The X-Files The Unnatural review: why it's a 10 out of 10

The Unnatural, episode 19 of The X-Files Season 6, is a classic and one of my favorite episodes in the whole franchise. I'd give it a 10 out of 10. It's a baseball story about an alien who only wants to be human, and it's an extremely impactful and emotional story that also feels timeless.

The X-Files, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, began its sixth season on the 8th of November 1998, coming straight off the series' first feature film. That season ran into the new year and ended up being the show's final season of the millennium.

Why The X-Files Season 6 is seen as the start of the decline, and why I liked it anyway

Season 6 bumped the episode count back above 20, giving us 22 episodes. It was also the first TV box set I ever bought. I didn't use to buy box sets, and because of that, this was the season I watched over and over and over again.

It's also considered by many to be the point where things started to decline. This is where the ratings began to drop, and they kept falling until the final season of this run. But I liked it. Most of the criticism centered on the standalone episodes leaning more toward humor and moving away from the scares that dominated so much of the earlier seasons.

The Unnatural opens with Josh Exley and a KKK attack in 1947 Roswell

The title is a play on the baseball novel and movie The Natural. We begin on July 2nd, 1947 in Roswell, but rather than watching a spaceship come crashing down, we see a mixed race baseball game. Black players were banned from playing against white players until that exact year, with Jackie Robinson then making his major league debut.

The opening follows an extremely talented player named Josh Exley, who people are tipping to make it to the big leagues. He's played by Jesse L. Martin. There's a feeling of warmth and happiness that comes from him, and he brings all of that to this role.

Things are broken up when the KKK arrives, with one of the attackers demanding they hand over Exley. Both his team and the opposing team stand up for him, fighting back and hitting the attackers in the head with baseballs. When the main attacker's hood comes off, he's revealed to be an alien.

Mulder spots Arthur Dales and the alien bounty hunter in an old Roswell newspaper

From there we jump to the present, where Mulder is working on a Saturday. He calls Scully into the office while she's eating an ice cream and trying to enjoy the sun. Mulder is going through a Roswell newspaper from the time, and after some ice cream drops onto an article, he notices two people he knows.

The first is Arthur Dales. The second is the alien bounty hunter. Mulder goes looking for Dales, but instead he finds Dales' brother, who also happens to be called Arthur Dales.

Why Arthur Dales suddenly has a brother also called Arthur

Darren McGavin was originally in the role of Dales. He shot two days' worth of this episode, but unfortunately suffered a stroke. So at the last minute, the production brought in M. Emmet Walsh.

That created a problem. They'd already shot most of the material with the actor who played a younger Dales earlier in the series, and in those scenes they'd used the name Arthur, so they were in a bind. Frank Spotnitz admitted the recast was a major hurdle and one they didn't want to make.

They still had to explain it, so they came up with the idea that this was his brother, who was also called Arthur, who happened to look the same and also happened to be a policeman. And they don't even say the two were twins.

Dales tells Mulder to stop looking for logic in Josh Exley's story

Dales tells Mulder about his time with Exley, which is what leads into the opening scenes. Mulder is desperate to learn the truth, but Dales tells him to enjoy the story rather than looking for logic or a deeper meaning about the entire universe and what's going on with aliens. As Dales puts it, "Maybe you'd better start paying a little less attention to the heart of the mystery and a little more attention to the mystery of the heart."

Dales was assigned to be a bodyguard for Exley, who plays for the Roswell Grays, a name I appreciated. One night Dales sees something strange: Exley's reflection in a window looks like an alien. The next day, during a game, Exley is hit in the head. On the ground he mumbles in another language, and his mitt has strange green blood on it. So yes, Exley is an alien.

Josh Exley is a gray who only wants to play baseball

In the early part of the story, Dales starts looking into Exley. He finds out that a boy with that name disappeared five years earlier, but he was only six years old at the time.

One night Dales looks through the wall into Exley's room and sees him as a gray swinging away. Dales ends up bursting in, and it goes about as well as you'd expect. Once the shock settles, though, he realizes Exley is a good soul who simply wants to play baseball.

The Unnatural probably reveals more about the grays than we've ever learned before

Dales is fascinated by the alien, and through this we probably learn more about the grays than we ever have before. And this isn't even really one of the mythology episodes.

We're told their race doesn't have a word for laughter, because none of the grays laugh. They also have very small mouths, which means they don't tend to smile. The grays are fixated on colonizing the world, but all Exley wants to do is play baseball. The grays see it as a completely meaningless game, whereas he found meaning in it every time he swung the bat.

Because of who he is, Exley has to lay low. He even throws a game in front of major league scouts purely to keep his head down. According to Dales, many of the great players of the past were aliens too, with Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle among the names that come up. This reminded me a lot of Men in Black and how many celebrities in that film were aliens.

Dales keeps getting Mulder's name wrong

Mulder's relationship with this version of Dales is, I don't know how else to say it, a bit antagonistic. Dales treats him like he's an idiot.

It's funny, though. Dales keeps getting Mulder's name wrong, which is a great running joke throughout the episode. At one point he tells him, "Trust the tale, Agent MacGyver, not the teller."

How the alien bounty hunter tracks down Josh Exley

Unfortunately, Dales makes a call to find out about Exley's past, and that call is taken by the bounty hunter. Dales has also sent off the glove to be studied by a scientist, who realizes the blood didn't come from a carbon based life form and flags it up to the authorities.

The bounty hunter then arrives looking for Dales and a killing follows. The episode reuses some footage from the bounty hunter's first shapeshifting appearance, and it was nice seeing that return to the show. The murder is pinned on Exley, and Dales warns him that the police are hunting him.

The ending: Exley dies a man rather than a gray

This is where we come full circle to the opening, as the game is ambushed by the KKK. The gray we saw at the start is the alien bounty hunter, and he's come to execute Exley. He tells Exley he can turn into his true form and die with dignity, but Exley wants to remain human. The bounty hunter then takes his own true form, and we finally get a good look at the villain.

Ultimately, Exley is killed, and Dales rushes over to hold him. Exley tells him to leave because his alien blood is toxic to humans. Dales then shows him the blood on him, and it's simply red. So Exley got to be human in the end, and he died a man rather than a gray.

This is an episode about race and how there are no real differences between us. People will still persecute others, and Exley falls victim to that. But his friendship with Dales crosses boundaries like race and even species to show that love means more than hate. There's an amazing shot where Exley dies in Dales' arms and we transition to the elderly Dales in a similar pose. We end with Mulder inviting Scully to hit some baseballs and to enjoy finding the meaning in the meaningless.

David Duchovny wrote and directed The Unnatural, inspired by Joe Bauman

It really is a phenomenal episode, and I was surprised to see that David Duchovny wrote and directed it. He'd developed episodes of the series before this, but this was him taking the reins. I think it's an incredible first effort, and a 10 out of 10 episode. You could say he hit a home run, delivering an impactful and emotional story that also feels timeless.

He was inspired not only by Jackie Robinson but also by the story of Joe Bauman, who hit a record 72 home runs but never made it to the major leagues. Bauman played for the Roswell Rockets, which was changed to the Grays here. Duchovny even wondered if the guy was an alien, and then decided to tie that idea in with race.

There are other touches too. The credits carry the tagline "the big innings," which plays off "in the beginning" from the Bible. The coach is named Shiban after John Shiban, and Duchovny's brother also plays a role. It's an excellent episode, and I can't recommend it any higher.