Gender Bender

Gender Bender sexes things up a bit for the x-files. This episode has an interesting premise, a good story, but an ending that is wanting. Gender Bender is also the x-files debut for actor Nicholas Lea, better known as Alex Krycek. In this episode he plays Michael, a man attacked by one of "The Kindred". You need to see this episode just to see Nic Lea's less than spectacular beginning. An interesting thing about the Kindred's "power of seduction". When Marty does it to his victims, they become turned onto him/her. However, when Andrew seduces Scully, she only because disoriented and groggy, and does not become attracted to Andrew. Maybe it's because Marty has more experience at it than Andrew. This episode reminds me of why it would sometimes be miserable to film up in British Columbia. Throughout the episode it is so wet, soggy, and muddy, it could not have been that much fun. Despite the disappointing ending, Gender Bender is still a decent episode to view.

If I'm a die-hard fan of "Twin peaks", "Married with children", early "Baywatch", "Mister Bean", nonetheless "X-files" is the number one because it's the more challenging. For a bachelor with a monotonous job in a conservative, old country, X-files is an incredible breath of air. With each show, it's a new setting, a new case and nearly a new example of paranormal. It's like there is an Earth-2 somewhere because UFOs, ghosts never get the headlines in my country. We may maybe add an Earth-3 as well because the black, corrupt government that hides truth form its citizens is another dark file that's never get publicized for sure. So that's the genius of this show to mix paranormal with conspiracy.

Next, X-files is a wonderful trip into America (yes i know it was shot in Vancouver...): it's the Hamish farm, the high tech building, the desert base, the dark woods, the cozy suburb. It's the same thing about people: Indians, disabled people, hobos, simple families, workers, believers, i think each minorities have the spotlight here. In other words, it's a very humanist naturalist, show that offers something else that capitalist life, eternal guns violence about bad guys.

Then, there are a terrific outstanding talented behind: the effects are amazing, simple but effective. The light is amazing. In a way, this TV show is like mini movies and the episodes are much worthy and interesting than the actual senseless blockbusters! Funnily, they can tell brilliantly in 43 minutes what the 120 minutes movie fail to entertain!

Last but not least, the cast: to put my feeling in paranormal term, i think it's because the three of us are Lions. David is from the 7th, Gilian the 9th and me, the 12th. In all cases, we are all a bit of calm with strong loud beliefs, hotly passionate with dry humor, mixing extraordinarily with some and almost close for others. So, i relate very well with this couple of loners and the sexual tension between them is the more elastic of any other show.

Now, the good question: how i discovered the show? It appears that this first season has been first aired on 1994 Sundays in France and i remember to have catch one by accident then, maybe "Tooms" or "Lazarus". It's sure that i couldn't see the end because i was with my parents then and the dinner was made for 19h! Later, I saw the first four episodes because i bought the VHS tape. Then, I know a lot of others as well ("Ice", "Darkness falls", NJ devil"). Did my brother tape them or were they a rerun, I can't remember! I'm pretty sure that this DVD session is the first time i see them all because some were totally unknown ("born again", "roland", "young at heart").

I pick this "gender bender" episode for this season just because i have always been disturbed by strange communities. One alien, one vampire, one werewolf are easy to confront but when it's the entire village that turn against you, there aren't no easy escape.

This is a freakish episode, I wish it had been revisited because it kind of fit into the mythos of the show. Who were these people? How are they able to move quickly, in the shadows? What were their secrets?

The interesting thing about this is that it shows ordinary looking people being able to cause a severe sexual reaction with the men or women that they interact with. In every case, the person that they target initially tries to tell them to get lost, but the power of attraction is so intense that they just drop whatever they're doing (and whatever they are wearing) and go with it. On the surface they are not even that attractive, especially the "woman". Neither of them, man or woman, were really anything to write home about, in terms of what people deem "attractive".

But these ordinary looking people were able to attract, first, Nicholas Lea (who would later become Alex Krycek), and then later Brent Hinkley (from Silence of the lambs) was able to get a reaction out of Skully.

In fact there was a whole town filled with Brent Hinkleys and Kate Twas (The actress who played the "woman"). Ordinary looking people who live in an Amish kind of community, who, as simple as they appear to be, are not what they appear.

Their abilities give rise to all kinds of questions: especially, how do they vanish? This is also the first time that we see the phenomenon known as a crop circle in the X-Files, but what does it represent here? And then there is also the relationship to a certain kind of mud, which appears to be part of this cult's religious practice.

For comparison's sake, in season nine we get to meet a bug woman and her bug child, who are able not only to control bugs but to spin webs- but they are at least partially explained. In my mind these cult people are even weirder than the bug family. Especially since no attempt was ever made to explain who they were, where they came from, where they went to. But this episode grabs your interest because those are questions that we want answered. They should have been answered. It drives us bugsputz because it was never resolved, not really.

I think part of the point of this episode was to show that even with communities of people that repress themselves in order to stay away from things like bars and sex and booze and Playboy magazines, and collect themselves into communities where there is no electricity or cars, as far away from the temptations of the world you would think that living like that would bring you, those temptations are still there and given an opportunity will sprout into activity. No matter how much they protest to Mulder and Skully that they want nothing to do with the world, they still can't deny that one of their members definitely wanted something to do with the world- and left the community in order to explore that world.

The only solution this cult could think of was to move even further away from the world in general. That's where the speculation comes in, because where they went to, was it out of this world completely? We don't know, because this episode basically dead ends, leaving Mulder and Skully again with nothing to show for it, except for possibly a few flakes of skin from their scalps as they scratched their heads in bewilderment (and not just Mulder and Skully, us as well).

Which was another reason why I loved season one...

"Gender Bender", the only X-Files script ever written by Paul and Larry Barber, is a mildly interesting mediocrity. There's some cheesy scenes and a silly plot, but it never becomes aggravatingly annoying as several season one episodes do. That doesn't mean it's particularly good either. The script is bland and flat, but I simply do not see what so many people hate about this episode, outside of the overused 'dangerous succubus' angle. The ending doesn't work as we learned more about extraterrestrial life later on in the series, but it worked at the time as a sort of Twilight Zone twist on things.

This episode is notable for two reasons: Nicholas Lea makes his debut, not as Krycek, but it's still the first episode he was in, and frequent X-Files director Rob Bowman makes his debut. One of the reasons this episode gets a 5/10 from me instead of a 4/10 is Bowman's work. It's always good, and it was the start of a working relationship hugely beneficial to Bowman's career and to The X-Files' visual aesthetic.

5/10

I was thrilled watching this show when it first aired and now am enjoying having all the episodes on DVD, but I'm noticing something that I guess didn't bother me before.

As has been generally noted, each episode has incredible production values and structure - enough for a full length movie and therein is where perhaps I am seeing the problem now. Everything is too rushed. Has to be to squeeze (pardon the pun) everything in in less than an hour.

For example in this episode, the banter between Mulder and Scully is quite rapid - first Mulder says something and Dana replies almost instantly. Would have been better (and more dramatic) if more time had been taking by each to reply. Also more realistic as it takes time to think through what someone else says and come up with a reply. Also this episode is over too quickly without having the time to more fully explore and expand all the details. We see the cult member "Marty" transform several times - how interesting it could have been if towards the end we saw him/her transform to his/her "real" form - also perhaps more of the sect leaving: glimpse of their craft or cut to a military base's radar operations in the area:

"Sir, I just notice an anomaly in sector 6." "Yes?" "Sir, object appeared on my screen at low altitude, then quickly shot up and out of range." "Identification?" "No sir, didn't match anything I'm familiar with and when it left, nothing I know of can move that fast."