Given 24 hours to live, Skinner is in a race against time to find who has poisoned him, and make them pay.
Now, this is another John Shiban episode, which usually provokes an air of trepidation. One of his trademarks is present: his love of diseases and viruses. So far, his solo stories have been based around them 90% of the time (see El Mundo Gira, The Pine Bluff Variant for instance. However, this time the story throws up a lot of interesting material. Never having been let loose on the supporting cast before, Shiban actually gets some good mileage out of Skinner, with the scene in which he tells Scully he wishes he’d supported her and Mulder’s work particularly telling.
Although the agent spends much of the episode lying down dying, in the early part, it’s nice to see the AD back in action. After his separation from Mulder and Scully earlier this season, it’s good to have him back.
The main problem here is that SR 819 is all set-up and no pay-off. The person responsible for Skinner’s illness (brilliantly concealed by excellent camerawork throughout) is a genuine surprise, but his answer as to why he’s done what he’s done is massively unsatisfactory: “all in good time…” Whether Skinner’s illness is somehow related to the black oil virus is unknown, but it seems there’s a lot more we haven’t been told. It’s just irritating that we’re not informed here, leaving the whole episode on something of a cliffhanger, and depriving us of a Skinner determined to help Mulder and Scully, which would have been great.
On top of this, we also have SR (Senate Resolution) 819 itself, a bill allowing transport of certain technological devices. We never find out exactly what these are, how they’re related to Skinner, or what Senator Matheson (unseen since Season Two) has to do with the Resolution, or the conspiracy as a whole. Too many unanswered questions, but it does give something to look forward to in the future.
****
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