Start With A Bang, End With A Whimper, ... aka Biowhosiwhatsis?

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Title:	Start With A Bang, End With A Whimper, ... aka Biowhosiwhatsis?
Creator:	Fialka
Date(s):	August 2001
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:
External Links:	Biowhosiwhatsis - Fialka, Archived version
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Start With A Bang, End With A Whimper, ... aka Biowhosiwhatsis? 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 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

Someone said, It's hard to get excited about a mythology that proposes that alien gods created all life on earth in order to come back later and destroy it all. But actually, the Old Testament tells us of a time when god looked upon his creation, found it displeasing and destroyed it - the flood. I think TBO's faith in a benevolent god has already been well shaken (or at least well stirred o_-) by Emily, and by the things that she herself has seen. The concept that god=lovingkindness doesn't belong to every religion on this planet. We Jews have a pretty harsh concept of god - there's a lot of smiting for this and that going on in the OT, and Scully would be familiar with those stories. Also, she speaks in All Souls about faith being a kind of reconciliation to the idea that god is not always kind. I guess it has to do with the Judeo/Christian concept of 'god' as a separate force which hears our prayers and can choose to answer, as apart from the Native concept of 'god' as a lifeforce animating and connecting all things: rocks and trees and rivers and rain, as well as animals and people. In that sense, all things go as they should, and therefore 'god' can be neither good nor bad...it is simply right. I don't want to debate theology per se here - though it always interests me - but rather how it fits in with the mytharc, and more importantly TBO. My question for the gods of the XF Universe (1013) would be the question we've been asking since Erlenmeyer flask: what exactly is 'Purity'? Is it a sentient life form in and of itself and therefore distinct from the grey shapeshifting lizards? We are told it is 'their' life force, but which 'they' are we talking about?

This may not be a case of 'when good gods go bad', but rather that the greys - animated by the same life force that animates us - are acting no better than we do when there is land that we want and it happens to be inhabited by a 'foreign' race. The aliens themselves are not gods, any more than we are, but they can set themselves up in that relationship, because they're at the top of the food chain. I think this has to do with the idea of humanity being given 'dominion', which we've interpreted as 'we have the right to do what we want with the earth and everything on it', rather than viewing ourselves as appointed caretakers, who must not abuse that which is in our care. We tend to see things in a heirarchical form, with ourselves at the top, and - having met up at last with a stronger life-form - we must then fit the aliens into our heirarchy. As they have the power to wipe us out, they necessarily come into that heirarchy above us, thus transferring 'dominion' to them. They've allowed us to multiply until there are enough of us to be useful to them. Now they're going to use us as beef cattle, as workhorses, as test subjects, going to breed us for selective traits like pets - in other words, they are going to use us as we - playing 'god' - have used the lifeforms 'below' ourselves. Now here's where Scully's science should be coming up smack against her religion, and where they never really go: what's her relationship, as a scientist who has been a test subject, to her own test subjects? As a religious person, what's her relationship to genetic monsters? Does Tooms have a soul in Scully's mind? Is he truly a manifestation of evil or simply killing what he needs to kill to survive - as we do? How does Scully relate herself to Tooms, and Gibson and all those other strange anomolies whom her scientific mind is so eager to pick apart so she can see how they work? How does she feel about vivisection? About the many abuses of our own god-power, and what we have done to the creatures in our dominion - like Polidori, simply because we can. The horror that we find in the colonisation scenario would, I hope, cause us to look closer at our own actions, and if they can really pull this off by making Scully finally confront some of her own issues...well, I guess I'm gonna owe Carter an apology for every time I called him a pompous poopyhead. But I'm not holding my breath. Especially not till November.

On a lighter note: I'm so glad that the mytharc is once again raising issues worth considering seriously. You know, I think 1013 finally got back on some kind of track with this, especially if it can continue to make us to see these questions through Scully's eyes - it was a technique that worked brilliantly in the first season to allay our own skepticism and allow us to follow even the most incredible of stories. We - like Scully - are products of a Judeo/Christian frame of reference; whether or not we ourselves 'believe' we can follow her explorations. Without that frame of reference, I have no idea what people would make of it.