Demons (The X-Files)
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"Demons" is the twenty-third
episode An episode is a narrative unit within a larger dramatic work or documentary production, such as a series intended for radio, television or streaming consumption. The noun ''episode'' is derived from the Greek term ''epeisodion'' (), meaning t ...
of the fourth season of the
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
television series ''
The X-Files ''The X-Files'' is an American science fiction on television, science fiction drama (film and television), drama television series created by Chris Carter (screenwriter), Chris Carter. The series revolves around Federal Bureau of Investigation ...
''. It premiered on the
Fox network The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with master control operations an ...
in the United States on May 11, 1997 and in the United Kingdom on
BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...
on . It was written by R. W. Goodwin and directed by
Kim Manners Kim Manners (January 13, 1951 – January 25, 2009) was an American television producer, director and actor best known for his work on ''The X-Files'' and ''Supernatural''. Early life Kim Manners was raised in a show business family. His fathe ...
. The episode helps explore the series' overarching
mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...
. "Demons" received a
Nielsen rating Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rati ...
of 11.8, being watched by 19.1 million viewers in its initial broadcast. The episode received mostly positive reviews from television critics, with many complimenting the episode's look in Mulder's mind. The show centers on
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
special agents
Fox Mulder Fox William Mulder () is a fictional FBI Special Agent and one of the two protagonists of the Fox science fiction-supernatural television series ''The X-Files'', played by David Duchovny. Mulder's peers dismiss his many theories on extraterrest ...
(
David Duchovny David William Duchovny ( ; born ) is an American actor, writer, producer, director, novelist, and singer-songwriter. He is known for portraying FBI agent Fox Mulder on the television series ''The X-Files'' (1993–2002, 2016-2018) and as write ...
) and
Dana Scully Dana Katherine Scully, MD, is a fictional character and one of the two Protagonist, protagonists in the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox science-fiction, supernatural fiction, supernatural television series ''The X-Files'', played by Gillian Anders ...
(
Gillian Anderson Gillian Leigh Anderson ( ; born August 9, 1968) is an American actress. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the series ''The X-Files'', ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in Terence Davies's film ''The House of Mirth'' ...
) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called
X-File In the fictional universe of the television series ''The X-Files'', an "X-File" is a case that has been deemed unsolvable or given minimal-priority status by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; these files are transferred to the X-Files unit. The ...
s. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In this episode, Mulder wakes up in a hotel with blood all over him and no memory of what happened. Mulder and Scully soon discover that Mulder was involved in a double homicide and may have been the killer. It is soon revealed that Mulder had been seeing a doctor who had allowed him to view glimpses of his past memories. After evidence becomes paramount, Mulder is cleared of the murder charges. The episode was written by R. W. Goodwin, an
executive producer Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the making of a commercial entertainment product. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights o ...
and director for the show. This marked the second instance where a member of the production crew wrote an episode, after the third season entry " Wetwired", written by Mat Beck. The episode was influenced by '' An Anthropologist on Mars'', a series of essays by
Oliver Sacks Oliver Wolf Sacks, (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in Britain, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the Uni ...
, in particular ''The Landscape of Dreams'' featuring a man who could recall every detail of his childhood. During the flashback sequences in the episode, various effects were created by manipulating the camera and its film.


Plot

Fox Mulder Fox William Mulder () is a fictional FBI Special Agent and one of the two protagonists of the Fox science fiction-supernatural television series ''The X-Files'', played by David Duchovny. Mulder's peers dismiss his many theories on extraterrest ...
's (
David Duchovny David William Duchovny ( ; born ) is an American actor, writer, producer, director, novelist, and singer-songwriter. He is known for portraying FBI agent Fox Mulder on the television series ''The X-Files'' (1993–2002, 2016-2018) and as write ...
) mind flashes back to being in the attic with his sister
Samantha Samantha (or the alternatively Samanta) is primarily used as a feminine given name. It was recorded in England in 1633 in Newton Regis, Warwickshire. It was also recorded in the 18th century in New England, but its etymology is uncertain. Specu ...
while their parents are arguing downstairs. Back in the present, Mulder wakes up in a hotel room in
Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
, covered in blood. Mulder calls
Dana Scully Dana Katherine Scully, MD, is a fictional character and one of the two Protagonist, protagonists in the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox science-fiction, supernatural fiction, supernatural television series ''The X-Files'', played by Gillian Anders ...
(
Gillian Anderson Gillian Leigh Anderson ( ; born August 9, 1968) is an American actress. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the series ''The X-Files'', ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in Terence Davies's film ''The House of Mirth'' ...
), who arrives, finding him in
shock Shock may refer to: Common uses Collective noun *Shock, a historic commercial term for a group of 60, see English numerals#Special names * Stook, or shock of grain, stacked sheaves Healthcare * Shock (circulatory), circulatory medical emergen ...
. Mulder has a pounding headache and has no memory of what he has done in the past two days. Scully finds that two bullets have been fired from Mulder's gun and that he has keys belonging to a David and Amy Cassandra. Scully wants Mulder to check into a hospital, but he wants to find out if he was involved in a crime before doing so. The agents arrive at the Cassandras' house where the housekeeper tells them they are not at home. Mulder recognizes a house in many of the Cassandras' paintings: a house that is near his parents' summer home in Rhode Island. When they arrive there, Mulder has striking pains in his head and flashes back again to when he was a child, seeing a younger version of
The Smoking Man The Cigarette Smoking Man (abbreviated CSM or C-Man; sometimes referred to as Cancer Man or the Smoking Man) is a fictional character and one of the primary antagonists of the American science fiction drama television series ''The X-Files''. He s ...
( Chris Owens) in his home. The agents enter the home, where they find the Cassandras dead from gunshot wounds. The agents call the police, who take Mulder with them due to the circumstantial evidence against him. Scully performs an autopsy on Amy Cassandra, finding a scab on her forehead. The detective in charge of the case tells Mulder that they have found David and Amy's blood on his shirt. Mulder refuses to confess to the murders, not remembering anything. Scully arrives, saying she found in Amy's blood traces of
ketamine Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic used medically for induction and maintenance of anesthesia. It is also used as a recreational drug. It is one of the safest anesthetics, as, in contrast with opiates, ether, and propofol, it suppresses ne ...
, an anesthesic substance that has hallucinogenic properties. The substance was detected in Mulder's blood as well. Meanwhile, one of the officers at the station kills himself; he has similar symptoms to that of the Cassandras. Mulder suffers a seizure and flashes back to his childhood again, witnessing his parents arguing with The Smoking Man. Scully sees Mulder the next day, telling him that she believes that the Cassandras killed themselves after receiving psychiatric treatment and that Mulder was visiting them about their alien abduction experiences. The agents visit Dr. Goldstein in
Warwick, Rhode Island Warwick ( or ) is a city in Kent County, Rhode Island, the third largest city in the state with a population of 82,823 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It is located approximately south of downtown Providence, Rhode Island, sout ...
, who was treating Amy with an aggressive method to help her recover her abduction memories. Goldstein also treated the police officer, but says he has not met Mulder before. Mulder has another painful flashback of The Smoking Man arguing with his mother, Teena Mulder. Mulder declines Scully's request that he go to the hospital and goes to visit his mother, demanding she explain what really happened when they had to make a choice between him and Samantha. Mulder believes that The Smoking Man forced them to take Samantha. Mulder also questions who his father really is. Mulder's mother gets upset and refuses to provide him answers. Later Mulder visits Goldstein, and convinces him to again treat him so he will remember what really happened. Mulder has further visions of the past. Scully and the police arrive soon after to arrest Goldstein but find Mulder gone. Scully finds him at the family's summer home in Rhode Island and is able to calm him down. While Mulder is cleared in the deaths of the Cassandras, what truly happened when he was a child remains a mystery.Meisler, pp. 245–256


Production


Writing

"Demons" was written by R. W. Goodwin, an
executive producer Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the making of a commercial entertainment product. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights o ...
and director for the show. Goodwin was inspired to write the episode after reading "The Landscape of Dreams", an essay by the
neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...
and best-selling author
Oliver Sacks Oliver Wolf Sacks, (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in Britain, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the Uni ...
from the anthology book '' An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales'' (1995), which details a man who could recall every detail of his childhood. Interested in this idea, Goodwin developed a story in which "Mulder wakes up in a strange place
ith The Ith () is a ridge in Germany's Central Uplands which is up to 439 m high. It lies about 40 km southwest of Hanover and, at 22 kilometres, is the longest line of crags in North Germany. Geography Location The Ith is immediatel ...
no idea how he got there". After receiving approval from series creator Chris Carter, Goodwin spent approximately six weeks writing the final episode.Meisler, p. 256 The episode explores the past of
The Smoking Man The Cigarette Smoking Man (abbreviated CSM or C-Man; sometimes referred to as Cancer Man or the Smoking Man) is a fictional character and one of the primary antagonists of the American science fiction drama television series ''The X-Files''. He s ...
, the series' chief antagonist.
William B. Davis William Bruce Davis (born January 13, 1938) is a Canadian actor, best known for his role as the Cigarette Smoking Man on ''The X-Files''. Besides appearing in many TV programs and movies, he founded his own acting school, the William Davis Ce ...
, the actor who played the character, later noted, "As the story developed, we developed a relationship between Cigarette-Smoking Man and Mulder's apparent father, and Cigarette-Smoking Man and Mulder's mother; then we started backfilling with an historical connection." Carter explained that the episode was the start of the series' greater conspiracy: "It's an interesting development because it really was the development of the conspiracy. The elements of the conspiracy were part of his development. But he Smoking Man'sback story, of course, intertwined with Mulder's."Hurwitz and Knowles, pp. 113–114 For this episode, actor Chris Owens reprised his role as The Smoking Man; he had previously played him in the season's earlier episode "
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" is the seventh episode of the fourth season of the science fiction television series '' The X-Files''. It premiered on the Fox network in the United States on November 17, 1996. It was written by Glen Morgan, ...
".Meilser, p. 74 The episode is based around the idea that
Geschwind syndrome Geschwind syndrome, also known as Gastaut-Geschwind, is a group of behavioral phenomena evident in some people with temporal lobe epilepsy. It is named for one of the first individuals to categorize the symptoms, Norman Geschwind, who published prol ...
(a group of behavioral phenomena, of which one is the ability to recall every memory of one's younger life) can be self-induced by using a unique combination of technology and drugssomething that is not supported by modern medicine. When writing the episode, Goodwin was aware of the idea's implausibility and admitted that he took significant creative liberties with the disorder. In fact, the technology used in the episode to induce Mulder's flashbacks was based on various
New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...
equipment, including a "brain stimulator".


Filming

The cottage used in the episode was actually a farmhouse located in
South Surrey South Surrey is a community within the City of Surrey, British Columbia, located on the Semiahmoo peninsula in the southern portion of the city of Surrey, sharing a border with the city of White Rock. Neighbourhoods of South Surrey include Cresc ...
, near where the previous episodes "
Home A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. H ...
" and " Tunguska" had been filmed. The show's art department rented and refurbished the house, took photographs of the building, then returned it to its original state for the actual filming. The paintings of the house were then manipulated with
Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...
and
Corel Painter Corel Painter is a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking. It is intended to be used in real-time by ...
, allowing it to look like Amy Cassandra had made numerous paintings of the house. The show's camera operators and editors made use of several distortion techniques to give the flashback sequences a hazy, uneasy, and "dystemporal" feel. First, the camera's shutter was "continuously stopped and started" to give the captured scenes an "out-of-time" feel. The scenes' colors were then manipulated by having the film strips negatives filtered with
strobe light A strobe light or stroboscopic lamp, commonly called a strobe, is a device used to produce regular flashes of light. It is one of a number of devices that can be used as a stroboscope. The word originated from the Ancient Greek ('), meaning ...
s during processing and development. To add to the sense of disorientation and confusion, the scenes' dialogue was mixed in with ambient
background noise Background noise or ambient noise is any sound other than the sound being monitored (primary sound). Background noise is a form of noise pollution or interference. Background noise is an important concept in setting noise levels. Background n ...
by producer
Paul Rabwin Paul Rabwin is an American television producer. He has worked on the supernatural drama series ''The X-Files''. He has been nominated for the Emmy Award for outstanding drama series four times for his work on the show. Biography Rabwin joined the ...
.Meisler, p. 257


Reception

"Demons" was originally broadcast in the United States on the
Fox network The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with master control operations an ...
on May 11, 1997, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on
BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...
on . This episode earned a
Nielsen rating Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rati ...
of 11.8, with an 18 share, meaning that roughly 11.8 percent of all television-equipped households, and 18 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 19.10 million viewers.Meisler, p. 298 Critical response to the episode was mostly positive. Zack Handlen from ''
The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' wrote highly of the episode and awarded it an A−. Handlen praised the episode's exploration of Mulder's mind, noting that the entry allowed the audience to see Mulder's views of the world. He argued that "Mulder's desperate need to understand what happened to his sister drives him to expect betrayal, because at least with betrayal, the world makes some kind of sense." He did write, however, that he was "a little disappointed at how "Demons" doesn't really hold up in retrospect from a story perspective," but noted that "what does work here is great." Paula Vitaris from ''
Cinefantastique ''Cinefantastique'' is an American horror, fantasy, and science fiction film magazine. History The magazine originally started as a mimeographed fanzine in 1967, then relaunched as a glossy, offset printed quarterly in 1970 by publisher/editor ...
'' gave the episode a largely positive review and awarded it three-and-a-half stars out of four. She wrote that "Demons" works "as a character study of Mulder" and praised the episode's "hyper-realistic flashback" sequences. Vitaris, while calling the structure of the story "not particularly imaginative", wrote that "Mulder's condition is intriguing". Not all reviews were positive.
Robert Shearman Robert Charles Shearman, sometimes credited as Rob Shearman, is an English television, radio, stage play and short story writer. He is known for his World Fantasy Award-winning short stories, as well as his work for ''Doctor Who'', and his asso ...
and
Lars Pearson Lars Pearson (born 1973, in Iowa) is an American writer, high school teacher, editor, and journalist. He is the owner/publisher of Mad Norwegian Press, a publishing company specializing in reference guides to television shows including ''Buffy th ...
, in their book ''Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen'', rated the episode one-and-a-half stars out of five, calling it "the wrong episode at the wrong time."Shearman and Pearson, p. 103 The two argued that the attention given to Mulder's potential "aneurysm" are oddly juxtaposed next to Scully's real, life-threatening brain cancer. However, they did call the flashback sequences "masterpieces of editing", but noted that their contents "lack dinformation".


Footnotes


Bibliography

* * *


External links


"Demons"
at TheXFiles.com * {{The X-Files episodes, 4 1997 American television episodes The X-Files (season 4) episodes Television episodes directed by Kim Manners Television episodes set in Rhode Island