major character, and have that character’s subsequent survival not be a cheat", in regards to Mulder's resurrection.[49] He applauded the fact that the episode is suspenseful, even though the ending has a certain inevitability. Handlen also positively commented on both Anderson's performance—although pointing out that she "is largely pushed to the side for the majority" of the episode—and Lea's reappearance, noting that "it's always fun to see Krycek".[49] However, he argued that the conclusion "makes less sense the more you think about it", but that the final scene with Mulder and Scully "makes up for the contrivance."[49]

Not all reviews were positive. Paula Vitaris from CFQ gave the episode one-and-a-half stars out of four. She criticized its storyline, noting a number of plot holes—such as Mulder's survival for three months without food or water—and the fact that his body was neither autopsied nor embalmed.[50] Tom Kessenich, in Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files, called the plot "wooden and convoluted" and felt that it "set the stage for ... the countdown toward the end of Fox Mulder's time on The X-Files".[51] However, he complimented Anderson on her "effective" performance.[51]

SFX magazine ranked the episode as the sixth "Top 10 Resurrections", reasoning that it allowed Mulder to be around for what was then the series finale a year later. However, the magazine felt his return made "poor Robert Patrick’s Agent Doggett a bit superfluous", and that the plot was rather complicated.[52] In a list comparing Fringe episodes with those of the X-Files, UGO Networks writer Alex Zalben named "Deadalive" as the best resurrection story, beating out Fringe's "Unearthed".[53] Zalben cited the "emotional reunion at the end" as the deciding factor, though "both [episodes] kind of suck".[53]

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Manners, Kim; et al. (2000). The X-Files: The Complete Eighth Season (Media notes). Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox.
  2. ^ "The X-Files, Season 8". iTunes Store. Apple. September 10, 1993. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
  3. ^ "The X-Files – 'DeadAlive'". TheXFiles.com. Fox Broadcasting Company. February 2002. Archived from the original on February 7, 2002. Retrieved April 27, 2012.
  4. ^ Shapiro (2000), pp. 266–277.
  5. ^ "Within". BBC Cult. BBC. Retrieved October 1, 2009.
  6. ^ "This Is Not Happening". BBC Cult. BBC. Retrieved March 2, 2012.
  7. ^ a b Morgan, Jessica. "Our Long National Nightmare is Over!". Television Without Pity. NBCUniversal. Archived from the original on February 3, 2013. Retrieved December 29, 2011.
  8. ^ Pergament, Alan (January 18, 1999). Chris Carter Feels 'X-Files' Will End By Spring of 2000. The Buffalo News (Berkshire Hathaway). Retrieved August 6, 2009.
  9. ^ a b c d Carter, Chris; et al. (2001). "The Truth Behind Season 8". The X-Files: The Complete Eighth Season (DVD). Fox Broadcasting Company.
  10. ^ Kessenich (2002), p. 80.
  11. ^ Kessenich (2002), p. 145.
  12. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 33:36–34:02.
  13. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 8:42–10:47.
  14. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 0:27–0:47.
  15. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 0:47–0:55.
  16. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 1:21–1:40.
  17. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 0:59–1:09.
  18. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 1:09–1:16.
  19. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 0:20–026.
  20. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 1:50–1:54.
  21. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 36:03–36:11.
  22. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 30:57–31:08.
  23. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 39:33–39:43.
  24. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 38:45–39:19.
  25. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 7:06–7:08.
  26. ^ Fraga (2010).
  27. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 6:43–6:45.
  28. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 18:27–19:02.
  29. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 7:38–7:45.
  30. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 8:17–8:19.
  31. ^ a b c d e Ray, Roxie (April 2002). "Disfigured Corpses and Moldy FBI Agents Lead Team to Emmy Award". CFQ. 34 (2): 46–47.
  32. ^ Soldan, Penny (April 18, 2003). "Atoka Makeup Artist Puts Face on Hollywood". TV Editor. Retrieved September 16, 2012.
  33. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 22:24–22:26.
  34. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 2:24–2:30.
  35. ^ Spotnitz (2005), 2:38–2:42.
  36. ^ Hurwitz and Knowles (2008), p. 192.
  37. ^ a b Kellner (2003), p. 155.
  38. ^ a b Donaldson (2011), p. 11.
  39. ^ a b c Donaldson (2011), pp. 210–211.
  40. ^ Ray, Kenneth (April 9, 2001). "Broadcast Watch". Broadcasting & Cable. p. 26.
  41. ^ "The List". Business to Business Magazine. Crain Communications. April 30, 2001. Retrieved November 26, 2012.
  42. ^ "The X-Files". Emmys.com. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
  43. ^ a b Hurwitz and Knowles (2008), p. 241.
  44. ^ Wharmby, Tony (2001). The X Files: Deadalive (DVD). Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox. Archived from the original on June 17, 2013 – via Amazon.co.uk.
  45. ^ Manners, Kim; et al. (2006). The X-Files: The Complete Eighth Season (DVD). Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox.
  46. ^ Manners, Kim; et al. (2005). The X-Files Mythology, Volume 4 – Super Soldiers (DVD). Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox.
  47. ^ Shearman (2010), p. 243.
  48. MediaNews Group
    . Retrieved December 29, 2011.
  49. ^ a b c Handlen, Zack (November 23, 2013). "The X-Files: 'Deadalive'/'Three Words'". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  50. ^ Vitaris, Paula (April 2002). "The X-Files Season Eight Episode Guide". CFQ. 34 (2): 42–49.
  51. ^ a b Kessenich (2002), pp. 163, 165.
  52. Future Publishing
    . May 24, 2011. Retrieved July 27, 2012.
  53. ^
    IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original
    on October 29, 2012. Retrieved February 29, 2012.

References

This article incorporates material derived from the "DeadAlive" article on the X-Files wiki at Fandom (formerly Wikia) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License (December 29, 2011).

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