Episode by Chris Carter
summary by Pellinor
In brief: Agent Dana Scully is assigned to work with "Spooky" Mulder on the X-Files. The subtext of her orders are that she is to "debunk" his work. However, on a case involving the alleged abduction of a class of teenagers, she begins to learn that his work has validity. Lots of essential character establishment in this episode, not surprisingly.
Character/Conspiracy things of note: The whole episode.
Before you begin? Obviously, as this is the first episode, there are no other episodes you ought to view first. The characters are introduced nicely as and when they appear.
Internal dating: Scully is assigned to the X-Files on March 6th 1992 (since we see "March 7th" as a screen caption as they start their case, the following morning). Billy Miles undergoes regression hypnosis on March 22nd.
"The following story is inspired by actual documented events."
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In Northwest Oregon, a girls runs in terror through the woods. Suddenly there is a bright light and a strong wind. A figure approaches her.
Next day, her body is found. There are two spots low on her back. A detective says her name was Karen Swensen, as she was at school with his son. One of his men asks if this was the Class of 89. "It's happening again, isn't it?"
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Agent Dana Scully arrives at the FBI Headquarters, where she is called into the office of Section Chief Scott Blevins. There are several other men there too, one of whom is Cigarette-Smoking Man (although it will be many months before he speaks).
From this meeting we learn that he has been in the Bureau for just under 2 years. She trained as a doctor, but decided not to practice. She was recruited out of medical school, she says. "My parents still think of it as an act of rebellion, but I saw the FBI as a place where I could distinguish myself."
She's asked if she's familiar with an agent called Fox Mulder, and she says that she is, by reputation. He's an Oxford educated psychologist who wrote a monograph on serial killers and the occult which helped catch Monty Props in 1989, and "generally thought of as the best analyst in the Violent Crimes Unit. He had a nickname at the Academy - Spooky Mulder."
Blevins then tells her that, recently, Mulder has developed a "consuming devotion to an unassigned project outside the Bureau mainstream." He asks her what she knows about the "so-called X-Files".
"I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena," she says.
He then tells her she's been called here as they want her to assist Mulder, and write field reports and "your observations on the validity of the work."
"Am I to understand that you want me to debunk the X-Files project, sir?" she asks, calmly.
He says they trust her to make a "proper scientific analysis."
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Scully knocks on Mulder's office door in the basement. "No-one here but the FBI's most unwanted," he calls. She goes in, looking around at the UFO pictures on the wall. She introduces herself, holding out her hand for him to shake.
Mulder: "Well, isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded. So, who did you tick off to be stuck with this detail, Scully?"
Scully: "Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you."
Mulder: "Oh, really? I was under the impression you were sent to spy on me."
Scully: "If you have any doubts about my qualification and credentials..."
Mulder: "You're a medical doctor. You teach at the Academy. You did your undergraduate degree in physics." (He pulls out her thesis from a pile of papers) "Einstein's twin paradox - a new interpretation. Dana Scully's senior thesis. Now that's a credential. Rewriting Einstein."
Scully: "Did you bother to read it?"
Mulder: "I did. I liked it. It's just that, in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply. Maybe I can get your medical opinion on this."
He shows her some slides of the girl we saw killed in the teaser. He shows her the chemical formula of the substance found at the site of the strange marks on the girl's back. She says she's never seen something like that before, and asks him if he has a theory.
"I have plenty of theories," he says. "Maybe you could explain to me why it's Bureau policy to label these cases as unexplained phenomena and ignore them." He then lowers his voice, and leans forward towards her. "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?" he asks.
She says no, arguing that the distance involved are too great.
He cuts off her explanation, telling her it's only "conventional wisdom." This girl in Oregon, he says, is the fourth person in her class to die in the same way. "When convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility."
Scully gives a long answer about it being "plausible" that things were missed in the investigation, but that the only thing she finds fantastic" is the idea that there are answers beyond the realm of science. "The answers are there," she says. "You just have to know where to look."
"That's why they put the eye in FBI," Mulder says, telling her they're off to the "plausible" state of Oregon to investigate.
****
On the plane, Mulder is lying down across the seat, while Scully is reading up on the case. When they hit some turbulence, Scully looks tense but Mulder is unworried. "This must be the place," he says.
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In the car, Mulder tells Scully that the case has already been investigated by the FBI after the first death. They found no evidence and were recalled, the case being filed away as an X-File. Scully has found out that the autopsy reports of the first three victims make no mention of the strange marks, but that these were performed by a different medical examiner from the one who did the latest autopsy.
"That's pretty good, Scully," Mulder says.
"Better than you expected, or better than you hoped?" she asks. She asks if the medical examiner is a suspect, but he says they won't know until the exhume on the other bodies to see if it also has the marks and the odd chemical substance.
Suddenly the radio goes all weird. Without a word, Mulder stops the car, gets out a can a spray paint and sprays a red cross in the middle of the road.
Scully looks on in amazement. When she asks what he's doing, he simply says, "Probably nothing."
****
At the cemetery, they prepare to exhume the body of Ray Soames, one of the earlier victims. Dr Nemman, the medical examiner from the first three deaths, drives up and orders them to stop. When Mulder asks about the tissue sample taken from Karen Swensen's body, he gets angry, asking what Mulder's insinuating. However, his daughter begs him to leave it alone and go home.
The body is exhumed, but the coffin falls to the ground and bursts open. The body inside in not human.
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In the morgue, Scully calmly examines the body while Mulder excitedly takes photos and gushes about how staggeringly important this discovery is. Scully concludes the body is some sort of ape, but Mulder wants more analysis done. She asks if he honestly believes its an alien.
"I'm not crazy, Scully," he says, softly. I have the same doubts you do."
****
4.37am. Scully writes her report on the body. She says she can't yet account for the small metal implant she found in the nasal cavity. There is a knock at the door and she asks who it is.
"Stephen Speilberg," Mulder says. He's dressed for running, saying he can't sleep, and asks her if she wants to come.
She declines.
He then asks if she's figured out the thing in Ray Soames' nose.
She says she hasn't, but isn't losing any sleep over it. She then shuts the door, and goes back to studying it.
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Next day, they go to the Psychiatric Hospital where Ray Soames had been treated for schizophrenia, brought on my post-traumatic stress. The doctor says that several others from the class also suffered from the same. Two of them, Billy Miles and Peggy O'Dell, are both still in the hospital.
Billy Miles is in a persistent vegetative state as a result of a car crash. Peggy O'Dell is at his side, reading. When he overhears Mulder's desire to do an examination, she panics. In the struggle, Mulder takes the chance to look at her back. She too has the marks.
Scully sees this, and walks out angrily.
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Outside, Mulder catches Scully up. She is angry with him for not telling her what he's thinking about the case.
He asks why he should tell her. "So you can put it down in your little report? I don't think you're ready for what I think."
"I'm here to solve this case. I want the truth," she shouts.
He tells her his idea of the truth - that the kids have all been abducted by aliens.
"You don't really believe that?" Scully asks. It's a crazy idea, she says, with nothing to support it.
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At night, Mulder and Scully go to the woods where all the victims have been found. Scully picks up a handful of fine dust from the ground and puts it in her pocket. She then hears an engine-type sound, and sees a bright light. A figure appears in the light, just like in the teaser. This time, however, it's just someone from the sheriff's department, who warns them they're trespassing.
They are forced to leave.
****
Mulder and Scully drive back in the dark. Scully shows Mulder the fine dust, and wonders if it's from some sort of fire in a cult ritual.
Suddenly there's a blinding flash, and the car stops. Mulder, who's looked at his watch just before, says they've lost nine minutes of time. He's really excited at this and gets out and virtually dances in the road. It's exactly the same place as the red cross he marked in the road.
"Time can't just disappear," Scully shouts. "It's a universal invariant."
"Not in this zip code," Mulder replies.
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Scully writes her report, concluding that Mulder's theories can't be validated. Just as the power goes out in the storm, she goes to take a shower and notices two small marks on her back.
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Mulder opens his door to see an anxious Scully in a bathrobe. She pulls it off and asks him to look at her back. He tells her they're just mosquito bites, and she is so relieved she leans on his chest and he puts his arms around her. She then sits down and he sits down across the table and urges her to take her time.
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Later, Scully is lying on the bed while Mulder sits on the floor and tells her about his sister. He was 12, he says, and she was 8. "She just disappeared out of her bed one night. Just gone. Vanished. No note. No phone calls. No evidence of everything.... It tore the family apart. No-one would talk about it. There were no facts to confront, nothing to offer any hope."
He says that, as soon as he could, he got out and went to Oxford, then was recruited by the Bureau. "It seemed that I had a natural aptitude for applying behavioural models to criminal cases. My success allowed me a certain freedom to pursue my own interests."
He thus discovered the X-Files, and was fascinated by them. However, some of the information is classified and someone is blocking his access. The only reason he's been able to continue is that he has made connections in Congress. When Scully asks who is blocking him, and why, he says, "you're part of that agenda. You know that."
"I'm not part of any agenda," she assures him. "You've got to trust me. I'm here like you - to solve this."
He then leans forward, and says he's telling her this because she needs to know, if she's going to be working with him. In the course of his work he's worked with a Dr Heitz Werber who's taken him through regression hypnosis to access his repressed memories of the night his sister disappeared.
"I can recall a bright light outside, and a presence in the room. I was paralysed, unable to respond to my sister's calls for help. Listen to me Scully. This thing exists. The government knows about it, and I've got to know what they're protecting. Nothing else matters to me, and this is as close as I've ever gotten to it."
The phone rings at that moment. It is an anonymous caller, saying Peggy O'Dell is dead.
****
Mulder and Scully go to the scene of the road accident that killer Peggy O'Dell - killed after running out in front of a car, despite normally being in a wheelchair. Her watch has stopped at the same time as Mulder and Scully lost nine minutes.
While they are at the scene, news comes in that the autopsy lab has been trashed and the bodies stolen.
****
Mulder and Scully return to find their motel has burnt down, taking all their files and photos with it.
A girl, Teresa Nemman, rushes up. She's the medical examiner's daughter, and she was the one who called about Peggy O'Dell. She's terrified and asks for their protection.
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Mulder and Scully talk to Teresa in a diner. Teresa says she often finds herself out in the woods with no memory of how she got there. All her friends and classmates are dying, and she's afraid she will be next. She admits that her father is covering things up.
Suddenly her nose starts bleeding, but then her father comes in and takes her home. With him is the detective who warned them out of the woods. They find out he is Billy Miles's father.
Scully thinks Nemman and Miles are in it together, but Mulder thinks it's something more.
****
Mulder and Scully go to the cemetery but find that the other two victims have also been exhumed. Mulder suddenly realises, somehow, who is really responsible. It is Billy Miles, he says - the boy in the hospital.
Scully laughs almost hysterically.
Mulder thinks that, at the same time as they lose their nine minutes, time as we know it stopped and something else took control of it, causing Billy Miles and Peggy O'Dell to be able to walk normally despite their injuries. They all come to the forest because the "force controls them, while the marks are from "tests" which cause some genetic mutation, as seen in the exhumed grave.
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Mulder and Scully visit Billy Miles, who is still in the hospital bed, unresponsive. Scully looks at his feet and finds they are covered with the grey dust from the woods. Scully is amazed, but Mulder, for once, urges caution, reminding her that she must write all this down in her report. She says she wants to go to the forest again to get another sample in order to run a comparison.
****
In the forest, they hear a scream. They both rush wildly through the woods, but Scully bumps into a branch and falls over.
Detective Miles is there, and he holds Mulder at gunpoint. Mulder accuses him of knowing all along what's happening and condoning murder in order to protect his son.
When there's another scream, Mulder rushes off. He finds Billy Miles crouched over Teresa Nemman, as the wind whirls around them. Detective Miles, persuaded by Mulder, urges his son to put her down and then raises his gun on his son. Mulder knocks Detective Miles over, and the watch as a bright light from above shines down on Billy and Teresa.
When the light is gone, they are both still there. "Dad?" Billy says, looking very confused. The marks on his back are gone.
Scully rushes up now, having seen the light from the distance. "It was incredible," Mulder tells her, looking moved.
****
March 22 1992. Billy Miles undergoes hypnosis, performed by Heitz Werber. Mulder is in the room with him; Scully, Blevins, and other FBI officials watch through a two-way mirror.
Billy Miles says he and his friends had all been in the wood celebrating their graduation when the light came. It took him away to the "testing place" and told him to gather the others so they could be tested. They put an implant in his head, and said it was all be okay. However the test didn't work and they wanted everything destroyed. He's afraid they're coming back.
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Scully presents her report, which Blevins finds to be unscientific and full of fantastic conclusions. She objects, saying she only reported things she actually saw. She admits, however, that she can't substantiate some of Mulder's claims.
Blevins says he sees no evidence to support the validity of the X-files, but she defends them, saying that real crimes had been committed, and were solved.
When told she has no evidence, she hands over the implant, which had escaped the fire. She has run a lab test on it, she says, and the material can't be identified.
Blevins asks what Mulder thinks about all this. "Agent Mulder thinks we are not alone," is her answer.
As Scully leaves, she passes the Cigarette Smoking Man in the corridor.
****
11.21. Scully is in bed, but awake, when Mulder calls her, just as the clock turns to 11.22.. He says he can't sleep. The file on Billy Miles has gone and he wants to talk. "Tomorrow," she says, looking thoughtful.
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In a warehouse in the Pentagon, CSM files away the implant in a box of dozens more the same, next to hundreds of similar boxes.