Scully investigates the wreckage of a mysterious craft on the coast of West Africa while, back in Washington, Skinner tries to help the mentally ill Mulder.

Grace Under Pressure

Kritschgau [visited by Skinner in shabby apartment]: Two years ago, Agent Mulder asked me for a favor, to blow the whistle on Uncle Sam's UFO propaganda mill. And all it got me was this swanky address.

Skinner [updating Scully about Mulder's treatment]: They said he's dying. I had to do something.    More Stories The X-Files and the Mythos of Space Don't Give Up On 'The X-Files' The X-Files - 'Sixth Extinction' (spoilers) The Cigarette-Smoking Skeptic Speaks    Related Links The X-Files (official) Scully: He's not dying. He is more alive than he's ever been. More alive than his body can stand. And what's causing it may be extraterrestrial in origin. Skinner: I know. But there's nothing to be done about it.

Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Kim Manners

John Finn -- Michael Kritschgau
Mimi Rogers - Diana Fowley

Scully is in a tent on a West African beach analyzing the symbols on debris that recently floated ashore from an artifact of apparently extraterrestrial origins. She hopes the clues will reveal the cause of Mulder's lapse into psychosis.

As the middle installment of a three-part story and what was then thought to be the final season premiere of The X-Files, "The Sixth Extinction" is suffused with a somber pre-apocalyptic mood, but one vivified by the possibility that soon we'll have answers to the most important outstanding mysteries of the series.

But wasn't that mind-reading kid from last season touted as a similarly comprehensive solution?

David Duchovny portrays Mulder's psychosis with a suitable intensity. Gillian Anderson adeptly depicts an interestingly optimistic Scully.

However, despite these fine performances, the questions remain. Are world religions a mere figment of humanity's experience with an influx of extraterrestrials? Or are the aliens themselves subsidiary players in a cosmic conflict among supernatural forces?

Is the revived African worker who killed Barnes now a mindless zombie or a lucid man understandably annoyed by his own murder? Zombie or no, did he steal the spaceship?

Several U.S. government agencies are currently working to compile a complete listing of the human genome. It's not clear that the saucer wreckage inscriptions really add to that knowledge.

There is no "ancient Navaho alphabet," making Barnes' theories dubious at best. Navajo, like most Native American languages, had no written form until relatively recently.