“Mulder and Scully are sent to investigate when a team of geophysicists stationed at a remote Alaskan outpost is killed by a parasitic life form.“

This is an honest-to-god excellent episode. The first classic in my eyes. Be prepared for a psychological thriller! Isolation and paranoia are on the menu today!

Icy Cape, Alaska, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. 8:30 AM or PM, it doesn’t matter. It’s probably wintertime. It’s dark. There’s a shirtless man walking around a research facility with a gun. He’s bleeding sexily.

He sits in front of video camera. Still shirtless! “We are… We’re not who we are… It goes no further than this… It stops right here… Right now.”

If he was talking about the recording, then he was correct! Another man (he’s got a shirt) starts attacking him. Shirtless guy gets away and grabs his gun. There is a standoff where each points his gun right at each other’s face. Slowly… ever so slowly… they put down their guns… then slowly… ever so slowly… the lift their guns… and then each commits suicide! *cue happy music*

It seems, good sir, that we are at an impasse.

If you thought this wasn’t a case for the X-Files, then you were sorely mistaken! Mulder and Scully review the recordings of the Arctic Ice Core Project science team. There were originally about six or seven people stationed there to do some climate research or make potato lightbulbs or have ugly sex in the cold. Well… then… we all know what happens next. *guns*

The station is remote as hell. Temperatures in the -430s. 19 out of 20 airplanes crash horribly on the way there. We’re talking twisted, fiery wrecks. Let’s go!

Scully is unnerved by the final recording of the shirtless man. “What happened up there?” she asks. They lost their shirts, that’s what. OK, enough shirt jokes, Tom, you fucking idiot.

Kenny Bania from Seinfeld is part of the team ready to take the FBI agents up to the Alaskan outpost. Also there are George Mason from the first couple seasons of 24 and Felicity Huffman! A real stacked cast for this particular episode. They all exchange obligatory niceties, and then the pilot (named “Bear”) arrives so they can start fucking off to the stupid middle-of-nowhere lab. CGI snowfall aplenty.

It’s gold, Jerry! Gold!

Dead bodies litter the floor of the research station. Bear looks for a generator to pump the place full of electricity juice while everyone else shines their giant flashlights randomly in every direction.

Mulder finds a refrigeration unit with sealed capsules of mysterious specimens. Kenny Bania grabs one to do some analysis. Elsewhere, they find a dog who is alive and he start chewing Mulder up for a bit. The dog also tears Bear a new one, and it’s going to be rather inconvenient for the only guy able to get them out of the outpost to be mortally wounded within three minutes of entering the facility!

Scully finds evidence of bubonic plague on the now-unconscious animal. They also discover a parasite crawling around under the skin. Shortly, Bear finds bubonic plague bumps on his own body while playing with himself in the bathroom.

Oh shit, I slept on my Hershey’s bar again.

Later, Scully determines that the shots on the two bodies in the MAIN FOYER were self-inflicted. George Mason reports that the bubonic plague spots on the dog are gone already, which is also mysterious and it foreshadows that Bear’s, too, will disappear! Pay close attention, guys, these episodes are packed with such Easter eggs. Scully also discovers ammonium hydroxide in the bodies, which shouldn’t exist at all at body temperature. Kenny Bania reports elevated ammonium hydroxide in the ice shelf. Some microscopy reveals a weird parasite floating around the body fluid sample. These parasites feed on the sweet, sweet ammonium and travel via body fluid contact! No sex until we get back, everyone! Also, we gotta quarantine you guys. Mask up.

The paranoia begins. They all need to strip down to their penises and vaginas to prove that none of them are now infected. Naturally, the guy who was bitten by the dog doesn’t wanna do that. He grits his teeth and snarls and throws his poop jar against the wall. “WHAT I’M DOIN’ IS GET MY GEAR, GET MY PLANE, AND GETTING THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” he yells. Mulder takes it upon himself to point a gun congenially at Bear and try to have him agree to provide a poop sample. Bear smashes a second jar on Mulder’s head. Mulder barely even flinches.

Attempting to pin the Bear to the ground reveals some bullshit slithering around under his neck. Bear convulses and moans like a bad sci-fi actor (or a bear in heat!) while Scully tears into this guy’s skin and pulls the parasite out. Mulder tries to radio back to the military base, but the weather’s too bad to send anyone out for a rescue mission. Tough titties. Bear dies. No pilot. And don’t forget, no sex until we all return to the base. Not even with yourself, Mr. Mulder.

Good morning, Vietnam!

Scully discovers that the last living parasite was found in a body’s hypothalamus, which explains Bear’s sudden aggressive behavior. They all get spooked. Mulder is eating this shit up right off of a plate.

It’s bedtime, children. Mulder and Scully have a chat before they retire to their shared quarters. Scully wants to find a way to kill the loathsome bug. “I don’t think we should kill it,” replies Mulder, kicking off the beginning of Incredulous Scully exactly halfway through the episode. The parasite is an alien. It survives in ammonia and subzero temperatures. A meteor crashed on this spot 9,000,000,000 years ago! Scully doesn’t want to spread a plague to the general population. Mulder wants to keep it as a pet.

The rest of the team becomes worried about Mulder and Scully’s loud arguing. They all convince themselves that these two FBI agents most certainly knew what they were getting into when they left. George Mason leads the way into their room and implies that Scully is getting a little… aggressive! Ahh! NO, YOU ARE! AHHH!

That’s it everyone! Clothes on the table! Time to show our mammalian protuberances!

They all agree to strip in front of each other and check armpits and butts for plague bumps. Again, ladies and gentlemen, keep the carnal enjoyment tabled until you all return safe and sound to the cozy military base. Mulder eagerly removes his shirt first and makes a joke about shrinkage. Scully feels Felicity Huffman’s titties tenderly and they share a moment. All is well, nobody is infected, and they retire for the evening. Before bed, Mulder’s eyes twinkle while he reminds Scully that the spots on the dog went away. Then he creeps out of view.

Everyone maintains their frightened and paranoid dispositions while alone in their separate quarters. George Mason takes notes and thinks about them quite fervently as if he were studying for a geometry test. Mulder keeps his shirt off as a little bit of fanservice. And, boy I tell ya, am I a fan!

Mulder hears a noise in the middle of the night and leaves his room to investigate the base. Kenny Bania has snuck out from his bed, and Mulder scares the caged dog into barking very loudly like the feral, plague-ridden parasitic animal that he is.

Then Mulder discovers Kenny Bania dead in the refrigeration unit. The other three enter the room and POINT FINGERS AT MULDER. KILLER! MURDERER! SEXY BEAST! “I’m not showing any of the symptoms,” Mulder says calmly before yelling at them. Scully demands that Mulder turn around so they can check his neck and Mulder fucking SCREAMS, man. He fucking screams and points a gun at all of them. Then, in a moment of realization, acquiesces to being locked up like an animal. “In here, I’ll be safer than you,” he tells Scully ominously before she wordlessly bolts the door. She probably rolls her eyes here too, but the audience doesn’t see it. I’d bet my oversized hat on it.

YOU WON’T LIKE ME WHEN I’M ANGRY AND SWEATY!!!

George Mason and Felicity Huffman confront Scully and tells her to lose the gun. If she gets infected, she’ll kill them all! So she throws her gun into the snow and proceeds to yell at them. These people haven’t learned that yelling doesn’t do you any favors here in Icy Cape!

Scully attempts to send a distress call to the military base again, but there’s no signal. Everyone is still yelling at each other. Felicity Huffman accidentally dollops a bit of infected blood onto other infected blood on the microscope slide, which angers George Mason like nobody’s business. NO FRET, MY PET, because Scully takes a look and sees two parasites duking it out to the death. Put them in the same areas and they’ll waste each other. That’s some good information to have in your back pocket in case you want to, you know, get out of this episode alive. Sounds like having sex will be the key after all, exchanging fluids and the like!

Once the three of them (sans Mulder) agree that the only way to cure an infected person is to throw another one of dem parasites in their body, they practice on the dog. It doesn’t die, that’s reassuring. Time to throw one into Mulder!

Look, I’m not saying we need to murder your friend. We just need to kill him.

Scully, against the other two’s opinion, wants to talk to Mulder one-on-one. He’s lousy with shifty-eyed anxiety, thinking Scully his here to whack him! She gives him the good news: two parasites in one host will kill each other, and then the host poops them out. Bing bang boom. Here you go, open wide…

“If you give me one worm, you’ll infect me,” snarls Mulder.
“If that’s true, then why didn’t you let us inspect you?”
“I WOULD HAVE, BUT YOU PULLED A GUN ON ME!”

Tension rises! The trust is gone! Scully sort of apologizes and Mulder lets her take a look at his back for bumps. He inspects her for bumps. No one ain’t got no bumps.

There’s one parasite left. If anyone’s infected, they have to make damn sure first before they use it.

Mulder and Scully emerge from the room and inform George Mason and Felicity Huffman that neither of them are infected. They don’t believe them, of course, but someone IS infected and they still need to get to the bottom of this. George Mason agrees to have everyone check each other again to make sure, but these shrewd so-and-sos trick Mulder and Scully! They get grabbed and thrown around. Huffman locks Scully back in the room and then Scully starts hitting the door with the pipe. George Mason holds Mulder down while Felicity Huffman prepares to drop the parasite into Mulder’s ear! Scully’s a-bangin’! Mulder’s a-gruntin’! Very primal stuff!

Oh yeah, is that one of those Babel fishes that can help you understand all languages? Gimme gimme gimme!

Good thing George Mason notices a creepy crawly in Huffman’s neck right before she drops the parasite. He knocks her away, and now the men team up to try to wallop the woman. Mason grabs the parasite. Huffman runs around the rooms and breaks every glass object she can find while she screams, which doesn’t appear to be productive. But, three against one prevails and she gets loaded up with parasite. Everyone lives happily ever after, and the rescue team eventually arrives.

Felicity Huffman and the dog get quarantined. The other three are released, but Mulder wants to return to the base! Aliens! There’s still a lot of research to be done! And–

“Don’t you know? 45 minutes after they evacuated us, they torched the place. There’s nothing left,” George Mason tells him.

Mulder’s not deterred. 2,000,000 years of history still under the ice.

“Leave it there,” Scully says before walking away from him.

Next Time on the X-Files

Season 1, Episode 9 — “Space”
Scully, as an April Fool’s joke, locks Mulder in a space shuttle right before a scheduled launch. Everyone laughs as an extra 170 lbs of payload causes an explosion rivaling the Challenger space launch.