Season 6: Biogenesis (6X22)

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

When a scientist Solomon Merkmallen who believes in Panspermia, the theory that life on Earth originated from Mars, finds an artifact on a beach in the Ivory Coast that could be irrefutable proof. He travels to Washington to show it to Dr. Sandoz, who has discovered similar tablets.

Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate when Merkmallen is killed. Mulder is shown a rubbing of the tablet Merkmallen found and experiences voices in his head while in Assistant Director Skinner's office. The two agents visit Dr. Sandoz's lab and meet Dr. Barnes, who has spent his career debunking fakes.

Mulder wonders if it would not be in Dr. Barnes best interest to hide any conclusive proof. They visit Dr Sandoz's residence and find Merkmallen's body and a photograph of Dr. Sandoz with the Navajo code talker Albert Holsteen.

Tests reveal Merkmallen's body has been exposed to Cosmic Galactic Radiation, a type of radiation from outside of our Solar System. Mulder's spells of hearing voices in his head increase in frequency until he is incapacitated and has to be rescued by Diana Fowley.

Meanwhile Scully goes to see Albert Holsteen in New Mexico only to discover he has cancer. Scully encounters Dr Sandoz who claims that the artifact has code from the human genome on it. Shortly afterwards Dr Sandoz is killed by Krycek. Scully travels to the Ivory Coast to the beach where Merkmallen discovered the tablet. And finds that the tablet is part of a larger object, a UFO buried in the sand.

Notes:
This episode marks the beginning of the so-called "new mythology".

When Mulder and Scully are examining the artifact in his office, there are pencils hanging from the ceiling tile over Mulder's desk in the background. These are presumably the same pencils he was throwing into the ceiling when Scully walked into the office at the end of the 5th season episode "Chinga".

Although X-Files management was prepared to suspend filming to accomodate the birth of David Duchovny's first child, it proved to be unnecessary. Madelaine West Duchovny was born on April 24, 1999; two days after the filming of Fox Mulder's final scene in this season finale.

Quotes:
Scully: (voiceover) From space, it seems an abstraction — a magician's trick on a darkened stage. And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive. It first appeared in the sea almost four billion years ago in the form of single-celled life. In an explosion of life spanning millions of years, nature's first multicellular organisms began to multiply... and then it stopped. 440 million years ago, a great mass extinction would kill off nearly every species on the planet leaving the vast oceans decimated and empty. Slowly, plants began to evolve, then insects, only to be wiped out in the second great mass extinction upon the Earth. The cycle repeated again and again. Reptiles emerging, independent of the sea only to be killed off. Then dinosaurs, struggling to life along with the first birds, fish, and flowering plants — their decimations Earth's fourth and fifth great extinctions. Only 100,000 years ago, Homosapiens appear — man. From cave paintings to the Bible to Columbus and Apollo 11, we have been a tireless force upon the earth and off cataloguing the natural world as it unfolds to us. Rising to a world population of over five billion people all descended from that original single cell, that first spark of life. But for all our knowledge, what no one can say for certain, is what or who ignited that original spark. Is there a plan, a purpose or a reason to our existence? Will we pass, as those before us, into oblivion, into the sixth extinction that scientists warn is already in progress? Or will the mystery be revealed through a sign, a symbol, a revelation?

Skinner: A case like this I, of course, thought of your obvious interest — Dr. Merkmallen's views and theories being what they were. I believe Agent Mulder is familiar with his work.

Scully: Dr. Solomon Merkmallen, Professor of Biology, University of Ivory Coast.
Skinner: He flew in yesterday from Africa. Two hours later, he was apparently murdered at American University. His body is missing but there was enough blood found on the floor to make a fair assumption. A couple of students also confirmed that they spoke to him when he asked them for directions to find a Dr. Steven Sandoz, also a Professor of Biology.
Mulder: Both men espouse a fringe theory called 'Panspermia'. It's the belief that life originated...
Scully: ...elsewhere... in this universe.
Skinner: You've heard of this?
Scully: Yeah. It's the idea that Mars or other planets were habitable long before Earth and that, uh, cosmic collisions on these planets blasted microbes into our solar system — some of which landed and flourished here.
Skinner: You'd accept that as plausible?
Scully: Well, almost any scientist would... theoretically. I mean, it's just a theory. That's about it, though. You don't think this has anything to do with his death, do you?
Skinner: Dr. Merkmallen found an artefact in his country. This is a rubbing of that artefact. He claimed it contained a message — not only of his Mars theories but the very meaning of human existence.
Scully: Much less plausible.
Mulder: Dr. Sandoz, the man he'd come to meet, made a similar claim in a... 'science'... journal. He said he'd found an artefact that was almost identical to that with similar writings on it."
Scully: And what was it supposed to say?
Mulder: Well, we'd have to ask Dr. Sandoz that.
Scully: Well, why don't we?
Mulder: We can't. He's missing.

Dr. Burks: Fascinating, Mulder.

Mulder: You don't believe it, Chuck?
Dr. Burks: No, no. You know me. This is right up my twisted little alley. So, uh... what exactly are you experiencing?
Mulder: Noise. Aural dissonance. It comes and it goes.
Scully: Is it happening right now?
Mulder: No, but it was a few minutes ago.
Dr. Burks: And it's only affecting you, triggered by the rubbing. Wow. That blows me away.
Mulder: Why?
Scully: Because the rubbing is a fake and I'm not the first one to say so.
Dr. Burks: The writing is Cree — phonetic Navajo — but no literal interpretation makes any sense.
Scully: And the fact that it was found in Africa makes it all the more suspicious as a fabrication.
Mulder: Suspicious of what?
Dr. Burks: Do you know what a Magic Square is?
Mulder: Yeah. It has to do with the occult.
Dr. Burks: Right. Very cool. They first appear in the ninth century in history but, uh... as the story goes, God himself instructed Adam in their use and then handed down the secret to all his saints and prophets and wise men as a way of trapping and storing potential power to the person whose name or numerical correlative exercises that power.
Mulder: That's what this thing is?
Scully: Well, that's what someone would have you believe this is.
Mulder: How do you know that?
Scully: As it turns out neither of us had to go very far to find out.
(Scully puts a magazine article by Dr Barnes up on the projector. 'Science Update — God Spelled Backward — Manufacturing Religious artefacts for Fun and Profit')
Barnes documented Sandoz's fakery once before. If he was blunt about his colleague when we met him, in here, he is downright brutal.
Mulder: Does he back any of that up?
Scully: Well, it's quite scholarly, actually.
Dr. Burks: Barnes has made something of a career exposing science and religious fraud. Name your wonder of the world — he's been there, debunked that.
Mulder: Yeah, but wouldn't it be in his great interest to hide something that he couldn't disprove with his scholarship?
Scully: Well, Mulder, if it were real then why would an American Indian artefact be fused in rock on the west coast of the African continent?
Mulder: In 1996, a rock from Mars was found in Antarctica. How did it get there?
Scully: It was from outer space.
Dr. Burks: Begs the question, doesn't it? Why produce a fraud with Navajo writing... in Africa?

Scully: (voiceover) It began with an act of supreme violence — a big bang expanding ever outward, cosmos born of matter and gas, matter and gas, ten billion years ago. Whose idea was this? Who had the audacity for such invention? And the reason? Were we part of that plan ten billion years ago? Are we born only to die? To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth before giving way to our generations? If there is a beginning, must there be an end? We burn like fires in our time, only to be extinguished, to surrender to the elements' eternal reclaim. Matter and gas... will this all end one day? Life no longer passing to life, the Earth left barren like the stars above, like the cosmos. Will the hand that lit the flame let it burn down? Let it burn out? Could we, too, become extinct? Or if this fire of life living inside us is meant to go on, who decides? Who tends the flames? Can he reignite the spark even as it grows cold and weak?

Opening clip from ''Biogenesis''

Episode Number: 139
Season Number: 6
First Aired: Sunday, May 16, 1999
Production Code: 6X22

Season 6: Field Trip (6X21)

Written by: Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban
Directed by: Kim Manners

After a day of hiking, a woman Angela complains that her husband Wallace left her behind and walked on ahead. Later in the shower she has a vision of being covered in yellow goo. That night as they embrace in bed, the scene changes to show their skeletons locked together in a field.

Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate, Scully speculates that the couple were killed and their bodies boiled to remove all the organs and tissue in some sort of ritualistic killing. But Mulder notes that the couple's remains were found on Brown Mountain, North Carolina. Where witnesses have report strange lights around the mountain for hundreds of years. On examination Scully discovers a yellow goo on Wallace and Angela's bones.

Meanwhile as Mulder combs the field where the couple were found looking for evidence, he encounters Wallace hiding in a cave. Wallace claims he was abducted by aliens, a claim backed up when a bright light appears and Angela is returned, recanting the same abduction story. Only Mulder can not figure out the skeletons.

The bright light returns and Mulder walks in to it. Mulder's skeleton is later found in the field, but Scully senses something is not right, especially when the Lone Gunman and Skinner both agree with her ritualistic killing theory with out question. Mulder returns with actual proof of alien involvement. However Scully's investigation seems to indicate that the yellow goo is a digestive secretion from a plant and holds the key to the case.

Notes:
The small gray alien was played by seven year old Cody Weselis, son of X-Files stunt coordinator Danny Weselis.

Quotes:
Scully: Well, what do you think this is?
Mulder: It's Brown Mountain, Scully. That doesn't ring a bell? The Brown Mountain lights? It's a famous atmospheric phenomenon dating back nearly 700 years witnessed by thousands of people — back to the Cherokee Indians. Strange multicoloured lights are seen to dance above the peak of the mountain. There's been no geological explanation, no scientific credible explanation at all.
Scully: And what does that have to do with these two?
Mulder: As I said, there's been no scientific credible explanation but there are those of us who believe these strange multicoloured lights are really...
Scully: UFOs. Extraterrestrial visitors from beyond who apparently have nothing better to do than buzz one mountain over and over again for 700 years.
Mulder: Sounds like crap when you say it. I'm just wondering if there's a connection, Scully. I mean, the conditions of these bodies are reminiscent of certain south-western cattle mutilations. Those are cases where there's no physical evidence and they've long been associated with UFO activity.
Scully: Mulder, can't you just for once, just... for the novelty of it, come up with the simplest explanation, the most logical one, instead of automatically jumping to UFOs or Bigfoot or...?
Mulder: Scully, in six years, how... how often have I been wrong? No, seriously. I mean, every time I bring you a new case we go through this perfunctory dance. You tell me I'm not being scientifically rigorous and that I'm off my nut, and then in the end who turns out to be right like 98.9% of the time? I just think I've... earned the benefit of the doubt here.

Mulder: Scully...

Scully: Mulder. Why the hell did you leave North Carolina without telling me?
Mulder: Long story.
Scully: You disappear and then I get a furtive call that you're back here in DC?
Mulder: I'm sorry. Does anybody know you're here?
Scully: No.
Mulder: Scully, this is...
Scully: Angela... and Wallace Schiff. But, Mulder, it can't be.
Mulder: This is my partner, Agent Scully.
Scully: Mulder, I IDed their remains myself.
Mulder: Yeah, I think you were meant to.
Angela Schiff: Agent Scully, the aliens planted decoys so you would think we were dead.
Scully: The aliens?
Mulder: Scully, I want you to... put aside your scientific bias for a moment. 'Cause what I'm about to tell you is going to change your life forever. Your life, my life, the life of everybody on this planet.
Scully: Mulder...
Mulder: I was out there... and I found it.
Scully: What?
Mulder: The truth. This couple... they were abducted by a UFO — the Brown Mountain lights.
Angela Schiff: They took me to a white place. There were men there. They put an implant in my neck.
Mulder: Just like what happened to you.
Scully: Mulder, from what very little I understand about this case, this is not what happened to me.
Mulder: There's more. (He leads Scully into the bedroom) It doesn't like the light.
Scully: Who?
(A small grey alien reaches around a bedpost)
Mulder: I abducted him. It's a grey. It speaks to me. We communicate telepathically. He told me everything.
Scully: I... I can hear him!
Mulder: Yeah.
Scully: Oh, my God.

Scully: I, uh... I don't know what to say, Mulder. Where to begin. I mean, you... you were right. All these years, you were right.

Mulder: You think so?
Scully: You were right about the greys, about... about the abductions, about the UFOs... the lights, the Brown Mountain lights...
Mulder: What about the skeletons?
Scully: They were... they were fake. They were decoys.
Mulder: You're buying that decoy theory? What about that organic substance we found on the skeletons? That goo you were so interested in?
Scully: It was nothing. It was bog sludge.
Mulder: That, uh... doesn't sound like you, Scully. It, uh... God, I can't believe you're buying this.
Scully: Mulder, I'm admitting that I was wrong. Are... are you all right? How are you feeling?
Mulder: Uh, this doesn't make any sense.
Scully: What?
Mulder: These two. Their story. Their skeletons. None of it.
Scully: Mulder, if I, of all people, can believe this then why can't you?

Highlights from ''Field Trip''

Episode Number: 138
Season Number: 6
First Aired: Sunday, May 9, 1999
Production Code: 6X21

Season 6: Three of a Kind (6X19)

Written by: Vince Gilligan and John Shiban

Directed by: Bryan Spicer

The Lone Gunman travel to Las Vegas where Def-Con '99, a convention of black ops technology is being held. Unable to gain access to the convention itself, Byers takes part in a private poker game posing as a defence contractor, but he is tricked by another player using fake jargon and kicked out of the game. On his way back to the hotel room Byers thinks he catches sight of Suzanne Modeski who the Lone Gunman first met at a convention in Baltimore back in 1989 and whom Byers has secretly longed to meet again.

Scully make the journey to Las Vegas following a phone call from Mulder telling her that the Lone Gunman have found something, only the phone call was from the Lone Gunman using a computer to fake Mulder's voice. Byers sees Suzanne in a hotel room kissing the man from the poker game.

The Lone Gunman hack in to the hotel computer and discover he is Grant Ellis, an employee of the Advanced Weapons Research Centre, the same place that Suzanne worked 10 years before. The Lone Gunman begin surveillance of Suzanne's room, but discover that she is already under surveillance. Byers confronts Suzanne and accuses her of being brainwashed into working for the government once more.

Suzanne denies this and later explains that Grant Ellis is helping her to expose a government program at the convention, a program using a drug she developed called 'AE', which affects the victims higher brain function, making them more open to suggestion.

Notes:
David Duchovny does not appear in this episode, although his voice is heard.

Signy Coleman, playing Suzanne Modeski, returns to ''The X-Files'' in this episode. She was last seen in the season 5 episode "Unusual Suspects".

Michael McKean, who played Morris Fletcher in the season 6 2-parter ''Dreamland/Dreamland II'', makes a brief return appearance when Scully is at the hotel bar.

Def-Con is an actual convention that has been held in Las Vegas. In reality it is a gathering of computer hackers, not of defense contractors.

Quotes:
Byers: My name is John Fitzgerald Byers. I was named after our 35th president, and I keep having this beautiful dream. In my dream, the events of November 22nd, 1963, never happened. In it, my namesake was never assassinated. Other things are different, too, in my dream. My country is hopeful and innocent; young again. Young in spirit. My fellow citizens trust their elect officials, never once having been betrayed by them. My government is truly 'of the people, by the people, for the people'. All my hopes for my country, for myself... all are fulfilled. I have everything a person could want; home and family... and love. Everything that counts for anything in life... I have it. But the dream ends the same way every time. I lose it all.

Scully: Yeah, Scully.

Mulder: Hey, Scully, it's me.
Scully: Mulder, what time is it?
Mulder: 2:34 am. Listen, Scully, I need you on the next flight to Las Vegas.
Scully: Las Vegas? Why?
Mulder: It's the Lone Gunmen. They're onto something big.
Scully: What, exactly?
Mulder: It's really important. Trust me. (Byers is synthesising Mulder's voice via a computer)
Scully: Yeah, I trust you, Mulder, it's the Three Stooges I'm not so sure about.
Mulder: Look, I can't talk over an unsecured line. Please just get here. It's an emergency.
Scully: Okay. Okay, okay, okay.
(Scully hangs up)
Langly: What if she calls him back?
Byers: I trapped her cell number. If she calls him, it rings here.
Frohike: She's going to kick our ass. What do you need Scully for, anyway?
Byers: We're up against agents of the government. We need our own government agent.
Langly: And that would be Mulder. Why do you want just Scully?
Frohike: She's going to kick our ass.
Byers: Mulder's too high profile. He's virtually a household name to the black ops who kidnapped Susanne in Baltimore.
Langly: Byers, I've hacked into the hotel computers, Susanne Modeski's not registered here. Are you sure you saw her; are you absolutely, positively sure?
Byers: It was her. She's here. I've got to find her!
Frohike: You've go to find some ice, you need a drink.

Byers: Agent Scully.

Scully: Where's Agent Mulder, I've been trying to call him.
Langly: He's, uh, I think that his, phone's messed up.
Byers: He may be hard to reach for the next few hours, he suggested we work with you, bring you up to speed.
Scully: By all means, bring me up to speed.

Byers: Susanne, do you remember me?
Susanne Modeski: John, what are you doing here?
Byers: I'm here to save you.
Susanne Modeski: From what?
Byers: I don't think... you are yourself. I think that, uh, you've been mistreated... and confused, and, and, I'm afraid that your, your beliefs, your opinions, are no longer your own.
Susanne Modeski: As in I've been brainwashed? I don't know what to tell you. I haven't been.
Byers: Your life may be in danger, Susanne. A friend of mine has just been killed. Murdered.
Susanne Modeski: What?
Byers: And that man that you're with...
Susanne Modeski: My fianc�? I'm sorry John, I think you better go.
Byers: No, wait. Wait. Ten years ago, I saw you thrown into a car. Kidnapped right in front of me. Did that not happen? Did I just dream all of that?
Susanne Modeski: It happened. But things got better.

Morris Fletcher: Cigarette?
(Scully leans in and seductively removes a cigarette from the pack with her mouth)

Frohike: You don't smoke.
Scully: But who's got a match?
(A dozen lighters appear in front of her)
Scully: Well... I just can't decide who lights my fire.
Frohike: That's it. Alright, you dandies, back off. This is Special Agent Dana Scully of the FBI. If you so much as touch her, you may be committing a federal offence.
Morris Fletcher: We could have been stardust.
Scully: Maybe next time.
(She gives Morris Fletcher one good slap on the arse before Frohike finally pulls her away)
Morris Fletcher: Ooh.

Frohike: (to Scully) Good work, party girl.

Highlights from ''Three of a Kind''


Episode Number: 137
Season Number: 6
First Aired: Sunday, May 2, 1999
Production Code: 6X19

Sesaon 6: The Unnatural (6X20)

Written by: David Duchovny
Directed by: David Duchovny

It is Saturday afternoon and Mulder is in the X-files basement office leafing through New Mexico newspaper obituaries from the 1940's looking for anomalies, much to Scully's dismay on such a beautiful afternoon. But Mulder stumbles across a newspaper picture of agent Arthur Dales with a Negro baseball player and the alien bounty hunter.

Ripping the page from the book, Mulder leaves the office and goes to Dales' apartment, only to discover that Dales brother, also named Arthur has taken over the apartment. But when he shows the photo to Dales, it turns out that the photo is of him not his brother. In June 1947 Dales was a police office in Roswell, assigned to protect a Negro baseball star Josh Exley from member of the Klu Klux Klan, bent on keeping baseball white. Exley played for a Negro team called the Roswell Greys and had hit 60 home runs in the season matching Babe Ruth's record, and so was being scouted for the major leagues.

Only Exley does not want to play for the major leagues, he is quite content to stay were he is and play baseball for the Roswell Greys. Only Dales claims this was because Exley was actually a grey alien who had fallen in love with the game of baseball and that was the reason he did not want to play in the major leagues.

As the newspapers and reporters would dig in to his background and reveal the truth. A fear shared by Exley's fellow aliens who send the alien bounty hunter to deal with the problem in his own unique fashion.

Notes:
This episode marks David Duchovny's writing and directorial debut.

The title of this episode makes reference to the title of a novel by 20th-century American writer Bernard Malamud: ''The Natural'' which is also baseball. The book was made into a film starring Robert Redford and Glen Close.

"Ex" is played by Jesse L. Martin, the original Broadway cast member of ''Rent'' in the role of Collins. Perhaps knowing this is what prompted David Duchovny to allow Martin a small scene where he sings with that "beautiful voice" of his.

Altough budget problems initially prevented Vin Scully from being hired as the baseball announcer, the famed sportscaster - who is the original inspiration for the name of Gillian Anderson's character - agreed to meet an X-Files sound crew in his Dodger Stadium broadcast booth and record the part for free.

David Duchovny's older brother, Daniel Duchovny, plays the role of bench jockey Piney.

Due to Darren McGavin's unfortunate illness he could not reprise his role as Arthur Dales, so the script was re-written with the key storyteller being his brother Arthur (played by M. Emmet Walsh). Mr McGavin did reprise his role in this episode, at least for 2 scenes. The Season 6 DVD features 2 alternate takes for scenes shot in the episode with Darren McGavin. Scene one is the scene in the kitchen where Mulder asks if the great glories of the past were aliens and the 2nd scene was one of the last in the episode, when Mulder says goodbye to Arthur Dales. Such a pitty that he was unable to complete the episode. Great actor, great performance.

Quotes:
Scully: Mulder, it is such a gorgeous day outside. Have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find life on this planet?
Mulder: I have seen the life on this planet, Scully, and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere. Did you bring enough ice cream to share with the rest of the class?
Scully: It's not ice cream. It's a non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicle.
Mulder: Ugh. Bet the air in my mouth tastes better than that. You sure know how to live it up, Scully.
Scully: Oh, you're Mr. Live-it-up. Mulder, you're really Mr. Squeeze-every-last-drop-out-of-this-sweet-life, aren't you? On this precious Saturday you've got us grabbing life by the testes, stealing reference books from the FBI library in order to go through New Mexico newspaper obituaries for the years 1940 to 1949, and for what joyful purpose?
Mulder: Looking for anomalies, Scully. Do you know how many so-called 'flying disc' reports there were in New Mexico in the 1940s?
Scully: I don't care. Mulder, this is a needle in a haystack. These poor souls have been dead for 50 years. Let them rest in peace. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Mulder: No, I won't sit idly by as you hurl cliches at me. Preparation is the father of inspiration.
Scully: Necessity is the mother of invention.
Mulder: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Scully: Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.
Mulder: I scream, you scream, we all scream for non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicles.
(Mulder sets down his book and lunges at Scully, taking a bite out of her psuedo-ice cream)
Scully: No! Mulder! Mulder!? You cheat. I can't believe that you've been reading about baseball this whole time.
Mulder: I'm reading the box scores, Scully. You'd like it. It's like the Pythagorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all baseball games into one tiny, perfect, rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny summer day back in 1947. It's like the numbers talk to me, they comfort me. They tell me that even though lots of things can change some things do remain the same. It's...
Scully: Boring. Mulder, can I ask you a personal question?
Mulder: Of course not.
Scully: Did your mother ever tell you to go outside and play?
Mulder: Is that... Arthur... Dales...
Scully: Mulder?
Mulder: Ah... Choo!
Scully: You just defaced property of the US Government.
(Mulder takes the page and leaves the office) You rebel.

Officer Dales: Mr. Exley? Mr Exley, my name's Arthur Dales. I'm an employee of the Roswell police department.

Josh Exley: Have I broken a law, sir?

Buck Johnson: You stole... second base in the third inning. I'm a witness. Officer, I seen Ex steal... at least 50 bases this year.

Officer Dales: No, sir, you haven't broken any laws. Not that I'm aware of. Uh, I've been assigned by my superiors to protect you, against certain parties.

Buck Johnson: I'm the one need protection from certain parties. Ex here, he in bed by 8:00 every night.

Josh Exley: I appreciate your concern, sir but I can protect myself.

Officer Dales: Mr. Exley, I'm not a big sports hero like yourself, sir and I really don't have an opinion on Negroes... or Jews or Communists or even Canadians and vegetarians, for that matter but I cannot stomach the murder of a man of any persuasion or any colour being flaunted and solicited in my town. Not on my watch. So you can be safe with me in a cell down at the precinct or you can be safe with me here on the bus. Seeing as how this is still America, you're free to choose, sir.

Officer Dales: Ex... Why did you tank that game today?

Josh Exley: I won that game today.

Officer Dales: You tanked the game today. You want me to tell you why? Because your name's not Josh Exley. Josh Exley is a six-year-old kid who disappeared from Macon, Georgia about the same time that you showed up in Roswell.

Josh Exley: I ain't never been to Macon.

Officer Dales: When you got beaned, you said you were from Macon.

Josh Exley: Well, I also spoke tongues like I did when I was a little boy in church. (He mumbles an unrecognisable language) I was joking, Arthur. Relax.

Officer Dales: I'm relaxed. You're hiding something. That's why you don't dare get into the major leagues 'cause the sports writers and everybody would be digging around and they'd find out what it is, right? So you tanked the game in front of those scouts today. Disappointing those kids — disappointing your team mates — disappointing your race...

Josh Exley: Look here, don't go talking about my race. You don't know nothing about my race.

Officer Dales: I know that liars come in all colours. You got a secret, and famous or not, I'm going to find out what it is.

Josh Exley: While you're out chasing secrets, you make sure you're chasing the right ones.

Mulder: You've never hit a baseball, have you, Scully?
Scully: No, I guess I have, uh... found more necessary things to do with my time than... slap a piece of horsehide with a stick.
Mulder: Get over here, Scully.
(Mulder hands Scully the bat, then steps behind her and wraps his arms around her tightly, also holding the bat around her hands)
Scully: This my birthday present, Mulder? You shouldn't have.
Mulder: This ain't cheap. I'm paying that kid ten bucks an hour to shag balls. That's not a bad piece of ash, huh? The bat — talking about the bat. Now, don't strangle it. You just want to shake hands with it. 'Hello, Mr. Bat. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.' 'Oh, no, no, Miss Scully. The pleasure's all mine.' Okay, now, we want to... we want to go hips before hands, okay? We want to stride forward and turn. That's all we're thinking about. So, we go hips... before hands, all right?
Scully: Okay.
Mulder: One more time. Hips... before hands, all right?
Scully: Yeah.
Mulder: What is it?
Scully: Hips before hands.
Mulder: Right. We're going to wait on the pitch. We're going to keep our eye on the ball. Then, we're just going to make contact. We're not going to think. We're just going to let it fly, Scully, okay?
Scully: Mm-hmm.
Mulder: Ready?
Scully: I'm in the middle.
Mulder: All right, fire away, Poorboy.
(They hit a foul)
Ooh! That's good. All right, what you may find is you concentrate on hitting that little ball...
(They hit the ball again)
The rest of the world just fades away — all your everyday, nagging concerns. The ticking of your biological clock.
(Another hit)
How you probably couldn't afford that nice, new suede coat on a G-Woman's salary. How you threw away a promising career in medicine...
(Another hit)
To hunt aliens with a crackpot, albeit brilliant, partner. Getting into the heart of a global conspiracy.
(Another hit)
Your obscenely overdue triple-X bill. Oh, I... I'm sorry, Scully.
(Another hit)
Those last two problems are mine, not yours.
(Another hit)
Scully: Shut up, Mulder. I'm playing baseball.

Scene from ''The Unnatural''

Episode Number: 136

Season Number: 6
First Aired: Sunday, April 25, 1999
Production Code: 6X20

Season 6: Milagro (6X18)

Written by: Chris Carter, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz
Directed by: Kim Manners

While on her way to Mulder's apartment to discuss a murder case, Scully runs into Phillip Padgett, Mulder's new next door neighbor. Padgett is an odd bird - a writer who lives in his own mind; he gives Scully a creepy feeling.

The agents discuss the case and Mulder expresses his theory that the murder is a result of psychic surgery - the victim's heart was removed without any incisions, no prints, no forensic evidence of any kind left as clues. Scully, at best, is dubious.

When a similar murder occurs out on Lover's Lane, Mulder gets a hold of Scully who happens to be in Mulder's office where she finds that a pendant has been slipped inside an envelope under Mulder's door. It's a "milagro" - a lucky charm, with an image of a burning heart engraved on it. Scully feels it may be from the murderer and sets out to do some research.

At a nearby church, Scully is studying a painting of Christ with a flaming heart in his hands when she is approached by Mulder's neighbor, Padgett. He tells Scully he sent her the milagro, that he has been studying her for a character in his novel, and that he's become enamored of her.

Scully is both intrigued and disquieted by Padgett, yet is drawn to visit him on her way to Mulder's apartment. He seems to be getting underneath her skin when Mulder barges in, gun high, and arrests Padgett. It seems that the murders which they have been investigating coincide with personal ads taken out in a local paper; Padgett used the ads to find his victims. He also wrote about each murder, in detail, in his novel.

But another murder occurs while Padgett is locked up. Mulder is even more fervent in his belief that Padgett psychically communicated with a partner in crime, Dr. Ken Naciamento - the noted Brazilian psychic surgeon, and that somehow Padgett directed Naciamento to commit the crime. Mulder feels the only way to catch Padgett is to release him.

Back in his apartment, Padgett is visited by Naciamento. However, Mulder and Scully, who have set up a surveillance on Padgett's apartment, see nothing on the screen of Naciamento. Is he only a figment of Padgett's imagination or not? Naciamento coaxes Padgett into the realization that Scully must be killed. Padgett hurriedly finishes his novel, then heads for the basement incinerator to burn the pages. Mulder follows him there and is about to arrest Padgett when he hears a scream from above. It's Scully, who is being attacked by Naciamento. Mulder races to her side, finds her covered in blood, but alive. Padgett, on the other hand, lies at the foot of the incinerator, his heart removed and beating in his own hand.

Notes:
Angele Vacco, who played the murdered teenager Kevin, is a former X-Files production assistant. He also appeared in the season 2 episode "F. Emasculata".

John Hawkes (playing Phillip Padgett) worked with David Duchovny in the 1997 movie ''Playing God''.

In the cemetery, the camera seems to linger on a tombstone engraved with the names "Diana and Nicholas Salinger", which are the names of the late parents of the kids on ''Party of Five''.

The index cards that Phillip Padgett pins to his wall are covered with plot points from the T.S. Elliot poem "The Wasteland".

The scene where Mulder runs after the hooded man in the cemetary had to be filmed on a motorcycle because David Duchovny runs so fast. According to Kim Manners, in ''Tunguska'' David ran so fast that he outran two horses.

Quotes:
Scully: I, uh... I rode up on the elevator with someone. Someone from next door, I think.
Mulder: Hmm... Young guy?
Scully: Yeah.
Mulder: New neighbour. Why?
Scully: You met him?
Mulder: Uh, briefly, yeah. He's a writer.
Scully: What does he write?
Mulder: He didn't say.
Scully: These are, uh... these are my autopsy reports from the second victim. As you can see the heart was removed in the same manner as the previous victim. No incisions, no scope marks, no cutting of any kind.
Mulder: No indication of how the killer did it?
Scully: No. There's no prints, no DNA material, no hair and fibre.
Mulder: And yet, you still refuse to believe my theory — that what this is psychic surgery?
Scully: Mulder, psychic surgery is some man dipping his hand in a bucket of chicken guts and pretending to remove tumours from the sick and gullible.
Mulder: Or... it's a grossly misunderstood area of alternative medicine.
Scully: Well, medicine, as you're referring to it is about keeping people alive.
Mulder: Well, absent another theory how else do we account for the impossible extraction of this man's heart?
Scully: I don't know. I have no idea.
Mulder: I mean, we have no evidence — no MO to speak of. This could be the perfect crime.
Scully: Well, a crime is only as perfect as the man or the mind that commits it. Even if it were perfect — even if he made not one mistake — there's still his motive. You find his motive and you find the murderer.

Scully: It's called a 'milagro'. That's the Spanish word for 'miracle'. It's worn as a lucky charm.

Mulder: It came here for me?
Scully: It was dropped off at reception by a man in his late 20s, early 30s... average looking, average build. They weren't able to get a good ID. There are no fingerprints and no DNA from his saliva.
Mulder: I don't think it's the killer, Scully.
Scully: Did you see that it's a burning heart?
Mulder: I see it has a burning heart. But we're dealing with a killer that leaves absolutely no clues. Why would he do something as heavy-handed as this?
Scully: Well, maybe it has something to do with his next victim. Maybe he's taunting you.
Mulder: Maybe it's not me at all. Maybe he sent it to you. Maybe it's a secret admirer.
Scully: I think I'll check it out.
Mulder: Actually, let me. You've got a 9:00am with the DC medical examiner. He's going to let you autopsy the latest victim.
Scully: Thank you for making my schedule but I think I'm going to have to be late for that appointment.

Phillip Padgett: (voiceover) The overture in the church had urged the beautiful agent's partner into an act of Hegelian self-justification. Expeditiously violating the fourth amendment against mail theft, he prepared to impudently infract the first.
(Mulder is listening at the heating vent)
But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions, Special Agent Dana Scully had herself... become simply aroused. All morning the stranger's unsolicited compliments had played on the dampened strings of her instrument until the middle 'C' of consciousness was struck square and resonant. She was flattered. His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself, quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and the investigators and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances.
(Scully finishes the autopsy and looks at the charm)
She felt an involuntary flush and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence.
(Phillip Padgett imagines 'the stranger' in bed with Scully)
But the images came perforce and she let them play — let them flood in like savoury — or more a sugary confection — from her adolescence when her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial. 'Ache', 'pang', 'prick', 'twinge' — how ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioural pathology now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire. The stranger had looked her in the eye and knew her more completely than she knew herself. She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal. Had the stranger unleashed in her what was already there, or only helped her discover a landscape she by necessity blinded herself to? What would her partner think of her?

Scully: My life's not so lonely, Mister, um...
Phillip Padgett: Padgett.
Scully: It's actually anything but.
Phillip Padgett: Mmm.
Scully: How is it you think you know me so well, Mr. Padgett?
Phillip Padgett: I'm writing about you.
Scully: Right. Since when?
Phillip Padgett: Since I first noticed you. You live in my old neighbourhood.
Scully: And you moved into this building by coincidence?
Phillip Padgett: No.
Scully: You moved here because of me?
Phillip Padgett: There wasn't anything available in your building and it's not like you spent a lot of time at home. I should've said something but I just couldn't get it all down fast enough. To really write someone, I have to be in their head. I have to know them more completely than they know themselves.
Scully: This is all about me?
Phillip Padgett: Well, you're an important part.
Scully: May I read it?
Phillip Padgett: It's not finished. I can't tell you how helpful it is having you here — being able to talk with you like this. Would you sit and stay a minute?
Scully: You don't have anywhere to sit.
(Phillip Padgett leads her into the bedroom)

Highlights from "Milagro''

Episode Number: 135

Season Number: 6
First Aired: Sunday, April 18, 1999
Production Code: 6X18