Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"

Internal dating: "How the Hell should I know?" The events of the case are clearly some time earlier than Scully's interview, and then the scenes in which Scully is reading the book much be several months after that. The episode immeidately afterwards, "Avatar", starts on March 7th 1996. Make of that what you will.

Klass County, Washington. Two teenagers are driving back from their first date when the car grinds to a halt and a space ship appears above them. She asks him what's happening. "How the Hell should I know?" he says, as they fall unconscious. Two "greys" drag them rather clumsily out of the car. Suddenly another space ship appears and a very badly animated monster thing appears and roars at them. "Jack, what is that thing?" one of the greys asks. "How the Hell should I know?" asks the other.

In Mulder's office, Scully is talking to Jose Chung, an author. Mulder, the "actual expert" on UFOs, has refused to speak with him, but Scully has always admired his work. His book, "The Lonely Buddha," is one of her favourite novels. He's pleased to hear she has good taste as well as being a "brainy beauty." He tells her his publisher has asked her to write a book on alien abduction, thus creating a whole new genre of "non-fiction science fiction" and bringing him lots of money. She says she hopes he plans to record the truth, but he laughs. "How can I possibly do that?... Truth is as subjective as reality," he says, adding that everyone involved in the particular abduction case in Klass County has their own versions of what happened.

Scully tells Chung about the girl, Chrissy, being found the next morning in the car, her clothes on inside out and her memory of the last evening gone. Chung asks her if she prefers the word "abductee" or "experiencer" for someone who has allegedly suffered alien abduction. Scully says she prefers neither but Mulder uses "abductee." However, she says, the girl was assumed to have been a victim of date rape.

That night, Scully tells Chung, the girl had a visitor. We then see the scene: Chrissy, her nose bleeding, sees an alien grasping at her, but it's only a hallucination. The figure is really her stuffed cat. Harold then appears outside, throwing stones at her window. She accuses him of attacking her, but he says he loves her and seems concerned for her welfare.

The boy is taken into custody and questioned (this too is based on what Scully tells Chung, as is everything in this episode). He denies rape and claims to have been abducted by aliens. However, by the time Mulder and Scully arrive, he's prepared to admit he must have raped her, as he sees no reason she would lie.

Mulder then questions the girl, and, on the basis of what she says about having hallucinations and things, is convinced that she was indeed abducted. He convinced the girl and her parents to be hypnotised, though, as Scully tells Chung now, she believes hypnosis only makes people make up stories rather than get at the truth. Chung, however, is fascinated by the idea of hypnosis.

Chrissy, under hypnosis, describes being tied to a slab while aliens look at her. Howard is on the next table but not aware of her. The aliens are arguing, but the only one she can understand is the leader, who appears to be speaking into her mind, telling her it's all for the good of her planet.

After the hypnosis, Mulder is excited, telling Scully it's a classic abduction. Scully disagrees, saying she's just being influenced by the abduction lore popular culture. Detective Manners is less polite in his opposition to Mulder's methods. His conversation is full of "bleeps", as Scully edits out his bad language when talking to Chung.

The boy now gives his story. In this, he was in some sort of cell. Chrissy was in the next cell on one side, and an the other was an alien. the alien was smoking, rocking to and fro and muttering "this is not happening." Howard promises to look after Chrissy, but she was pulled through the ceiling by a bright light. Scully cuts into his story, asking him is he and Chrissy had sex that night. He says they did, before the abduction, but if her father finds out "I'm a dead man." Scully, therefore, thinks the whole thing is a product of the stress caused by children having sex before they're ready.

A man, Rocky Crickensen, comes forward to say he's witness to the whole abduction. Mulder and Scully go to visit him, and he gives them a manuscript in which he's written it all down. He warns them that they're putting their life in danger by reading it, and tells them he was visited by two "Men in Black" the previous night. The Man in Black told him that all he saw was the planet Venus. Their faces were strangely unmemorable, and he couldn't move away from their gaze. The Man in Black who spoke to him mentioned "your scientists" as if he wasn't human, and has nothing but contempt for Rocky's "seeing is believing" attitude.

Later, in the motel room, Mulder reads aloud from Rocky's manuscript. His version is the same as the one we saw in the teaser, although he goes further. After the monster alien thing abducted the two greys, it came up to him. "Be thou not afraid," it told him, telling him he can help in the survival of all earthlings. The alien introduced himself as Lord Kinbote and took him deep within the earth. Mulder looks pretty disillusioned at this point.

Back in the present, Jose Chung tells Scully that he too has a copy of Rocky's tale, written in screen play format and full of details of the sex orgies of the creatures who live at the earth's core. "Surely your partner didn't believe any of it?" he asks her. Scully tactfully says Mulder's not inclined to dismiss any new theory, then we have a quick cut back to the scene in the motel room. "Mulder, you're nuts," she tells him. He admits that Rocky's delusional, but thinks the first part of the story is true, and it is that experience which caused the delusions behind the second half.

Mulder gets the girl rehypnotised. This time her story is different. Instead of aliens around her, he says she saw military men, although their positions in the room are exactly the same as the aliens she talked about last time. The man nearest to her was hypnotising her, while the others were arguing about what to ask her - such as whether the third alien had a Russian accent or where the grey aliens have gone. "Give her the usual abduction rigmarole," they say in the end.

Scully thinks Mulder was leading her, and even Mulder by now admits that the case may have nothing to do with aliens. Just then, Manners comes in and says someone has called in to say he's found a real alien body.

This story is told by Blaine, the youth who found the body, to Jose Chung, some time before he came to interview Scully. Blaine says he wants to be abducted by aliens as he has no prospects or no job here. He was out in the field that night when he literally stumbled over a UFO, and "notified the proper authorities." Unfortunately, he says, the proper authorities turned up with a couple of men in black (Mulder and Scully) "One of them was disguised as a woman but wasn't puling it off. Like, her hair was red, but it was a little too red, you know? And the other one, the tall lanky one - his face was so blank and expressionless. He didn't even seem human. I think he was a mandroid. The only time he reacted was when he saw the alien body" (Mulder gives girlie scream.) Scully then (according to Blaine) threatened him, saying if he tells anyone what he saw he's a "dead man." Scully is outraged when Chung tells her what Blaine said. Far from silencing him, she says, they let him attend the autopsy.

The autopsy is then shown. Blaine bursts in shouting "Roswell! Roswell!" and demanding to see the truth. Mulder invites him in and asks him to film the procedure. Scully, seemingly unfazed by the fact that she's performing an autopsy on something she doesn't believe in, examines the body.

However, as she tells Chung, someone got hold of Blaine's video and has marketed it, presented by the Stupendous Yappi (from Clyde Bruckman.) Yappi's voice over speculates on the identity of the "mysterious man " overseeing the proceedings (Mulder) and wonders which secret government agency the doctor (Scully) works for. The whole thing, Scully says, is really embarrassing and all the significant findings have been edited out.

These "significant findings" turn out to be that the "alien" is in fact a man dressed in an alien suit. Mulder assumes he'll turn out to be an airforce man. This is confirmed when some officers turn up to collect him. Mulder bluffs and manages to get confirmation that there is also a second airforce man somewhere out there. By this time, the body has disappeared.

(This next scene is told by Blaine to Chung.) Two Men in Black arrive at Blaine's place and rip the autopsy video out of the machine and rough him up. He was awoken by a third Man in Black (actually Mulder) who (so he says) also hit him and demanded to know where the tape was, telling him he was a "dead man" if he was lying.

(These next events are as told by Mulder to Scully. She isn't sure if they are true). Mulder is driving back from Blaine's place when he comes across the second pilot, Jack Scheaffer, who is naked, wandering in the road muttering "this is not happening." In a diner, over a meal of mashed potatoes, Scheaffer explains what's happening. (Trivia note - Scheaffer is wearing a grey sweat shirt marked "FBI", which was presumably in Mulder's car.) Scheaffer says UFOs have been fakes in order to disguise real military manoeuvres. The enemy attacks a real plane, but thinks twice before attacking a UFO. Abductees are worked on by the doctors at the base, who "mess with their minds" and makes them believe they've been probed by aliens. Scheaffer also believes he was abducted and that he met Lord Kinbote, but says he knows he can't trust that memory. "I don't know if you even exist," he tells Mulder. Then the airforce men come in to drag him off.

Chung tells Scully that this whole account is odd as the cook at the diner saw none of this. According to him, Mulder came in that night and ate slice after slice of sweet potato pie, while asking lots of questions such as "have you ever been abducted by aliens." (As this behaviour is very un-Mulder-like, presumably the cook's memory has been tampered with.)

(Mulder's version continues). Mulder gets back to the motel after leaving the diner. He finds two Men in Black in Scully's room, and Scully acting very calm and weird. The first Man in Black tells Mulder that some so-called alien encounters are hoaxes set up by the government, and that some of these hoaxes are then revealed as hoaxes in order to discredit the truth-seekers who believed them. Mulder says he's heard that the Men in Black act oddly so anyone who describes and encounter with them will seem crazy. "I find absolutely no reason why anyone would think you crazy if you described this meeting of ours," the Man in Black says, as the second Man in Black steps forward. It's Alex Trebeck. "The game-show host?"

Scully, talking to Chung now, admits she has no memory of any of this. Embarrassed, she tells him she was surprised to wake up and find Mulder asleep in her room. (Chung looks surprised at this.)

A crashed plane is found. Manners says this explains the UFO sightings, but Mulder says it's just the military's alibi. The pilot carried out of the plane is the one Scully did the autopsy on. Manners sums it up: "Bleep."

Back in the present, Scully tells Chung, "I know it probably doesn't have the sense of closure that you want, but it has more than some of our other cases."

Chung is working on his novel when Mulder visits him, urging him not to publish. "It will perform a disservice to a field of inquiry that has always struggled for respectability." The events, he says, deal with alternative realities and viewpoints, and, if presented wrongly, could really discredit the people involved and make them appear "foolish, if not downright psychotic." He is also concerned that the publisher is owned by a subsidiary of some other company that is part of the "Military-Industrial-Entertainments Complex." Chung assures him that the book will be written and asks him what really happened to Chrissy and Howard. "How the Hell should I know?" Mulder says.

Chung's voice-over muses on the persistence of people like Blaine, searching the skies in order to find the contentment that has eluded him in this life. Blaine now has Rocky's old job, while Rocky has moved to California and set up a cult based on his Lord Kinbote experiences. Chung reflects on how such a message appeals to the "lost and the desperate."

As Chung's voice-over continues, Scully is seen in the office, reading his book. In it, Chung calls her "Diana Luskey". He says she is "noble of spirit and pure at heart," but that she remains and FBI agent first and foremost. He calls Mulder "Reynard Muldrake" and says he's a "ticking time-bomb of insanity". "His quest into the unknown has so warped his psyche one shudders to think how he receives any pleasures from life." As we hear this, we see Mulder in bed, watching a Big Foot video.

Chung's summing-up continues: Chrissy has read into her experience a message to improve her own world and had got involved in campaigning. Howard still loves her, but, as she sneers at him, "Love? Is that all you think about?" As Chung says, everyone is searching for meaning, whether in the skies or in other humans. "Although we may not be alone in the Universe, in our own separate ways, on this planet, we are all alone."

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