Our Town (X-Files)

[MadAmosMalone]

You know, J. Michael Straczynski had an idea of what the conspiracy's real goals were:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLI4OocZHVQ

"The truth is...."

"...out of fashion."

Visitors from Down the Street is easily my favorite ep of Crusade.

[Fixer]

A few thoughts - the red herring of the disease being related to chicken processing is probably a reference to Mad Cow disease (which is a variant of Creutzfeldt–Jakob) and the references to cannibalism and New Guinea probably were inspired by kuru, a disease of the Fore People, who practiced cannibalism as a funereal ritual.

The most well-known (fictional) Anasazi Indian is, of course, John Redcorn, who will remind you that his people have not practiced cannibalism for more than 700 years - although (at least in his case) they are not above sleeping with the wife of the local paranoid exterminator. (Kudos to anyone who gets the reference).

I was going to say, this episode came out around the peak of the BSE/Mad Cow Disease outbreak and subsequent cullings in the UK cattle fields.

The disease was spread by cattle herds being fed or otherwise coming in contact with meat and bone meal from infected cows. I can still remember the fields being marked off with biohazard tape, men in hazard suits and seeing the smoke rising from the mounds of corpses in the distance. It was all very post-apocalyptic.

[Rocketboy1313]

hell, i wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some sort of interstellar treaty against that sort of thing.

There is in Marvel comics (no one listens to it).

[ORCACommander]

was I the only one who when they heard chuck start talking about how the diseases is connected in its spreading thought incest?

[Xaios]

Man, this episode and especially this review certainly hit different since I had an uncle pass of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease a couple years ago. CJD is a horrifying way to go, sort of like rabies. In the case of my uncle, the progression from onset of symptoms to his passing was mercifully quick, literally only a month. One day he was having trouble driving because his vision was starting to blur. A week later, he had the diagnosis from his doctor: it was CJD. My aunt told me that, even as they were giving him the diagnosis, he started to become increasingly absent, as if he just... wasn't there mentally. They gave him 3 months to live, but he passed only 3 weeks after getting the diagnosis. Prion diseases in general are fucking terrifying, because they are completely incurable by their very nature, and once symptoms set in, you don't have long.