episode by Chris Carter and David Duchovny
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: Mulder goes to the submarine at the end of "End Game" on February 3rd 1995 - which is the time shown in that global positioning thingy. The story told in "Colony" begins two-weeks earlier, as we are shown on screen, placing it neatly as around January 20th or so - rather close after "Die Hand". There are a few nice nit-picky mistakes, though. At the start of "Colony" Mulder and Scully are investigating the recent death of Doctor Landon Prince of Scanton. Close inspection of Mulder's e-mail reveals that Prince was killed on December 28 1994. Unfortunately, it also reveals that another of the doctors, Harvey Buchanon, was killed on January 10 1995, despite the fact that Mulder calls Prince the "latest victim." Oops.
Mulder's voice-over: "I have lived with a fragile faith built on the vague ether of memories I could neither prove nor explain. When I was twelve my sister was taken from me - taken from our home by a force that I came to believe was extra-terrestrial. This belief sustained me, fuelling in me a quest for truths that were as elusive as the memory itself. To believe as passionately as I did was not without sacrifice, but I always accepted the risks - to my career, my reputation, my relationships.... to life itself."
Mulder is airlifted into a military hospital in Alaska, suffering from extreme hypothermia. As he in placed in a tub of warm water, he explains, also in voice-over, how what has happened to him has justified his every belief, and if he dies now he's already found the answers. "And if through death larger mysteries are revealed, I have already learnt the answer to the question that has driven me here - that there is intelligent life in the universe other than our own - that they are here among us and they have begun to colonise".
Scully rushes in, shouting that he mustn't be warmed up, but his heart stops.
****
Three weeks earlier: A ship watches as a "UFO" crashes into the sea. Two days later, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a doctor in an abortion clinic sees the report of this on television, which shows a "Russian fighter pilot" who was rescued from the wreckage but is now missing. The doctor panics and runs, but the "pilot" appears and kills him. Green fluid oozes from the wound.
Mulder receives the obituaries of this doctor and two others in his email. All three doctors are identical, and there is no other record of them at all. Scranton police have arrested a militant right-to-lifer who has threatened the doctor, but he says he didn't do it. He has a clipping from the local newspaper in Binghamton which shows the doctor, and asks "do you know this man?"
Mulder and Scully go to the newspaper office and ask who placed the advert. Scully says she has a bad feeling about the case. "You've been set up before," she warns Mulder. Mulder wants to continue with the case. He points out that the murders are slowly moving north. He pays to listen to the replies to the advert and finds out that another identical doctor lives in Syracuse.
They call Agent Weiss in Syracuse, who goes to the doctor's house, arriving to see the doctor and the "pilot" arguing. He bursts in to find the doctor dead, corroding away into a sizzling green mass. He shoot the "pilot" then collapses in agony.
Mulder and Scully arrive at the doctor's house, but Agent Weiss says no-one's there. We then see him morph into the form of the "pilot". The real Agent Weiss is dead in the trunk of the car.
As soon as they get back to Washington, Skinner calls Mulder in to his office. "Did anyone authorise this case?" he demands. "Do you have any paperwork on this case?" Mulder looks confused. "I assumed we had an understanding with respect to the X-Files." Skinner points out that "the people I have to answer to aren't quite so understanding." He tells Mulder Agent Weiss is dead, demands a full report and orders Mulder off the case. "Don't underestimate the seriousness of this matter, Agent Mulder."
Scully calls Mulder telling him she'd received the picture of yet another of the doctors in her email, and that he's right here in Washington. Mulder goes round to pick her up, but instead meets a man, Ambrose Chapel, who was waiting on her doorstep. In Scully's apartment, Chapel says he's a CIA Agent who's tracked them down through their interest in the advert he placed. He says the doctors are clones left over from a Russian Cold War project called Gregor and they are now being killed in "state-sanctioned murder" as part of a secret deal to cover up the project in return for the medical information. He says the Gregors have obviously been appealing for help from Mulder and Scully, knowing they oppose, as Chapel himself does, the government's policy of denial. Mulder decides to trust Chapel and tells him what they've found out.
The Washington doctor, James Dickens, is then seen in a laboratory full of green vats. A woman drives him home, then hides when Mulder, Scully and Chapel knock at the door. When the doctor sees them he jumps out of the window but gets up, apparently unharmed, and flees. Giving chase, Mulder is knocked down by a car, allowing Chapel to get there first. Chapel morphs into the "pilot" and kills the doctor. When Scully gets there she sees only Chapel, in his CIA Agent form, who says the doctor slipped away, but she looks suspicious, and notices some green goo on the ground.
Next day, Scully tells Mulder she thinks they should stop the case. "Whatever happened to 'trust no-one', Mulder?" she asks, distrusting Chapel. "Oh, I changed it to 'trust everyone', replies Mulder. Didn't I tell you?" Scully thinks Chapel killed the doctor and could well have killed Agent Weiss, but Mulder thinks she's being paranoid. Scully looks annoyed. "You'll pursue a case at the expense of everything - to the point of insanity - and expect me to follow you," she says. "There has to be somewhere to draw the line." Mulder says she should back away if that's what she feels. When Scully points out that an agent died because of the case he says, "Those are the risks we take. You either accept it or you don't. We all draw our own lines."
Scully doesn't push the issue, but instead shows him her shoes, corroded through from where she stepped in the green goo. Mulder says Scully should take a look at the autopsy of Agent Weiss, as no clear cause of death can be found.
In the autopsy bay, Scully reads that it seemed as if Weiss's blood was curdled like jelly, but before they can get any further an agent tells Mulder Skinner's been looking for him. (Mulder's cell phone had been killed when he was hit by the car.)
Skinner tells Mulder his father has been trying to get in touch with him about a family emergency. Mulder calls his father, and is surprised to find his mother at his father's house. His father tells him to come home. When Scully comes in, with an address recovered from the doctor's bag, Mulder walks out. "Home," is his only reply, when she asks him where he's going.
Scully goes to the address on the bag and finds a warehouse full of green vats. Chapel in there smashing them, but he sees her. Back at her apartment she calls Mulder, telling his answering machine that she thinks she's been followed.
Mulder arrives at his father's house, in West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard. His father is on the veranda, smoking. Mulder makes as if to embrace his father, but is offered an unsmiling hand shake. "She wanted you to come," she says, referring to Mulder's mother. "The certainty becomes a comfort that allows us to move on," he says. "We bury our memories so deep, after all that has been destroyed, never expecting...." Mulder interrupts, asking who his mother's talking to. "Your sister."
Later, Mulder tucks his mother into bed. "It is really her, isn't it?" she asks. "I don't see who else it could be," he replies.
Outside, Samantha tells her story. She says she was 9 or 10 when she was returned, and was placed with a family. It was only recently that she'd had problems and, through regression therapy, had remembered her real family. Her adoptive parents are clones, like the doctors who'd been killed. "They're only visitors here - what people would call aliens," she says. A bounty hunter is killing them and will come for her soon.
Mulder calls Scully, getting her machine, and tells her not to trust the CIA agent, though Samantha says she wouldn't be able to recognise him as he can disguise himself as anyone. Scully slips out in disguise and calls Mulder from a bus, getting his machine, saying she's going to stay at the Vacation Village Motor Lodge. Unbeknown to her, the bounty hunter is listening.
Scully goes to the warehouse and finds, amongst the smashed vats and green goo, something that looks like a foetus. She then apprehends four more of the doctors, who ask for her protection. She calls in the federal Marshal and has them put in protective custody.
Mulder calls Scully's motel, but just missed her due to an incompetent clerk, then, later, due to her running a bath.
The Bounty Hunter morphs into the shape of the Marshal and kills all four of the doctors.
At 11.21 there is a knock at Scully's door. It is Mulder. But then the phone rings, and that's Mulder too....
To be continued in "End Game".