Musings on Milagro Syndrome

Meta
Title:	Musings on Milagro Syndrome
Creator:	Fialka
Date(s):	February 2001
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:
External Links:	Musings on Milagro Syndrome - Fialka, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Musings on Milagro Syndrome is by Fialka.

It was part of a series. The author comments that: "Many of these essays first appeared as discussions on OBSSE, Scullyfic and/or ATXA."

The author defines "Milagro Syndrome": "MILAGRO SYNDROME, n, the state of having anticipated an event for such a length of time that when it finally arrives, it cannot possibly live up to expectation."

The essay was first posted to The Annotated X-Files Study Guide and is at Fialka's Candybox.

Later, it was reposted:

Sadly, when the old NBCI server went the way of so many really cool, free things on the net, I never could find another free site with enough space to house the whole Study Guide, and it didn't get enough traffic to warrant paying for 250mb on a server somewhere. Not to mention, I no longer have as much time on my hands as I did back then, so like the UFOs...well, it is another UFO. Some of it still appears to be here, if you can wade your way through all the advertising on FortuneCity. I sure won't be insulted if you don't. These essays are from the original site, and appear here unchanged. Unlinked titles got abducted by aliens somewhere along the way. If you find them wandering dazed by the side of the road, could you be so kind as to send them home?

Excerpts

I love the theory that Padgett was a healing tool to make Scully realise she still has a heart, especially as it ties in well with her lightness in The Unnatural. As an overall story arc, I'm glad they showed that right after, as it does cement the theory that the events of Milagro have given her back some things she long ago lost: laughter and the ability to love and be loved. To touch and be touched. The last scene of Unnat doesn't have to be read as shippy, it's simply that she has come through the events of Milagro more integrated than previously and is therefore able to allow Mulder closer than she ever has.

But my real problem with the ending was that it was unusually badly done. The poet in me imagines that GA was going with the idea that once Scully started crying at all, the whole last 6 years came out and she just lost it, but it would have taken her a bit more than the 3 seconds they gave to it to work herself into that level of hysteria. The crying didn't sound to me like a studio loop, but more as if they looped the later sound into the earlier visual. A time thing, I guess, but I'm just not sure why they did that. (Anyone know?). I had no problem with the idea that Scully would be hysterical - when someone who is as controlled as she is loses it, they REALLY lose it, and she's been needing a good cry for years. What I don't understand is why, if they needed to cut the sequence for time, 1013 didn't find those precious seconds elsewhere (like cutting the not!Teenaged kids' murders shorter) and give that ending the time it needed to unfold. It was just way too important to go by so quickly.

So, to finish, I go with Jenn's statement above, but would like to add my own twist: In waking to realise that she still has her heart, she is realising that Dana is still alive within her. Loneliness becomes truly a choice, one she can also choose to unmake. I would like to say that the magnitude of her reaction comes not only from her terror of moments before, but from accepting Dana (and the pain she carries) back into her life, of finally integrating her two selves into a whole. She knows now that she can choose to let someone reach in and touch her heart and it will not kill her.