The X-files

Gethsemane (part 1 of 3)
Episode: 4X24
First aired:5/18/97
Written by: Chris Carter
Directed by: R.W. Goodwin

A very important episode in the mythology of the X-files. Deals specifically on alien life and how far Mulder would go for the truth. This is the season 4 finale that left all us fans with a huge cliffhanger.

We see Scully making her way into Mulder's apartment where a bunch of detectives are waiting for her. One detective kneels down to the body on the floor, uncovers the sheet covering it and asks Scully to id the body. Scully replies that it is him, although it is not clear to the audience who it is. We next see Scully in a meeting with Section Cheif Blevins and a large group of important looking officials. She tells the group, sitting around a table that four years agp she was assigned to The X-files and the her purpose was to to report on the illegitimacy of Mulder's work.

In flashback anthropologists Arlinsky and Babcock fly to the base of a snowy mountain. They reach the summit and campsite where they are shown by members of the camp a perfectly preserved alein body in the ice nearby.

Back to the present, at the meeting, Scully tells the group that Recent events had shed new light on the factual and physical evidence that would prove the existence of extra terrestrial life but that Mulder was duped by a man whose motives seemed so similar to his own. And that Scully is determined now to show how Mulder, and her along aswell, decieved into believing the lies. In another flashback, Mrs. Scully is having a dinner party where Scully, her brother, and family guests are attending. Father McCue, a Catholic Priest is there and talks to Scully, hoping he can help her renew her faith especially since her health is at great risk. Their conversation is interupted by a phone call from Mulder who asks her to meet him at the Smithsonion to see something that had been discovered in Canaada.

Scully meets Mulder who introduces her to Arlinsky. Arlinsky tells Scully that from his research and investigation into the ice core samples the alien body found on the mountain is hundreds of years old and is, in his opinion, a real alien body but he wants their help in the verification. Scully declines Mulder's insistance for her help and Mulder and Arlinsky decide to fly to the mountain.

Scully talks with a lab tech who tells her about the ice cores and says that they have not been tampered with and that cells found in the core can not be catagorized as plant or animal.

At the mountain site, before Mulder and Arlinsky have made their way, an assasin shoots the members of the camp.

Mulder and Arlinsky find the men dead and the alien body missing. One of the men is alive and tells them that the body is buried underneath his tent so Mulder and Arlinsky dig it up.

Scully returns to the lab where she is attacked by an unknown man (later identified as Micheal Kristchgau). Scully learns that Kristchgau works for the Pentagon's research division and places him under arrest. But Kritschgau warns that if he is taken to jail, the same people who gave Scully cancer will kill him.

Meanwhile, Arlinsky preforms an autopsy of the alien body in a warehouse with Mulder and the okay Babcock (the man that survived) watching.

We go back to Scully telling the story to the panel. She tells them that Kristchgau had told her a story detailing point by point how Mulder and her had been decieved and that she had been given her cancer to make Mulder believe. Soon afterward Mulder leaves to meet Scully, the assassin, Ostelhoff, shoots and kills Arlinsky and Babcock at the warehouse.

Scully gets Mulder to meet with Kritshgau, to hear what he has told her. He tells them that the government has been orchestrating an elaborate hoax to divert attention from itself. The hoax included Scully's cancer and the alien body. Mulder naturally does not believe (or want to believe) him and returns to the warehouse where he finds Arlinsky and Babcock dead and the alien body missing. Scully confronts Mulder asking him why he can continue to believe. Mulder asks her why she now believes Kritshgau's story and she tells him what Kritshgau told her: that the reason she was given her cancer was to decieve Mulder even more. With this news Mulder leaves the warehouse in silence.

We see Mulder watching TV about aliens, clearly in pain about the news he has just heard, that he may be responsible for Scully's cancer.

Back in the present, Scully tells the officials that she recieved a call eariler that morning by the FBI asking her to ID a body in Mulder's apartment. Starting to break down, Scully tells the committee that "Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." To Be Continued... Important Quotes:
Scully -- "Yes sir. Four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned me to a project you all know as the X Files. As I am a medical doctor with a background in hard science, my job was to provide an analytical prospective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder, who's investigations into the paranormal were fueled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was 12. I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work. That it is my scientific opinion that he became over the course of these years a victim. A victim of his own false hopes and of his beliefs in the biggest of lies."

Scully -- "You already believe, Mulder. What difference would it make? I mean, what would proof change for you?"
Mulder -- "If someone could prove to you the existence of God, would it change you?"
Scully -- "Only if it were disproven."
Mulder -- "Then you accept the possibility the belief in God is a lie?"
Scully -- "I don't think about it, actually, and I don't think it can be proven."
Mulder -- "But what if it could be? Wouldn't that knowledge be worth seeking? Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie?"

Scully -- "What I couldn't tell Agent Mulder, what I had only learned myself, was that the cancer which had been diagnosed in me several months earlier had metastasized. And the doctors told me, short of a miracle, it would continue to aggressively invade my body, advancing faster each day toward the inevitable."

Scully -- "Hey, look, just because I haven't bared my soul to you, or to Father McCue, or to God, it doesn't mean that I'm not responsible to what's important to me!"
Bill -- "To what?! To who? This guy, Mulder? Well where is he, Dana? Where is he through all this?"

Blevins -- "But this man Kritschgau had convinced you otherwise. How?"
Scully -- "He told me a story which detailed, point by point, the systematic way in which Agent Mulder had been deceived and used and how I as his partner I had been led down the same path. Losing a family member due to my allegiance and contracting a fatal disease which I was told was engineered by the men who responsible for Agent Mulder's deception."
Blevins -- "Were you able to convince Agent Mulder of these facts?"
Scully -- "I was only able to convince him to meet me so that he might hear the story the way I had."

Scully -- "Mulder, everything this man described. You can't just guess at these details. I'm sorry, but the facts here completely overwhelm any argument against them!"
Mulder -- "Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them!"
Scully -- "Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe."
Mulder -- "After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's NOT true!"
Scully -- Because it's easier to believe the lie. Isn't it?"
Mulder -- "What the hell did that guy say to you, that you believe his story!?"
Scully -- "He said that the men behind this hoax... behind these lies... gave me this disease to make you believe."

Scully -- "Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."


Back to The X-files: Season 4

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