The Rogue's Eye View
http://www.mmreviews.cjb.net



M I L L E N N I U M
112. FORCE MAJEURE

Written by Chip Johannessen
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Original Air Date: February 7, 1997


Brief summary: After a mysterical suicide, Frank is led to a prophetic man who is engineering a race of clones, which he hopes will survive to the next world after ours is flooded on May 5th, 2000.

Rogue's Review: "Force Majeure" opens with a truly chilling visual - a heavy thunderstorm gives way to falling chunks of ice, forcing students at Washington Polytechnic University to take shelter. When the ice subsides, a lone blond woman walks toward them, seemingly dazed by the onslaught; our first impression is that she's been hurt. But she wordlessly reaches for another girl's cigarette - and then bursts into flame.

The Blacks are drawn into this unusual case of self-immolation (as it appears) when Catherine goes to comfort the grieving parents on behalf of Social Services. "It's gotta feel worse," she tells Frank, "when it's an only child."

But the dead woman is NOT an only child, as the mystery of her death leads Frank and Peter - and lone gun investigator Dennis Hoffman - into chasing a strange cult that believes a startling apocalyptic prophecy, one that suggests we stand at the brink of worldwide catastrophe. "On May 5, 2000," Hoffman (the always brilliant Brad Dourif, of EXORCIST 3 and the X-FILES episode "Beyond the Sea") tell Frank, "seven inner planets align for the first time since the great flood. With Uranus at the meridian of its epicenter, Earth becomes the focus of the biggest gravitational tug-of-war in 6,000 years."

Might be more immediately relevant to the Group's interests - if someone else besides crackpot and rejected candidate Hoffman were spouting the theories. But despite his eccentric behavior (and first signs of the coldness Peter Watts is capable of, as he demands Dennis back off) Frank can't help but be pulled into the search for the identical blonde women and their mystery leader, the Iron Lung Man.

And yet for all its charms, "Force Majeure" lacks something, a cohesiveness and long-term believability that makes it more than the sum of 44 minutes of unsettling prophesizing and masterful atmospheric scares. The clone element smacks of an XF ripoff, and ultimately, the episode seems like nothing more than an extended prologue - a storyline we won't learn more about until May 5, 2000.

This is my least favorite ep penned by 2K stalwart Chip Johannessen, but the stamp of his quality is evident in the fact that I would indeed like to see Dennis Hoffman - and the family of clones - return. (Hey, it took Max Fenig almost four years to pop back up on THE X-FILES... I wouldn't rule it out!)

"Force Majeure" also contains some of Mark Snow's best music to date, and it's interesting that I was so often reminded of the electronic stylings of Tangerine Dream during the last half of the episode - the Dream has a 1979 release called "Force Majeure."

The ep did something else right, too... I find myself unnerved by contemplation of that particular date. Where will YOU be on May 5, 2000? Pocatello, Idaho's sounding pretty good to me! [Rating: 6/10]

"Noah was an insane man, until the rains came, and that day the flood began. All the people who had jeered showed up. Imagine that scene--the chaos, the violence. People who had taunted Noah just hours before, now willing to commit any vile act... to secure a seat on his boat." -- Iron Lung Man


reviews by Rick Smith (1996 - present) and website by Matt Asendorf (2004)
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