Without (The X-Files)

Plot

FBI special agent Fox Mulder has been abducted by aliens in the seventh season finale, "Requiem." His partner Dana Scully works with Agent John Doggett to locate him. After consulting with The Lone Gunmen, Scully finds evidence that Mulder may be in Arizona. Doggett learns that Gibson Praise, a boy with potentially extraterrestrial DNA, may also be hiding in Arizona.

Events

They arrive with Walter Skinner and a task force and find Mulder and Praise on a mountain. Doggett pursues them to a cliff edge, where he convinces Mulder to release Praise. Mulder then steps off the precipice and apparently falls to his death. When agents retrieve the body, they find only footprints.

Scully realizes "Mulder" was an Alien Bounty Hunter sent to retrieve Praise. The Bounty Hunter returns to a school to continue searching for Praise. Scully follows Praise's schoolmate, a deaf girl named Thea, through the desert to a hidden underground room where Praise has broken his leg. Scully applies first aid but cannot move him without a car.

Doggett explains the cliff events to Alvin Kersh; Skinner warns that Kersh is setting Doggett up to fail. The Alien Bounty Hunter, disguised as Scully, attacks Agent Landau. Skinner and the real Scully drive the alien away. Skinner gets Praise to a hospital but leaves Scully in the desert.

Scully sees a bright light in the sky, which is a helicopter with Doggett inside. Doggett insists she travel to the hospital; she reluctantly accepts. There, two FBI agents assure them nothing has happened to Praise, but they soon discover he has vanished. Scully leaves to search for Praise while Doggett checks the ceiling space, where he finds Skinner badly injured.

Scully finds Praise with "Skinner," who claims to be protecting the boy. The Alien Bounty Hunter attempts to kill her, but Scully shoots and kills him first.

Production

David Duchovny had fulfilled his contract after season seven and felt the character of Fox Mulder had run its course. To write the actor out, creator Chris Carter had Mulder abducted in the season seven finale, "Requiem." The episode "Without" features several scenes set inside an alien spaceship where Mulder is held. Production designer Cory Kaplan chose a primitive look for the ship's interior, explaining that low-tech felt more visually interesting than the usual super-tech.

Her work was helped by finding a backdrop from the 1979 film Alien, which she and cinematographer Bill Roe lit very dimly and placed behind the chair restraining Mulder. That chair was described as a rotating platform with a large, rotating dental piece. Most torture scenes were done with practical effects and creative camera work. For a scene where hooks restrain Mulder's face, makeup artist Matthew W. Mungle made special cheek prosthetics that were attached to Duchovny, who series makeup supervisor Cheri Montasanto-Medcalf noted handled the process well.

The final shot shows multiple Alien Bounty Hunters surrounding Mulder in a surgical chair. This effect required motion control, a technique the series rarely used. The camera first filmed the empty set, then made five more passes, each with a Bounty Hunter in a different spot. Compositing these shots together cloned the Bounty Hunter, making him appear in several places at once.

Reception

"Without" first aired on Fox on November 12, 2000. According to Nielsen, it scored a 9.0 household rating, meaning 9.0% of the nation's estimated households tuned in. This translated to 9.07 million households and 15.1 million viewers. Fox promoted the installment with the tagline: "Once in a great while a story takes a turn that you never expect... Tonight this is one of them." The episode later appeared on the DVD collection The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, which compiles episodes centered on the alien Colonists' plan to take over Earth.

Critical reception was largely positive. In their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson gave the episode a perfect five-star rating. They praised the plot, calling the abduction of Mulder and the subsequent search for him key to the arc's "brilliance." They also highlighted the final scene, where Mulder is surrounded by the alien bounty hunter, describing it as a collision of "beauty, emotion, and horror" that makes The X-Files one of television's best shows.

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave both "Without" and its predecessor "Within" a B+. He felt the pair served as "a great way to pick up after the cliffhanger ending of the previous season" and worked well as an introduction to the new narrative status quo. However, he noted that "Without" nearly felt "strained or stalling," though it was saved by the "general freakiness of the alien bounty hunter." Jessica Morgan from Television Without Pity awarded the episode a rare A+.

The previous episode, "Within," also received an A+, making them the only two episodes of The X-Files to earn that grade from the site.