text: It's easy to forget, once later series had developed the alien conspiracy plot arc more, that once upon a time, The X-Files' wrote episodes like "GenderBender" and "Fearful Symmetry", where the aliens weren't all little grey men or mind-control goop, but could actually surprise you.<br /><br />"Fearful Symmetry" starts with an "invisible elephant" - actually an elephant somehow dislocated in space and time, not a mile away from "The Walk" - and ends with a pregnant gorilla being abducted. And it's very much an episode of wonderful moments. The subplot is annoyingly worthy - yeah, we get it, zoos are bad except when they're not - but the ideas that within it are fascinating, visually powerful, and very memorable, and it covers an angle on abduction that is largely overlooked - why *would* humans be the only things that aliens are interested in?<br /><br />In the end, it wasn't an instant classic, but it was enjoyable viewing while it lasted, again, very memorable, and mainly, it's something that you couldn't imagine many other shows doing.