MILLENNIUM: The Time Was Then
A tentative look back at the other Chris Carter series
As my wife and I make our way through a rewatch of The X-Files, we dutifully took on the Season 7 episode entitled “Millennium”. The episode, intended to serve as a sort-of conclusion to Chris Carter’s other major series (which was unceremoniously cancelled after its third season, not even reaching the titular date), is relatively palatable as just another X-File case. It kinda stinks as a conclusion to the series Millennium, but as a standalone episode, it’s not nearly as goofy as I remembered it to be (that’s not to say it isn’t goofy; it is, I just remembered it being far, far more so). Taken as just another episode that happens to have a recognizable guest star in it, it’s merely slightly unmemorable, rather than a total disaster.
But, rather than proceed on to “Rush”, I opted instead to throw on the first couple of episodes of Millennium to show my wife (who had no idea that Lance Henriksen’s former FBI profiler Frank Blank wasn’t just a one-off side character in the X-Files episode) that there was an entire backstory to him, and if I continue with a rewatch of this series, I’ll offer a few thoughts on it.
First things first, it’s immediately clear why Carter would choose genre stalwart Lance Henriksen as the nucleus for a series. From Henriksen’s lined face to his gravitas-laden voice to his world-weary demeanor, he captivates despite being a naturally taciturn character. The entire series is suffused with doom-laden Vancouver atmosphere, which can become the series’s most trying characteristic: particularly in the first season, the entire enterprise is taken so seriously as to be oppressively grim. Megan Gallagher, as Frank Black’s wife Catherine, does what she can with her material, but the series never figured out how to properly utilize her outside of the beatific figure Frank constantly strove to protect; a shame, given that The X-Files provided one of the greatest female characters in TV history. Terry O’Quinn, however, shines as Frank’s closest Millennium Group member, Peter Watts. And despite reports that they hated each other on set, Henriksen and Bill Smitrovich have a lived-in chemistry that makes Smitrovich’s role as Frank’s Seattle PD contact and best friend Bob Bletcher believable.
“Pilot” is…pretty good. Not on the level of The X-Files’s first episode (I can’t imagine it receiving the reported standing ovation that Mulder and Scully’s first case did upon screening). But despite lacking the immediate, electric chemistry of The X-Files, and a clear engine to drive the series, it’s accomplished enough to retain interest (and atmospheric as hell). I still find the sophomore episode, “Gehenna”, a strange mixture of being both a little too abstract in its villain and too simplistically plotted, but as everything says it’s one of the “necessary” episodes for when the series started picking up steam (which, if I remember correctly, is around the halfway point of Season One), I didn’t want to skip it. While not without its own merits, the entire reason, as far as I’m concerned, to make it through Millennium Season One is to get to Season Two, which I remember being, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, one of the best seasons of American television ever made. It’s amazing what having a clear direction for the show will do. I know I saw all of Season One when it initially aired (same with Season Two, though I dropped off after the first episode of Season Three), but I’m effectively watching them with fresh eyes due to time and lack of recollection.
That said, I am probably going to rely on internet guides and friends to continue to suss out Season One’s Greatest Hits episodes. Even being a completist won’t get me to rewatch “Loin Like a Hunting Flame”.
