Memento Mori

Season 4, Episode 14, Aired
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Episode Summary

Scully's recent failing health is revealed to be inoperable brain cancer which is common among abductees. She meets with other abductees with the same condition and forms a special bond with a dying woman, while Mulder tries to save her from a doctor who may be connected with the abductions.moreless
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Fan Episode Reviews (13)

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  • Scully spends the whole episode moaning Fox should just put her down ! this episode and the last one she has just moaned and moaned boring !

    1.0
    "Abysmal"
    By DarcyPace, Nov 24, 2011 Report Abuse
    I have been re watching the x files in order and this is by far the worst episodes Scully spends the whole episode moaning Fox should just put her down ! this episode and the last one she has just moaned and moaned boring ! these monologs the scully dictates are awful please just croak and let me enough the x files in peace with out having to listen to a cancer monlogue a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a aq a a a aq a a a a a a amoreless

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  • It is a long, long way from "I thought you were sent to spy on me" to "The truth will save both of us", but we finally got there.

    10
    "Perfect"
    By MattMTRUSTNO1, Aug 13, 2011 Report Abuse


    "Memento Mori" opens with a voice over narration, Agent Scully reading from her journal. Though the language is as formal as Scully's reports, the emotion in it seeps through to saturate the scene in despair and resignation. The camera takes us down a long tunnel of white light, reminiscent of near-death experiences, to focus finally on Dana Scully's X-ray, showing a deadly mass growing at the base of her brain. From this image of the death's-head, the episode unreels as a parallel story deriving from Scully's abduction: Scully fights the result of it and Mulder seeks the cause of it. As before, Scully rejects their stories, but is forced to rely on Penny, who is dying of brain cancer, as her guide through the ordeal of cancer therapy. Mulder, meanwhile, searches desperately for information about the other women of that luckless group, all of whom are dead; his investigation leads him to a fertility clinic and a confrontation with a hybridization experiment that now vitally involves Scully.
    "They're our mothers," Kurt the Clone tells Mulder. In such small and offhand sentences whole story arcs are born. In "Herrenvolk", X's last words to Scully herself were a warning to "protect the mother". Is Dana Scully indeed the genetic mother of a set of red-headed clones?
    The metaphor of cancer as an invading demon, with chemo/radiation therapy as a form of exorcism, struck a profound note. The mini-drama between Skinner and the Cigarette-Smoking Man alone deserves a paragraph, as Skinner contemplates a Faustian bargain. Scully's diary entries beautifully summed up her relationship with Mulder with her usual dispassionate and objective mien: like Marie Curie, Scully would take her own temperature and make her own diagnosis on her deathbed, a scientist to the end.
    I'm not sure where to begin in describing Gillian Anderson's benchmark performance. Likewise, Sheila Larken's brief scene as Mrs. Scully once again showcased her capacity to show tenderness, anger, and bitter grief mixed together. Mitch Pileggi's terse and troubled Skinner struck the perfect note of worry and resolve, and the final image of the episode, closing in on his profoundly disturbed expression, sounded the right grace note for the story. Gillian Barber's portrayal of the ill-fated Penny Northern was enough to bring tears to a statue.
    In "Memento Mori", Duchovny let us hear the tears stuck in Mulder's throat, the anger choking him, the fear nearly strangling him. Struck nearly dumb with grief and denial, he fights to maintain his usual sang-froid and utterly fails. From the sea-change that comes over Mulder's face when Scully tells him of her cancer, to the barely-repressed grimace when she calls him to bring her bag to the hospital, Duchovny gives us a Mulder stripped down to raw, bleeding nerve. In a storage room that might contain his own sister's eggs, he doesn't even look for a drawer with her name on it. In Skinner's office, he is willing to sell his soul cheap for Scully's life. Mulder is down to his last emotional nickel here, on the ragged edge of despair. The most sensitive moment in "Memento Mori", however, the one that demonstrated Fox Mulder's innate humanity, came as Scully walks away down the hospital corridor. He takes the vial of her eggs from his pocket-- and does nothing. The truth, and his quest, might be served by revealing to Scully at this supremely vulnerable moment that she has suffered a violation as intimate and visceral as rape. But the Fox Mulder who might have blurted out the painful truth in the first season now thinks twice. Finally, he understands that some things--such as compassion- -are more important than his version of the truth.
    "Memento Mori" gives Dana Scully a crusade of her own, and Mulder a partner unto death.

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  • Scully faces her cancer

    8.9
    "Great"
    By JaCkKbAuEr2424, Feb 02, 2011 Report Abuse
    Scully's cancer is something that's been hovering around for the past couple episodes, influencing her actions and her reactions towards Mulder. Finally, the show finds her acknowledging it and as a result, we find her illness becoming the next X-File, and that Mulder ends up learning that her illness is a result of her abduction. Scully's abduction was obviously a plot point born out of the fact that Gillian Anderson was pregnant, but for a plot that was created out of necessity, it's carried on remarkably well into other seasons. It's nice to see the show returning to this idea, and it has some very interesting points, although we still are given extremely weak explanations as to why things are the way they are.

    What worked for me was when Mulder and the Lone Gunmen went on their little adventure into the doctor's office. They find a large number of clones that are attempting to save the women who were abducted from people like the Cigarette Man, who are seemingly trying to use them in order to create a colony of aliens. Once again, this plot point has always been a bit murky to me, but I'm hoping that over time, it'll be explained a little better. It's disappointing when a show that usually did conspiracies so well in its first and second seasons has failed to capture that excitement in the last two seasons.

    But here, we really see the friendship between Mulder and Scully growing, and for the most part, we had some great touching moments bookended with great action scenes. Definitely one of the better episodes of this season.moreless

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  • Scully's cancer Beware of spoilers!

    10
    "Perfect"
    By Ngbballgyrl15, Oct 21, 2010 Report Abuse
    By far one of the best x-files episodes ever! Ok so scully finds out that she has incurable cancer and decides to look for the women from the Mufon group who are in the same boat as her. Scully finds out that all the women have died except for one. After she visits Penny in the hospital, Scully decides that she is going to get treatment at the hospital. Mulder is determined to find out what happened to scully but lets her know that he will always be there for her. While going through chemo, scully rights in her journal to mulder. Angst, Angst, Angst.......and finally we get to the end. Mulder goes to scully's room and when he sees that she isn't there he has the saddest look on his face. He runs down the hall and Byers tells him that she is in the room with Penny. Mulder busts into the room and is relieve when he sees scully. Penny (I hope that was her name)dies and Scully comes out of the room crying. Her and Mulder share a hug and a kiss on the forehead and the top of the head after she tells him that she's not going to be defeated by her illness and after he tells her that he read what she wrote to him. Like I said it was a great episode.moreless

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  • For the first time I feel time like a heartbeat...

    10
    "Perfect"
    By tunguska1013, Oct 21, 2010 Report Abuse
    Scully finds out that she has an inoperable brain tumor as a result of her abduction and Mulder's desperate search for the cure brings him closer to the conspiracy.

    Memento Mori is an amazing episode, emotional and revealing at the same time. The writing is great especially in Scully's voice-overs and the directing is excellent. Moreover the performances throughout the episode are spot on especially by Gillian Anderson who deservedly won the EMMY. In this episode we also get the chance to learn a little more about the project and the experiments they've done to Scully during her abduction as well as the fate of the women from the MUFON group we met last year. Memento Mori is an episode full of memorable moments: when we find out that Kurt Crawford is a hybrid, the scenes between Scully and Penny Northern or Scully and her mother, The Lone Gunmen appearance and of course the hallway scene between Mulder and Scully near the end. Definitely one of the best episodes!moreless

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

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    • Continuity: Just before Mulder goes into the lab with the Kurt Crawford clones, Byers sees the police getting out of their car at the front of the lab complex. Mulder spends several minutes in the lab with the clones; the scene then cuts to Byers at the front again and the police are just a few feet from their vehicle, although quite a few minutes have passed. Edit

  • Notes

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    • This episode originally had a kiss on the lips between Mulder and Scully. In the original version, Mulder kisses her forehead, then her lips, then they hug and she walks away. The aired version just has the kiss on the head. Edit
    • A scene with Gillian Anderson (Scully) and Pat Skipper (Scully's brother Bill Jr.) was cut due to time constraints. Bill Scully would make his second 'first appearance' in the season 4 finale 'Gethsemane'. This scene is significant for several reasons in that Bill Jr. voices his displeasure, or rather what he believes to be his parents displeasure, about Dana choosing to be an FBI Agent instead of a doctor and that now she has paid for that decision with her cancer. He also indirectly blames Dana for Melissa's death and, finally, he mentions their other brother Charles. Edit
    • The date on the drawer holding Scully's ova is October 29, 1994 - a few days before she was returned to the hospital in the season 2 episode 'One Breath'. Edit

  • Quotes

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    • Mulder: These women, these women are your birth mothers. Hybrid: Barren now, from the same procedure that caused their cancer. And now they're left to die, their conditions hastened by the men running this project. Mulder: You're trying to save them. Hybrid: They're our mothers. (Mulder leaves with vial) Edit
    • Mulder: Byers told you about Dr. Scanlon? Scully: Yeah Mulder: He very well may have killed those women Scully: It will have to be proven, if we find him Mulder: When we find him, Scully something was done to you, something you're just beginning to remember, you can't quite figure out. But it can be explained and it will be explained, and no matter what you think as a scientist or a doctor there is a way and you will find it, To save yourself. Scully: Mulder I can't kid myself, people live with cancer they carry on, and so will I. You know I've got things to finish to prove to myself, my family, But for my own reasons. Edit
    • Scully: (Writing in her journal) I have not written to you in the past twenty four hours because the treatment has weakened my body. Mulder it's difficult to explain to you the fear of facing an enemy which I can neither conquer nor escape. Penny Northern has taken a down turn. I now look at her with the respect that can only come from one that is about to walk the same dark path. Seeing her I can't help seeing myself in a month or a year. I pray that I have her courage to face this journey. Mulder I feel you close, though I know you are now pursuing your own path. For that I am grateful, more than I can ever express. I need to know you're out there if I am ever to see through this. Edit

  • Allusions

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    • Episode Title: Memento Mori Memento Mori is Latin and means "remember that you are mortal". In the days of the Roman Empire, a military leader achieving great victories would be given a parade through the city of Rome where he in the end was told Memento Mori, so that he wouldn't forget his place in the world. Edit

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