 Writing for The Vindicator , Eric Mink felt that the episode was " intense , unsettling , sometimes gross , and suspenseful to the point of nerve @-@ racking [ sic ] " , feeling that its plot would " resonate instantly and ominously with viewers " . Meghan Deans of Tor.com felt that , while the episode did unfortunately reduce Scully down to a traditional idea of feminine identity for part of its run , it was " one of the most emotional Scully @-@ centric episodes the show has ever given us . " Furthermore , Deans reasoned that the episode was an example of " what The X @-@ Files would have been , had Scully been the believer : a woman being told that she is hysterical , a woman being told that she imagined it all [ and ] a woman being told that the evidence of her own body is invalid " , a direction that would have been " startling " . 
