While the first season of The X-Files
introduced us to Scully and Mulder, the second season finds the show
confidently hitting its stride. Building on its earlier success, the
show evolves, and in these 25 episodes, a glimpse is shown of a
longer-running story line (which will continue through subsequent
seasons) that is woven into the usual stand-alone episodes of the
paranormal. These so-called mythology episodes hint at a global
conspiracy involving sinister government agents, UFOs, alien
abductions, genetic engineering, the ever-lurking Cigarette Smoking
Man, and Fox Mulder's father. Season 2 fleshes out Mulder's family
history, including the childhood abduction of his sister Samantha,
an event that would shape him for life. Actress Gillian Anderson
(Scully) became unexpectedly pregnant during season 2, but series
creator Chris Carter managed to dance nimbly around her absence and
even integrate it into the show. As in season 1, Mulder and Scully
are surrounded by a strong supporting cast, which adds a suspicious
new agent named Alex Krycek, an informant named X, and a seemingly
indestructible alien bounty hunter.
Among the standout
episodes are "The Host," "Duane Barry/Ascension," "Humbug," "Dod
Kalm," "Colony/End Game," and "Anasazi." These episodes are a
powerful reminder that The X-Files, like no other show on
television, can span horror, suspense, mystery, romance, drama, and
comedy, sometimes all in the same episode, and always with the
production values of a major feature film. --Eugene Wei
With the X-Files shut down, Mulder finds his
own belief in the truth waning. So when an old political
ally gives him a new reason to believe, he goes alone to an
abandoned
SETI program site --
Arecibo Observatory -- in
Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Concerned for his safety, Scully
has to track down his whereabouts before someone or
something else does.
When a man’s decomposed body is found in the
sewers of Newark, Mulder is given the supposed “grunt” work.
But after Scully’s autopsy turns up a parasite living inside
the body and a sewer worker is attacked and bitten by
something, it opens up a whole new can of worms.
A recent rash of killings in the small town
of
Franklin, Pennsylvania brings Mulder to profile the
murderers — a task made more difficult by the fact that none
of them had any previous history of violence and all died at
the end of their berserk rages. The only clues he has are
some destroyed electronics and an unknown organic substance.
The events lead to the discovery of a bizarre experiment on
the town.
An audio cassette hidden in his morning paper
brings Mulder to request the case of a scientist’s death
consistent with burning, despite the lack of any evidence of
any flames or burns. He is given his request...along with a
new partner, Agent
Alex Krycek.
An ex-FBI agent escapes from a mental
hospital and holds several people hostage in a travel
agency. Mulder and Krycek are sent in to help with the
negotiations since the man claims to have been a UFO
abductee.
A.D. Skinner reopens the X-Files, but Mulder
is finding it difficult to work without the missing Scully.
When he recognises a
Los Angeles killing as the work of the Trinity
murderers, a trio of killers with a fetish for drinking
blood, it gives him work in which to immerse himself.
When Scully mysteriously re-appears comatose
in a hospital, Mulder drives himself crazy trying to find
the people responsible. Though his quest for vengeance could
make him exactly like those whom he despises.
A malfunction in a robot designed for
volcanic exploration yields evidence of a lifeform living in
the caves. When this lifeform seemingly causes the death of
a member of the research team,
Mulder and a newly recovered
Dana Scully are flown out to the site in
The Cascades to investigate before anyone else dies.
Several
Wisconsin teens are found wandering in the woods in
their underwear with “He is one” scrawled on their
backs. Mulder and Scully travel to investigate this aberrant
behaviour, though the strangest thing in this meat-producing
area is a cult of vegetarian “walk-ins.” Several relics from
the mythology like purity control and Deep Throat are
revisited here.
035-211
"Excelsis Dei"
Paul Brown
Steven Surjik
December 16, 1994
2X11
Mulder and Scully’s latest case begins with
the rape and battery of a nurse in a Massachusetts
convalescent home. What makes it an X-File is her claim that
her attacker was invisible. But upon their arrival, they
discover that the unrest is not limited only to the live –
in residents.
A young woman has been murdered in Aubrey,
Missouri, and the word "Sister" has been carved into
her chest with a razor. Detective B.J Morrow subsequently
experiences a vision and finds the body of an FBI agent who
was killed nearly 50 years ago. The dead agent had
investigated murders which then became filed in the X-files.
A serial killer kills again and Mulder and Scully have to
find out who the murderer is.
Someone is excavating graves in
Minneapolis, removing body parts from the corpses.
Mulder and
Scully are contacted because the agent on the case
believes the crimes to be related to incidents of
cattle mutilation. Mulder quickly dismisses the idea
that the case is an X-File, profiling the perpetrator as a
fetishist.
New Hampshire
teenagers feign an occult ritual in an attempt to score and
inadvertently cause the murder of one of their group. When
Mulder and Scully are called to look into the matter, the
town’s real worshippers attempt to hide their tracks, though
they fear that the boys’ attempt to “get some” got them more
than they thought.
One morning Private Jack McAlpin crashes his
car into a tree after two separate hallucinatory incidents.
The tree has a voodoo symbol drawn on it and this is the
second death of a soldier in two weeks that has featured
that symbol. The soldiers are guarding a processing centre
for Haitians and suspicion falls on one of the Haitians
identified by the colonel in charge.
At the beginning, a frozen Fox Mulder is
brought to a hospital. The episode flashes back to a scene
two weeks before, where the crew of a research vessel find
the wreckage of a UFO in the
Beaufort Sea. The pilot who survives this crash walks
out of the hospital and kills identical-looking doctors in
various abortion clinics.
The death of a federal construction worker
and the destruction of various property can only be tied to
an escaped
elephant, yet the witnesses claim to have seen no
animals which might have caused the turmoil. Soon, Mulder
and Scully discover the local zoo whose claim to fame is
that they’ve never had a successful animal birth.
FBI
Special Agents
Fox Mulder and
Dana Scully are called in when a boatload of survivors
from a
U.S. Navy
destroyer are found. What particularly catches Agent
Mulder's attention is that all of these Sailors appear to
have aged many decades in the course of a few days. Mulder
and Scully travel to
Norway where they find a civilian fisherman who is
willing to take them to the destroyer's last known
position.
Mulder and Scully must find the paranormal
among the abnormal when they are sent to investigate a long
standing series of ritualistic killings which match no known
patterns. The latest of which was the death of the “Alligator
Man,” just one of many sideshow acts around which the town
of
Gibsonton, Florida is built.
A photograph taken just before the death of a
two year – old boy yields evidence of some supernatural
intervention which piques Mulder’s curiosity. When another
death in the family occurs, the grandmother of the remaining
child requests the aid of some
Romanian ritualists (called
calusari, “horsemen”) in order to cleanse the home
of evil.
Mulder and Scully find themselves sent to a
penitentiary in order to participate in the retrieval of two
escaped convicts. Confused as to the reason for FBI
involvement, they soon discover a highly contagious and
deadly disease has infected many of the inmates, and
possibly the two escapees as well. The disease spreads when
larvae escape burst lesions on the skin of infected animals
or humans. It kills the infected host within hours. Mulder
and Scully's investigations lead them to conclude that the
disease was introduced into the prison in order to speed up
FDA trials of a pharmaceutical company's drug.
An ex-student of Scully’s asks the agents to
help her with her first investigation concerning a number of
disappearances with very few clues. Mulder ponders the idea
of
spontaneous human combustion but rethinks it when they
find a man who is afraid of his own shadow. The man is Dr.
Banton, a scientist researching
dark matter.
Dudley,
Arkansas is the site of the latest investigation for
Mulder and Scully, who are sent to find a missing poultry
inspector. The case takes a twist when another poultry
worker is shot after she goes insane, giving Mulder a hunch
that the townsfolk really
are what they eat.
The trust that Mulder and Scully have is
sorely tested when Mulder begins acting strangely. His
aberrant behavior is compounded when the Lone Gunmen direct
him to a hacker who managed to break into some very closely
guarded files. The files are encoded in Navajo and need to
be decoded by a former Navajo code talker.
