The end and the beginning. The X-Files leave Vancouver and move production to Los Angeles, and it shows from the first frame: a big shiny sun! This is the first of the signs that this season will take a much different path from the 'classic' XF of the Vancouver era: there will be many more 'light' stories this year, much more humor (not always for the best) and the general gloomy atmosphere, despite LA's quality work, is gone. The Beginning, written by Carter, continues the story of 5X20: The End and close some threads Fight the Future left hanging.

The X-Files office v2.0

With this closure and reopening of the X-Files, Carter does not repeat what had happened between 1X23: The Erlenmeyer Flask and 2X06: Ascension. Mulder and Scully are reassigned on the long term, while their positions in the X-Files are filled by agents Fowley and Spender, a most unlikely duo. The beginning of the episode is spent summarizing the events of the season finale and the movie in the most obvious manner. Mulder is so obsessed that he hopes to restore the hundreds of burnt pages of his precious files fragment by fragment (ah, the remote time when no digital copies in safeguarded servers existed anywhere). This is a noble enterprise, but of which Mulder is tired. As Skinner says, "When will you accept that no amount of pressure or reason will bring to heel a conspiracy whose members walk these halls with absolute impunity?" Scully, being unnervingly muleheaded, still doesn't believe Mulder's theories despite her experience in the movie; she needs the theories to be baked up by science. By the end of the episode, the evidence she herself uncovers is a sign of hope that exposure might really possible.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man and the Syndicate go along as in old times -- which is odd given the tension seen in The End. The CSM will no longer be the protector of Mulder. He puts his son Jeffrey Spender in the X-Files, even though Spender's disbelief in the paranormal is still strong. The decision to reopen the X-Files was taken at the end of Fight the Future; subsequently, the CSM must have pulled some strings as to which agents should be assigned there. And already, Spender gains influence within the FBI: he had suspicions it was Skinner who tipped this case to Mulder, and at the end Skinner is absent from the OPR board ("I'm going to get you censored for this and demand a review of A.D. Skinner's actions."). The CSM and Spender obviously have met many times since The End, and Spender seems to have accepted this patron: "You [CSM]'re not supposed to come here. It's what was agreed to. It's the deal you made." Even if Spender doesn't actually do something, the CSM is more than encouraging ("You did well, son"), even exchanging with him thoughts that can only come from someone that has expericenced absolute power firsthand and can't have enough of it: "You can kill a man but you can't kill what he stands for. Not unless you first break his spirit. That's a beautiful thing to see." (this is very Orwellian; in fact, clearly inspired by Orwell's "1984" (1948)).

And who better to accompany Spender in his arrival in the X-Files but the woman who had accompanied Mulder the first time? Diana Fowley had also joined the X-Files back at the time at the request of the CSM (but that only becomes clear in 6X12: One Son). We learn than not only had they worked together on the X-Files in 1990-1991, but that "you and I found the X-Files together". The mystery remains on what happened in the 1992-1993 period (between the 1X79: Pilot and 1X01: Deep Throat), a blatant inconsistency from Carter. Mulder and Fowley are partnered once again just for this episode. Scully has many suspicions on Diana, but Mulder still trusts her blindly ("Agent Fowley took me to that plant at great risk to herself"). Scully finds her report conveniently silences many substancial points. Mulder justifies this by saying "Agent Fowley's report was a means to an end. Trying to protect the work. Protect the X-Files". An all-out report at such a sensitive time would have had the same disbelieving and dismissing reception as Mulder's report in the beginning of the episode, and would have led to closing the X-Files once again. Indeed Fowley never straight out lies to Mulder either: "I was given this assignment, Fox, OK? They offered it to me. I took the chance." and this is completely true, she is very good at playing double agents for the CSM. However, with Fowley replacing Mulder on the X-Files, Mulder cannot but feel a bit betrayed, and perhaps even suspicious: Mulder: "Who sent you?" Fowley: "I'm here on my own."

In the case investigated here, it's Skinner, the middle man between Spender and the CSM, who tips the case to Mulder; Skinner is yet again in the middle of a difficult situation but still finds ways to help Mulder's quest. Muder and Scully investigate this case outside of their jurisdiction, unofficially (notice the civilian clothes). This forces the Office of Professional Review (the same OPR from the movie?) to distance Mulder & Scully from the X-Files for good and place them under a different Assistant Director: the bleak Alvin Kersh. Spender and Fowley install themselves in the X-Files office. The "I Want To Believe" poster is replaced by a politically correct picture of President Clinton, and to underline Scully's unfair treatment both new agents will soon have nameplates on the door!

Roush Technologies and the Black Oil alien life cycle

Sandy, the scientist who got infected with the Black Oil virus, was working for Roush Technologies (seen on the company van that takes him home). The (only) other time we heard about Roush was in 5X03: Redux II: it's the biotechnology firm the Syndicate uses as a front. Given the way the Black Oil virus acted on Sandy, Roush must have been working on the Black Oil uncovered in Blackwood, Texas (Fight the Future), working on a vaccine.

Unlike Scully, who fainted almost immediately after she was infected, Sandy is conscious while the gestation had started. This is probably because Sandy, like all other Roush employees who were actively working on the Black Oil, had had a preventive injection of the vaccine, just in case they got infected by mistake -- a standard procedure with research on viruses (sorry, virii). Sandy must have accidentally stung himself with an infected needle.

The alien "creature" gestates and is 'born' very quickly ("just 12 hours"), probably because of the heat he was bred in -- contrary to the creature in Fight the Future, whose development was slowed down by turning the temperature close to freezing. 'It' leaves Sandy's house and wanders the desert in search of a source of heat ("It wants heat. It needs heat."). Heat, as a source of energy, helps its development, just like a cold-blooded reptile thrives in warm climates but doesn't survive in cooler areas of the world. It finds heat inside a nuclear power plant and kills one of the employees there (named Homer...Simpson?). It seems to change skin a first time (the big slimy chunk of organic material Mulder and Fowley find). After killing the CSM's henchman who was with Gibson, the creature moves further inside the nuclear plant, into the pool just above the core of the nuclear reactor, among the rods controlling the nuclear fuel. On a side note, because of extreme safety procedures related to radiation exposure in the core, there is no way that anyone, be it the creature or Gibson and the man, would have got in there without being noticed! As established in 3X15: Piper Maru, the Black Oil doesn't fear radiation. And in the pool, the creature alien sheds its skin again, and reveals a grey alien, the mature form of the Black Oil alien race and the final stage in its evolution. The creature form only insures the survival of the alien at first; the grey is weak and fragile but it's the form under which this race can develop a social life, technology and civilization.

Note that in all of these stages, the Black Oil is present and the same: the Black Oil taken separately, or inside the creature, or inside the grey is as intelligent as any other Black Oil. The Black Oil is the Colonists. The physical incarnation it assumes -- simple fluid, creature alien or grey alien -- is depending on the needs and circumstances. We don't know what happened next, but it's likely the alien found its way out of there as it found its way in, and Gibson followed it out.

Gibson Praise and the genetic link

The CSM uses Gibson Praise's mental powers to locate and exterminate the creature alien. Ever since Gibson came in the hands of the Syndicate, they have been trying to understand how Gibson got his special powers. At the end, Gibson and the creature seem to communicate telepathically, since the creature spares Gibson's life. Scully has the chance to examine Gibson again after The End using what she learned in Fight the Future. Despite Mulder's initial claims, Scully has found that "that virus' DNA and proteins are very much of this world"; no direct examination of the virus can prove its extraterrestrial origin (unlike the examination of the green toxin in 1X23: The Erlenmeyer Flask), it is 'only' a new kind of virus. At first, Scully finds "evidence of the virus in [Gibson's] system", which establishes "a link" between his abilities and the Black Oil virus. Further tests prove that "DNA from the claw nail we found matching exactly the DNA from the virus you believe is extraterrestrial. [...] Which matches exactly DNA that was found in Gibson Praise. [...] It's a part of his DNA." This echoes what was only suspected in The End, that "Gibson is in some part extraterrestrial." Only that this part of virus DNA is "a part of all of our DNA. It's called a genetic remnant. It's inactive junk DNA. Except in Gibson it's turned on." The 'junk' DNA in a common human is inactive.

In Gibson, by some random mutation of natural evolution, it has been activated; this gives him his unique mind-reading abilities, which are only extraterrestrial in origin. That would mean that "all of us are [part extraterrestrial]"! If the alien DNA is part of our DNA, it wouldn't be identified as alien initially; evidently the material from The Erlenmeyer Flask is different.

But what use is the Black Oil genetic material in our DNA? Scully's study of the virus concludes that "it attacks and destroys human cells but that is all it does, Mulder. It creates nothing"; nothing that would trigger the gestation of something as complex as an entire alien creature. The answer may be found in that the virus' genome does not contain all the information necessary for creating a creature or grey: the Black Oil virus only contains what is necessary for its survival and its sentience, nothing more. The virus then recognizes the alien parts of the human host's DNA and uses them in order to start the gestation. The gestation is impossible with the virus only, it needs the human host as more than food but as an 'external information tank' to be used when necessary. The Black Oil combined with human DNA permits the development of a grey alien. This information was put there on purpose for the future date of colonization, back when humans were designed by the Colonists, something that will be fully explained in 6X22: Biogenesis. This explanation reconciles the persistant naming of the Black Oil as a "virus" with the fact that a virus is much simpler than a complex organism as a grey. Information on this was found in the book by Anne Simon (Carter's scientific advisor on The X-Files)!