28 Years Later, This Polarizing X-Files Episode Still Leaves Scully Fans Furious

While fans of The X-Files appreciate the show’s commitment to various mythical beings and alien encounters, it’s clear to see that Mulder and Scully are the show’s biggest appeal. Aside from their addictive slow-burn romance and camaraderie, these agents have their own unique backstories. As such, the show has managed to create two amazing protagonists who also work very well on their own.

Dana Scully is a beloved and multi-faceted character. Not only is she an esteemed FBI agent, but she’s also a trained doctor. However, her lore runs so much deeper, and even 30 years on, fans are still developing theories about her. But, the show struggled to really pin down her over-reaching story. A prime example of this is «Christmas Carol,» an episode that attempts to discuss more about this elusive woman but still leaves fans with more questions than answers.

"Christmas Carol" Delves Much Deeper Into Scully’s Future

Season 5, Episode 6, «Christmas Carol» is a very Scully-centric episode, and it starts with the agent heading back to San Diego to visit her family for Christmas. But, as soon as she walks through the front door, her high spirits are broken by a mysterious phone call from a woman asking for help. When she traces the call and arrives at their house, she discovers that the woman had taken her own life about half an hour before she received the phone call.

During her investigation, Scully meets the dead woman’s daughter, Emily, who bears a striking resemblance to her dead sister Melissa. As expected, the agent cannot let this rest and later discovers that Emily and Melissa are almost an exact DNA match. However, Scully’s world gets turned upside-down on Christmas Day when she learns that Emily is her daughter, not Melissa’s. This is an immense shock, considering that Scully cannot naturally conceive a child due to her previous alien abduction.

Overall, fans aren’t always keen on single-character stories. Even really intense episodes like «Closure» and «3» are seen as a tad weak because, without both agents, the overall flow of the story feels a bit stagnant. However, «Christmas Carol» completely turns this idea on its head and allows fans to finally see a different side of Scully. Audiences discover her true feelings about her infertility and learn that she does dream of a normal life outside of the FBI, regardless of what she tells Mulder.

Plus, this episode allows Scully to accept her abundance of trauma, which makes her a really unique three-dimensional character. Watching her break down while discussing her cancer diagnosis is a really impactful scene and proves that The X-Files doesn’t always have to rely on scary monsters to keep the audience engaged. Overall, arguably, for the first time, allows Scully to be her own woman and not just a hard-headed FBI worker. The audience is allowed to peek inside her real emotions and discover that she’s not actually a workaholic and just uses her job to avoid thinking about her many worries.

That being said, «Christmas Carol» doesn’t really give Scully enough space to unpack the past few years. Learning that Scully has a biological daughter is a really interesting note, but all it really does is add to the list of things that will never really be explained. Plus, a lot of fans argue that without Mulder, Scully seems a tad meek, especially in the workplace. When faced with countless male law enforcement workers, Scully struggles to stand her ground and is excessively polite. This episode does have its merits and proves that Scully can lead her own stories without being chased by giant aliens. However, fans find it frustrating because it offers a lot of information about the character but doesn’t give her enough room to process how she really feels about everything that has happened to her.

Certain Cast Members Struggled to Cope With the Episode’s Setting

While a lot of the criticisms surrounding «Christmas Carol» are valid, fans need to understand how a ton of behind-the-scenes drama impacted the overall flow of production. Fans of the show will know that «Christmas Carol» is actually a two-parter, ending with Season 5, Episode 7, «Emily.» In this episode, the little girl takes center stage, and the agents have to watch as she slowly passes away from a harsh infection. However, the original child actress who played Emily was petrified of the hospital setting and struggled to calm down during takes.

Thus, the team had no choice but to hire another actress and reshoot all of the scenes. Obviously, it would be cruel to force a little girl to remain in an environment that terrifies her, but this would have slowed production down a ton. Not only did the team have to reshoot «Christmas Carol,» but they would also have had to edit «Emily». Therefore, this could explain why this episode feels a tad weak in some places. At times. Scully’s heartache is painfully apparent, but in other moments, it feels as if she’s just going through the motions. As such, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that the actors were extremely overworked and weren’t in the right state of mind to give this episode their all.

This episode was inspired by the 1951 film Scrooge, which is a really off-beat adaptation of «Christmas Carol». Thus, instead of being visited by three spirits, Scully encounters multiple versions of her past self. While it was easy enough to find a little red-haired girl to play her as a child, the casting team struggled to find the right person to play Scully as a teen. After searching high and low, they finally picked Gillian Anderson’s younger sister, Zoe. Yet again, it’s clear that this episode was packed full of small hurdles, all of which would have impacted the overall drive and motivation behind this episode.

Another really strange aspect of this episode is the brief appearance of Fox Mulder. After investigating the woman’s suicide, Scully calls her partner. He rushes to the phone, but she doesn’t reply, making this entire scene just a bit confusing. The reason that Mulder wasn’t in this episode is that David Duchovny was busy promoting his film Playing God. While it’s always nice to see him pop up in a Scully-centric episode, this scene feels remarkably forced. Again, randomly placing Mulder in this episode disrupts its flow and reminds the audience that she will never get the chance to really sit with herself because she’ll always be connected to him in some way.

"Christmas Carol" Is So Much More Than a Holiday Special

As far as Christmas specials go, this episode is undeniably morbid and depressing. But, some argue that the Christmas overlay distracts the viewer from the true point of this episode, which is to extend Scully’s arc. Discovering that Scully has a biological child suggests that her abduction involved so much more than kidnapping. Plus, not only does this impact her relationship with Mulder, it interferes with her relationship with her own femininity. There’s a heartbreaking scene where Scully looks at her pregnant sister-in-law and her mother just assumes that she’s being moody for the sake of it. But when her mother discovers that Scully is actually jealous, the audience’s perception of Scully shifts tremendously. The viewer no longer sees her as a career-hungry agent, but as a woman who is forced to grieve something she hasn’t actually experienced yet.

A lot of fans find this episode a tad off-putting, but not just because of its heavy themes. Although Anderson is a dramatic powerhouse and her many accolades prove this, it’s hard to ignore her lack of enthusiasm for this part. Not only does it appear that she’s saying her lines without any sense of passion, but it also seems like she has very little direction. Anderson also agreed that her acting was not up to standard in this episode, mostly because she had no real connection with Emily. Overall, this episode felt as if everything was happening to Scully, and the character just didn’t have any time or room to really engage with the circumstances.

While it’s very easy to nitpick episodes like this one, especially since it was completed under very difficult circumstances, it is important to view the bigger picture. Perhaps the issue has nothing to do with «Christmas Carol» or The X-Files in general, but it is a product of 1990s television. Back then, shows were encouraged to produce as many episodes as possible because it was a great way to increase viewership and engagement. For example, Season 5 was released in 1997 and contained 20 episodes. On the flip side, Season 10 came out in 2016 and only has six episodes. So, it’s fair to assume that the crew was stretched thin during this episode, so they didn’t really see Scully’s emotions as a key selling point, even if lots of fans still disagree.