But mostly what she has is confidence. More than ever, Anderson's Dana Scully commands your attention with her radiant gravity and stillness. She makes thinking look sexy.

The rejuvenated Anderson (she looked bored last year, but then so did Duchovny) is a big reason "The X-Files" is watchable again. But it's not the only reason. Ever since Duchovny's Mulder was taken aboard the mother ship in last season's finale, "The X-Files" has largely dispensed with the increasingly convoluted "mythology" and gone back to doing what it does best -- scaring the pants off smart viewers. Chris Carter and company have returned to making mini-horror movies of the week, and they're infinitely preferable to watching Mulder being poked and prodded by aliens.

The boogeymen this season seem to consciously hark back to the glory days of such accidents of birth as Flukeman the human worm and Eugene Tooms the immortal human-liver eater. This season has unveiled a bat-human; a crazy religious cult whose members worshiped a giant slug; a metal man; and, in the "sleep with the light on" Jan. 21 episode, a tiny, legless Indian fakir on a rolling cart with a squeaky wheel, who could crawl into people's body cavities to hitch a free ride. But wait -- aren't the writers just rehashing their greatest hits? Perhaps. But not when you look at this season from the perspective of Scully -- the pregnant Scully.

"The X-Files" has always been at its best when it's tapping into everyday phobias, societal paranoia (it did a mad cow disease story long before most of us knew what mad cow disease was) and, of course, subconscious anxieties and desires. And on a subconscious level, this season is playing out like every pregnant woman's worst nightmare.

Do I need to spell it out? How about the episode in which Scully was held captive by that crazy cult and ended up having her spine impregnated with the holy slug? When her partner, agent John Doggett (Patrick), rescued her, she ordered him to perform a kind of cesarean on her back while she screamed, "Cut it out of me now!" like a woman in labor. And in the fakir episode, Scully, in contrast to the tediously incredulous Doggett, seemed unfazed by the evidence that pointed to something having birthed its way out of the anal cavity of a dead businessman. What if it were something very small, she wondered aloud, "with small hands?"

Pointedly, this season has also had a recurring emphasis on endangered and abducted children, whom Scully must protect, and demons in the guise of children who mess with her head -- she can't destroy them until her paranormal-sniffing instincts shout down her maternal ones.

Oddly, though, the expectant Scully (who has yet to reveal her secret to Doggett) looks like she hasn't gained an ounce; TV Guide is already jeering the "forgotten" pregnancy story line. But Scully's pregnancy has not been forgotten; from a psychological angle, it dominates the show this season, down to the new floating-fetus image that begins the opening credit sequence.

Like Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (written to exorcise grief over a lost baby) and "Rosemary's Baby," "The X-Files" this season captures the dark side of pregnancy. The cases mirror Scully's feelings of being invaded and not being in control, her fear of complications and loss and her profound ambivalence over her impending motherhood. In addition to not looking pregnant, Scully never talks about her condition either, as if she's in denial. Anderson may not be lumbering around in a fat suit, but she does an exquisite job of conveying the anxiety and exhaustion of Scully not knowing for sure if what's inside her is angel or monster.

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