The Sixth Extinction (The X Files)

Plot

On the coast of Côte d'Ivoire, Scully sits in her tent studying detailed photographs of the spacecraft half-buried on the beach nearby. A figure, the Primitive African Man, mysteriously appears before suddenly vanishing, after which Scully's tent is swarmed by flying insects. Back in the United States, Walter Skinner visits a delusional Fox Mulder, who is being kept in a padded cell at a Georgetown hospital. Mulder seemingly attacks Skinner, but actually covertly passes him a torn shred of his hospital gown reading, "HELP ME".

Scully is visited by Dr. Amina Ngebe, Solomon Merkmellen's former colleague who warns Scully to not tell any of the locals about the swarm or the Primitive African Man, although word is already out on the "African internet". Soon afterwards, one of the locals working on excavating the ship is apparently scalded by boiling seawater. With the arrival of Dr. Barnes another "plague" occurs – that night the ocean turns blood red.

Skinner revisits a heavily drugged Mulder, who cannot talk but writes "Kritschgau". Skinner goes to visit Kritschgau, now unemployed and living in a low-cost apartment, and convinces him to visit the hospital with him. Once there, Kritschgau believes Mulder has alien induced mind reading abilities and injects him with a drug (phenytoin) to slow down his brain activity. Later Diana Fowley and his doctor arrive, and with his mind-reading abilities, Mulder is able to tell Skinner that he knows about him being indebted to Krycek, and Diana Fowley's connections with the Cigarette Smoking Man.

Scully, with Dr. Barnes' help, is able to translate some of the spaceship, which contains information on genetics and various religions. Dr. Barnes' behavior becomes increasingly erratic however and, armed with a machete, he refuses to let Scully or Ngebe leave. He soon realizes that the craft is bringing dead fish back to life, and Scully and Ngebe take the opportunity to knock him out and escape. Scully sees the vanishing man again in the car as they drive off.

Kritschgau and Skinner put Mulder under additional tests to verify his abnormal brain activity. They again inject Mulder with phenytoin, but this time they are caught by Fowley and Mulder goes into a seizure. Meanwhile Dr. Barnes, in a bizarre type of experiment, kills his driver, but the driver soon reanimates and kills him instead. Scully flies back to the U.S. and visits Mulder at the hospital. On the African coast, Ngebe arrives with the police, finding Dr. Barnes dead and the spaceship gone.

Production

Frank Spotnitz said of the episode's origins, "We've destroyed all the stuff about Mulder's father, the project, and the Syndicate. All the things that had sustained us for six years were suddenly gone. We had no crutches. From that point on, every time we sat down to write a mythology show, we knew it was going to be a completely different challenge." Chris Carter saw the episode as a transitional episode, stating "I felt that, with "The Sixth Extinction", I was just playing a supporting role and that the episode, essentially the middle episode of a three-episode arc, was just a transitional episode to get us to 'Amor Fati', which was really less about the mythology and more about Mulder's choices in life."

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson both had other commitments as the season began, resulting in the producers delaying filming for this episode. It ended up being filmed third in the season, after the episodes "Hungry" and "The Goldberg Variation". Carter wrote the episode at the same time as Duchovny was working on the next episode, "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati". Kim Manners said preparations were confusing since it wasn't known at the time how the storyline would unfold. Spotnitz said of the end result, "For me, it was a lot like a fifties monster movie with Scully out on the beach with this guy going nuts with a machete, the bug attacks, and the sea of blood. Yeah, it was supposed to be serious business but, overall, I thought it was shaping up as a pretty entertaining hour."

The producers had to move the filming of the beach sequences from the previous episodes due to changes in the tides at that time of year. Similar to the previous episode, the spaceship was computer-generated. The sequence where the locals are boiled by the ocean water was accomplished using underwater filming of stuntmen under various degrees of make up. Fifty thousand dead crickets were rented from a local entomologist for the scene where Scully's tent was attacked by bugs. The live insects were portrayed by blowing popcorn and packing foam at Anderson with fans and editing it into insects in post production.

A large portion of the episode was based on the ancient astronaut theory, which proposes that intelligent extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth in antiquity or prehistory and made contact with humans. Frank Spotnitz later remarked that he was astounded at how little negative fan mail the show received, despite the fact that the "Biogenesis"/"The Sixth Extinction"/"Amor Fati" story arc heavily hinted that aliens were the originators of the notion of God and religion. He credited the manner in which the show handled this delicate subject, saying, "Often in the past, we've done stuff where I was sure we would get angry letters. But we rarely do. And the reason is because of the way we handle things. In 'Amor Fati' we treated the religious side with respect." The ancient astronaut themes were later revisited in the two season nine episodes "Provenance" and "Providence."

Ratings

"The Sixth Extinction" was first shown in the United States on November 7, 1999. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.6, with a 16 share, meaning that roughly 10.6 percent of all television-equipped households, and 16 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 17.82 million viewers and was the most watched episode of the seventh season in the United States. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on May 7, 2000, and received 1.00 million viewers and was the third most watched episode that week. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "Something is driving Mulder insane. Something he's been searching for. Something he shouldn't have found." The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth.

Reviews

"The Sixth Extinction" received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files gave the episode a positive review, noting that the episode takes the themes of "Biogenesis" and "runs with them". Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly awarded the episode a "B+". Tucker praised series creator Chris Carter's writing ability, stating that "the kickoff episode suggests the author's limitless imagination for sustaining his alien-nation tropes". Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode three-and-a-half stars out of five. The two called the episode "the most arresting season opener in years" and noted that it "promises that maybe there's life in the old mythology yet." Shearman and Pearson, however, did critique the lack of finality to the episode, but attributed most of this to the fact that the episode was the second of a three-part mythology tale. Den of Geek writer Nina Sordi ranked "The Sixth Extinction," along with "Biogenesis" and "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati," as the fifth best episode of the series, writing, "it is evident that as [The X-Files] progressed, the episodes surrounding those storylines and the breaking points Mulder and Scully endured push them further and further towards total, irreversible defeat. This is especially poignant when viewing this anxiety inducing trio of episodes." Monica S. Kuebler of Exclaim magazine called "The Sixth Extinction", along with "Biogenesis" and "Amor Fati", one of the "best" episodes during the show's "colonization" phase. Kenneth Silber of Space.com wrote positively of the episode, hoping that it foreshadowed answers to come, writing "As the middle installment of a three-part story and what was then thought to be the final season premiere of The X-Files, 'The Sixth Extinction' is suffused with a somber pre-apocalyptic mood, but one vivified by the possibility that soon we'll have answers to the most important outstanding mysteries of the series."

Not all reviews were so positive. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a negative review and awarded it one-and-a-half stars out of four. She noted that "Mulder's situation is handled just poorly" and argued that Mulder's illness was created solely to provide a cross-season cliffhanger. Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "C" and called it a "weird bridge". Largely, he criticized the episode for featuring "no real twists or complications here" in lieu of "things just […] getting worse along a linear path".