1.17 – Miracle Man – X-Files Review

Posted by Samuel Walters

“Miracle Man” is a kind of aimless, middling episode whose central twist manages to be thoroughly unconvincing and altogether too conventional to really drive home the central conflict of the story: namely, is “faith healing” legitimate? This is a case where the attempt by the X-Files to walk the line between mysticism and skepticism leads to a watered-down, shallow tale which never piques any real interest, drama, or mystery.

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This is the story of a young boy who manages to use his hands to heal all manner of diseases and ailments – including bringing a burn victim back to life. As the episode begins, the young boy is now a young man and one of his “patients” ends up dead as a result of his actions. Tied into the faith-healer’s story is that of a shyster pastor whose real talent has more to do with showmanship than spirituality. Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate and, ultimately, they discover that the rejuvenated burn-victim has been poisoning the victims in order to discredit the faith-healer — because, you know, the burns disfigured him and he’s, like, totally pissed that he was given back his life to live.

I get the whole notion that the burn victim has grown tired of living with his disfigurement, and can even accept that he might blame the faith-healer. But it’s just not interesting enough of a concept to make it a foundation for the episode. Or rather, the episode didn’t do a good job of establishing the motivations and inner conflicts of the burn victim, opting instead to make it a narrative-based plot-twist, rather than a true character exploration.

What little exploration the episode makes comes by way of Mulder who has visions of his sister whenever the faith-healer is around. So is the faith-healer legit? Is Mulder just seeing things because he wants to see things? This, too, is given very little prominence in the episode.