The X-files
Redux (part 2 of 3)
Episode: 5X02
First aired:11/02/97
Written by: Chris Carter
Directed by: Kim Manners
NOTE: See Gethesmane, the first part of this triology.
Fox Mulder accesses a secret research facility that may hold a cure for Scully's illness. Meanwhile, Scully performs an experiment in hopes of determining the origin of the disease.
In something of a flashback: twenty-four hours before Scully identified Mulder's body in his apartment, Mulder receives a tip from Kritschgau that he is being watched.
After discovering a pinhole in his ceiling he encounters Scott Ostelhof spying on him from the apartment above, after a short scuffle a shot rings out. Mulder tells Scully that he killed Ostelhof while he has trying to destroy a record of phone calls he made to the Bureau. They conclude that their own agency is behind a cover up and that they are unwitting pawns in the conspiracy. Mulder persuades Scully to help him fake his own death in an attempt to uncover the truth.
After Scully goes to Mulder's apartment to identify 'his' body, she traces the number that Ostelhoff was calling to the same exchange that Assistant Director Skinner is on.
Test results on the ice core sample taken from the mountain reveal a new life form. When Scully compares this new organism with her own DNA, they match, she concludes that her cancer is a result of being exposed to the organism. The Cigarette Smoking Man tells his fellow conspirators that he does not believe that Agent Mulder is dead.
Meanwhile Mulder uses Ostelhoff's ID card to break in to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency facility and finds a metallic vial that may contain a cure for Scully, only to have the Lone Gunman discover it is just de-ionized water. However it appears all Mulder's effort was in vain when Scully collapses while presenting evidence to an FBI inquiry panel.
to be continued...
Important Quotes:
Mulder: Keep going, FBI woman.
Mulder: Let the truth be known though the heavens fall. The web of lies entangling us can now be connected back to the very institution which brought us together. The facts supported by a Byzantine plot, executed by someone inside the FBI who, if named, could be tied to the plot meant to destroy me. And to the terminal disease inflicted on Scully. In four years, I have shared my partner's passionate search for the truth. And if my part has been a deception, I have never seen her integrity waver or her honour compromised. But now, I ask her to lie, to the people that lied to us. A dangerous lie to find the truth. To find the men who would be revealed as its enemy, as our enemy. As the enemy within.
Kritschgau: How'd you get his card?
Mulder: I found it on a dead man.
Scully: All lies lead to the truth, isn't that right?
Skinner: And what about your lie, Agent Scully? What does it lead to?
Scully: The truth. About the men behind what happened to me, about my abduction and the tests, about being exposed to something against my will, about being put on a table and having something implanted in me. And then having my memory stolen, only to have it returned along with a disease that I was given!
Skinner: Your silence won't save you, not with these people. And if you lie, I don't know if anything can.
Scully: Except proof.
Scully: If my work with Agent Mulder has tested the foundation of my beliefs, science has been, and continues to be, my guiding light. Now I am again relying on its familar and systematic methods to arrive at a truth. A fact that might explain he fate that has befallen me. An investigation that began without, now turning within. Taking cellular material from the unidentified life-form, and isolating a virus contained within it, then matching the DNA from this virus against that which I believe has caused my cancer, I hope a picture will develop. The picture that might confirm my darkest suspicion, about he source of this disease invading my body. In hope of providing evidence that its cause is not without blame, even though its cure remains unknown. If science serves me to these ends, it is not lost on me that the tool with which I have come to depend on absolutely, cannot save or protect me. But only bring into focus the darkness that lies ahead.
Mulder: If I did indeed have the cure for Scully's cancer, I was now as dependent on her as she was on me. As I had breeched this facility, I needed to find my way out to safety. Depending on Scully to weave her story, to tell her tale, to make them believe the lie.
Back to The X-files: Season 5