The Pilot Episode

Internal dating: The episode starts on March 7th 1992 and ends on March 22nd. See theTimeline for the problems with this dating.

"The following story is inspired by actual documented events."

In Northwest Oregon, a girls runs in terror through the woods. Suddenlythere is a bright light and a strong wind. A figure approaches her.

Next day, her body is found. There are two spots low on her back. Adetective says her name was Karen Swensen, as she was at school with his son. One of his men asks if this was the Class of 89. "It's happening again, isn't it?"

Scully arrives at the FBI Headquarters, where she is called into the officeof Section Chief Scott Blevins. There are several other men there too, one of whom is Cigarette-Smoking Man. From this meeting we learn that he has been in the Bureau for just under 2 years. She trained as a doctor, but decided not topractice. She was recruited out of medical school, she says. "My parents still think of it as an act of rebellion, but I saw the FBI as a place where Icould distinguish myself." She's asked if she's familiar with an agentcalled Fox Mulder, and she says that she is, by reputation. He's an Oxford educated psychologist who wrote a monograph on serial killers and the occultwhich helped catch Monty Props in 1989, and "generally thought of as thebest analyst in the Violent Crimes Unit. He had a nickname at the Academy -Spooky Mulder." Blevins then tells her that, recently, Mulder has developeda "consuming devotion to an unassigned project outside the Bureaumainstream." He asks her what she knows about the "so-called X-Files"."I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena," she says. Hethen tells her she's been called here as they want her to assist Mulder, andwrite field reports and "your observations on the validity of the work.""Am I to understand that you want me to debunk the X-Files project, sir?"she asks, calmly. He says they trust her to make a "proper scientificanalysis."

Scully knocks on Mulder's office door in the basement. "No-one here butthe FBI's most unwanted," he calls. She goes in, looking around at the UFOpictures on the wall. She introduces herself, holding out her hand for him toshake.

Mulder: "Well, isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded. So, whodid you tick off to be stuck with this detail, Scully?"

Scully: "Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've hearda lot about you."

Mulder: "Oh, really? I was under the impression you were sent to spy onme."

Scully: "If you have any doubts about my qualification andcredentials..."

Mulder: "You're a medical doctor. You teach at the Academy. You didyour undergraduate degree in physics." (He pulls out her thesis from a pileof papers) "Einstein's twin paradox - a new interpretation. Dana Scully'ssenior thesis. Now that's a credential. Rewriting Einstein."

Scully: "Did you bother to read it?"

Mulder: "I did. I liked it. It's just that, in most of my work, thelaws of physics rarely seem to apply. Maybe I can get your medical opinion onthis."

He shows her some slides of the girl we saw killed in the teaser. He showsher the chemical formula of the substance found at the site of the strange markson the girl's back. She says she's never seen something like that before, andasks him if he has a theory. "I have plenty of theories," he says. "Maybeyou could explain to me why it's Bureau policy to label these cases asunexplained phenomena and ignore them." He then lowers his voice, andleans forward towards her. "Do you believe in the existence ofextraterrestrials?" he asks. She says no, arguing that the distanceinvolved are too great. He cuts off her explanation, telling her it's only "conventionalwisdom." This girl in Oregon, he says, is the fourth person in her class todie in the same way. "When convention and science offer us no answers,might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility." Scully givesa long answer about it being "plausible" that things were missed inthe investigation, but that the only thing she finds fantastic" is the ideathat there are answers beyond the realm of science. "The answers are there,"she says. "You just have to know where to look." "That's why theyput the eye in FBI?" Mulder says, telling her they're off to the "plausible"state of Oregon to investigate.

On the plane, Mulder is lying down across the seat, while Scully is readingup on the case. When they hit some turbulence, Scully looks tense but Mulder isunworried. "This must be the place," he says.

In the car, Mulder tells Scully that the case has already been investigatedby the FBI after the first death. They found no evidence and were recalled, thecase being filed away as an X-File. Scully has found out that the autopsyreports of the first three victims make no mention of the strange marks, butthat these were performed by a different medical examiner from the one who didthe latest autopsy. "That's pretty good, Scully," Mulder says. "Betterthan you expected, or better than you hoped?" she asks. She asks if themedical examiner is a suspect, but he says they won't know until the exhume onthe other bodies to see if it also has the marks and the odd chemical substance.

Suddenly the radio goes all weird. Without a word, Mulder stops the car,gets out a can a spray paint and sprays a red cross in the middle of the road.Scully looks on in amazement. When she asks what he's doing, he simply says, "Probablynothing."

At the cemetery, they prepare to exhume the body of Ray Soames, one of theearlier victims. Dr Nemman, the medical examiner from the first three deaths,drives up and orders them to stop. When Mulder asks about the tissue sampletaken from Karen Swensen's body, he gets angry, asking what Mulder'sinsinuating. However, his daughter begs him to leave it alone and go home.

The body is exhumed, but the coffin falls to the ground and bursts open. Thebody inside in not human. XXX Scully calmly examines the body while Mulderexcitedly takes photos and gushes about how staggeringly important thisdiscovery is. Scully concludes the body is some sort of ape, but Mulder wantsmore analysis done. She asks if he honestly believes its an alien. "I'm notcrazy, Scully," he says, softly. I have the same doubts you do."

4.37am. Scully writes her report on the body. She says she can't yet accountfor the small metal implant she found in the nasal cavity. There is a knock atthe door and she asks who it is. "Stephen Speilberg," Mulder says.He's dressed for running, saying he can't sleep, and asks her if she wants tocome. She declines. He then asks if she's figured out the thing in Ray Soames'nose. She says she hasn't, but isn't losing any sleep over it. She then shutsthe door, and goes back to studying it.

Next day, they go to the Psychiatric Hospital where Ray Soames had beentreated for schizophrenia, brought on my post-traumatic stress. The doctor saysthat several others from the class also suffered from the same. Two of them,Billy Miles and Peggy O'Dell, are both still in the hospital.

Billy Miles is in a persistent vegetative state as a result of a car crash.Peggy O'Dell is at his side, reading. When he overhears Mulder's desire to do anexamination, she panics. In the struggle, Mulder takes the chance to look ather back. She too has the marks. Scully sees this, and walks out angrily.

Outside, Mulder catches Scully up. She is angry with him for not telling herwhat he's thinking about the case. He asks why he should tell her. "So youcan put it down in your little report? I don't think you're ready for what Ithink." "I'm here to solve this case. I want the truth," sheshouts. He tells her his idea of the truth - that the kids have all beenabducted by aliens. "You don't really believe that?" Scully asks. It'sa crazy idea, she says, with nothing to support it.

At night, Mulder and Scully go to the woods where all the victims have beenfound. Scully picks up a handful of fine dust from the ground and puts it in herpocket. She then hears an engine-type sound, and sees a bright light. A figureappears in the light, just like in the teaser. This time, however, it's justsomeone from the sheriff's department, who warns them they're trespassing. Theyare forced to leave.

Mulder and Scully drive back in the dark. Scully shows Mulder the fine dust,and wonders if it's from some sort of fire in a cult ritual. Suddenly there's ablinding flash, and the car stops. Mulder, who's looked at his watch justbefore, says they've lost nine minutes of time. He's really excited at this andgets out and virtually dances in the road. It's exactly the same place as thered cross he marked in the road. "Time can't just disappear," Scullyshouts. "It's a universal invariant." "Not in this zip code,"Mulder replies.

Scully writes her report, concluding that Mulder's theories can't bevalidated. Just as the power goes out in the storm, she goes to take a showerand notices two small marks on her back.

Mulder opens his door to see an anxious Scully in a bathrobe. She pulls itoff and asks him to look at her back. He tells her they're just mosquito bites,and she is so relieved she leans on his chest and he puts his arms around her.She then sits down and he sits down across the table and urges her to take hertime.

Scully is lying on the bed while Mulder sits on the floor and tells herabout his sister. He was 12, he says, and she was 8. "She just disappearedout of her bed one night. Just gone. Vanished. No note. No phone calls. Noevidence of everything.... It tore the family apart. No-one would talk about it.There were no facts to confront, nothing to offer any hope." He says that,as soon as he could, he got out and went to Oxford, then was recruited by theBureau. "It seemed that I had a natural aptitude for applying behaviouralmodels to criminal cases. My success allowed me a certain freedom to pursue myown interests." He thus discovered the X-Files, and was fascinated by them.However, some of the information is classified and someone is blocking hisaccess. The only reason he's been able to continue is that he has madeconnections in Congress. When Scully asks who is blocking him, and why, he says,"you're part of that agenda. You know that." "I'm not part of anyagenda," she assures him. "You've got to trust me. I'm here like you -to solve this."

He then leans forward, and says he's telling her this because she needs toknow, if she's going to be working with him. In the course of his work he'sworked with a Dr Heitz Werber who's taken him through regression hypnosis toaccess his repressed memories of the night his sister disappeared. "I canrecall a bright light outside, and a presence in the room. I was paralysed,unable to respond to my sister's calls for help. Listen to me Scully. This thingexists. The government knows about it, and I've got to know what they'reprotecting. Nothing else matters to me, and this is as close as I've ever gottento it."

The phone rings at that moment. It is an anonymous caller, saying PeggyO'Dell is dead.

Peggy O'Dell was killed after running out in front of a car, despitenormally being in a wheelchair. Her watch has stopped at the same time as Mulderand Scully lost nine minutes. While they are at the scene, news comes in thatthe autopsy lab has been trashed and the bodies stolen.

Mulder and Scully return to find their motel has burnt down, taking alltheir files and photos with it. A girl, Teresa Nemman, rushes up. She's themedical examiner's daughter, and she was the one who called about Peggy O'Dell.She's terrified and asks for their protection.

Teresa says she often finds herself out in the woods with no memory of howshe got there. All her friends and classmates are dying, and she's afraid shewill be next. She admits that her father is covering things up. Suddenly hernose starts bleeding, but then her father comes in and takes her home. With himis the detective who warned them out of the woods. They find out he is BillyMiles's father.

Scully thinks Nemman and Miles are in it together, but Mulder thinks it'ssomething more. They go to the cemetery but find that the other two victims havealso been exhumed. Mulder suddenly realises somehow who is responsible. It isBilly Miles, he says - the boy in the hospital. Scully laughs almosthysterically. Mulder thinks that, at the same time as they lose their nineminutes, time as we know it stopped and something else took control of it,causing Billy Miles and Peggy O'Dell to be able to walk normally despite theirinjuries. They all come to the forest because the "force controls them,while the marks are from "tests" which cause some genetic mutation, asseen in the exhumed grave.

Mulder and Scully visit Billy Miles, who is still in the hospital bed,unresponsive. Scully looks at his feet and finds they are covered with the greydust from the woods. Scully is amazed, but Mulder, for once, urges caution,reminding her that she must write all this down in her report. She says shewants to go to the forest again to get another sample in order to run acomparison.

In the forest, they hear a scream. They both rush wildly through the woods,but Scully bumps into a branch and falls over. Detective Miles is there, and heholds Mulder at gunpoint. Mulder accuses him of knowing all along what'shappening and condoning murder in order to protect his son. When there's anotherscream, Mulder rushes off. He finds Billy Miles crouched over Teresa Nemman, asthe wind whirls around them. Detective Miles, persuaded by Mulder, urges his sonto put her down and then raises his gun on his son. Mulder knocks DetectiveMiles over, and the watch as a bright light from above shines down on Billy andTeresa. When the light is gone, they are both still there. "Dad?"Billy says, looking very confused. The marks on his back are gone.

Scully rushes up now, having seen the light from the distance. "It wasincredible," Mulder tells her, looking moved.

March 22 1992. Billy Miles undergoes hypnosis, performed by Heitz Werber. Hesays he and his friends had all been in the wood celebrating their graduationwhen the light came. It took him away to the "testing place" and toldhim to gather the others so they could be tested. They put an implant in hishead, and said it was all be okay. However the test didn't work and they wantedeverything destroyed. He's afraid they're coming back.

Scully presents her report, which Blevins finds to be unscientific and fullof fantastic conclusions. She objects, saying she only reported things sheactually saw. She admits, however, that she can't substantiate some of Mulder'sclaims. Blevins says he sees no evidence to support the validity of the X-files,but she defends them, saying that real crimes had been committed, and weresolved. When told she has no evidence, she hands over the implant, which hadescaped the fire. She has run a lab test on it, she says, and the material can'tbe identified. Blevins asks what Mulder thinks about all this. "AgentMulder thinks we are not alone," is her answer.

As Scully leaves, she passes the Cigarette Smoking Man in the corridor

11.21. Scully is in bed, but awake, when Mulder calls her. He says he can'tsleep. The file on Billy Miles has gone and he wants to talk. "Tomorrow,"she says, looking thoughtful.

In a warehouse in the Pentagon, CSM files away the implant in a box ofdozens more the same, next to hundreds of similar boxes.

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