The X-Files (1993–…): Season 4, Episode 24 - Gethsemane - full transcript

Each passing year has seen...

"our estimate of the probability
of life in space increase,

"More and more scientists feel that
contact with other civilizations...

"is no longer something
beyond our dreams,

"but is a natural event
in the history of mankind...

that will, perhaps, occur
within the lifetime of many of us."

All right, great.
Tell him to come on in.

- Excuse me.
- Make way. Lethe through.

Agent Scully?
Detective Rempulski, Alexandria P.D.

Thanks for coming down
to do this.

- It him?
- Yeah.



Agent Scully,
please have a seat.

Agent Scully,
we've had a brief discussion,

but will you restate the matter
we're here to put to rest?

Yes, sir.

Four years ago,

Section Chief Blevins assigned me to
a project you all know as the X-Files.

As I am a medical doctor
with a background in hard science,

my job was to provide
an analytical perspective...

on the work
of Special Agent Fox Mulder...

whose investigations
into the paranormal...

were fueled
by a personal belief...

that his sister had been abducted
by aliens when he was 12.

I come here today,
four years later,

to report on the illegitimacy
of Agent Mulder's work.



It is my scientific opinion...

that he became,
over the course of these years,

a victim...

a victim
of his own false hopes...

and of his belief...

in the biggest of lies.

We're meeting the guide
at base camp.

- He'll take us to the site.
- Has he seen it?

Oh, yeah.
He said it's unbelievable.

- How soon can we get to the site?
- Right now?

We'd be pushing it
to be up top by nightfall.

I'd rather sleep seeing it than
lay awake all night wondering.

- It's gonna take some work.
- I've waited all my life for this day.

Let's do it.

Over here!

Hello.

- I assume you're okay. Nice to meet you.
- George.

My God.
It's beautiful.

Agent Scully,
I presume you have a basis...

for this break
from Agent Mulder.

Recent events
have shed new light...

that would serve to prove
the existence of extraterrestrial life,

which is the foundation of Agent
Mulder's consuming devotion to his work.

What factual evidence?

Agent Mulder was recently
contacted by a man...

whose pursuit of this evidence
seemed to coincide with his own.

In his intense desire
to believe,

Agent Mulder was duped
by this man.

He was fooled by an act
of scientific sleight of hand...

calculated to perpetuate
false truths, the larger lie.

I am here today
to expose this lie,

to show the mechanism
of deception...

that drew him and me into it...

and to expose
Agent Mulder's work for what it is.

Grabbing him by the knees,
then him falling backwards,

tumbling over me and down the stairs.

- Hi.
- Speaking of Bill, is he coming?

- Good evening. May I take your coat?
- Thank you.

There he is.

Hi.

Hello, Dana.

- Look at you.
- Look at you, my big brother.

I'm sorry I'm late.
My ship got stuck in traffic.

- Did you get my birthday card?
- Yes, I did.

- Thanks for remembering this year.
- Once a decade.

How you feeling, Dana?

- I'm fine. Let's get some dinner, huh?
- Yeah, I'm starving.

You came just in time.

So the parrot says,
"I only got one question:

What did that chicken
in there do?"

- Mom, I'll open some more wine.
- Okay.

I feel awkward
sitting here. I'm sure you do too.

- No. I'm sorry.
- I've known your family for so many years.

Your mother
asked me to come,

that I might have
a word with you.

I know it's been some time
since we've spoken ourselves,

since you drifted
from the church.

- Father McCue...
- But at a time of personal crisis,

a threat to your health,

- turning back to your faith is important and essential.
- Father McCue...

I appreciate my mother's
concern... and yours,

but I'm being treated for my cancer,
and I'm taking every precaution.

Faith can make you
stronger.

I haven't felt a need.

I have strength, and...

and I'm not going
to come running back now.

It's just not who I am.

I'd be lying to myself
and to you.

Dana. phone.

Excuse me.

- No, is something the matter?
- I need your help on something.

- Somebody named Arlinski just contacted me at the Smithsonian.
- Contacted you about what?

- About something he found on a mountain in Canada.
- What?

I'd rather not talk about it over the phone.
I just need you to meet me at the Smithsonian.

- When?
- Right away.

I'm on my way.

I'm gonna have to apologize
to your brother and mother.

- This is something that just couldn't wait, though.
- It's okay.

Who is this Arlinski?

He's a forensics anthropologist that I've
been in contact with over the past four years.

Several years ago he was involved
in a U.F.O. photo enhancement scandal,

but he continues
to profess his innocence.

- What am I coming to see?
- I'm not going to tell you.

I want you to decide
for yourself.

By my rough estimate,

from the sediment
in our ice core samples,

the body you're looking at
is over200years old.

- It looks perfectly intact.
- Yeah.

That doesn't make sense. There would
have been signs of predation.

Yeah, but the position he was found in,
stuffed in a crevice at high altitude,

he may have frozen
fast enough to avoid being eaten.

- Does that fit geologically?
- The area where he was found...

is in the terminal moraine
of a glacier which has since receded.

Two hundred years ago, the area where
he was frozen was within the tree line.

- There would have been a thaw.
- Who found him?

A Canadian
geodetic survey team.

Along with a colleague
of mine named Babcock,

they're all still up there
on the mountain.

- Who else knows about this?
- No one.

I know what
your first thought was,

but the St. Elias range?

That's a long way to go
for a hoax.

- If you're gonna go, why not go all the way?
- I'm circumspect myself,

but the ice core samples
I took can't be faked.

You have the ice core
samples here?

Yeah.
Yeah.

One taken from each side
of the body.

A 360-degreematching
integrity of sediment.

It's my sincere belief...

that what we have here...

is the complete corpus of
an extraterrestrial biological entity.

Absolute,
and irrefutable.

Qualitatively indefensible.
You go public with this,

and nobody is going
to believe you.

You also risk never knowing because the same
people who buried the truth so assiduously...

- will be in charge of its authentication.
- That's why I came to you.

I need to get the specimen out
so I can authenticate it.

This body means everything
to you, Agent Mulder.

- You're gonna have the proof in your hands.
- And what do you want?

We just want the credit.

- Do you think it's foolish?
- I have no opinion, actually.

- You have no opinion?
- This is your Holy Grail, Mulder, not mine.

What is that
supposed to mean?

is not my last, dying wish.

How about Santa Claus
or the Easter Bunny?

This is not some selfish
pet project of mine.

I'm as skeptical of that man
as you are, but definitive proof...

of sentient beings sharing time and
existence with us would change everything.

Every truth we live by
would be shaken to the ground.

There is no greater revelation imaginable,
no greater scientific discovery.

You already believe, Mulder.
What difference will it make?

What will proof change for you?

If someone could prove to you the
existence of God, would it change you?

Only if it had been disproven.

Then you accept the possibility
that belief in God is a lie?

I don't think about it,
actually,

and I don't think
that it can be proven.

But what if it could be? Wouldn't
that knowledge be worth seeking?

Or is it just easier
to go on believing the lie?

I can't go with you, Mulder.

Can you at least take a look at those core
samples and tell me if they're a lie?

That's all I'm asking.

What I couldn't tell Agent Mulder,

what I had only
just learned myself,

was that the cancer which had been
diagnosed in me several months earlier...

The doctors told me,
short of a miracle,

it would continue
to aggressively invade my body,

advancing faster each day
towards the inevitable.

What's that for?

I don't know these men well.
Do you?

- Well enough.
- I'm gonna be up here alone until you get back.

I hope I don't have to use it.

I think you better
have a look at this.

We were doing a lateral cut
to the back corner...

when I saw something
in the ice.

Right here.

What do you think that is?

I don't know. It could be
a bubble, a weak spot.

Or a casting channel,
a pour hole.

Liquid poured in
from the side or above somehow.

Poured from where?

- I don't know.
- The angle wouldn't make sense.

Yeah, you're right.

We'll never know
until we get it out of there.

The iron concentration, density and
temperature profiles are all consistent.

There's a tight matrix of crystals
at approximal center,

suggesting the quick-freezing
scenario you mentioned.

Here at the terminus, you've got
some particulate hydrocarbons:

jet fuel pollutants found just
about everywhere in the world.

- But not in old ice?
- Don't misunderstand. This is old ice.

This sample has numerous layers of sedimentation,
like the rings on a tree essentially.

- So it hasn't been tampered with?
- Not from what I can see.

Can I ask why it is
you're testing this ice?

Do you know where
this sample came from?

From a site
in the Yukon Territory.

- Why?
- There's some cellular material within the matrix.

- Plant or animal?
- I don't know. It's what I'd have to classify a chimera,

- a hybrid cell.
- From what?

- As I said, I don't know.
- Is it capable of cell division?

I don't know that either.
I've just now found them.

I'd like to get them under our
electron microscope, if that's okay.

Yes, please.

I thought you said
there was someone meeting us.

Yeah, a guide named Ralston.

I don't get it.

This had all been arranged. He knew he
was supposed to take us up to the summit.

I don't know what to do.

We can probably follow
this track right up to the site.

Maybe we'll meet him
on the way down.

Funny place
to take a nap.

- He's been shot.
- Oh, God.

- This our guide?
- Yeah.

Excuse me.
I'm looking for Dr. Vitagliano.

Dr. Vitagliano...
Is he here?

Uh, no, I'm afraid not.

I was supposed to meet him here.
Actually, I'm a little late.

Sorry.

Oh, my God.

They're all dead.
They've been shot.

Babcock!

The body.

It's gone.
They took it!

No one knew.
We didn't tell a soul.

They had radio communication. Maybe
it was being monitored. Wait. Shh!

Someone's still alive.

It's Babcock.

Get me some water.

It looks like
he took a shotgun hit.

It didn't open him up too badly.
The bleeding's stopped.

Who did this?

- Here you go.
- They took our body, Babcock.

- No... I buried it.
- Where?

- Dana?
- Bill.

What are you doing here?

I picked up the phone
when they called Mom's.

Said you could use
a change of clothes.

Thank you.
Where's Mom?

I didn't tell Mom
what happened.

- So what did happen?
- I, uh...

I was knocked down
a flight of stairs,

but I'm okay, luckily.

You're not okay, Dana.

I know about your cancer.

- I told Mom not to tell you.
- Why?

Because it's very personal.

Because I don't want sympathy.

You think you can cure yourself.

Mom tells me
that you've gotten worse,

that your cancer's gone
into your bloodstream.

What are you doing at work,
getting knocked down and beaten up?

What are you trying to prove?
That you're gonna go out fighting?

Come on, Bill.

You know what
Mom's going through?

Why do you think I didn't
tell her when they called?

- What should I be doing?
- We have a responsibility,

not just to ourselves,
but to the people in our lives!

Just because I haven't bared my soul
to you or to Father McCue or to God...

doesn't mean that I'm not responsible
to what's important to me.

To what? To who?
This guy, Mulder?

Where is he, Dana?
Where is he through all this?

- Thank you for coming.
- Dana...

We should be able to do a good enough examination
of the body right here to remove any doubt.

We won't know for sure
until we do a carbon dating test.

I'm anticipating his physiology alone
is going to be telltale.

The Piltdown man hoax
wasn't uncovered for 40 years...

until it failed the carbon dating test,
and that wasn't even very good.

If this were hoax, would we have
six dead men up on that mountain?

Somebody other than us
sure as hell believes it's not.

As you can imagine,
that's heavily trafficked stairwell,

so we went back to the bio lab where
we found an anomalous set of latents.

We found a partial matching in the stairwell
four centimeters from one of yours.

- Have you run it through the N.C.I.C.?
- Yep.

This is your assailant. Unfortunately,
he doesn't have a criminal record.

Try the federal database.

I'll be damned. How'd you know
it would be a government employee?

Where does he work?

Right here in Washington.

Michael Kritschgau,
formerly of the U.S. Army,

now attached to the Pentagon's
research division in Virginia.

Is this the man?

The body is
147 centimeters long,

weighing 24 kilograms
deliquesced.

Derma is hairless gray with
an elephantine texture with no odor.

There are some small eruptions
on the surface of the skin,

mostly likely due to the presence
of iron phosphate in the ice.

Otherwise there appears to be
no scarring and no identifying marks.

The circumference of the head
is 64 centimeters.

There are four digits on each hand
and three on each foot.

The sex is indeterminate.

The eyes are lidless black...

covered by what appears
to be a thin membrane,

which I am now removing.

The tissue underneath...

with a fine network of veins
running throughout.

Examination of the chest cavity
confirms the presence...

of what appears to be
a cardiopulmonary system...

heart, lungs,
all identifiable...

within a mass of white
string like tissue...

that doesn't appear
to correspond...

to human physiology.

Stop! Federal agent!
Hold it!

You are under arrest!

Identify your location!

Get out of the car! Now!

Move!

Please don't shoot. I didn't mean
to hurt you. I had no choice.

- Hands on the car!
- If you arrest me, they'll kill me.

I don't know
what you're talking about.

The same people
who are trying to kill you.

The people who gave you
your cancer.

There's tissue culturing to be done,
DNA sequence and an analysis.

We'd be wise to run a gas chromatograph
and that carbon dating you suggested.

But if this isn't alien,
I don't know what it is.

Mulder.

I had reached
Agent Mulder in a warehouse...

just outside of Washington
in Sethburg, Virginia.

They had managed
the frozen corpse by helicopter...

down the side
of the mountain...

and across the Canadian border
in a refrigerated truck.

After conducting a limited
physical examination,

Agent Mulder
was ready to believe...

that the body was that of an
extraterrestrial biological entity,

that he had finally found
the proof which had eluded him,

which would confirm not only
the existence of alien life,

but of his sister
Samantha's abduction.

But this man Kritschgau had
convinced you otherwise. How?

He told me a story,
which detailed point by point...

the systematic way in which Agent
Mulder had been deceived and used,

and how I, as his partner,
had been led down the same path,

losing a family member
due to my allegiance...

and contracting a fatal disease, which
I was being told was engineered...

by the men who are responsible
for Agent Mulder's deception.

Were you able to convince
Agent Mulder of these facts?

I was only able
to convince him to meet me...

so that he might
hear the story the way I had.

- Who the hell is this?
- Right there, Pork.

How's the wound?

I'll live.

What is this,
Babcock?

Where did Mulder go?

- He got a call.
- Is he a believer?

Oh, yeah.

- Then we're the only ones who know.
- Right.

The lie you believe...

that they have cleverly led you
to believe, Agent Mulder...

is that there's intelligent
life other than our own...

and that we have had contact
with these life-forms.

So you're saying this
has all been orchestrated, a hoax?

- Which you have been used to perpetuate.
- You come by this knowledge how?

Working for the D.O.D.

Watching a military
industrial complex...

that operated unbridled
and unchecked during the Cold War...

create a diversion of attention from
itself and its continued misdeeds...

by confabulating enough
believable evidence...

to convince passionate adepts like
yourself that it really could be true.

And just by chance,
you run into Agent Scully?

I was just like you,
Agent Mulder:

suspicious of everything
but what you should be.

I ran the D.O.D.'s
agitprop arm for a decade.

I can show you records
of disinformation...

dating back to the Korean War,
before you were born.

Why come to me now?
Why not four years ago?

I have a son who's very sick.

He served in the Gulf War.

The lies are so deep,

the only way to cover them...

is to create something
even more incredible.

They invented you:

your regression hypnosis,
the story of your sister's abduction,

the lies
they fed your father.

You wanted to believe so badly,
and who could have blamed you?

And the thousands
of U.F.O. sightings?

Above-top-secret
military aircraft...

concept designed
to feed hysteria.

Evidence of alien biology?

Unclassified but naturally
occurring biologic anomalies...

science will eventually explain.

- The body that was found?
- Meticulously constructed...

out of biomaterials...

created through the hybridization
of differentiated cells...

what are called chimeras...

frozen into place
over the course of a year...

using sediment and materials
that would be a rout its age,

poured through a small channel
drilled in the rock above.

They would have known the body would be
carbon-dated, that it would be proved a fake.

- The body will never be tested.
- What do you mean?

You were only meant to see it...

to make you believe the lie...

so that you might
finally commit...

and go public with the news.

This man is a liar.

You can see for yourself,
Agent Mulder.

The body is already long gone.

Dr. Arlinski?

It's gone.

Mulder?

What?

It's Arlinski.
He's dead.

So is this man.

Who did this, Mulder?

Mulder?

What we had here was proof. There's
no way it could be anything else.

You said it yourself:
More tests needed to be run.

But the ice core samples
checked out.

If the ice hasn't been tampered with,
how could the body within be a fake?

Cellular material found
in the ice core samples...

were a direct match for what
this man Kritschgau described:

hybrid cells, chimeras
within the matrix.

Do we know for sure those cells
are not extraterrestrial?

Mulder, everything this man described...
You can't just guess at these details.

I'm sorry, but the facts here completely
overwhelm any argument against them.

Facts overwhelmed by the lies
created to support them.

The only lie here is the one
that you continue to believe.

After all I've seen
and experienced,

I refuse to believe
that it's not true.

Because it's easier
to believe the lie, isn't it?

What the hell did that guy say to you
that you believe his story?

He said that the men
behind this hoax...

behind these lies...

gave me this disease
to make you believe.

What we generally mean
is intelligent life,

something resembling
our noble selves.

It is highly probable...

that there are such
intelligent forms of life...

in other galaxies
in the universe,

and it is even more probable...

that many of these forms are
vastly more intelligent than we.

I think there's no question...

but that we live
in an inhabited universe...

that has life all over it.

By finding out what the other
planets are like,

by finding out whether there are
civilizations on planets of other stars,

we reestablish meaningful
context for ourselves.

I don't think we should
wait until the encounter occurs,

but that we should do all in our power
to prepare ourselves for it.

I can conceive of no nightmare
as terrifying...

as establishing
such communication...

with so-called
superior...

or, if you wish, advanced
technology in outer space.

Early this morning...
I got a call from the police,

asking me to come
to Agent Mulder's apartment.

The detective asked me...

He needed me to identify a body.

Agent Scully...

Agent Mulder died
late last night...

from an apparent self-inflicted
gunshot wound to the head.