Doggett is shot and taken to a hospital where the prognosis is that he'll never walk again. His accident happened shortly after seeing Reyes having her throat slit by a criminal, yet it's Reyes who visits him in hospital unscathed, claiming he can't be here as he was in her apartment at the time he was meant to have been shot. What has happened?

What starts off as an intriguing premise turns into a rather puzzling trip into the popular Sci-Fi premise of the parallel universe. Somehow the killer can switch between universes; he's killed the alternate Monica and now his universe's Doggett has managed to follow him to our world. So far so good, and having Doggett face a non-existent future leads to some strong drama between him and Reyes. Even though he's only typing into a computer (very quickly considering he only has a mouse and one button), there's some humour there and a desire to bring his shooter to justice, not to mention to help Monica with her problem.

The killer himself, while certainly capable of murder, isn't the most interesting character to watch, sitting about at home and looking after his mother until he gets fed up and kills her. It's another pretty nasty no holds barred episode, with Monica's gruesome early death and some serious issues for Doggett, but once again it doesn't seem to know how to use the characters. Scully has little to nothing to do, Follmer puts in another appearance without serving any useful function, Skinner likewise, and the centre is on Reyes and Doggett's relationship.

The place where things fall apart is at the end. The premise is that the arrival of a parallel universe person forces the one in 'our' universe to swap over. The problem is that this makes the ending tremendously puzzling. Doggett claims that if this is true, his death should put the 'real' Doggett back. While it does just that, in the place our Doggett was last seen (Monica's apartment), why does it also jump Monica back there when she should still be in the hospital, and how come it seems to move time backwards as well? There's no reason for this and the episode finishes so suddenly that an explanation is missed out.

There were several ways to make this episode better; a glimpse into the parallel universe and Doggett's time in it would have been good, along with how he would cope with the news of Monica's death. Splitting the story between the universes would have made things more interesting, and we should have found out more about the killer's background, as he doesn't seem to have much of a motive here. If I can think of ways to improve things, why couldn't the creators of the show made more of an effort? With such a neat little idea, the potential is far greater than what has made it to the screen.

***

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