This Is Not Happening

Plot

In Helena, Montana, Richie Szalay is chasing a spaceship. As the spaceship stops, it dumps a naked woman and cloaks itself. The woman is later revealed to be Theresa Hoese, who was abducted the same time as Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) visit Hoese in the hospital to get information about Mulder's whereabouts.

Later in a motel, they interrogate Szalay, whose friend Gary had been abducted just before Mulder; Szalay was investigating the UFO reports in Montana in an attempt to find him. Doggett reports that fresh footprints from Nike shoes were noted in the area Hoese was found, making Doggett skeptical about Szalay's claims to alien sightings. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Smith has assumed the form of a doctor and arranges for Hoese to be transferred. Having learned of Hoese's disappearance, Doggett calls Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish). Reyes assists in the investigation, believing that Mulder may have joined a UFO cult. In a derelict compound, Smith cures Hoese of her injuries, as observed by a man called Absalom.

Reyes' car stalls just before she sees a UFO. Stopping, she sees Smith and Absalom taking a body. She also finds Gary's body. Reyes is able to retrieve the license plate number on the truck used to kidnap the abductee. It is later revealed that it belongs to Travis Clayton Moberly, better known as Absalom, the leader of a doomsday cult. The FBI storms the cult's compound, and arrests Absalom, but Smith is not found. Absalom tells Scully and Doggett that he has been saving abductees that had been left for dead by the aliens. Examining video of the compound raid, Scully, Reyes and Doggett watch Smith step through a doorway and transform into Agent Doggett. Doggett is stunned, and the agents realize that Smith is still in the compound.

Scully runs into the cult compound and, identifying Smith by his Nike shoes, tells him she knows who he is and what he's doing. She is distracted when Skinner tells her they've found Mulder's body in the woods. Scully sees Mulder's lifeless body and races back to the compound hoping that Smith can heal him, but a UFO directs a beam of light into the room where he is being held; when she enters the room, he is gone. Distraught, Scully yells, "This is not happening!", and weeps.

Background and effects

"This Is Not Happening" marked the return of David Duchovny as Fox Mulder. After settling his contract dispute with Fox, Duchovny had quit full-time participation in the show after the seventh season. In order to explain Mulder's absence, Duchovny's character was abducted by aliens in the seventh season finale, "Requiem." After several rounds of contractual discussions, Duchovny agreed to return for a total of 11 season eight episodes. "This Is Not Happening" marked the fifth appearance of Duchovny in the eighth season: his character had appeared in cameos in "Within" and "Without", as well as in flashbacks in "The Gift" and "Per Manum."

The opening scene required the crew of The X-Files to create a UFO chase. In order to do this, the scene was filmed entirely in a mountainous area that was lit up to give the shot a more alien-like feel. The UFO seen flying at the opening of the scene was actually a helicopter, disguised using various techniques. A so-called "cloaking-effect", created on a computer and consisting mostly of digital fog and "wiggled lights", was used to make the "spaceship" appear and then suddenly disappear.

Casting

This episode marked the first appearance of Monica Reyes, played by Annabeth Gish, who would become a main character in season nine. The character was developed and introduced due to Gillian Anderson's possible departure at the end of the eighth season. Although Anderson would remain on until the end, Gish later became a series regular. When creating the character, series creator Chris Carter wanted to give the character a personality who had much in common with both Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. At the same time, however, Carter wanted the character to be different from Scully's character in a way that Doggett was different from Mulder, saying, "as much as Robert Patrick was unlike Mulder, we needed someone who was equally unlike Scully." Gish later noted that, "Chris really wanted Monica to be a sunny force, which is hard to play sometimes. But it's a natural instinct for me; I can find happiness in the midst of darkness."

The casting process for Monica Reyes was unconventional. Gish received a call from her agent, who informed her that The X-Files were looking for a new female character. Gish applied for the part, but instead of having to a do a reading, she only had to meet with Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. After receiving the part, Gish's first shot was scheduled four in the morning; her first scene in the episode was to run down a hill to discover a former abductee.

Reception

"This Is Not Happening" premiered on February 25, 2001 on American television on Fox. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.7, meaning that it was seen by 9.7% of the nation's estimated households. It was watched by 9.91 million households and 16.9 million viewers, making it the highest-rated episode of the season, as well as the highest-rated episode of the series since the seventh season episode "The Sixth Extinction". Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "Tonight, the search for Mulder ends." The episode was nominated for an Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series. The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 4 – Super Soldiers, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien super soldiers arc.

Critical reception to "This Is Not Happening" was mostly positive. Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the episode a "A–" and called it "one of the strongest episodes of the season, give or take a Monica Reyes." He applauded the reintroduction of Jeremiah Smith—a character he felt "the show had mostly forgotten about"—and wrote highly of Scott as Absalom, calling him a "one of the episode's highlights." VanDerWerff also wrote that the episode, along with the previous episode "Per Manum" was a showcase for Anderson's acting ability. 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 five stars out of five. The two noted, and praised, that the true tragedy of the episode is the fact that, despite her increased role as the reluctant believer, the way Scully deals with Absalom and Jeremiah Smith "in a strictly scientific way", instead of taking the "leap of faith", prevents her from finding and saving Mulder in time.

Not all reviews were positive. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a negative review and awarded it one-and-a-half stars out of four. She called the episode "unexciting" and concluded that the final scene was "anti-climactic". In addition, Vitaris noted that the introduction of Monica Reyes was not satisfactorily explained.