A Review of "The Beginning"
By: Jonathon McDonald

The sun!!!!!!! Dear God, turn it off!!!!!! Contrary to popular belief, these aren't the lunatic cries of a TV critic who's just come up for air from the depths of his darkened den.

They're the reaction upon seeing the opening shot of tonight's sixth-season opener of The X-Files. After all, when you've been buried under millions of inches of the wet stuff for five years, it's pretty darn shocking to see the blinding sun in all its glory.

If that's supposed to be some symbolic nod to Vancouver, then maybe the other half of the opening shot is too: A couple of lab techies, taking a leak in the middle of the burning desert.

One of them doesn't get the same kind of relief. During the van trip back to parched, brittle Mesa, Ariz. -- Toto, we're not in the rainforest any more -- one of the geeks starts perspiring in buckets.

A few hours after getting home, he knows something's really wrong: His hand looks a whole lot like a piece of tempura. As for the rest of him? Well, death's never been all that elegant in Chris Carter's universe of dementia.

It is elegance itself that seems to be missing. The poor sucker who didn't shell out $8.50 during the summer to see The X-Files on the big screen will surely scratch his head at all the references to the movie -- the Antarctic, spaceships, a sick Scully and a more-obsessed-with-aliens-than-ever-before Mulder.

That same sucker will no doubt wonder at the arrogance of the Fox network, which has churned out a series of dogs all fall while making faithful X-philes wait an extra two months, as usual, for the show to return.

Some things haven't changed since the series moved to Los Angeles. The music's still really good, Scully's science-textbook seriousness and Mulder's witty retorts still flow, and the plot lines are still intriguing but really convoluted.

Not that The X-Files was ever supposed to be all that realistic. But there are a couple of serious lapses in logic -- breaking into a nuclear power plant without being noticed might be pulled off once, but twice? -- and there seems to be a little less steam in this premiere than premieres past. Even Mimi Rogers, as new recurring cast member Agent Diana Fowley, lacks spark.

Maybe it won't make a difference to the series that it's moved -- technical wizardry allows even Saudi Arabia to stand in for Vancouver, if necessary -- but this one comes up a little flat, a little uninspired, a little contrived. After all, the best X-Files line doesn't even happen during The X-Files. It takes place seconds before, during That '70s Show. The gang of Wisconsin schoolkids, hanging around in a basement smoking dope in 1976, tape-record one of their hazy conversations.

Hyde (Danny Masterson) says it like it is.

"The Earth is a farm," he says, "put here by aliens, man. And we are the cattle. The government knows it's out there.

"Out there . . . is the truth."

REVIEW

The X-Files

Debuts: Tonight at 9, Global, KCPQ.

Rating two