Spoilers

“Fire”

Pyrokinetic ability is the basis behind this season one episode of the X-Files, an episode that has Agent Mulder facing a childhood fear and an old flame from England.

We find out that Mulder had a childhood fear of fire, stemming from a time when his best friend’s house burned down. And the old flame was an inspector from Scotland Yard who had a habit of playing mind games with Mulder, and picked up doing the same immediately ten years after the relationship ended.

Honestly, this was a weak episode. The villain had little motivation for his actions and the ending was not satisfying. And Phoebe, the inspector, was one of my least favorite characters the show has introduced since. I did not like her manipulations and I did not like how she sort of replaced Scully at Mulder’s side for much of the show.

The relationship between Mulder and Phoebe was not believable and the reigniting of the chemistry (or lack there of) between them did not work and felt tacked into the story. I am sure that Phoebe Green was intended to be a conflict eventually between Mulder and Scully but she just did not fit into the story.

Then, why the villain did the things that he did made no sense. There was a scene of him involving a bar and a woman where he set his arm on fire which seemed to fly in the face of what he was trying to accomplish with the British family he was stalking.

There were some solid scenes involving fire that were well shot and impressive, especially for the time. Sadly, this was an episode that took a step down from some of the other strong episodes in this first season.