Season 8: Within (8X01)

Written by: Chris Carter
Directed by: Kim Manners

Scully is released from hospital and returns to work, keeping her pregnancy secret. Only to discover other agents going over the X-files basement office. Assistant Director Skinner explains that newly promoted Deputy Director Kersh has ordered a man hunt for Mulder.

Kersh has assigned agent John Doggett to the case and expects Scully and AD Skinner to co-operate with the investigation, warning that any mention of an alien connection will result in their dismissal. AD Skinner and Scully comply but secretly begin their own investigation in to Mulder's disappearance. Scully is suspicious of Agent Doggett, especially when she discovers that her phone is being tapped and later when her computer is stolen.

Investigating at Mulder's apartment she discovers his computer missing as well, more bizarrely her building superintendent claims to have seen Mulder. Meanwhile AD Skinner enlists the help of the Lone Gunman in tracking the movements of the UFO after Mulder's abduction.

When Mulder is again spotted, this time at the FBI, Doggett tells Scully that he believes that Mulder is dying from the affects of his unusual brain activity problem the year before and wants to save the X-files from being uncovered as a failure. So he staged his disappearance and is destroying all the evidence. AD Skinner disputes this, having been a witness to his abduction. The Lone Gunman discover that the UFO is in the Arizona Desert, probably preparing to abduct another victim. And Scully thinks she knows who.

Notes:
This episode marks the first major change to the opening credits since the show first started with new images, updated photos for David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and the addition of Robert Patrick to the main cast.

Agent John Doggett is named after sports commentator Vin Scully's co-commentator, Jerry Doggett. Vin Scully is the man after whom Dana Scully is named.

Dedication: In Memoriam - Jim Engh 1961-2000. Jim Engh was a member of the production crew who was electrocuted while filming a scene from a scaffold for this episode. Six other crew members were injured in the accident.

The titles of this two part season premiere 'Within' and 'Without' is from a line by Deep Throat in the season 3 premiere 'The Blessing Way'. When Mulder talks to him in the dream state, Deep Throat says "Go back. Do not look into the abyss or let the abyss look into you. Awaken the sleep of reason and fight the monsters within and without." And yet it seems odd they titled them this way round, since in the opening episode, the characters are 'without' Mulder, Scully is without someone she cares about so much, and Skinner and Scully must go without their belief in what happened to Mulder, as in not revealing it to anyone. In the second episode, they have an alien 'within', who could be anyone and there is much distrust of who it could be.

When Scully points out the location of the last time they saw Gibson Praise, she points to the (real) Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, which is west of Phoenix. In 'The Beginning' the plant shown was the (fictional) Rolling Hills Nuclear Plant, 60 miles east of Phoenix.

Quotes:
(Scully finds four agents rifling through the desk and file cabinets of her office)
Scully: What is this?! Excuse me. Can somebody please tell me what's going on here?
Agent TDB: We're collecting material.
Scully: For?
Agent TDB: For anything that might be pertinent to the manhunt.
Scully: What manhunt? Manhunt for who?
Agent TDB: You're kidding, right?
Scully: Look, there's nothing. If you're looking for Mulder, you're wasting your time. Are you listening to me?
Agent TDB: I'm not the man to talk to.
Scully: Well, then whose stupid idea is this?

Deputy Director Kersh: AD Skinner, Agent Scully. Thanks for getting right over. I don't want to lose any time. We have one of our own missing and the only acceptable outcome is that we find him safe and alive. I'm sure the two of you agree.

Skinner: That goes without saying, sir.
Deputy Director Kersh: Good. This comes at a stressful time, with my new appointment. But I'm thankful for your co-operation in the hunt for Mulder.
Scully: Our co-operation? With due respect, there aren't two people better qualified to be directing this action, sir.
Deputy Director Kersh: Right now, you and AD Skinner are the two primary witnesses to Mulder's disappearance. I want your statement taken ASAP.
Scully: You make us out to be suspects, sir.
Skinner: Taken by who?
Deputy Director Kersh: My task force leader on this, Special Agent John Doggett. He's waiting to hear from you now. One more thing. Anything leaves this building about aliens or alien abductions or any other nonsense that might cast the Bureau in a ridiculous light — hey, you can forget about looking for Agent Mulder. You'll both be looking for new jobs. That's all.

Doggett: Weren't you his partner? Mulder?

Scully: Yes.
Doggett: I guess nobody's beyond suspicion on this thing.
Scully: Why are they talking to you?
Doggett: Me? I knew Mulder back a bit. They're developing a working profile — character background.
Scully: I'd say they have all the character profile they need on him.
Doggett: Certainly his reputation. I doubt we agents ever really truly know each other even our partners. Not at the end of the day. Their real lives, their friends, girlfriends, deeply personal things, issues.
Scully: I think I know Mulder as much as anybody.
Doggett: Yeah, probably so. I always took the rumours with a grain of salt.
Scully: What rumours are those?
Doggett: Well, you know. Well, that, from the beginning he never felt a real trust with you, that you were ambitious.
Scully: Where'd that come from?
Doggett: There are women here at the Bureau that he could confide in. I don't know if you knew that or not.
Scully: No. When was this?
Doggett: I don't know, it's just talk. So, what do you think happened? To Mulder? What's your theory?
Scully: What's my theory? My theory is you don't know Mulder at all. You never did. 'John Doggett'. Kersh's task force leader. You might have just introduced yourself.
Doggett: Well, I was getting around to it.
(Scully stands up, throws her water in Doggett's face and leaves)
Scully: Nice to meet you, Agent Doggett.

Frohike: It took some serious voodoo.

Langly: Major satellite hacking.
Byers: But we got your data.
Skinner: What am I looking at?
Byers: You're seeing real-time images right off the JPL Topex Poseidon.
Frohike: We're wired right into the dish.
Byers: We're not able to find raw data with UFO activity on it.
Frohike: But... Langly was able to hack into the data storage here and pull up something just as tasty.
Byers: You're looking at UFO activity in the Pacific Northwest just prior to Mulder's abduction.
Langly: All these markers correspond with reported alien abductions. It's a regular shopping spree.
Skinner: So Mulder's abduction...
Frohike: Was a UFO whistle stop on the way to the next pickup.
Skinner: Where? Where's the UFO activity after Mulder's abduction?
Byers: Like we said, we can't tell. Not from the data we're pulling down.
Skinner: Look, if we can figure out where that ship was going, where it was going to be, we've got a chance to find Mulder.

Scully: What do you want to get on me, Agent Doggett? What is it you hope to find?

Doggett: I'm just trying to find Mulder.
Scully: You wouldn't know where to look.
Doggett: It's in the desk, middle drawer. I know the answer, Agent Scully.
Scully: I don't even know the question.
Doggett: What happened to Mulder? I know what you're going to say or not because you think I'm the big bad wolf. Do you really believe it?
Scully: You think by talking in circles, I'm just going to get dizzy and blurt it out — this so-called answer?
Doggett: That he was abducted by aliens?
Scully: You said it. I didn't.
Doggett: I guess I just find it hard to swallow that a scientist, a serious person, could buy that. Ever see an alien, Agent Scully?
Scully: You want me to go on record? I will go on record to say this: that I have seen things that I cannot explain. I have observed phenomena that I cannot deny. And that as a scientist and a serious person it is a badge of honour not to dismiss these things because someone thinks they're BS.
Doggett: So you think he was abducted? I'm just trying to find him.
Scully: Then what are you doing here?
Doggett: Trying to figure these out. I found them in his desk there. Car rental receipts on Agent Mulder's Visa. Four consecutive weekends in May. Same mileage each trip — 370 miles, 375 miles... where was he going?
Scully: I don't know.
Doggett: Like I said, maybe you really didn't know your partner.

Scully: That's it. It just came to me.

Skinner: What?
Scully: What you saw, why they took Mulder, why they're in Arizona now — it all makes sense. Why do people refuse to believe in aliens and UFOs after all these years of sightings and eyewitness accounts? Why?
Frohike: Because there's no real proof.
Scully: Because, maybe, if there are aliens they're simply going around and they're... and they're removing all of the evidence before it becomes proof. This isn't Mulder who's going around and collecting this stuff. It's them.
Skinner: Then why Arizona?
Scully: Because they are looking to find that which is not in my computer or Mulder's computer or in the files that were removed from the FBI. They are looking to find the whereabouts of good, hard proof. That in this case exists in a person, in a boy named Gibson Praise.

Episode Number: 162
Season Number: 8
First Aired: Sunday, November 5, 2000
Production Code: 8X01

Season 7: Requiem (7X22)

Written by: Chris Carter
Directed by: Kim Manners

A police car races down the highway in Bellefleur, Oregon. In the driver's seat is Detective Miles, who radios to his deputy, Ray Hoese, that he is approaching with backup on a downed aircraft in the woods. Suddenly, the digital clock scrolls backwards. The car loses power as it careens into another sheriff's cruiser, parked on the side of the road. A dazed and injured Detective Miles gets out of his car. A big fire burns in the distance through the trees. He notices the hands on his wristwatch are spinning backwards, as he approaches the other vehicle. An unconscious Ray Hoese slumps over the wheel. The deputy's eyes are swollen shut, the lids and membranes blistered and burned. Detective Miles looks down to see he has stepped in a bubbling, green substance. When he turns around, another Deputy Hoese stands before him. The man's eyes are unscathed. This Hoese has three bullet holes in his chest with the same green substance oozing out of him.

In Washington, Mulder sits before a large pile of receipts. Agent Chesty Short, the deputy chief auditor of the FBI, admonishes both Mulder and Scully for the extravagant expenses racked up by the X-files. He questions what they are investigating, now that the Samantha case has been resolved.

Back in their office, the agents receive a call from Billy Miles, who reports that the abduction experiences are occurring again. This time, however, they are not happening to him. Two teenagers scour the Oregon forest in an excited search for a UFO. One of the boys steps into an invisible force field and gets shaken at warp speed. Spooked by this sudden disappearance, the boy's friend Richie drops his flashlight, which has suddenly become red hot, and runs out of the woods.

Marita Covarrubias releases Krycek from a Tunisian prison on orders from the Cigarette-Smoking Man. The pair find the CSM near death, in a wheelchair, and attended by a nurse. Krycek is furious with the old man for sentencing him to a foreign jail. The CSM is eager to report that an alien ship collided with a military aircraft in Oregon. He needs them to recover it. "Our chance to rebuild the project," he whispers with a faint voice squeezed through a neck shunt.

Determined to rebuke Agent Short and spend more of the FBI's money, Mulder and Scully set off to Oregon to meet with Billy Miles, who is now a sheriff's deputy. The unidentified craft has yet to be found, and Deputy Hoese is still missing. Billy's father, Detective Miles, claims that there was never another craft. The agents follow the Miles officers to the scene. At the spot where Detective Miles' car went dead, Mulder sees an "X" spray painted on the pavement. It is the same mark he made on the road seven years prior to designate an anomalous electrical disturbance. Scully locates shells on the ground from Hoese's gun, but there is no indication of what he might have been shooting at. The agents drive off, and Detective Miles puts the evidence bag in his trunk - next to the body of Ray Hoese.

Mulder and Scully visit Hoese's wife, Teresa, and are surprised to find she is an abduction victim who approached them for help seven years ago. She says that her husband is also an abductee who had been taken and tested many times. As Scully holds Teresa's baby, Mulder watches his partner. The sight of Scully with a child seemingly has an effect on him. Scully comes to Mulder's motel room later that evening, pale and perspiring, suffering from chills. He covers her up in his bed and lies with his arms around her for warmth. He's been thinking that her personal costs are too high when motherhood and her health have been taken away from her. He demands that there has to be an end.

Outside the motel, Krycek sits behind the wheel of a parked car. He is on the phone to the CSM, telling him that no one can find the spaceship, even as Mulder and Scully search for the deputy. The CSM assures him that the ship is really there but it just rebuilding itself. Finding the deputy will uncover the ship. Ever faithful that his minion will be successful, the CSM is only wary of Krycek's true intentions once he finds the ship.

Across town, Teresa Hoese is awakened by the return of her missing husband. When Ray doesn't speak to her, she realizes that he is only an imposter. She gashes him with a pair of scissors, but the stabs don't faze him. Green ooze bubbles from the holes in his chest, causing Teresa's eyes to burn and blister. She stumbles and is grabbed by the imposter.

The next morning, Billy reports to Mulder and Scully that Teresa is missing. They immediately recognize the green acid burn on the floor, and as Scully touches it, she experiences another wave of vertigo. Outside the Hoese home, Mulder and Billy spot Richie eyeing the crime scene. Richie admits that "they" took his friend, and that Detective Miles does know what's going on because he was there. Richie leads the agents to the area in the forest where his friend vanished. Scully is quickly jerked into a force field and shook at a high frequency. Noticing Scully is missing, Mulder calls out for her. She lies on the ground semi-conscious, as if from another bout of vertigo. Mulder determines that these aren't merely random abductions, but a case of abductees not coming back.

A suspicious Billy returns home and draws his gun on the man that appears to be his father. Detective Miles calms his son before morphing into the Alien Bounty Hunter. At the same time, Mulder and Scully enter the house to warn Billy. Both men have instantly vanished. Mulder sits in his FBI office two days later, when Skinner enters with Krycek and Marita. There is a moment of complete surprise, but Mulder's quickly out of his chair to attack his nemesis. They explain that the CSM is dying, but his final wish is to revive the conspiracy. While the Bounty Hunter eliminates proof of testing on abductees, the spaceship, cloaked in an energy field, rebuilds itself.

That evening, the Lone Gunmen are brought in to Skinner's office to consult. They determine the ship's location even though the military has not picked it up on satellites. Mulder listens suspiciously to Krycek and Marita in silence. Scully abruptly leaves the room and Mulder follows her into the hallway. Since they are reclaiming abductees, he refuses to allow her go back to Oregon.

Scully remains in Washington with the Lone Gunmen, scrutinizing the abductee reports. Each one has reported experiencing the same irregular brain activity that struck Mulder earlier in the year. She concludes that Mulder is really the one in danger of being taken. Without warning, Scully collapses, and the Gunmen jump to save her. Meanwhile, Mulder and Skinner enter the Oregon forest. They lay out a series of laser pointers to detect any abnormal movements. As Mulder follows the red beams, something catches his eye. The red lines deflect in space and define the rough shape of a dome, but it seems as if they are colliding with an energy field. Mulder reaches out to touch the field and his hand vibrates at a high speed.

Looking up from laying down the last laser pointer, Skinner notices that Mulder is gone. Inside the field, a bright cone of light reflects on Mulder. His expression is full of awe. The other abductees are there to greet him with gentle smiles. A spaceship hovers overhead, and the Bounty Hunter enters the circle of abductees. The light grows in intensity and Mulder's look of awe turns to fear.

Outside the force field, Skinner is unaware of this activity and calls out for Mulder. All of a sudden, a spaceship appears from out of nowhere and Skinner watches it rise into the night sky. He is left alone in the darkness. Krycek reports back to the CSM that he failed his mission, but the CSM suggests that perhaps Krycek never meant to succeed. As Marita watches, Krycek shoves the CSM's wheelchair down a flight of stairs. The Cigarette-Smoking Man's body lies on the ground, motionless and apparently dead.

The next morning, Skinner is awkward when he visits Scully in her hospital room. She is better, but waiting on more tests. Skinner tries to hold back his emotion in telling her that he lost Mulder. She takes his hand and says she already heard the news. They both begin to cry, and Scully assures him that she must find her partner. And there is something else - although she can't explain it or believe it herself, she is pregnant.

Notes:
A 'requiem' is a mass for a deceased person, or a musical composition for such a mass. It is a hymn, composition, or service for commemorating the dead.

In Chris Carter's original script, there was no revelation about Scully's pregnancy. Instead it has Mulder lying on a table aboard the alien ship and his father coming to him and comforting him.

Three deleted scenes in this episode include an extended scene where Mulder and Scully arrive at Oregon for the first time after 7 years, an extended scene where Scully is questioned by the FBI agent, and an extended version of Marita Covarrubias' conversation with Kryceck

The FBI agent states that Mulder and Scully have 160 cases investigated, the same number of episodes done to that point. Of course this could be said to be incorrect, because of the 2 and 3 parters, but it's a nice wink to the audience.

Quotes:
Special Agent Short: Lariat car rentals. Totals. Would you like to see the figure?
Mulder: Is that a lot?
Special Agent Short: A lot? Gas, expenses... the motel rooms alone. By FBI standards these numbers are out of control.
Mulder: We could start sharing rooms.
Special Agent Short: You're under evaluation. There has to be a point when we say no.
Mulder: You can't really compare what we do to other departments in the Bureau.
Special Agent Short: Right. This business with aliens.
Mulder: Well, there's more to it than that.
Special Agent Short: But, at the end of the day you'd say aliens are your real focus.
Mulder: That's the reason I got started, yeah.
Special Agent Short: Investigating your sister's abduction and the government conspiracy around it. Both of which have been resolved, correct?
Mulder: Nothing has been resolved exactly.
Special Agent Short: In this case report here, it's concluded your sister is dead, as well as the men who took her. This is your handwriting here on the report, Agent Mulder?
Mulder: Yeah.
Special Agent Short: So, what exactly is left to investigate?

Special Agent Short: I see the money bleed out, but it just doesn't seem to make the results of your work any better. So many of the cases you investigate are left unexplained. Makes it hard to justify the expense.

Scully: So much of the work that we do cannot be measured in standard terms.
Special Agent Short: How would you measure it?
Scully: We open doors with the X-Files, which lead to other doors.
Special Agent Short: Doors leading to... 'A conspiracy of men who cooperated with alien beings to create human alien hybrids.' So we could all become slaves of an alien invasion.
Scully: I believe that there was once a conspiracy. I believe I was taken by men who subjected me to medical tests, which gave me cancer and left me barren.
Special Agent Short: But you don't believe in aliens?
Scully: I've seen things that I cannot deny.

Nurse Greta: Hi. He's anxious to see you.

Smoking Man: I was worried about you, Alex.
Krycek: Cut the crap, old man.
Smoking Man: I heard about your incarceration.
Krycek: You had me thrown in that hellhole.
Smoking Man: For trying to sell something that was mine, was it not? I hope we can all move forward... Put the past behind us. We have a... singular opportunity now.
Krycek: A singular opportunity?
Smoking Man: There's been a crash in Oregon. An alien ship has collided with a military aircraft. Recovery is all-important. It's Roswell and Corona all over again — 50 years later. It's our chance to rebuild the project.
Marita Covarrubias: How do you know someone hasn't already recovered it?
Smoking Man: It's never quite so easy.

Teresa Hoese: Yes?

Scully: Sorry to bother you, Mrs Hoese. We're with the FBI.
Teresa Hoese: Is this about my husband?
Mulder: You're Teresa? Teresa Nemman?
Teresa Hoese: Yes.
Mulder: Seven years ago you came to Agent Scully and I for help. You were afraid of being abducted.
Teresa Hoese: Oh, my God. Please, come in.
Teresa Hoese: I'm sorry... I sort of lost it when I realised who you were.
Scully: We, uh... we came to see if there's anything that you could tell us that might help to find your husband.
Mulder: We had no idea you were his wife.
Teresa Hoese: I don't know if it's important. Maybe I just hope it's not, but... Ray and I have a connection, that's even deeper for us.
Mulder: He's an abductee, too?
Teresa Hoese: He kept it a secret from almost everyone. It doesn't make you real popular around here. His experiences were a lot more terrifying than mine. He was taken many times and tested. I have extensive medical records on him and photos of his scars. I'll get you the files.

Scully: I, um... I was starting to get ready for bed and I started to feel really dizzy — vertigo or something — and then I just... I started to get chills.

Mulder: You want me to call a doctor?
Scully: No, I just... I just want to get warm.
(Mulder tucks Scully into bed, then lies behind her and embraces her in spooning cuddle) Thank you.
Mulder: It's not worth it, Scully.
Scully: What?
Mulder: I want you to go home.
Scully: Oh, Mulder, I'm going to be fine.
Mulder: No, I've been thinking about it. Looking at you tonight, holding that baby... knowing everything that's been taken away from you. A chance for motherhood and your health and that baby. I think that... I don't know, maybe they're right.
Scully: Who's right?
Mulder: The FBI. Maybe what they say is true, though for all the wrong reasons. It's the personal costs that are too high. There so much more you need to do with your life. There's so much more than this. There has to be an end, Scully.

Marita Covarrubias: Why the trouble? To bring Krycek here and then toy with him?

Smoking Man: Do you trust Alex, Marita?
Marita Covarrubias: Then why bring him here at all?
Smoking Man: You misunderstand. I've great faith that Alex will find the ship. But if I told him how, he'd be... he'd be tempted to sell the information.
Marita Covarrubias: And you're certain it's there?
Smoking Man: Oh, yes. But it won't be there forever. It's rebuilding itself.
Marita Covarrubias: If he finds the ship, then what?
Smoking Man: To possess it, is to possess the answer to all things. Every possible imaginable question.
Marita Covarrubias: To God?
Smoking Man: There's no God, Marita. What we call God is only alien — an intelligence much greater than us.
Marita Covarrubias: They're coming here, aren't they?
Smoking Man: They're only coming back.

Skinner: Agent Mulder! I think you should listen to him.

Krycek: You've got every reason to want to see me dead. But you've got to listen to me now. You have the singular opportunity.
Mulder: Here or you want to step outside.
Marita Covarrubias: Agent Mulder. Cancerman is dying. His last wish is to rebuild his Project, to have us revive the Conspiracy. It all begins in Oregon.
Krycek: The ship that collided with that Navy plane. It's in those woods.
Mulder: There's no ship in those woods.
Krycek: Yeah, it's there. Cloaked in an energy field. Great, mops up the evidence.
Mulder: Who?
Krycek: The Alien Bounty Hunter. Billy Miles. Teresa Hoese, her husband. He's eliminating proof of all the tests. We're asking ourselves, we're asking ourselves, 'Where are they?' They're right there. They're right under our noses. I'm giving you the chance to change that, to hold the proof.
Mulder: Why me and why now.
Krycek: I want to damn the soul of that Cigarette Smiking Son-of-a-Bitch.

Scully: This just can't be.

Frohike: What are you looking at?
Scully: Medical records — Billy Miles and other known abductees in Bellefleur, Oregon. They all experienced anomalous brain activity.
Byers: Electro-encephalitic trauma.
Scully: Which is exactly what Mulder experienced earlier this year.
Langley: I don't understand.
Scully: There was something out there in that field. It knocked me back. Because it didn't want me. Mulder thinks that it's me that's in danger of being taken.
Frohike: When it's Mulder who's in danger. Scully?
(Scully faints)
Lone Gunmen: Scully! Whoa! You okay? Oh, gee.

Skinner: Agent Scully.

Scully: Hi.
Skinner: Hi. How you feeling?
Scully: I'm feeling fine. They're just running some tests on me.
Skinner: Well... um...
Scully: I already heard.
Skinner: I lost him. I don't know what else I can say. I lost him. I'll be asked... what I saw. And what I saw, I can't deny. I won't.
Scully: We will find him. I have to. Sir, um... there's something else I need to tell you. Something that I need for you to keep to yourself. I'm having a hard time explaining it. Or believing it. But, um... I'm pregnant.

Highlights from ''Requiem''

Episode Number: 161

Season Number: 7

First Aired: Sunday, May 21, 2000

Production Code: 7X22

Season 7: Je Souhaite (7X21)

Written by: Vince Gilligan
Directed by: Vince Gilligan

Mulder and Scully are approached by Missouri businessman Jay Gillmore, who wants them to investigate a bizarre affliction that befell him, his mouth suddenly disappeared. He believes one of his former employee's Anson Stokes is some how to blame, having told him to shut up moments before it happened. Mulder and Scully travel to the Mark Twain trailer park to interview Anson, there is a brand new yacht parked next to the trailer.

Anson believing them to be IRS agents about the taxes on the yacht, hides and his wheel chair bound brother Leslie talks to Mulder and Scully instead. Mulder notices a woman in black looking board in the kitchen. Scully is astounded when Anson is later found dead and brought in for an autopsy, because he is invisible! An excited Scully calls in a research team from Harvard to validate her discovery.

Mulder meanwhile can find no record of the woman in black, until he runs her image through the national archive and finds evidence of the same woman appearing through out history, always around men who have great success and then great failure. Scully is deflated when the Harvard research team arrive and find Anson's body missing. Mulder however believes it has nothing to do with science, that Anson's body disappearing was the result of a wish being granted, he theorises that the woman in black is actually a genie. But he can not make out whether she is a good or evil genie, as everyone she comes in to contact with seems to end in tragedy.

Notes:
'Je Souhaite' is French for "I Wish".

The scene where Mulder walks through an empty street, after wishing for peace on earth, was shot on a Sunday morning and cost about $50,000, for some 10 seconds of filming.

In the original script, when Anson becomes invisible, his clothes were supposed to be seen moving, without a body inside, but it proved too expensive to shoot that way.

Mulder and Scully watch Caddyshack at the end of the episode, a reference to David Duchovny's first date with Tea Leoni, where they watched Caddyshack together and "just howled".

Quotes:
Scully: Look, Mulder, all I'm saying is that...
Mulder: I know — this may not be a crime and this guy Stokes may not know anything about it.
Scully: But there is a condition called microstomia — 'small mouth' — which is, uh, it's brought on by the disease scleroderma and it's the overproduction of collagen and it can actually reduce a person's mouth to a tiny little opening.
Mulder: Yeah, but that takes months to develop, right? It doesn't just happen in the blink of an eye. Gilmore's surgeons are stumped. They're writing it up in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Scully: Well, there's always nasal aplasia — the complete absence of a nose.
Mulder: That's a nose, Scully; we're talking mouth here.
Scully: Yeah, but what we're talking, Mulder, is medical — physiological — not criminal. Not as far as I can see.
Mulder: Well, maybe, but I still want to know why Anson Stokes doesn't want to talk to the police.
Scully: Mulder...
(They stop walking and stare at the enormous yacht sitting on the ground next to one of the trailers)
Scully: That's a little... out of place, wouldn't you say?
Mulder: A little bit.

Anson Stokes: I got it. I got it, I got it, I got it. Okay. Okay. Are you ready? Because I am ready. I am absolutely ready. Okay, here goes. I wish that I could turn invisible... at will.

Jenn: You're kidding.
Anson Stokes: No, no. This is perfect. Yeah, I could have an advantage that nobody else on earth can have. I can, um, you know, spy and learn secret information, pick up stock tips.
Jenn: Sneak into a women's locker room.
Anson Stokes: Not just that, okay? I'm talking about James Bond type stuff. You know?
Jenn: Your wish is breathtaking in its unoriginality.
Anson Stokes: You don't have to like it, all right? You just have to do it. Right?
Jenn: Done.
Anson Stokes: My clothes are going to turn invisible, too, right?
Jenn: You didn't specify clothes.
Anson Stokes: I know, but... screw it.
Jenn: Oh, God. Turn invisible please.

Scully: What's this?

Mulder: It's not what I hoped it would be. Judging from the odour coming inside, I think it's where the Stokes brothers keep their weed. But that's not what I wanted to show you. Recognise him?
Scully: Benito Mussolini.
Mulder: How about her?
Scully: Your mystery woman. Or someone who looks a lot like her.
Mulder: Well, the computer says it is her. I ran her through Quantico's facial recognition software and couldn't come up with a match in the known felon database. Then I took a flier and checked with the image bank at the national archives. Voila.
Scully: Well, even if it is her, Mulder, what would she be doing with Mussolini?
Mulder: Or Richard Nixon, for that matter. I don't know. Except that they're both men who got all the power they ever wished for and then lost it.

Jenn: The only thing you people are cursed with is stupidity. All of you. Everybody. Mankind. Everyone I have ever come into contact with without fail. Always asking for the wrong thing.

Mulder: You mean making the wrong wishes.
Jenn: Yeah, it's always: 'Give me money. Give me big boobs. Give me a big hoo-hoo. Make me cool like the Fonz.' Or whoever's the big name now.
Mulder: You been out of circulation a long time.
Jenn: So what? In 500 years, people have not changed a bit.
Scully: 500 years.
Jenn: Granted, they smell better now generally speaking but human greed still reigns... shallowness... a propensity for self-destruction.
Scully: You're saying that you have been a firsthand witness to 500 years of human history.
Jenn: I used to be human. I was born in 15th century France and then, one day, an old Moor came to my village peddling rugs and I unrolled one that an Ifrit had taken residence in.
Scully: 'An Ifrit'.
Jenn: A very... powerful class of jinni. He offered me three wishes. For the first I asked for a stout-hearted mule. For the second, a magic sack that was always full of turnips... Did I mention this was 15th century France?
Mulder: What was your third wish?
Jenn: My third... I pondered for a great while. I didn't want to waste it. So, finally, feeling very intelligent I spoke up and I said 'Je souhaite un grand pouvoir et une longue vie'. I wish for great power and long life.
Mulder: And thus became a jinni yourself.
Jenn: Gave me the mark of the jinn... right there. It's forever. Sort of like a prison tattoo. I should've been more specific. So, am I under arrest?
Scully: I can't think of anything we have to hold you on. And, not surprisingly we don't have any evidence of any of this, so, uh... I think she's free to go.
Jenn: No, I'm not. He unrolled me.
Mulder: I get three wishes.

Highlights from ''Je Souhaite''

Episode Number: 160

Season Number: 7

First Aired: Sunday, May 14, 2000

Production Code: 7X21

Season 7: Fight Club (7X20)

Written by: Chris Carter
Directed by: Paul Shapiro

When two FBI agents from the Kansas office get in to a fight with one another while investigating an incident where two men making religious calls got in to a fight with one another after visiting two houses and finding identical looking women living in them, Mulder brings the case to Scully's attention. One of the women is identified as Betty Templeton. Back in Kansas, Lulu Pfeiffer, who looks exactly like Betty applies for a job at a Koko's Copy shop, the manager remarks on the fact that she has had 17 jobs in 17 states in the past 3 years.

Across town in another Koko's Copy shop, Betty also applies for a job and the manager there notes that she has had 17 jobs in 17 states in the past 3 years. A newspaper clipping leads Mulder and Scully to Burt Zupanic, an amateur wrestler, he claims not to know Betty, but gives them an address. Scully checks the address and finds out about Lulu, she relates to Mulder how Lulu and Betty have followed each other from state to state and where ever they go, destruction has followed in their wake, from fights to fires even full scale riots.

Evidence suggests that the women are dopplegangers and keeping them apart should be their top priority. Unfortunately both Lulu and Betty have fallen for Burt Zupanic and have decided they want to stay in Kansas. When Scully discovers that Betty and Lulu's likeness stems from their shared father, via donations to a sperm bank. It leads to the discovery of Burt's doppleganger, but when they meet chaos ensues.

Notes:
The doppelgangers for Mulder and Scully are Steve Kiziak and Arlene Pileggi, who are also the stand-ins for the actors. Steve Kiziak appeared as himself in ''Hungry'' and Arlene Pileggi (wife of Mitch Pileggi) has appeared in several episodes as Skinner's assistant.

Scully tells Mulder "That's why they put the 'I' in FBI." Mulder said the same thing to her in the series Pilot episode.

Quotes:
Mulder: You have any ideas, Scully, any thoughts?
Scully: What I'm thinking, Mulder, is how familiar this seems. Playing Watson to your Sherlock. You dangling clues out in front of me one by one. It's a game, and... and, as usual, you're holding something back from me. You're not telling me something about this case.
Mulder: Hmm...
Scully: Okay, so these agents were investigating something. Something... much like what they themselves were almost killed by. Uh, something they came into contact with. Uh... Third party? Two third parties. Twins? Relatives? A doppelganger? A corporeal likeness that appears unbidden from the spirit world, the sight of which presages one's own death or... a double, conjured into the world by a technique called bilocation... which in psychological terms represents the person's secret desires and impulses, committing acts that the, uh, real person cannot commit himself... or herself? Mulder, the slide, please. Yes!
Mulder: Don't go thinking I'm going to start doing the autopsies.

Scully: Maybe you should take another look at that photograph, Mr Zupanic. Five-foot three, red hair. Maybe I can jog your memory. (She holds up a newspaper photo of Bert Zupanic with either LuLu Pfeiffer or Betty Templeton) Are you still pleading ignorance, Mr Zupanic? Is that not you in last year's Fourth of July parade?

Bert Zupanic: Yeah.
Scully: And who's that sitting next to you?
Bert Zupanic: Her?
Scully: Try Betty Templeton. We can't find her, Mr Zupanic. She seems to have left town in a hurry.
Bert Zupanic: She did?
Scully: Mm-hmm.
Bert Zupanic: Didn't she used to live on Moreton Bay in a pink house?
Scully: Alderwood, blue house.
Bert Zupanic: On Alderwood?
Scully: Mr Zupanic, do you have any reason to be lying to us?
Bert Zupanic: No, sir. I mean, ma'am.
Scully: Thank you, Mr Zupanic. I've no doubt we'll be in touch with you.

Scully: Bert Zupanic is a boxer?

Argyle Saperstein: A wrestler — semipro.
Scully: So what? We wait around Kansas City for a couple of days until we can talk with this woman?
Mulder: Well, there's lots to do here, and the barbecue's second to none right, Mr Saperstein? Plus Mr Saperstein's going to show me some in-your-face, smack-down moves so I can quit getting my ass kicked so often, right? Oh, and there's an art exhibit that traces the influence of Soviet art on the American pop culture, right? Unless, of course you've already found Betty Templeton.
Scully: Well, finding Betty Templeton won't solve this case, Mulder. Not unless we find LuLu Pfeiffer.
Mulder: Who's LuLu Pfeiffer?
Scully: Our doppelganger who lived, until yesterday, in a pink house on Moreton Bay Street, but she's not a manifestation, Mulder, she's real and so is the path of destruction that she's left in her wake. Though there seems to be no connection of any kind between these two women, Betty Templeton and LuLu Pfeiffer have travelled city to city across seventeen US States, one alternately trailing the other for the past twelve years and wherever they have been, mayhem has followed.
Argyle Saperstein: Damn.
Scully: It's not just car accidents and fistfights, Mulder. It's house fires and explosions and even riots.
Argyle Saperstein: The lady knows her stuff.
Mulder: Sholom alecheim.
Argyle Saperstein: Yeah. Your mama.

Scully: 50 million anonymous donations have been made to sperm banks across the US. Most have produced healthy offspring for single mothers or fertility-challenged couples while some of them have not. Bert Zupanic and his non-fraternal biological sibling both small-time bank robbers, part-time pro wrestlers, both with too many idiosyncratic behaviourism to list, stood a 27-million-to-one chance of ever meeting, but they did.

Argyle Saperstein: Damn, those are some odds.
Scully: Betty Templeton and LuLu Pfeiffer products of different mothers but the same father... an angry drifter now doing time for counterfeiting — chanced to meet 12 years ago, but couldn't seem to avoid each other's compulsively identical mannerisms, mannerisms attributable to their perpetually angry father.
Argyle Saperstein: Mm. What does it all mean?
Scully: I've been thinking hard about that, Mr Saperstein. I would like to say it has something to do with balance in the universe, the attraction of opposites and the repulsion of equivalents, or that over time, nature produces only so many originals, that when two original copies meet that the result is often unpredictable. If four should meet, the result is... well, suffice to say it's better just to avoid these encounters altogether and at all costs. I think Agent Mulder would agree with me.
Mulder: Mm-hmm. Mmmm.

Clip from ''Fight Club''

Episode Number: 159
Season Number: 7
First Aired: Sunday, May 7, 2000
Production Code: 7X20