Reception
"Biogenesis" first aired in the United States on May 16, 1999. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 9.4, with a 14 share, meaning that roughly 9.4 percent of all television-equipped households, and 14 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 15.86 million viewers. The episode aired in the United Kingdom on Sky1 on July 25, 1999 and received 0.55 million viewers and was the eighth most watched episode that week. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "You've heard every theory about how man evolved... except for one." The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth.
Tom Kessenich, in his book Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files gave the episode a positive review, writing "'Biogenesis' gave us a Mulder gone mad, duplicitous allies and enemies, a rising body count, and Scully on the brink of an amazing discovery. It was pure X-Files and a terrific conclusion to a standout sixth season." Den of Geek writer Nina Sordi ranked "Biogensis," along with "The Sixth Extinction" and "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati," as the fifth best episode of the series, writing, "it is evident that as progressed, the episodes surrounding those storylines and the breaking points Mulder and Scully endured push them further and further towards total, irreversible defeat. This is especially poignant when viewing this anxiety inducing trio of episodes." Monica S. Kuebler from Exclaim magazine called "Biogenesis", along with "The Sixth Extinction" and "Amor Fati", one of the "best" episodes during the show's "colonization" phase. Michigan Daily reviewer Melissa Runstrom said "Biogenesis," along with "One Son" and "Two Fathers," were the highlights of the sixth season.
Zack Handlen awarded the episode a "B" and called it "crazy enough at the end that, if nothing else, I really want to know what happens next". He enjoyed the basic premise, involving the idea that aliens were active in the development of humanity—comparing it to Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ridley Scott’s movie Prometheus. However, Handlen, since he was reviewing the series retrospectively, was slightly disappointed that the plot was dropped in subsequent season. In the end, he noted that the entry was "ambitious, but it doesn’t exactly make sense, which is pretty much where is at now."
Other reviews were more critical. Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode two stars out of five. The two heavily criticized the episode for recycling story lines, writing, "With the Syndicate destroyed, this episode was widely touted as the beginning of a fresh new mythology for the show. So why does watching it give such a strong sense of déjà vu?" Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a largely negative review and awarded it one-and-a-half stars out of four. Vitaris summarized the episode as "if someone took the script to 'Anasazi'—one of the best X-Files episodes ever—changed the plot a bit, and then stripped it of virtually all human interest."
Read more about this topic: Biogenesis (The X-Files)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)