Quagmire

Internal dating: No date given. The previous episode was early March 1996 and the next is late April giving us a nice long period of time to play with.

Mulder, Scully, plus dog, drive along the Georgia roads, past exciting notices asking things like "what's older than the hills?" Mulder asks her if she really needed to bring "that thing", but she points out that it's his fault, dragging her out with five minutes' warning on a Saturday morning when her mother was out of town and the dog-sitters already booked up. She pronounces herself "lost" as to why he's interested in a missing person's case, and is not really any clearer after he points out that the missing person was a federal employee therefore the case falls under FBI jurisdiction. He then tells her this is the second such case in two weeks. "So you think that there's a serial killer at large?" she asks. "The operative word being large," Mulder says. There is a long silence. "What are you leaving out?" Scully asks at last. Mulder affects all innocence, but she's not fooled. They then drive past a large notice, proclaiming the presence of "Big Blue - the Southern Serpent." "Tell me you're not serious," Scully says, incredulous.

Mulder and Scully visit Dr Farraday (and Mulder does his staring into a fish tank trick, like in Born Again. Is he reminding himself what his fish looked like, back when they were still alive?). Farraday makes no secret of his dislike of the missing man, who dismissed his work on the frogs, but denies killing him, although Scully seems rather sceptical. Mulder asks him if he knows of any creature in the lake capable of killing a man. "Has anyone ever told you two you have a great problem coming to the point?" Farraday asks. Mulder gets to the point and asks if he's seen any evidence of Big Blue. Farraday looks disgusted. "Whenever an issue requires any real thought, any serious mental effort, people turn to UFOs, and sea serpents and sasquatch," he says, as Mulder and Scully exchange a look. Mulder protests that other sea creatures have been found in inland lakes, but Farraday dismissed his example as "an anomaly which proves nothing. It only serves a pseudo-scientists with nothing better to do than chase fairy tales."

As they walk to a fishing shop, Mulder lectures Scully on lake monsters. She says he knew about them once, but "then I grew up and became a scientist." Mulder says that some "very grown-up crypto-zoologists" think it could be a plesiosaur, though he admits there's little hard evidence. That's because it's all a folk tale, Scully says.

Inside the store, Mulder and Scully talk to the owner, Ted Bertram, he recounts his own sighting of Big Blue when he was a child. Scully says it's a good story - "those stories must sell a lot of t-shirts." Bertram suggests they talk to Ansel Bray, the real expert, who devotes his life to trying to photograph the monster.

On a jetty, a fisherman hooks up a body and Mulder and Scully (minus dog) go to investigate. It turns out to be half a body only - the boy scout leader who was the first person to go missing. Scully thinks he got drunk, fell in while urinating, and has been half consumed by lots of little voracious fishes. "Are fish also known for eating half and saving half for later?" Mulder asks.

That night, Bertram the shop owner stomps through the mud in some very cute monster feet. One foot gets stuck in the mud, and something attacks him as he tries to extract it.

Next day, having found Bertram's discarded hat, Ansel and Mulder get rather interested in the tracks, though the sheriff and Scully (and dog) trample right through them. Mulder wants to close the lake, but the sheriff opposed, saying it would be an vast effort, requiring the National Guard, and, besides, he sees no reason. Suddenly the dog, now revealed to be called Queequeg, takes off and Scully follows, finding the monster boot stuck in the mud. It was all a hoax, she says, but Mulder points out some blood on the boot. "What happened to the hoaxer?" he asks.

Beside the lake, the surviving youth from War of the Coprophages is still trying to convince the same girl into taking dubious drugs - toads, this time, rather than manure. Suddenly a diver bursts out of the water, lashing around as if being attacked. The water runs red with blood.

Scully looks at the body and pronouncing it to be propeller damage from a boat, but Mulder is sceptical. "Regardless of what I believe," she tells him, "there's no hard evidence that it's what you believe."

Ansel Bray sets up his camera, snapping away as something rushes out of the water and attacks him. At the scene later, Mulder again insists that the lake be closed down, but the sheriff says he hasn't got the man power. Scully agrees, telling Mulder they have no real evidence. Suddenly the sheriff falls in the water. When he gets out he's terrified, saying something brushed up against him. "Close the lake!" he orders.

Mulder studies the photos Ansel took during the attack. "Could this be a tooth?" he asks, pointing at some vague triangular thing. Convinced he'll find nothing at all, she takes the dog out for a walk. He offers to come with her, but she says she'll be fine, and he says he'll see her in the morning.

Out in the dark, Queequeg starts barking at something in the undergrowth and pulls away. Little squeaks are heard from the darkness, as his retracting leash thing comes snaking back, the collar empty. Scully looks at it in horror.

"I'm sorry about Queequeg," Mulder says, as Scully sits staring into space, looking devastated. Mulder gives the impression of almost wanting to laugh at the dog's name, and immediately starts talking about the photos, saying he's worked out that the sightings of the monster have moved closer to the shore. "Can you repeat the last part again, I kind of faded out," Scully asks. Mulder asks which part she means. "After you said I'm sorry," she says. "Can you drive a boat?" Mulder asks.

Mulder and Scully head out into the lake. "You really expect to find this thing, don't you, Mulder?" she asks. Mulder points to the map, telling her where to turn, and she says she'll take it as a yes. "I know the difference between expectation and hope," Mulder says. "Seek and ye shall find, Scully." Suddenly something rather large appears on the radar ("it ain't no bass") and they crash into it, holing the boat rather dramatically, and have to abandon ship. "There goes out $500 deposit," Scully says, as they manage to clamber onto a rock

Stuck on the rock, Mulder and Scully talk.

Mulder: "You know, living in the city, you forget that the night is actually so... dark."

Scully: "Living in the city you forget a lot of things. You know there you're always thinking about getting mugged, or hit by a car. It's not until you get back to nature that you realise that everything is out to get you. My father always told me to respect nature because it has no respect for you."

They draw their guns at a sound in the water, but it passes by.

Mulder: "That was him, Scully. That was Big Blue."

Scully: "So what if it was. Mulder, what are we doing here?" (she sits down) "What are you hoping to accomplish?

Mulder explains how so many things they investigate are intangible, but this exists within the confines of this lake and he wants to find it.

Scully: "What for?"

Mulder: "You're a scientist. Why do you ask that question?" He goes on to explain that it would revolutionise biological thinking.

Scully: "Is that really the reason why? You know when you showed me those pictures that the photographer took, you want to know what I really saw in them?

Mulder: "A tooth?"

Scully: "No. You. That man is your future - listening only to himself, hoping to catch a glimpse of the truth for who knows what reason."

Mulder: "Well I did read in his journals that he was hoping to live off the copyright fees from a genuine Big Blue photo."

Scully: "As dumb as it sounds at least it's a legitimate reason."

Mulder: "You don't think my reasons are legitimate?"

Scully: "Mulder, sometimes I just can't figure them out."

Another splash disturbs them into pointing their guns, but it's a duck this time.

Later, sitting by a fire on the rock, Mulder asks Scully if she could ever cannibalise someone. She begins to ponder the question, but he interrupts her to ask her if she's lost some weight. "Yeah, I have, actually, thank..." she begins, then sees what he's implying and gives him a dirty look. He laughs, but then turns serious, pondering on the lengths creatures go to survive, and how such a creature would have survived. "Poor Queequeg," Scully says suddenly. Mulder asks her why she called him that, and she tells him about her father reading her "Moby Dick". She was Starbuck, he was Ahab, and the dog was named after Queequeg, the harpooner.

Scully: "It's funny. I've just realised something. How much you're like Ahab. You're so consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be its inherent cruelties or its mysteries, that everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniac cosmology."

Mulder: "Scully, are you coming on to me?"

Scully: "It's just... the truth, or a white whale?" she says. "What difference does it make? I mean, both obsessions are impossible to capture, and trying to do so will only leave you dead, along with everyone else you bring with you. You know, Mulder, you are Ahab."

Mulder: "You know, it's interesting you should say that because I've always wanted a peg leg. It's a boyhood thing I never grew out of. No, I'm not being flippant." He goes on to explain how, having a disability of some sort, it's heroic just to live, but without it you actually have to do something with your life. "So if anything I'm actually the antithesis of Ahab because if I did have a pegleg I'd quite probably be more happy and more content and not feel the need to chase after these creatures of the unknown."

Scully: "And that's not flippant?"

Another noise disturbs them ("it ain't no duck") and they see Dr Farraday walking past, and realise their rock is only yards from the shore. Farraday talks about frogs, and Mulder theorises that the monster used to eat frogs but, after they declined, had to turn to alternative food sources. Farraday is annoyed at what he sees as Mulder's distortion of his legitimate research, but Mulder gets all carried away with his idea, as Scully rolls her eyes in the background. "Well, Captain, what now?" she asks, as Farraday goes. The sheriff comes up, saying there's a genuine attack on the other side of the lake, but Mulder wants the search right here, in Striker's Cove, as that's where the depletion of the frogs started, so that's where he thinks the monster lives. The sheriff won't listen to Mulder, but Scully steps up and politely tells him "Agent Mulder and myself would appreciate it if you could spare us two or three of your men to assist us here." he agrees, and Scully gives Mulder a look. "Thanks," he mutters.

Farraday is attacked, his leg badly bitten. Scully stays to tend to him, and Mulder goes after the monster, following Farraday's directions. "Mulder!" Scully calls, as he walks off, ignoring her.

Mulder prowls around the woods, as something watches him from the undergrowth. hearing a noise, he runs, but trips over a tree root. He empties his gun into the attacker, which is revealed as an alligator.

The sheriff and his men clear up the scene as Mulder stands staring out into the lake.

Scully: "How are you?"

Mulder: "I'm fine,"

Scully: "Well, you slew the big white whale, Ahab."

Mulder (smiling): "Yeah, but I still don't have that peg-leg."

Scully: "How can you be disappointed. That alligator would have gone through the local population if you hadn't killed it."

Mulder: "I know. I guess I just wanted Big Blue to be real. I guess I see hope in such a possibility."

Scully: "Well, there's still hope. That's why these myths and stories have endured. People want to believe."

Mulder stares at the lake a while, then follows Scully. Big Blue swims past after he's gone.

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