Millennium Episode Review of Gehenna by Erin (Raven Wolf)

Reviewed: Gehenna

Contributor: Erin (Raven Wolf)

Gehenna should have, in my opinion, been a part two of the Pilot, rather than a separate episode, despite the entirely new story, and the fact that it was set several months after the Pilot. It seems to be a continuing train of thought...easily interwoven with the first story. While the previous episode had begun to the throbbing beat of White Zombie's "More Human than Human", "Gehenna" begins with a dizzying rap, spinning you in a whirlwind with the spiraling cars, packed with young men as they circled a separate, doomed young man like a pack of hungry wolves, forcing him into an abandoned warehouse and imminent death....followed by the now familiar drums and violins of the main theme music.

"I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen" (W.H. Auden)

This was the first of the hauntingly mysterious quotes that became a trademark for the series. Quotes such as these became yet another example of the mix of horror and beauty that was woven throughout the series. This carried on into the first scene, with the discovery of human ashes, spread amongst the rose gardens in a park in San Francisco.

In "Gehenna", we meet Mike Atkins, the man who brought Frank into the Millennium Group. This also seems like a continuation of the first episode, as they discuss the Polaroids Frank got in his mail at the end of the first episode, and the question of "what IS evil" that was the backbone of the series was discussed in depth for the first time. Most evil in the world comes from men, was the recurring view in both The X-Files and Millennium....Reflecting the opinion that the Devil lies as a potential within us all. The room full of young men, all repeating the same rhetoric over the phones, "selling products nobody wants" is both horrifying and almost humorous, seeming to reflect that all telemarketers are in league with the devil. ".....numbers are all we are!" "It knows your numbers and it knows YOU." Evil and the devil are portrayed as the modern-day obsession with money and power, which slowly turns us all into mindless drones.

Yet another thread that connects this episode with the first one is the conversation between Catherine and Bob Bletcher. Through that, we learn more about Frank's personality, his passions, and his past. We learn of his devotion to his family, of his calling to "try to catch these terrible men before they kill again" and, of his mental breakdown. In the last few scenes, especially the final conversation between Frank and Catherine, we begin to understand Frank's feelings of utter hopelessness in the battle against evil, and we feel for him, as Catherine embraces him, trying to comfort him. There is so much feeling in this episode...horror, love, passion, fear, hopelessness, innocence, beauty...all woven together so effortlessly, that it marks it, in my opinion, one of the best of all of the series.