I loved Irresistible, so I naturally awaited this sequel with great anticipation. Although I didn't like Orison as much as I thought I would, or as much as I liked its predecessor, I still thought it was a great episode - and let's face it, it would have had to have been something really extraordinary to better Irresistible, at least in my opinion. It would have been so easy to simply rehash the original, but that wasn't what this episode was about - there were some nice subtle references to Irresistible, but the writers still managed to take the story in a new direction. It wasn't a direction which I enjoyed all of the time - in fact I had a few major problems with it - but it meant that Orison was genuinely a sequel and not a repeat. One thing it did have in common with Irresistible, at least from my point of view, was the fact that I loved most of it but had strong objections to a few aspects.

I really would question the wisdom of whoever it was who assigned Scully to this case. I don't doubt that they debated it with both themselves and her, and I appreciate that Scully worked on the original case and would therefore be a useful asset (as long as she could hold herself together). But in Kitsunegari (the last "belated sequel" episode), Mulder was taken off the case for being too personally involved and because Modell was baiting him. So I couldn't quite see the logic in letting Scully work on the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if she had argued strongly to be allowed to investigate. Her line "That man does things to people that no-one should ever have to think about. It's not a question of if I should stay, I don't have a choice" seemed to be an acceptance that this is her job, it is her responsibility to deal with this kind of horror and to protect others from it. In fact, that was more or less what she said to the counsellor back in Irresistible. I thought maybe she was putting herself through the Pfaster case again so that nobody else would have to deal with it, to encounter the terrifying nature of his crimes and perhaps fall victim to him. Maybe she thought that, since she'd been through it once and come out the other side, she could do it again, and that was better than subjecting some fresh-faced agent straight out of the Academy to the evil that is Donnie Pfaster. Just a few thoughts.

Scully was, unsurprisingly, shaken right from the start of the episode - and equally unsurprisingly, she didn't want other people to realise it. I liked her obvious reluctance to take the case file, and the way she turned away to read it, although the photograph of Pfaster obviously disturbed her so much that she didn't read any further. You can hardly blame her, and she thought she could bluff her way through a simple case of an escaped prisoner. But if she couldn't even bring herself to read the file, it does seem like she shouldn't have been there, however many times she might have professed to be alright. For Scully's line "Mulder, this case doesn't bother me," Gillian Anderson did a very convincing job of sounding unconvincing. There's a difference between delivering a line and making it sound like it's not true, and delivering a line that your character wants to sound true, but can't quite make it. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, it was a typically Scully line in that it aimed to hide any signs of weakness.

She was also visibly distressed when she left the room after she and Mulder were asked about their paranormal expertise. Her abrupt, shaken "I promise you there is nothing supernatural about this man. Donnie Pfaster is just plain evil" was an effective line - she doesn't want people reaching for paranormal explanations just because it is easier "to believe in aliens and UFOs than in the kind of cold-blooded, inhuman monster who would prey on the living to scavenge from the dead" (quoted from Irresistible - I might have remembered it wrong). She can't stand for people to be wasting time looking for a supernatural aspect to the case while Pfaster is on the loose and ready to kill. She knows what he can do, she's terrified of what he can do, and she can't bear for anybody's procrastination to allow him to do it to anybody else.

To be fair, Scully wasn't insecure and vulnerable for the entire episode, and this, for me, was a good thing. Several scenes showed her to be in complete control, and although we don't know what she was thinking, she was behaving as if this was any other case. For example, when she and Mulder were talking in the hallway after the interview scene, she was smiling, questioning and sceptical - more or less her usual self. And again, when she and Mulder were looking at Orison's brain scan, she was in Scully the Medic mode.

But of course it did bother her, to the point where she was making connections that she would normally have put down to coincidence. Usually, one event happening at 6:06 to one person in one place would seem totally unconnected to another event happening to a different person somewhere else. But where Donnie Pfaster is concerned, everything for Scully takes on a sinister meaning. And the song, Don't Look Any Further - I'm sure Scully would have found it odd to have heard it so many times, but if Pfaster wasn't involved she would most likely have thought very little of it (especially as she heard it twice in the same place). Also, as a message from a fugitive, "Don't look any further" wouldn't normally seem too mysterious. Rationally, she knew that her fear of Pfaster was largely illogical - rationally, there was no reason why he should come after her. And her sense and reason won out over her irrationality: just before she was attacked by Pfaster, she thought he was in the wardrobe - but she didn't run. She opened the door - because her rational mind didn't really believe he was in there. Of course, she didn't know that he'd spent the last five years thinking about her, or that he'd been furious with a prostitute for not being a redhead.

I loved the fact that Scully did get through the case without falling apart. As I've said (at some length), it disturbed her considerably, but she got through it. She was still morbidly fascinated by the horrible photographs of the murdered girl in the bath and couldn't help but look at them - presumably wondering if that was what Pfaster had planned to do to her. But in the five years since she last encountered Pfaster, a lot has happened to her and a lot has changed. So while she was obviously (and naturally) relieved when Mulder suggested going home after the discovery of Orison's body, she had remained, for the most part, reasonably calm and controlled throughout. Of course, she'd never actually seen Pfaster in person by that point.

Not only has the character of Scully developed, we were also shown some aspects of Pfaster which went beyond those revealed in Irresistible. There, he was quiet, deliberate, calmly destructive. In Orison, we saw him cry (not that I'm suggesting this shows any kind of humanity - I choose to believe that he was crying in self-pity rather than remorse) and become angry ("You lied to me!"). Whether these were changes in his character resulting from five years of incarceration nurturing his obsession, or simply aspects of him which weren't given the chance to come to the fore in Irresistible, was never explained. I don't think that's a bad thing, it doesn't matter too much where the development came from - the important thing is, it was there. I also felt that the scene of Pfaster in his underwear, calmly preparing the fingers for freezing, demonstrated the sexual nature of his crimes more strongly than any other scene in either episode. I think that may have been the most disturbing scene in the episode.

OK, I think most of what I've said so far has been positive, and there are more positive comments to come. But, like Irresistible, Orison had certain aspects which didn't work for me.

I really didn't like the way Mulder was written. He is single-minded, occasionally tactless and sometimes offensive to those that anger him - but I thought some of his lines in this episode were more insensitive towards Scully than I would ever have expected him to be. Take for instance the line "We found women's fingers in his freezer - he liked to eat them with his peas and carrots." I realize that Mulder may have been trying to shock the agent into immediate, assertive action to make sure Pfaster was apprehended. But the prison guards and the local police knew how dangerous Pfaster was and were hardly going to sit around waiting for him to kill again. It just seemed to me that Mulder should have known that comment would probably upset Scully, and I don't think he would be so insensitive. Unless (and I've only just thought of this) he was deliberately trying to get her to cave in immediately and go home. His calling her "Scout" seemed to belittle her beliefs and confusion, and I also thought referring to people who believe God has spoken to them as "nutbags" and then asking Scully if He had ever spoken to her was blatantly offensive. Mulder expects people to accept his beliefs, yet he was hardly considerate of Scully's. I've always found it difficult to understand why he believes so passionately in almost any paranormal phenomenon you care to name, but never seems to even acknowledge the possibility that there could be a god, or a group of gods, or some kind of supreme being controlling the cosmos. I don't see why that should be any less likely than, say, an alien lifeform surviving under the Arctic ice for a quarter of a million years before infecting a group of scientists. Having said all that about Mulder's lack of sensitivity (or rather, writing which didn't quite seem consistent to me), I did think that "Donnie Pfaster did a number on your head like I've never seen" was a beautiful way to point out something that Scully would rather not be reminded of.

Two words: devil morphing. I didn't like it in Irresistible, but they just about got away with it by the implication that it was simply a representation of Scully's fear (the morphing into sex killers was another matter). One of the many things I liked about Irresistible was that it acknowledged the fact that Pfaster was not a demon, not a mutant or the result of a hideous experiment, but a sick, disturbed human being. Orison seemed to want to turn that on its head. I hope they didn't mean any of the Devil imagery to go beyond the metaphorical. While Pfaster may be the closest embodiment of Evil that Scully has encountered, and he certainly was one of her personal demons, I really don't believe he was the earthly incarnation of Satan.

Before I move on to the climax of the episode, there are few brief things I want to mention. I found it very odd and almost totally unbelievable to hear Scully and Mulder refer to Pfaster as "Donnie" - I really don't think I would be on first name (or pet name) terms with someone who'd done to me, or to a good friend of mine, what Pfaster did to Scully. "6:66" was vaguely spooky the first time, but lost a lot of its impact (at least for me) the second time it was used. The very end of the teaser, when Pfaster walked straight towards the camera, was a nice, subtle reference to Irresistible, in which an almost identical shot was used. I found "Sheep go to Heven [sic], goats go to Hell," written on the wall, an amusing piece of religious imagery, but I had to have Eleanor point out to me that it's a song by Cake (a band who Gillian Anderson likes). During the scene in the hospital where Orison "hypnotised" the supervising Agent, I really wished I knew what those sounds coming from the monitor actually meant.

OK. Pfaster's attack on Scully. It was fairly creepy seeing her go home and behave normally, while Pfaster was waiting for her. I was so glad he couldn't see her get undressed - I don't know why really, it seems an irrational thing to care about, but I suppose I just felt like he'd violated her enough and I didn't want him to get any thrills out of her. I think it said a lot about the rationality of Scully's mind when she opened the cupboard door - she obviously suspected someone was in there, but can't have really believed it or she would have got out of the house straight away. But I think that's realistic - you wouldn't run out into the street and get help because you'd look so hysterical if there was nobody there, and you couldn't be sure there was anything to be afraid of.

It was great to see Scully fighting back, and fighting back convincingly. In Irresistible, she was rescued, here she took charge herself and would have survived, I think, even if Mulder hadn't turned up. But she went for the phone, which is, according to other reviews I've read, not what you're advised to do in a situation like that. Exactly what you are supposed to do, I'm not sure, probably just get out of the house and to somewhere safe, but I thought I'd mention it. It's not a criticism of Scully - although I'm sure she would know the correct thing to do in that situation, knowing it and doing it are two completely different things when it's actually happening to you.

Despite my reservations over some of the Heaven and Hell imagery in Orison, I thought Scully's line "Go back to Hell!" was quite powerful, because he is, to her, a demon. As I've already said, that doesn't make him the Devil, but a monster from Scully's own personal Hell. I found it interesting, though not entirely surprising, that Scully had asked for Pfaster not to be executed. She apparently didn't feel that she had the right to pass judgement on him, or that it was her place to decree that he deserved to die. To be honest, I think I would have to agree with her. I hope this wasn't supposed to make us think it was alright for Scully to kill him at the end.

Another subtly disconcerting reference to Irresistible came when Pfaster called Scully "girly-girl." I thought Scully's scream as Pfaster went to run her a bath was just right - she knew exactly what that meant, she must have instantly thought of the crime scene photographs - but I didn't like the loud, crashing, staccato chords which seemed to have been put in for emphasis. Normally I have nothing but praise for Mark Snow's scores, but I really didn't think that worked, and I didn't like the ominous music that played at the beginning as Scully left her first scene either.

Mulder found Don't Look Any Further playing on the radio, but Pfaster appeared to be playing it on a CD. Maybe Scully's radio controls just look like a CD player. If not, either the writers made a mistake, or the CD was Pfaster's (Scully said she hadn't heard the song since high school) - which just makes his crimes seem even more ritualistic. He brought his own music to defile girls by? Add to that the slow, careful way he prepared the candles and the bubble bath, and the viewer begins to get an idea of how inhuman Pfaster was. Once again, music and visuals which didn't seem to go together were used to great effect - that song made the scenes of Scully struggling and Pfaster preparing the ritual seem almost surreal. It's a credit to the whole X Files team that I'll probably never be able to hear that song without getting chills down my spine. When Pfaster turned the music off, the atmosphere instantly became more menacing. The old saying about silence breeding more apprehension than incidental music is true.

I really didn't like the slow motion of the scene where Mulder burst in and Scully shot Pfaster. I don't know why. Maybe it was supposed to show how Scully was seeing things - she couldn't hear anything, she was totally focussed on Pfaster, and everything was happening slowly. But I still didn't like it, although I have to admit that the shot light looked fantastic at that speed. As Mulder put his gun almost against Pfaster's head, I wondered if he would have pulled the trigger if he had found Scully dead. I liked that it made me think that - it was another reference to the issue of whether anyone has the right to kill a killer, but one which raised its head almost imperceptibly.

If I was going to defend Scully's actions, I would say that maybe she hadn't seen Mulder before she pulled the trigger. But while I think it's just about possible that she was so fixated on Pfaster that she didn't see him, he was quite clearly shouting (it looked like he mouthed "Did he hurt you?" which seemed like a fairly stupid question in the circumstances), so I don't think she could have missed both the sound and the sight of him. Plus, after she shot Pfaster, she didn't look surprised that Mulder was there, just completely drained and dully amazed that she could have done it.

Seeing Scully as the victim, rather than as the calm and collected FBI Agent we're used to, was quite powerful, as she walked exhaustedly around her house full of cops, wrapped in a blanket. She was totally vulnerable, and when was the last time we saw that in Scully?

The thing I really hated in Orison, even more than I hated the devil morphing in Irresistible, was the implication right at the end that Mulder and Scully were going to cover up her shooting Pfaster. I realise that it was the easiest way for the writers to tie up the fact that she had actually committed murder since they (and most likely the viewers) wouldn't want a lengthy court case dragged out over however many weeks. But there were some pretty major extenuating circumstances going on, and I'm Scully would have received some kind of special consideration for that. Of course there would have had to have quite a bit of artistic licence to get her off scot-free, but that kind of artistic licence has been used many times in the past (an FBI agent who'd done half the things Mulder has would have been sacked long ago). Either way the viewer had to be cheated, but I for one would rather have been cheated the second way. The other option to avoid all of this would have been to not have Scully kill him in the first place. I don't think that would have worked either. Dramatically, she had to rescue herself to enable her to get some sense of resolution and to lay some of her demons to rest. And really, he had to die, otherwise she would never be able to move on. I think that was what Mulder meant when he said that Scully "didn't have a choice" - as long as Pfaster is alive, Scully will be afraid of him. Even if he's locked up, what's to stop him escaping? He's already done it once. And even if he never escapes, he'll always be there, in her nightmares, in the footsteps she hears in a darkened street. I'm going to leave that train of thought before it becomes any more cheesy. So Scully had to hurt Pfaster, and he had to die. But I hated the way it was resolved. For two people who despise liars, cheats and deceivers, Mulder and Scully constructed a pretty good cover-up. I don't think Scully will be able to live with it for long, though. Whatever she may believe about her God judging her, she works for the Federal Government and has too much integrity to just keep quiet about having killed someone. It will be interesting to see how she deals with this over the coming weeks, as well as how she reacts in general to this week's ordeal.

Despite all of that, I liked Mulder and Scully's final exchange. I liked the fact that Scully was honest enough to finish her sentence ("What made me - what made me pull the trigger"), and I really liked the episode's last two lines:

Mulder: You mean, what if it was God?

Scully: I mean, what if it wasn't?

It only struck me afterwards that maybe she meant "what if it was the Devil?" Maybe she did, but I prefer my initial interpretation - that she meant "what if I did it completely independently?" The idea of demon possession is frightening, but more terrifying is the idea that you could commit murder yourself.

Two words spring to mind now: "long" and "ridiculously." So I'm going to wrap it up there. Thanks for reading to the end.

Agent: You two put this man away.

Mulder: Yeah. Someone forgot to throw away the key.

Scully: I haven't heard that song since high school.

Mulder: I think if it was a make-out song I think it'd be ruined forever now, huh?

Scully: I believe that the Reverend believes what he's saying, that it's God working through him.

Mulder: Plenty of nutbags do. Has He ever spoken to you?

Scully: I'm trying not to take offence.

Mulder: Maybe he thought he was opening the doors of perception but then unwittingly he opened the gates of Hell.

Orison: Are you crying for your sins, or for yourself?

Scully: The only reason why you're alive is because I asked the judge for life! The only reason why you're alive is because we didn't kill you when we could!

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