Elizabeth Holden

Sentinels (X-Files/X-Men)

Reviewed by Kathryn A on 1st October 2001 (10)

The Sentinels in the title have got nothing to do with The Sentinel; they are the name of the evil robots in the X-Men comics universe which have been created to track down and destroy mutants. I'm not sure what to think about this one. It certainly had its moments -- the opening is nicely dramatic, and there are some good lines:
    His little sister summed it up. "He became a teenager. Teenagers are weird."

Unfortunately the plot doesn't seem to go anywhere much. There is a death, there are X-Files-ish things about it, suspicious people and associations -- and a great bit of dialogue between Mulder and the Lone Gunmen -- people are evasive and defensive, Mulder and Scully skulk, get caught, get things explained to them, and, er, go home. Huh? I think I was also put off stride by Mulder's initial reaction to Storm -- instead of thinking "weird, she's got weird eyes" he's thinking about how beautiful she is. And yes, she is beautiful, but...

I think a fundamental difficulty in writing a crossover between two lots of justifiably paranoid good guys is that if they end up sitting down and explaining things to each other, it rings false.