Season 6: One Son (6X12)

Written by: Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz
Directed by: Rob Bowman

Mulder is about to pull the trigger and end Cassandra Spender's life, when the door to his apartment is forced open and CDC agents storm in, taking Mulder, Scully and Cassandra into custody. In a quarantined area at Ft. Marlene military base, Mulder and Scully are addressed by Diana Fowley. She explains that Cassandra Spender had contracted a highly contagious virus and needed to be put in isolation pending full medical evaluation. Scully scoffs at this notion, calling it unjustified and highly suspicious. Scully believes that Cassandra was taken so that the tests could continue. But Mulder tells Scully that the tests won't continue because they have been completed; Cassandra is, in fact, the first successful human/alien hybrid. Cassandra knew that; she was begging Mulder to end her life so that the aliens would not start colonization.

In a hallway at Ft. Marlene, Mulder finds Marita Covarrubias. She is a shell of her former self, all her beauty gone. She tells Mulder that they have been performing tests on her - tests to find a vaccine against the Black Oil. She explains to Mulder that the hybrid program was in cooperation with the aliens, but the conspirators never intended to succeed. They were only buying time until a vaccine was created to fight the Black Oil. But now that Cassandra Spendor is a successful human/alien hybrid, colonization will begin.

Scully calls Mulder to the Lone Gunmen's lair where she tells him of her suspicions about Diana Fowley. Scully feels that Diana is somehow working with the Syndicate but Mulder refuses to believe her. Scully storms out and Mulder pays a visit to Diana's apartment. He begins searching her room for any incriminating evidence when he hears another person enter the apartment - the Cigarette Smoking Man. Mulder holds him at gunpoint as C.S.M. substantiates the entire Syndicate operation. He even explains that Mulder's father gave over Mulder's sister Samantha to the aliens as a guarantee of their honor. In return, the aliens gave the Syndicate the alien fetus that would allow the human/alien hybrid work to begin. C.S.M. truly believes that what he did saved millions of lives and ultimately would bring Samantha and other family members back home. It was Mulder's father who thought of the idea to use the alien fetus DNA to make a secret vaccine against the Black Oil.

Jeffrey Spender pays a visit to his father in the Syndicate offices, only to find Krycek in the now abandoned space. Krycek tells Spender that everyone has left for El Rico Air Force Base to receive the hybrid genes and that Spender's father, C.S.M., has gone to get Cassandra to turn her over to the aliens, not believing him.

Notes:
This episode, which finally puts to rest everything about the government conspiracy with an alien species, begins with a montage of flashbacks stretching back to ''The Erlenmeyer Flask''.

Although the train carrying the Cigarette Smoking Man and Cassandra Spender near the conclusion of this episode appears to be travelling at high speed, in reality it never got above eight miles an hour -- the speed limit in the rail yard used for filming. The illusion was created with sound effects, music, clever camera angles and quick cutting.

Jo Black-David, who played the murderous nurse, was casting director Rick Millikan's high school drama teacher.

Quotes:
Mulder: (voiceover) Two men, young, idealistic -the fine product of a generation hardened by world war. Two fathers whose paths would converge in a new battle -an invisible war between a silent enemy and a sleeping giant on a scale to dwarf all historical conflicts. A 50-years war, its killing fields lying in wait for the inevitable global holocaust. Theirs was the dawn of Armageddon. And while the world was unaware, unwitting spectators to the hurly-burly of the decades-long struggle between heaven and earth there were those who prepared for the end; who measured the size and power of the enemy, and faced the choices: stand and fight, or bow to the will of a fearsome enemy. Or to surrender -to yield and collaborate. To save themselves and stay their enemy's hand. Men who believed that victory was the absence of defeat and survival the ultimate ideology ... No matter what the sacrifice.

(Mulder and Scully dressed in medical scrubs are being checked for radioactivity by a pair of technicians.)
Mulder: There must be some kind of mistake. I signed up for the aromatherapy treatment.
Scully: Are we going to be able to talk to somebody who can tell us what this is all about?

Diana Fawley: I'm going to beg for your understanding and forgiveness and offer my humblest apologies for the way this went down. I didn't have a lot of choices. I owe your neighbors apologies as well. It's going to be some time before they get back in the building. We're still acting on a CDC Level-Four quarantine protocol.
Scully: Based on what information?
Diana Fawley: That Cassandra Spender had contracted a highly contagious vectoring organism which produces a spontaneous cellular breakdown and combustion.
Scully: What?
Diana Fawley: She was and remains the only surviving victim of an unspecified medical experiment that killed seven doctors with violent and unexplained burning.
Mulder: Who called you?
Diana Fawley: Agent Spender.
Scully: Where's Cassandra?
Diana Fawley: She's isolated... pending full and satisfactory medical evaluation.
Scully: Cassandra Spender was in a general hospital environment for days. We met with her, and yet on a whim you call in the third battalion. It's unjustified and highly suspicious as to motive.
Mulder: Scully...
Diana Fawley: What motives are you suspecting?
Scully: Your isolation of Cassandra.
Diana Fawley: She's Patient Zero.

Marita Covarrubias: If they catch me with you, they'll kill me this time.
Mulder: Who?
Marita Covarrubias: The Smoking Man and ... his group.
Mulder: What have they done to you?
Marita Covarrubias: Tests. Terrible, terrible tests.
Mulder: Like the tests on Cassandra Spender?
Marita Covarrubias: No. No, Cassandra Spender is part of a program that's been going on for 25 years. A hybrid program.
Mulder: Then what were the tests on you?
Marita Covarrubias: I was infected with the alien virus -the black oil. My tests were on the vaccine against it ... being developed in secret.
Mulder: In secret from the alien colonists. The hybrid program was in cooperation with the aliens but the conspirators never intended to succeed ... to finish the work.
Marita Covarrubias: They were buying time.
Mulder: To make a vaccine and build a weapon.
Marita Covarrubias: But Cassandra Spender happened.
Mulder: She's the first, isn't she? She's the first successful alien/human hybrid.
Marita Covarrubias: If she is ... and the aliens learn a hybrid exists ... colonization of the planet will begin. With no stopping it.

Scully: Mulder, when I was abducted a chip was put in my neck. When I happened upon a MUFON group filled with women who'd had the same experience.
Mulder: So you're suggesting that Diana is monitoring these abductees?Monitoring these tests? Scully: You tell me that Cassandra Spender is the critical test subject -the one who could prove everything. And yet, who is watching over her? Mulder, I can prove what you're saying or I can disprove it but not when Diana Fowley is keeping us from even seeing her. Mulder, ask yourself why there is no information whatsoever on Special Agent Diana Fowley. Why she would suddenly happen into your life when you are closer than ever to the truth. I mean, you ... you ask me to trust no one and yet you trust her on simple faith.
Mulder: Because you've given me no reason here to do otherwise.
Scully: Well, then I can't help you anymore.

CSM: I remember looking over a gun barrel at you once before, Agent Mulder. You couldn't pull the trigger then. What makes you think you can do it now?
(Mulder cocks the gun.)
CSM: I came here looking for my son.
Mulder: Why?
CSM: Because he's betrayed me. He's chosen the wrong side. He's chosen to believe in your cause.
Mulder: That presumes my cause is wrong.
CSM: Oh, it is, Agent Mulder. It is.
Mulder: I'm not the one using innocent people -innocent women -as lab rats, trying to create a hybrid - an alien/human hybrid -so that I might save my own sorry ass when they finally come knocking! (CSM smiles.) You find that funny?!
CSM: Your father was against it, too, back in '73. The lone dissenter. But he came to his senses. And gave up your sister, Samantha.
Mulder: He didn't give up my sister. He was forced to. You made him do it.
CSM (with a laugh): Oh, you're wrong, Agent Mulder. I can't tell you how wrong you are. How wrong you've always been. We had agreed to cooperate with the alien colonists. By a majority vote taken by the group that your father and I worked for. A group that came together at the State Department on a project dating back to 1947, to Roswell.

Highlights from ''One Son''

Episode Number: 129

Season Number: 6

First Aired: Sunday, February 14, 1999

Production Code: 6X12