episode by Chris Carter
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: If my "Blessing Way" deductions are right, this episode starts on the night of the April 22nd 1995, though this could be out by a day or so on either side. Albert arrives at Melissa's hospital room the following day, and later tells Skinner he's been there for two days. We then see one more night-time before the final scenes, suggesting Melissa dies four days after being shot. My guess is April 26th 1995, but anyone's guess is as good as mine.
"Blessing Way" left Scully and Skinner at gunpoint in Mulder's apartment, footsteps pausing at the door.... But first we get an Albert Hosteen voice-over
Albert talks about Navajo myths about animals and healing and things. After Mulder was healed, he says, they heard from other tribes in the north that a white buffalo had been born. "This was a powerful omen and great changes were coming."
The person at the door turns out to be Mulder who bursts in, gun in hand, demanding that Skinner drop his weapon. "What are you pulling here?" Skinner asks, evidently baffled as to how the dead Mulder can be threatening him. Scully and Mulder insist that Skinner give Scully his gun, then Skinner pulls out the tape, asking for an explanation of what it stands for. "Your cigarette smoking friend killed my father for that tape and then he killed me," Mulder says. Skinner looks understandably confused, so Mulder explains -"I was a dead man. Now I'm back." He tells them that the tape contains proof about a global conspiracy of silence about the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Skinner points out that, if what Mulder says is true, the tape could be the only way of bringing the guilty people to justice, and that it wouldn't "do us any good" (note the "us") if it just fell back into their hands. "Then you'd better make sure it doesn't," Mulder says, lowering him gun and calling Scully to follow him. "Where?" she asks. "There are truths out there that aren't on that tape," he tells her.
As they wait for the elevator, Scully smiles. "Mulder, I..." she begins. He puts his hands on her shoulders -. "Scully, whatever you're going to say...." "I went to your father's funeral," she interrupts. "I told your mother you were going to be okay." "How did you know," he asks. "I just knew," she says.
At the hospital, Mrs Scully bursts in, expecting to find Dana. Instead she finds Melissa, shot in the head. The doctors have induced a coma to try to relieve the trauma on the brain.
Mulder and Scully go to the Lone Gunmen, and Mulder shows them the 1973 picture of his father, Deep Throat, Cancerman et al that he'd asked his mother about in the previous episode. They talk about Operation Paperclip, which Mulder calls "our deal with the devil," in which Nazi war criminals were offered safe haven in return for their scientific knowledge. Langly recognises the man next to Mulder's father as being one Victor Klemper, a man who's performed horrible experiments on the Jews but later helped the Americans win the space race. Operation Paperclip was supposedly scrapped in the 1950s, Byers says, but this picture implies something remained as late as 1973.
Frohike comes in, amazed and happy to see Mulder. "Unbelievable!" he says, embracing him. "You're going to have to wait a little bit longer for my video collection," Mulder tells him. When Frohike sees Scully his expression becomes sombre and he takes of his hat and tells her about Melissa's shooting, which he's heard about by cruising through police frequencies. Scully rushes off without a word. Mulder chases her down the stairs and finally gets her to stop. She says she has to get there - "that bullet was meant for me." Mulder says that she mustn't - that's the first place "they" will look. "The only thing you can do for her now is to try to crucify them," he says.
46th Street, New York, 7.09 am. The Consortium lament the "serious mistake" of shooting an "innocent woman." "It was your man," Cancerman is told. He assures them the mistake will be rectified. "By whom?" Well Manicured Man asks, dangerously. "By your ridiculously ineffective assassins?" Cancerman says his men are professional, but Well Manicured Man tells him "this is not a profession for men who make mistakes." He then says that Scully believes Mulder is still alive. "Mulder is dead," Cancerman says, firmly. "I took care of it myself." Well Manicured Man asks about the tape that "you tell us has been recovered" - can he show them proof? "I wasn't aware that my honesty was in question or doubt." "Of course I have it," he snaps, when asked if he really has the tape. They all he say they want to see it, and he says they can have it the next day, "by which time this whole matter will be cleared up."
Mulder and Scully visit Victor Klemper in his greenhouse, where he is tending orchids. "I am an old man. History bores me," he says, when Mulder begins to question him. "Because it escapes you, or because you escaped it?" Scully asks. Klemper says he's bitter that his great scientific work will not be remembered. He will only be known as a butcher, he says, which Scully says is perhaps the only justice he will ever know. Klemper defends his work, saying "our experiments changed the world." When Scully accuses him of working at the expense of thousands of innocents he coldly says that "progress demands sacrifice. I have confronted my demons, and soon I will die too." "Like my father," Mulder cuts in, asking Klemper what he knows about that. Klemper says they would kill anyone if that was in the best interests of the work, but he won't tell Mulder what the work is. "There are some things you don't need to know," he says, barely glancing at the photograph Mulder shows him. "But I need to know!" Mulder shouts. "I need to know the truth!... Isn't that what you want too.?" Klemper is silent for a while, then tells them tat the photo was taken at the Strughold Mining Company in West Virginia, and asks them if they know the formula for Napier's constant. "That's all I will tell you," he says. "The rest you will find out for yourself."
Klemper calls Well Manicured Man at the Consortium HQ, calling him "old friend," and saying he's just been visited by "the son of one of our old colleagues," but told him nothing. "Mulder is alive," Well Manicured Man tells the others, putting the phone down. They agree it is time the affair was handled in a more satisfactory way than Cancerman has managed.
As mysterious men in black loiter near Melissa's hospital room, Albert Hosteen arrives, telling Mrs Scully that Dana is sorry she can't be here. Mrs Scully says Melissa is getting better, but Albert asks if he can pray over her.
Mulder and Scully go to the Strughold Mining Company, which is completely derelict. They find a row of doors with number pads, and type in the number of Napier's constant (which they get wrong!) and one of the doors opens. Scully pauses at the door, telling Mulder that she thinks he hasn't had time to process what has happened. "You weren't even able to go to your father's funeral," she says. "If something in here was to cast doubt on the kind of man he was.... I just know how it would affect me." Mulder nods, but opens the door.
Skinner calls Cancerman to his office, telling him he may have located the tape and that it may fall into the hands of people who will use it against him. "You want to work a deal?" Cancerman asks. "I don't work deals." "I just thought you should be aware of certain potentialities," Skinner says. Cancerman looks angry and desperate. "Do you have the damn tape?" he shouts. "I'll know more when we next meet," Skinner says. Cancerman tries to threaten him, stressing that he doesn't negotiate. "I'm quite aware of your policies in those regards?" skinner says, and Cancerman warns him that his next actions should be more... cautious and informed.
Mulder and Scully investigate the hidden tunnels in the mine, finding "lots and lots of files." The files, one per person, contain birth certificates, smallpox vaccination certificates and a tissue sample. Scully has a file, with a recent tissue sample. "What the hell is going on here?" Scully asks, as Mulder runs wildly down the corridor to find his sister's file. It too has a recent tissue sample, and Mulder finds out that the file used to be his - his name is written on the file and her name is on a sticky label stuck on top.
Suddenly the lights go out and Mulder rushes off. ("Mulder? Where are you going?") Inside the mine, Scully sees lots of little alien-like figures rushing past her, while Mulder, outside, sees a vast space-ship thing passing overhead and stares up at in, awe-struck. Just as everything goes quiet again, carloads of armed me drive up and start shooting at Mulder. He rushes back, dodging bullets left right and centre, and joins up with Scully again. Luckily, there is a small unguarded and unlocked back door and they slip out.
Next morning, Craiger, Maryland. Skinner arrives at a diner where Mulder and Scully are waiting for him. Mulder tells him what happened, saying the armed men were driving CIA vehicles. Skinner says he may be able to make a deal - the tape for their safety and reinstatement. Mulder refuses point blank, saying the tape is the only proof of an "elaborate conspiracy against the American public." The answer to all his questions are on the tape, he says. "Is that answer worth your lives?" Skinner asks. "It's obviously worth killing us for," Mulder replies, saying he hopes he can find out why they killed his father and what happened to his sister, and what they did to Scully. Even though he says he wants to find answers for her, Scully says she wants Skinner to do a deal.
Scully: "These answers are going to mean nothing if we're going to be hunted down like animals," she tells him. "We are operating so far outside of the law right now, we've given up on the very notion of justice. We've turned ourselves into outsiders - we have lost our justice, and our protection."
Mulder: "What makes you think there is any such thing as justice, Scully?"
Scully: "What good are those answers to anyone but you, Mulder?"
Mulder: "What we found last night..."
Scully: "I want exactly what you want, but I need to see my sister."
They stare at each other in silence for a while. Mulder the turns to Skinner, asking him about the tape and the deal. Skinner says he hasn't been able to make a back-up copy, and promises that he'll go state's evidence if they refuse to honour the deal - "then they'll have to kill me too." Mulder tells Scully it's up to her, and walks out of the diner.
Skinner and Scully emerge, having decided to go ahead with the deal. "I'm sorry about your sister, Scully," Mulder says. Scully says she just needs to know she'll be okay.
Albert Hosteen has been at Melissa's side for two days. The doctors are hopeful, but he's pessimistic as the white buffalo's mother died three days after the birth of the now ailing calf. "For something to live, another thing must sometimes be sacrificed," he says.
Skinner visits Mrs Scully in Melissa's room, passing on a message from Dana. Seeing a man in a suit in the corridor, Skinner gives chase. The man attacks him in a stairwell, joined by Krycek and Hispanic Man, the man who shot Melissa. They take the tape from him.
The three thugs stop at a garage. The other two get out, leaving Krycek waiting in the car. Suddenly realising there's a bomb in the car, he runs away and gets out just in time.
Mulder and Scully go to see Klemper again, but find only Well Manicured Man. Klemper's dead, he says. Mulder recognises Well Manicured Man from the photograph and demands to know more about the project, and his father's involvement in it. Well Manicured Man tells him about Roswell and the resulting recovery of an alien body. This coincided with Operation Paperclip and Nazi experiments in genetic engineering. Well Manicured Man looks round the green house as he speaks. Klemper could produce wonderful hybrids, he says, ostensibly about orchids. From this Mulder hypothesises that Klemper and his friends were creating an alien-human hybrid, and that that was what he saw in the boxcar. "My father was involved in this?" he asks, incredulously. Scully steps in to slow him down, saying that the technology just didn't exist at the time. "This is all a lie," she says. Well Manicured Man tells Mulder that his father objected to the project. He was happy collecting genetic data on the population to be used for identification after a nuclear war, but was unhappy when he found out what the tissue was really being used for. Everyone who received a smallpox vaccination - i.e. everyone - had their tissue taken. "This man is telling you everything you want to hear," Scully says, firmly. "But it's a fabrication - its pure science fiction. There were no experiments with aliens." Well Manicured Man asks why he would lie, but Scully says it's to protect himself - to put them off the scent. Mulder asks her why her file was there - why there are current records - "of abductions. Of abductees" he shouts, seeming close to tears, whether from the revelations or from her doubts. Scully looks at him, then leaves. Mulder steps closer to Well Manicured Man. "They took my sister," he says. "Why?" "They took her as insurance," Well Manicured Man says, as Mr Mulder threatened to expose the project. "Why her?" Mulder asks, voice cracking. "Why not me?" Well Manicured Man says it's not for him to say, but that Mulder's life is also in danger now, for wanting to expose the project. "You have become your father," he says.
Mulder: "Why are you telling me this?"
Well Manicured Man: "It's what you want to know.... isn't it?"
Mulder: "Is there more?"
Well Manicured Man: "More than you will ever know."
Krycek calls Cancerman at the Consortium club, telling him he's alive and that he'll expose him if he does anything to find him. Cancerman puts the phone down and tells the others that the tape has been destroyed in a car bomb. Skinner wants to make a deal, he says, but has no leverage. "There will be no deal," he says.
Greenwich, Connecticut. Mrs Mulder is woken up by Mulder who asks her if his father ever asked her is she had a favourite child. "Did he make you make a choice?" he shouts. "No. I couldn't choose," she says. "It was your father's choice, and I hated him for it. I hate him still." She cries in his arms.
Cancerman goes to Skinner's office, all smug and confident. "You haven't got any tape. You haven't got any deal," Cancerman says, turning to go. Skinner then calls Albert in. "This is where you pucker up and kiss my ass," he says Albert and the other Navajo have memorised the contents of the case, he says, so short of killing every Navajo in America there's nothing Cancerman can do. "You're bluffing," Cancerman says, looking rather worried. "Am I?" Skinner says.
Mulder arrives at Melissa's hospital room to find Scully staring at an empty bed. Melissa died three hours ago, she says.
Scully: "She died for me. I tried to tell her I was sorry but I don't think she'll ever know."
Mulder: "She knows. Melissa knows."
Scully: "You were right. There is no justice."
Mulder: "I don't think this about justice, Scully."
Scully: "Then what is it about?"
Mulder: "I think it's about something we have no personal choice in. I think it's about fate. (long silence) Skinner told me that he talked to you - that you were insistent about coming back to work. If Melissa's death is...."
Scully: "I need something to put my back up against."
Mulder: "I feel the same way. We've both lost so much. But I believe that what we're looking for is in the X-Files. I'm more certain than ever that the truth is in there."
Scully: "I've heard the truth. Now what I want are the answers."
He puts his arms around her and pulls her head onto his shoulder.