Born Again

Born Again is a sub-standard episode from season one. It deals with the subject of reincarnation and just doesn't fly. I've never been big on reincarnation and that could be part of my apathy toward this episode. It does reference the Tooms case which is some nice continuation from the previous episode. But the positives end there. Which is unfortunate because that takes place at the beginning of the episode. I think it's ludicrous that a dead guy would chose to reincarnate in the body of a completely unrelated girl. And he waits until the girl turns eight to start exacting revenge. There's even a serious lack of witty Mulder & Scully dialogue to keep the episode afloat. If you're into reincarnation, maybe this episode is up your alley. If you're not, then at least you can learn what bradycardia is.

Only on a very rare occasion does an episode of the x-files fail to generate any excitement or does the episode contain anything which is just totally boring to watch.A detective and his former partner both die in unexplained circumstances.The deaths are linked to the presence of a little girl who was there when the deaths took place.Mulder has devised a theory that a policeman murdered by his colleagues has come back reincarnated as the little girl and is exacting revenge.Now for the bizarre bit.The little girl has no connection at all and seems to just a random person chosen as the reincarnation.I think this was slightly lazy writing by the writers and this episode ranks as one of the worst in x-files history!

I saw this when I was a teenager, living in Buffalo, who constantly did origami so that was pretty funny. It was pretty obvious it wasn't filmed in Buffalo, no one has a thick NY accent and there's no Chinatown. I did appreciate the Bills banner on the bus though.

Oh my... "Born Again" manages to combine two of my least favorite things in horror and in fiction in general: reincarnation and creepy little girls who stare a lot (only good if done humorously ala "The League of Gentlemen"). Yeah, sure, the girl isn't actually evil, just the unfortunate choice of someone else for reincarnation, but she does stare a lot, and no, the script doesn't make any more sense than that does.

"Born Again" features barely any redeemable values really. I guess Mulder and Scully are always fun to watch, even in a Gordon/Gansa script (which means you can forget about witty banter outside of some attempts which tend to fall flat). This plays like a cheesy, forgettable old horror film, the worst of the sort you could expect to find on the drive-in channel. It's probably my pick for the worst episode of season one, actually, generating more complete disinterest from me than "Ghost in the Machine" or "Space".

2/10

I struggled to concentrate on this one, meaning only one thing, that I was somewhat bored. The opening scenes were brilliant, what a dramatic beginning, the scene on the bus was also terrific, pretty nasty, the trouble is the rest of it was just a bit flat somehow.

We've had shadows, we've had Lazarus, it's a very long first series, and somehow it feels tired here, have they recycled some of the material, or is there a bit of an obsession with Reincarnation.

It's not a bad episode per se, but it just never seems to come to life. After Darkness falls and Tooms, my expectations are high, this one was just totally forgettable. 6/10.