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The X-Files File 3: Abduction (VHS)
Fox Video, three X-Files episodes, 135 minutes
Review by David Clark (1996)

Much better, a real improvement on Tooms. This time, three of the second series’ best episodes are pointlessly turned into a ‘movie’ for video release, namely Duane Barry, Ascension and One Breath. 

Basically, this tape presents the Scully abduction saga. While not Mulder’s partner – this story occurs during the period the X-Files project was closed and Mulder given other duties – Scully arrives to tell Mulder that Duane Barry, believed by all concerned except Mulder to be merely an escaped mental patient with abduction delusions, is a former FBI agent with problems resulting from being shot in the head. Duane Barry is essentially a hostage drama with an air of underlying paranoia. But just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, and in the conspiracy-filled Ascension Barry gets it and Scully gets abducted (Gillian Anderson was famously pregnant at the time). 

One Breath occurs an episode later, the amusing, off-beat, rather good Scully-less vampire episode 3 of this series being missed out – the sooner this wretched series of ‘movies’ ends and we get back to video releases in chronological order the better. One Breath is the Scully return episode featuring her spiritualist-inclined psychic sister Melissa, along with Mulder freaking out and plotting to kill those responsible for her spending the episode in a coma having weird dreams.

There are plenty of good X-Files moments here – Mulder plotting to kill the men responsible for Scully’s kidnapping, good scenes with Cigarette Smoking Man, Skinner, Scully’s family, Mr X, old Smug-Boy losing his rag again, and plenty of mystical meanderings, whose occasional incursions into the series I thoroughly approve of, in One Breath. All in all very X-Files and very good.

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