Episode Summary
The return of Cassandra Spender, an alien abductee, threatens to finally expose the conspiracy involving extraterrestrials, forcing the Smoking Man to strike back at Mulder and Scully with greater determination than ever before.
Part one of two
Episode Details
- Writers: Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz
- Director: Kim Manners
- Original Broadcast: AU: 21.04.1999 US: 07.02.1999
Cast
- Scully Gillian Anderson
- Mulder David Duchovny
Guest Cast
- Cassandra Spender Veronica Cartwright
- Smoking Man William B Davis
- Fifth Elder Frank Ertl
- Nurse Jen Forgie
- Dr Patou Chapelle Jaffe
- Alex Krycek Nicholas Lea
- Third Elder John Moore
- Second Elder George Murdock
- Doctor James Newman
- Special Agent Jeffrey Spender Chris Owens
- FBI Agent Valarie Pettiford
- Assistant Director Walter Skinner Mitch Pileggi
- Medic Klodyne Rodney
- Agent Diana Fowley Mimi Rogers
- Fourth Elder Al Ruscio
- Basketbell Player Damon P Saleem
- Dr Eugene Openshaw Nick Tate
- First Elder Don S Williams
Quotes
Smoking Man: This is the end. I never thought I'd hear myself say those words after all these years. You put your life into something... build it, protect it... The end is as unimaginable as your own death or the death of your children. I could never have scripted the events that led us to this. None of us could. All the brilliant men... the secret that we kept so well. It happened simply, like this. We had a perfect conspiracy with an alien race. Aliens who were coming to reclaim this planet and to destroy all human life. Our job was to secretly prepare the way for their invasion. To create for them a slave race of human/alien hybrids. They were good plans... right plans. Kept secret for over 50 years, ever since the crash at Roswell. Kept secret from men like Fox Mulder. Plans that would have worked... had not a rebel alien race come to destroy them. Had not my own son chosen betrayal. Or chosen to betray more wisely.
Spender: AD Skinner. I... I didn't hear the elevator. I was working here.
Skinner: Working on what, Agent Spender?
Spender: Progress report on the X-Files.
Skinner: Progress report to who?
Spender: Just to file.
Skinner: I wasn't aware that you'd made any progress. In the months since your assignment, I've received but one memorandum. Were you planning to hit me all at once?
Spender: Uh, it's been slow going.
Skinner: Truth is your purpose here is not to make any progress, isn't it? Truth is you have no interest in the X-Files. Beyond a certain... personal case. Your mother's abduction.
Spender: Alleged abduction.
Skinner: That's what I'm here about.
Spender: What did they do to you?
Cassandra Spender: I need to talk to someone.
Spender: You can tell me.
Cassandra Spender: I need to speak to Agent Mulder.
Spender: I don't want him talking with her.
Skinner: Why?
Spender: He's forbidden from the X-Files. He's to stay out of this.
Skinner: She's asking for him.
Spender: She's my mother.
Skinner: What are you afraid of, Agent Spender?
Spender: Of Agent Mulder filling her head with alien-abduction nonsense.
Skinner: Are you afraid of the truth?
Spender: I want to know who did this to her and why. That's all I want.
Skinner: Then why not use every resource available to you?
Spender: I'll send you a progress report.
Smoking Man: My son refused to believe that his mother had been abducted... though it had been going on for years. Even after I schemed to put him in charge of the X-Files where Fox Mulder had amassed so much evidence of our secret plans... he still couldn't bring himself to accept the possibility of alien life. When he did... come to believe... when the facts became so glaring he turned... not to me, his father, but to the man I'd ruined. The man I'd chosen for him to replace.
Mulder: Hey, Homegirl, word up.
Scully: Mulder, it's my distinct impression that you just cheated. And that you're not coming in again today.
Mulder: Oh, Scully, I got game.
Scully: Yeah, you got so much game I'm wondering if you have any work left in you.
Mulder: No, I'm ready to JOB just not on some jagoff shoeshine tip.
Scully: No
jagoff shoeshine tip
?
Mulder: No background checking jagoff shoeshine tip.
Scully: Well, about your JOB, Mulder, somebody's been trying very hard to reach you by phone. Somebody who wants you back at the FBI ASAP.
Mulder: About what?
Scully: About an X-File.
Mulder: You looking for work, Agent Spender? 'Cause if you are, I got a whole pile in that middle drawer that I'd love to shove down someone's throat.
Spender: I was just writing you a note. I think you know why I'm here.
Mulder: They found your mother.
Spender: She wants to talk to you.
Mulder: I didn't hear the magic word.
Spender: Look, Agent Mulder, I'm not going to get down on my knees here.
Mulder: Are you asking me, Agent Spender?
Spender: My mother's been gone for almost a year. She turns up in a train car where she's been operated on by a group of doctors who were burned alive. I just want the truth.
Mulder: The truth is out there, Agent Spender. Maybe you should find it for yourself.
[Smoking Man enters a room where a badly burned Dr Openshaw is lying in a hyperbaric chamber]
Dr Openshaw: I expected you sooner.
Smoking Man: I've been at the train yard. Trying to tidy things up.
Dr Openshaw: The overkill will be hard to divert attention from. But not as hard as from Cassandra. You have no idea, do you? Cassandra is a success.
Smoking Man: No, she can't be. Not now.
Dr Openshaw: I had prepared a syringe for her as agreed. But the rebels came.
Smoking Man: They saved her to expose us.
Dr Openshaw: She's the key to everything.
Smoking Man: I won't let her out of our hands.
Dr Openshaw: They will run medical tests on her. It's only a matter of time. Cassandra must be terminated. They will come and question me.
Smoking Man: I know. I'm sorry.
[He shuts off the oxygen to the chamber]
Dr Openshaw: A man should never live long enough to see his children or his work destroyed.
Scully: Didn't expect to find you here.
Mulder: Where did you expect to find me?
Scully: I thought Agent Spender offered you an X-File assignment.
Mulder: It wasn't exactly an offer.
Scully: But isn't it just the opportunity you've been waiting for?
Mulder: It is an opportunity, made to order for the powers that be.
Scully: You think it's a setup?
Mulder: This is exactly the kind of mistake they've been waiting for to come down on me full force.
Scully: But Agent Spender asked you.
Mulder: Like I said, not exactly.
Scully: We've seen this before. Bodies set aflame with no conclusive cause of combustion. Mulder...
Mulder: I know.
Scully: I was with Cassandra Spender when she disappeared. You sat with me while I was under hypnosis when I spoke of just these sorts of details.
Mulder: I have no doubt that what Cassandra would tell us would expose more than just what happened to her.
Scully: I was taken to one of those train cars. I was tested, just like Cassandra. What if what she tells us could expose who did this to me? Mulder, Agent Spender doesn't have to know.
Cassandra Spender: It feels so good to walk. The doctors don't know what to say. I told them they wouldn't believe how it happened and they wouldn't. No, I'm not going to tell anybody this time, because nobody believes you anyway. They want to hear it but they just think you're crazy. I guess I wouldn't believe it either, except that it happened to me. No, I'm only going to tell somebody I can trust and who can do something about it. I was hoping when I saw you that Agent Mulder was going to be coming in the door behind you.
Scully: I've got a surprise for you, Cassandra.
Cassandra Spender: I told you about their power. You said you didn't believe it.
Mulder: Well, I had reasons for doubt when I met you, Cassandra.
Cassandra Spender: You just doubted yourself. You were just doubting you'd ever see her again, weren't you? Your sister.
Scully: Agent Mulder told me he believed he saw his sister... last year.
Cassandra Spender: That wasn't her, Agent Mulder.
Mulder: Then where is she?
Cassandra Spender: Out there, with them. The aliens.
Scully: Cassandra, you were found in a train car. You'd been operated on by doctors.
Cassandra Spender: Yes, that's right.
Scully: And these are the doctors who cured you?
Cassandra Spender: No. The aliens cured me. The doctors were working with the aliens. That's what I wanted to tell you.
Mulder: What?
Cassandra Spender: I told you that the aliens were here to do good and that I was being used as an oracle to spread the word. Only now I know what the aliens are here for and it isn't good.
Mulder: What are they here for?
Cassandra Spender: To wipe us off the planet. They're taking over the universe. They're infecting all other life-forms with a black substance called Purity. It's their life force. It's what they're made of.
Mulder: It's the virus — the black oil.
Scully: But, Cassandra, the doctors weren't infected. They were burned.
Cassandra Spender: By another race of aliens. A rebel force that are mutilating their faces so that they won't be infected. This is what I couldn't tell my son Jeffrey.
Scully: Why couldn't you tell Jeffrey?
Cassandra Spender: Because he doesn't believe me... even though his life is in danger by these same rebel aliens.
Scully: Spender's life's in danger?
Cassandra Spender: He's in with the men that have been working with the alien colonists for 50 years.
Scully: Working to do what?
Cassandra Spender: Whatever it is they did to me... and to you, Dana.
Mulder: And you know who these men are?
Cassandra Spender: Oh, sure. One of them's my ex-husband... Jeffrey's father.
Smoking Man: Cassandra was beginning to realise her role in the greatest science project that man had ever known. She was the centre of 50 years of work... The key to all of our plans... something even my colleagues didn't realise yet. I killed to keep them unknowing. I killed Dr Openshaw so they wouldn't discover her. When it's Cassandra I should have killed... Cassandra who needed to die. I couldn't do it. With all the blood on my hands I couldn't kill the mother of my own son, a woman I never even loved. My colleagues never knew, focused as they were on the new threat — the faceless alien rebels who'd burned our doctors alive... But my colleagues had become old men... blind to the fact that the faceless rebels already held the upper hand... that they'd used their powers of disguise to infiltrate our group.
Scully: Why risk getting caught here?
Mulder: They're going to be monitoring any work on our machines, in or out. We need access to files. And a name that'll raise flags.
[Mulder turns on Spender's computer and runs a search on Spender
. Pictures of Spender, Jeffrey Frank #10487 and Spender, Cassandra Anne #53934 come up]
Scully: Maybe she was making it all up.
[Mulder shakes his head and types another command]
Mulder: Smokey's got a name.
[Picture of Smoking Man with name Spender, CGB. The reference number field states No Information Available]
Skinner: [entering office] Get up from the desk. Get up, turn the computer off, grab whatever you took or printed out and give it to me. Let's go, agents. They're coming.
Mulder: Who?
Skinner: [As they exit the office, they are confronted by Spender and several other agents] Spender: Spender: Smoking Man: Spender: Smoking Man: Spender: Smoking Man: Spender: Smoking Man: Spender: Smoking Man: Spender: Smoking Man: [Mulder is shooting baskets alone at the gym court, when Scully enters with a large box under her arm] Scully: Mulder: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Smoking Man: Mulder: Scully: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Scully: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Mulder: Skinner: Mulder: [Spender sits staring at the dead alien] Krycek: Spender: Krycek: Spender: Krycek: Spender: Krycek: Spender: Krycek: Spender: Krycek: Spender: Smoking Man: Fowley: Mulder: Cassandra Spender: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Cassandra Spender: Mulder: Cassandra Spender: Scully: Mulder: Scully: Just go."
Assistant Director. I'll assume you came down to apprehend these agents for unauthorised entry into my office. I'll make sure it's duly noted in the report of their dismissal.
I've done as you've asked. Mulder's been brought up to his superiors. He and his partner will be processed out of the FBI. I've done as you've asked, now I would like you to do for me.
Do for you?
I think I'm entitled.
To...?
The truth. The truth about my mother. She won't tell me.
Because you won't believe her. Maybe you won't believe me. Maybe it's better not to know.
Look, I need to know.
You need to show me that you're capable of handling the responsibility that comes with this knowledge.
Don't try me, old man.
[Smoking Man stands and slaps Spender]I gave you responsibility. I gave you a position. I gave you the things that you couldn't get yourself and you can't do the job!
Keeping Fox Mulder down is not a job. It's your dirty work!
[Smoking Man slaps him again]You pale to Fox Mulder.
[He walks out of the room]
I bet you're curious about CGB.
What's that?
CGB Spender — his name. Cigarette-Smoking Man?
What's it stand for?
It's an alias, as far as I can figure. One of hundreds.
Scully, want to go one-on-one? We got nothing but time now that we're on administrative leave.
Aren't you curious what I've got in the box? Everything I could find on him.
Nothing you could ever find would be accurate or credible.
Maybe. But there's a picture you're going to want to see.
That's CGB Spender and my father.
It was taken in 1973. I traced the connection to something they worked on together for 25 years at the state department. A highly classified project. There's more, if you're ready. Cassandra Spender is, indeed, the mother of Agent Jeffery Spender and the ex-wife of CGB Spender. But there's something that you're going to be surprised to find out. She was first abducted in 1973 on the night of November 27.
That's the same night as my sister.
And there are other names connected to CGB Spender and your father — PhDs, doctors... one a Nobel winner for early works in genetics. A Dr Eugene Openshaw. He was the doctor that was found amongst the burn victims clinging to life beside Cassandra Spender. He died the next day in the hospital, before he was questioned.
The project is still going on.
Yeah.
If Mulder hadn't known of his father's history with me he was fuelled now with names and dates and... certainties. I couldn't stop him any longer — stop him from learning our sins. His father's and my own. The truth was out there, fatally exposed. I had one last hope. One chance to preserve my legacy.
Thanks for coming. I know it's late and you've been forbidden to have any contact with us.
Sir.
You say Cassandra Spender's life is in danger.
Her life's been in danger going on 30 years... just not the way I think it is now.
In danger from who?
Men who've conducted medical experiments in what began as a secret government project but what is now the most private global enterprise.
Enterprising to do what?
To develop alien-human hybrids that will survive the viral apocalypse when aliens colonise the earth.
And I suppose you have proof of this?
Files that Agent Scully dug up that make all the right connections to Dr Eugene Openshaw, to my sister, to my father... to Agent Spender's father.
Agent Spender's father?
The Smoking Man.
What?!
It's true, sir. We have documented evidence.
Then you believe this, Agent Scully? This whole account?
I know that Agent Scully has her doubts about the purposes of these experiments but I also know that she herself believes she was a test subject when she was abducted four years ago.
If Cassandra Spender's life was in danger, why not Scully's?
Because I believe Cassandra Spender represents the final stages of these experiments — that she may very well be the first successful alien-human hybrid.
What I don't understand is if she was a success, then why is her life threatened?
Because... the men who created her would rather kill her than let her expose the enterprise.
She's under 24-hour guard.
Assigned by Agent Spender?
You've never seen one before, have you? It's shocking at first. The acceptance of the idea, it's... it's something you thought only children and fools believed in. It undermines your beliefs — in yourself, in the world... but then you come to understand.
Understand what?
Well, the responsibility that this knowledge demands by the men who have it. The great sacrifice... by great men like your father.
What sacrifice?
The sacrifice of your mother.
What do you know about that?
Just that she's... been the subject of an experiment for 25 years.
My father's involved in that? Is he?
Your father directs the experiments.
So... I'm protecting her now so the experiments can continue?
That's why he put you on the X-Files. That's why your father sent you here tonight. You're protecting the project, Jeff. Making the sacrifices. So that you can be a great man, too.
I'll be my own great man.
I've trusted no one. Treachery is the inevitable result of all affairs. Every man believes he has his own good reason. I have little doubt of my son's disloyalty to me. Certainly he led Mulder and Scully to us. His mother must know by now her central role in the grand plan... That she's as much alien as human. Do you wonder why I've chosen you? You've never betrayed me. Now I need someone to trust.
I'll help you. It's not too late.
Cassandra?
I can't believe I found you.
How did you find us? Cassandra?
How did you get here? How did you get out of your room?
How did you get your clothes?
[There's loud knocking at the door]Oh, Agent Scully, Agent Mulder, you cannot let them find me.
[More loud pounding at the door] You cannot let them have me!
[She frantically grabs for Mulder's gun]Let go!
You have got to kill me now! If you don't kill me, it all starts. There won't be any stopping it. I am the one. You have to shoot me... Please!
[More knocking. Mulder unholsters his gun and raises it]Mulder, what are you doing?
Stand away, Scully.
Mulder! Mulder, we have to protect her.
[The pounding at the door continues, getting louder. Mulder aims the gun at Cassandra Spender's head. It sounds like someone is breaking the door down] Mulder? Mulder!