Providence (The X-Files)

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Zeke Josepho recounts a strange experience during the Persian Gulf War and how he claims it brought him to God: as his squad was ambushed during the Battle of Al Busayyah and on the verge of defeat, four mysterious men showed up and defeated the enemy with astonishing ease. While Josepho thinks of them as guardian angels, they are revealed to be the almost-indestructible Super Soldiers. In the present, Josepho stands above the wreckage of a spacecraft in Canada. At the FBI, Brad Follmer (Cary Elwes) discloses to a room of agents that Dana Scully’s (Gillian Anderson) son William has been abducted. Follmer notes that The Lone Gunmen are identifying the woman who took the child and ran over John Doggett (Robert Patrick). However, Follmer leaves out any potential motive for these crimes, which causes a frustrated Scully to leave the room. Byers (Bruce Harwood) reveals that he put a cell phone in the baby's belongings so they can track the Overcoat Woman; Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish) and Scully head out to find William. The two eventually find William's car seat along with the cell phone in an abandoned SUV. Meanwhile, the Overcoat Woman reports to Josepho that she has William. Scully meets Agent Robert Comer, whom she was forced to shoot after his attempt on William's life, and uses the alien artifact to heal him. Comer explains that Josepho believes a physical manifestation of God exists inside the spacecraft. According to an ancient prophecy, William is destined to become the savior of humanity, but only if Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is still alive. If he dies, William will instead lead the Colonists. Comer claims that Mulder was supposedly killed by the cult in order for the aliens to successfully invade; he tried to kill William to prevent him from causing humanity's destruction. Suddenly, a nurse and the Toothpick Man (Alan Dale) arrive and ask Reyes and Scully to leave. Comer ends up alone with the Toothpick Man. Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) later reports to Reyes and Scully that Comer has died. Reyes accuses Toothpick Man and others in the room of killing Comer. Meanwhile, Scully visits Doggett, who warns her not to trust the cultists. However, Scully goes to meet Josepho near Calgary. Josepho claims to be protecting William, but demands Mulder's head as collateral in exchange for the baby's release. When Josepho returns to the wreck site, the Overcoat Woman relates that the aperture of the craft began to glow when William started crying. The craft soon rises up out of the ground. Looking on the site from a distance, Scully and Reyes see the craft burst out of an enclosure and into space, lighting the ground beneath it on fire as it goes. The two find an unharmed William among the charred bodies of the cultists. At FBI headquarters, Follmer asks Kersh to remove his name from the final report. Instead, Kersh rebukes him and goes in to see the Toothpick Man, who is revealed to be a Super Soldier. ==Production==

. A desert area one hour outside of Los Angeles stood in for Iraq, and the scene featured actual U.S. military personnel as extras (U.S. Marines in the Gulf War pictured). "Providence" was written by series creator Chris Carter and executive producer Frank Spotnitz. The themes had previously been visited in the "Biogenesis"/"The Sixth Extinction"/"Amor Fati" story arc. This episode, as well as the one that proceeds it, plays around with questions concerning traditional religion and faith. Unlike many of the sets featured on the show, which were filmed on a Fox soundstage, the shot of the buried alien space craft was actually filmed in the hills near Simi Valley, California. Carter wanted a full-scale mock-up of the alien ship to be buried in the ground. This was unusual for the show; usually, a small portion of the ship would have been buried in the ground and the rest would have been filled in either via digital graphics, or with a scale model. In this episode, however, all the shots of the alien ship, sans the takeoff, were done practically. To create the otherworldly glow of the ship, over 100 lamps were hidden within the craft. The ship was also covered in fictional characters that had been programmed into a computer, printed off as stickers, and then applied to the ship's hull. == Broadcast and reception ==

Ratings "Providence" first premiered on the Fox network in the United States on March 10, 2002. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 5.2, meaning that it was seen by 5.2% of the nation's estimated households and was viewed by 5.49 million households, and 8.4 million viewers. "Providence" was the 56th most watched episode of television that aired during the week ending March 10. Reviews "Providence" received mixed reviews from television critics. Jessica Morgan from Television Without Pity awarded the episode a B+ rating. Jeffrey Robinson from DVD Talk concluded that "Providence", along with the previous episode "Provenance", "does a fairly good job without including Duchovny" due to its adherence to "the series' main storyline [about] the government conspiracies." Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode one star out of five. They called the entry "shallow and pretentious, and internally inconsistent" and derided its plot. They wrote that "at the centre of [the show's] mythology [is] a situation dependent on Mulder and a baby. One of them is absent, and one of them can't talk." M.A. Crang, in his book Denying the Truth: Revisiting The X-Files after 9/11, also complimented the teaser sequence, calling it "glorious", but was heavily critical of the rest of the episode's "confused and impenetrable" story. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations, wrote a largely negative review of the episode and derided its plot. He wrote that "as this series winds down, you would think Carter and Spotnitz would be in a hurry to resolve some of the myriad of questions they've posed. Instead, 'Providence' was just more of what we've come to expect the past two seasons." == Explanatory notes ==