Force Majeure (Millennium)

Millennium Group consultant Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) investigates a pair of suicides connected to a cult which has been experimenting with human cloning.

"Force Majeure" features stock footage of the 1996 Saguenay Flood, and makes mention of a conjunction of planets which occurred in May 2000.

Black meets the Group member in question, Dennis Hoffman (Brad Dourif), who describes his theories that when several planets achieve syzygy on May 5, 2000, a series of natural disasters will bring about the apocalypse.

When Black leaves to meet with the girls in custody, he finds that the bus driver was another of the cult leader's offspring and has escaped with the clones; Hoffman has also disappeared.

Black realizes that the building they found the girls in is located in an area of extreme geological stability and is built on shock absorbing foundations—Black does not know where the cult has escaped to, but he does know where they will be on May 5, 2000.

"Force Majeure" was the second of four episodes helmed by director Winrich Kolbe, who had previously worked on "Kingdom Come", and would return later in the first season for "Lamentation" and "Broken World".

[10][11][12][13] The conjunction of several planets which Brad Dourif's character Dennis Hoffman speaks about was reliably predicted at the time of the episode's broadcast.

[15][16] "The episode is just odd enough to be distinctive (Carter is wearing his Lynch on his sleeve even more than usual), and, beyond the pleasure of the series finally stretching its legs, it's nice to have a storyline that doesn't just exist to lecture us about how we're all going to Hell".

The script is Carter and company's usual hodepodge of crackpot theory and weird extemporization, but it's a huge relief to shift away, even for a week, from the grind of heavy-handed murder parties that define so much of the series".

Gibron praised Dourif's guest role, and noted that the episode helped to lay the groundwork for the direction the series would take in its second season.

[20] Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated "Force Majeure" five stars out of five, describing it as "rich and dark".