Without (The X-Files)

After David Duchovny fulfilled his contractual obligations with the show's seventh season, he felt that there was not much else to do with the character. Fox Mulder's abduction was thus devised by Chris Carter towards the end of seventh season as a way of allowing the actor to leave the series.[5]

A concept sketch of the alien surgical chair, as seen in Mulder's experimentation scenes.

Several of the scenes from this episode take place on the alien spaceship in which Mulder is being imprisoned. When designing the interior look of the ship, production designer Cory Kaplan was attracted to primitive materials. In an interview, she noted, "We all see super-tech [in spaceships] now, but the idea of low-tech was much more interesting to me, much more visual. So, you take elements of rock and steel and chisel them into interesting shapes."[5] Her task was aided by the discovery of a backdrop from the film Alien (1979), which she and director of photography Bill Roe "lit ... very dimly and put it behind" the chair in which Mulder is restrained.[5] According to Kaplan, the chair "was just this rotating platform with this humongous dental piece that could rotate around as well and pull [Mulder's] face apart."[5] According to Makeup Supervisor Cheri Montasanto-Medcalf, Matthew Mungle helped in the creation of the alien torture machine by making prosthetic cheeks, which were pierced by hooks. These cheeks were applied to Duchovny, whom Montasanto-Medcalf notes "sat pretty good through all that."[5]

This episode made use of several unusual filming techniques. Visual Effects Supervisor John Wash recalls, "We devised a laser effect where a device is going into [Mulder's] mouth and some other weird lens effects that were going over the scene to give it an alien, other-world-like quality."[5] During one scene, an extremely small drill was to approach the camera. The producers were forced to find a way to film not only the tiny device, but also make the entire sequence suspenseful. Supervising producer Paul Rabwin noted, "I had to set up a very, very highly magnified lens to try to get this little device coming right at us. It was very, very scary. We ended up putting some really cool sound effects in there, little servos and motors."[5]

The sequence at the end of the episode in which multiple Alien Bounty Hunters appear required the use of motion control, a method in which a motion-control camera on a computerized module is repeatedly run through the same motion while elements are continually added. According to John Wash, this was one of the few times that the series employed motion control, which made it slightly harder to film than most other scenes. To accomplish the effect, the cameras first filmed a pass over the empty set and lighting elements. Then, the production crew filmed five different passes, each one with the Alien Bounty Hunter in a different location. By compositing all the shots together, the production crew was able to "clone" the Bounty Hunter and have him surround Mulder.[5]

"Without" premiered on American television on November 12, 2000, on Fox.[6] The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.0, meaning that it was seen by 9.0% of the nation's estimated households, and was viewed by 9.07 million households,[7][nb 1] and 15.1 million viewers.[8] Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "Once in a great while a story takes a turn that you never expect... Tonight this is one of them."[9] The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth.[10]

The episode was met with relatively positive reviews from critics. 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 five stars out of five. The two praised the episode's plot, citing the abduction and search for Mulder as components to the arcs "brilliance".[11] Shearman and Pearson noted that the final scene, featuring Mulder surrounded by the alien bounty hunter was created with "beauty, emotion, and horror which in collision make The X-Files one of the best shows on TV."[11]

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club wrote that both "Without" and "Within" form "a great way to pick up after the cliffhanger ending of the previous season" and that "the pair of episodes [...] work well as an introduction to the new narrative status quo."[12] He awarded both entries a "B+" but noted, however, that "Without" nearly came across as "strained or stalling", but "manages to get by with the general freakiness of the alien bounty hunter".[12] Jessica Morgan from Television Without Pity gave the episode a rare "A+". The previous episode, "Within", also received an "A+" grade, making them the only two episodes of The X-Files to receive this rating from the site.[3]

Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly was positive towards both this episode and the season premiere, "Within," awarding the episodes an "A-".[13] George Avalos and Michael Liedtke from the Contra Costa Times praised the episode and noted that the Scully/Dogget dynamic and the hunt for Fox Mulder worked towards the show's strengths.[14] Tom Janulewicz from Space.com positively commented on Scully's conversion from skeptic to believer, writing, "Regardless of whether it's aliens, flukemen, or pizza delivering vampires, The X-Files is all about phenomena that don't stand in the face of 'rational' explanations. It took her a long time, but like Mulder before her, Scully eventually came to accept that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in her philosophy."[4]

Not all reviews were positive. Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a more mixed review and awarded it two stars out of four.[15] Vitaris criticized both Scully becoming the believer as well as the "sky turning out to be a helicopter gimmick", which she notes "has gotten way too old."[15] Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations wrote a relatively negative review of the episode. He noted, "All ['Without'] did was remind me why the show is a hollow shell of what it once was as long as Fox Mulder is strapped to an alien table and why The Doggett and Pony Show holds absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever."[16]

• Hurwitz, Matt; Knowles, Chris (2008). The Complete X-Files. Insight Editions. ISBN 978-1933784809.
• Kessenich, Tom (2002). Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files. Trafford Publishing. ISBN 1553698126.
• Shearman, Robert; Pearson, Lars (2009). Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen. Mad Norwegian Press. ISBN 978-0975944691.

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• "Without" at IMDb
• "Without" at TV.com