Episode Summary

Agent Mulder discovers the ultimate proof of extraterrestrial life while Scully is forced to confront her own mortality.

Part one of three

Episode Details

Cast

Guest Cast

Quotes

Scully: 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 perspective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder, whose investigations into the paranormal were fuelled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was twelve. 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 belief in the biggest of lies.


Bill Scully Jr: I'm sorry I'm late. My ship got stuck in traffic. You get my birthday card?

Scully: Yes, I did. Thanks for remembering this year.

Bill Scully Jr: Well, once a decade.


Father McCue: I feel awkward sitting here. I'm sure you do too.

Scully: No. I'm sorry.

Father McCue: I've known your family for so many years. Your mother asked me to come, that I might have a word with you. I know its been some time since we've spoken ourselves, since you drifted from the church —

Scully: Father McCue.

Father McCue: — In this time of personal crisis, a threat to your health, turning back to your faith is important and essential.

Scully: Father McCue. I appreciate my mother's concern, and yours, but I'm being treated for my cancer and I'm taking every precaution —

Father McCue: Faith can make you stronger.

Scully: I haven't felt a need. I have strength... and I'm not going to come running back now, that's just not who I am. I'd be lying to myself and to you.


Mulder: Who else knows about this?

Arlinsky: No one. I know what your first thought was. But the St Elias range? That's a long way to go for a hoax.

Mulder: Well, if you're going to go, why not go all the way?


Mulder: You think its foolish?

Scully: I have no opinion actually.

Mulder: You have no opinion?

Scully: This is your holy grail, Mulder. Not mine.

Mulder: What is that supposed to mean?

Scully: It just means proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish.

Mulder: How about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?


Mulder: Then you accept the possibility that belief in god is a lie?

Scully: I don't think about it actually, and I don't think that 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?


Dr Vitagliano: There's some cellular material within the matrix.

Scully: Plant or animal?

Dr Vitagliano: I don't know. It's what I'd have to classify, a chimera — a hybrid cell.

Scully: From what?

Dr Vitagliano: As I said, I don't know.

Scully: Is it capable of cell division?

Dr Vitagliano: I don't know that either. I just now found them. I'd like to get them under our electron microscope, if that's okay?

Scully: Yes. Please.


[Mulder and Arlinsky see a body lying in a snow bank]

Mulder: Funny place to take a nap.


Michael Kritschgau: Please don't shoot. I didn't mean to hurt you. I had no choice.

Scully: PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE CAR!

Michael Kritschgau: If you arrest me, they'll kill me.

Scully: I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

Michael Kritschgau: The same people who are trying to kill you. The people who gave you your cancer.


Scott Ostelhoff: Where did Mulder go?

Babcock: He got a call.

Scott Ostelhoff: Is he a believer?

Babcock: Oh yeah.

Scott Ostelhoff: Then we're then only ones who know.

Babcock: Right.


Mulder: They would have known that the body would be carbon dated, that it would be proven a fake.

Michael Kritschgau: The body will never be tested, Agent Mulder.

Mulder: What do you mean?

Michael Kritschgau: You were only meant to see it, to make you believe the lie, so that you might finally commit and go public with the news.

Mulder: [to Scully] This man is a liar.

Michael Kritschgau: You can see for yourself, Agent Mulder. The body is all ready long gone.


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'd believe his story?

Scully: He said that the men behind this hoax, behind these lies, gave me this disease to make you believe.


Scully: Early this morning I got a call from the police asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment. The detective asked me, he needed me to identify a body...

Section Chief Blevins: Agent Scully...

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

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