This is the age of the high concept tele-movie, heavily promoted, usually shown in two parts. Gulliver's Travels (****) was so intelligent and handsome that it spoiled us. The Odyssey (**) had impressive special effects, but never got to the heart of the famous story. Moby Dick (*) rendered the classic novel down for its oil and blubber, throwing away the meat and bones of the book, which is the conflict between science and religion, between industry and madness. Now comes Merlin, better than it has any right to be, and yet somehow sadly disappointing.

This revisionist story, borrowing more from the film Excaliber than from Malory, tells of Merlin's life, from birth to old age. King Arthur has a relatively minor part. This is high fantasy, with dragons and lots of magic. But the tone is anti-heroic. Merlin loves Nimue. Merlin looses Nimue. Merlin finds Nimue. When Merlin tries to be a hero, he fails.

First, the good news. The special effects are like nothing you have ever seen before, both in the imagination that conceived them and the skill that brought them to the screen. Fifty million dollars could not have bought effects like these five years ago. Especially memorable are the Lady of the Lake's necklace of fish, which dwindles as she grows weaker, and Frik's startling transformations. The acting is excellent. Miranda Richardson's Queen Mab is a bit hard to take, but Sam Neill as Merlin and especially Martin Short as Frik are performances that will stay with you in memory. Also Alice Hamilton as the child Morgan le Fey is excellent. Even better news, there is intelligence at work here, a rare quality in the visual media. I was particularly impressed by the dialogue near the end, where Frik tells the aged Merlin, "But that wasn't the way it really happened." And Merlin says, "No, but it's what they want to hear."

And yet... and yet... the concept of Merlin as a loser, who always makes the wrong choice and causes disaster by trying to do good, is somehow unsatisfying. And I have a problem with the no doubt high minded attempt to resolve the plot without violence. A good idea, nonviolence. But dramatically, when nonviolence wins and violence loses, I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. The nonviolent cause may win out in the end, but the nonviolent individual tends to get squished.

The fourth season finale turns the X-Files on its head, as Scully testifies that everything Mulder believes is wrong. What appears to be the corpse of a large-eyed alien is found buried in the ice. Meanwhile, the body count keeps rising. Someone is willing to kill a lot of people to keep America from finding out about the extraterrestrials among us. Or are they really trying to distract America with false stories of extraterrestrials, to keep them from finding out that the Military-Industrial Complex has taken over the country? Which is it? Wait for the movie to find out.

All I can say is, the ETs had better be real, because we've seen them. Mulder has seen them. Even Scully has seen them, though she hasn't seen as much as Mulder. This is the one problem I have with this otherwise imaginative and well-mounted series. Doesn't Scully believe her own eyes? Her continued skepticism is beginning to wear a bit thin, considering what she has experienced.

Still, I liked this episode a lot more than the reviewer from Cinefantastique did. He only gave it 1½ stars. The sequences on the mountain are excellent. (In the first season episode, "Ice" (***), they forgot to give characters in the cold visible breath, and got a lot of flack about it. They haven't messed up on this detail since.) The framing device of Scully testifying that a dead Mulder was deluded in everything he believed works for me. This episode leaves me eager to rewatch the two part fifth season premiere, "Redux" (***).