The X-Files very quickly immersed itself in its own mythology during those first few episodes. In alien abduction conspiracies and government coverups. Today I’ll be discussing how thirteen-year-old me loved this aspect of the show, especially when it came to episodes 1.2, Deep Throat, and 1.4, Conduit. Before you flood my comments saying I skipped episode 3, know that I have not skipped it. While I’m watching the episodes in order, episode 1.3, Squeeze, has a sequel episode later in the season so I will be reviewing both then because Walter Skinner has not been introduced yet, but by episode 1.21, he is very much in the picture.
Episode 1.2: Deep Throat
The second episode in the series introduces us to a character that calls himself Deep Throat, played by actor Jerry Hardin. In the context of the show, he serves as an informant to Agent Mulder but also as sort of a father figure. A guide for Mulder to follow. To help him talk through the parts of his investigations that Mulder struggles understanding.
Creator Chris Carter admittedly drew inspiration from the Watergate scandal during which an anonymous source calling themselves Deep Throat gave intel from the FBI investigation to journalists. Later, it would be revealed that the informant was FBI Associate Director Mark Felt. Carter also drew inspiration from the film JFK. In the film, Donald Sutherland’s X character divulges that the Kennedy assassination may have been orchestrated by the government. Discovering this info years after the series ended made me like the Deep Throat character more because teenage me liked exposition even less than adult me (it actually really bothers me as a storytelling technique in movies and television), and Deep Throat was largely used to give information from events that happened off camera to Mulder. While I like the context he gives, his appearances sometimes feel gratuitous.
In this episode, Mulder suspects a conspiracy at Ellens Air Force Base in Idaho and meets Scully at a bar to discuss it. Why a bar, you ask? Why so public? So that Deep Throat can approach him in the restroom. The man had information for Mulder and what better place to sway him away from the case than in the john? Mulder, ever undeterred, investigates anyway, taking Scully with him to Idaho.
They meet Emil, played by a young Seth Green, and his girlfriend while they chase UFOs by trespassing onto the base. They all witness strange UFO lights in the sky, even though Scully remains skeptical. When Mulder suspects that Emil and his girlfriend have been captured, he goes back onto the base to search for them. He was captured and given a drug that causes him to lose time and memories. The loss of that time was something that caused Mulder great distress.
Scully is never fully on board with the UFO theory at this point in the show for she believes that he is just chasing guilt from his sister’s disappearance, but she does learn to respect Mulder for his investigative open mind. For his blind faith in all things paranormal. She even defends him ardently in the next episode to a colleague. Already, Mulder and Scully have formed a strong bond.
Episode 1.4: Conduit
Conduit follows Mulder and Scully as he makes a connection to a past abduction tabloid story and a new case; a woman whose daughter, Ruby, has disappeared claimed to see UFO’s when she was a kid and now claims her daughter has been abducted.
What they find at Lake Okobogee, Florida, are signs of something that brought great heat to a place where Ruby disappeared. Her brother, Kevin keeps writing down constant series of 1’s and 0’s on sheets of copy paper which gets the attention of the government who see him as a threat who may be stealing government secrets… through the television. As it turns out, he is just writing down code for musical numbers and art, but the government getting involved loses Mulder and Scully the trust of his mother who refuses to talk to them.
In the middle of the episode, Ruby’s friend comes forward with what turns out to be false intel, making her the episode’s red herring. Even Scully falls for it, assuming that she is their true suspect. Mulder is obsessed with the belief that Ruby was the victim of a UFO abduction, and Scully sees the parallels between this case and his sister, Samantha’s unsolved disappearance. This is the first time we really see how invested Mulder is in believing what he thinks happened to his sister, and how it often blinds him to what is going on in the present.
At the end of the episode, when Ruby is found alive and Scully notices that her white blood cell count is down along with other medical issues, Mulder tells her that those issues are common with prolonged weightlessness. An issue that astronauts often have. It makes Scully question what her scientific beliefs are, which is a recurring aspect of the show.
While Scully revisits the case file of Samantha Mulder, Fox Mulder sits in a church looking at his sister’s photo. Her unsolved disappearance still, and always will, haunt him. This sad scene gives us Mulder’s motivation to keep going, as heartbreaking as it is.
West Michigan Connection, Films, and The Pentagon
I was born and raised in Michigan, about half an hour from Lake Michigan. There are many small and medium sized towns there filled with people who, on March 8, 1994, claimed to have seen UFO type aircraft flying in the sky. This was about six months after The X-Files originally aired its first episodes. Thirteen-year-old me was having a field day with my area suddenly obsessed with UFOs. People were finally speaking my language. Even the local chief of the National Weather Service acknowledged that their radar had picked up fast moving phenomenon over Lake Michigan on March 8. Like Mulder, I was a believer.
That particular event made me feel more connected to the show, especially with three of the first four episodes being about UFO activity or abductions and about the conspiracy to cover them up. So did the film Fire in the Sky, released in 1993, the same year as The X-Files. It is a shockingly real depiction of what might happen if you were abducted by aliens and how people believe you are making it up upon your return. It stars D.B. Sweeney and Robert Patrick who ends up being cast as Agent Doggett in later seasons of The X-Files. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It is one of the few films that still frightens me when I watch it.
Not being believed or being judged for believing was a constant in sci-fi films about the existence of aliens. 1997’s Contact starring Jodie Foster followed a character who was ostracized in her scientific field for looking for little green men out in the universe until she heard a transmission from another world. When she is able to travel through wormhole to this alien world, she still wasn’t believed because everyone else witnessed something different than she did, even if her video feed recorded 18 hours of static while she was away – and.
More recently, 2013’s Dark Skies, a film starring Keri Russell, follows a family dealing with strange occurrences in their home until one of them is abducted by aliens and they are forced to move because everyone believes the family is responsible. This time, it is the aliens doing the gaslighting and making it impossible to prove that the family was not responsible.
In a modern-day 2020 version of a real world X-File, the Pentagon quietly released three videos of unidentified flying phenomena in our skies. In 2023, the Pentagon released further evidence with footage taken by MQ-9 military drones. They maintain that they have evidence of hundreds of these objects flying through our airspace, but much like the series that sent Mulder and Scully down countless rabbit holes, the Pentagon also denied knowledge of the existence of extraterrestrial life. I’m an everlasting believer so I question why they would release this information so quietly only to deny that life exists out there in the great, wide universe. How is Earth the only place to spawn life? That seems like a great impossibility.
Until next week, the truth is out there.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
The X-Files very quickly immersed itself in its own mythology during those first few episodes. In alien abduction conspiracies and government coverups. Today I’ll be discussing how thirteen-year-old me loved this aspect of the show, especially when it came to episodes 1.2, Deep Throat, and 1.4, Conduit. Before you flood my comments saying I skipped episode 3, know that I have not skipped it. While I’m watching the episodes in order, episode 1.3, Squeeze, has a sequel episode later in the season so I will be reviewing both then because Walter Skinner has not been introduced yet, but by episode 1.21, he is very much in the picture.
Episode 1.2: Deep Throat
The second episode in the series introduces us to a character that calls himself Deep Throat, played by actor Jerry Hardin. In the context of the show, he serves as an informant to Agent Mulder but also as sort of a father figure. A guide for Mulder to follow. To help him talk through the parts of his investigations that Mulder struggles understanding.
Creator Chris Carter admittedly drew inspiration from the Watergate scandal during which an anonymous source calling themselves Deep Throat gave intel from the FBI investigation to journalists. Later, it would be revealed that the informant was FBI Associate Director Mark Felt. Carter also drew inspiration from the film JFK. In the film, Donald Sutherland’s X character divulges that the Kennedy assassination may have been orchestrated by the government. Discovering this info years after the series ended made me like the Deep Throat character more because teenage me liked exposition even less than adult me (it actually really bothers me as a storytelling technique in movies and television), and Deep Throat was largely used to give information from events that happened off camera to Mulder. While I like the context he gives, his appearances sometimes feel gratuitous.
In this episode, Mulder suspects a conspiracy at Ellens Air Force Base in Idaho and meets Scully at a bar to discuss it. Why a bar, you ask? Why so public? So that Deep Throat can approach him in the restroom. The man had information for Mulder and what better place to sway him away from the case than in the john? Mulder, ever undeterred, investigates anyway, taking Scully with him to Idaho.
They meet Emil, played by a young Seth Green, and his girlfriend while they chase UFOs by trespassing onto the base. They all witness strange UFO lights in the sky, even though Scully remains skeptical. When Mulder suspects that Emil and his girlfriend have been captured, he goes back onto the base to search for them. He was captured and given a drug that causes him to lose time and memories. The loss of that time was something that caused Mulder great distress.
Scully is never fully on board with the UFO theory at this point in the show for she believes that he is just chasing guilt from his sister’s disappearance, but she does learn to respect Mulder for his investigative open mind. For his blind faith in all things paranormal. She even defends him ardently in the next episode to a colleague. Already, Mulder and Scully have formed a strong bond.
Episode 1.4: Conduit
Conduit follows Mulder and Scully as he makes a connection to a past abduction tabloid story and a new case; a woman whose daughter, Ruby, has disappeared claimed to see UFO’s when she was a kid and now claims her daughter has been abducted.
What they find at Lake Okobogee, Florida, are signs of something that brought great heat to a place where Ruby disappeared. Her brother, Kevin keeps writing down constant series of 1’s and 0’s on sheets of copy paper which gets the attention of the government who see him as a threat who may be stealing government secrets… through the television. As it turns out, he is just writing down code for musical numbers and art, but the government getting involved loses Mulder and Scully the trust of his mother who refuses to talk to them.
In the middle of the episode, Ruby’s friend comes forward with what turns out to be false intel, making her the episode’s red herring. Even Scully falls for it, assuming that she is their true suspect. Mulder is obsessed with the belief that Ruby was the victim of a UFO abduction, and Scully sees the parallels between this case and his sister, Samantha’s unsolved disappearance. This is the first time we really see how invested Mulder is in believing what he thinks happened to his sister, and how it often blinds him to what is going on in the present.
At the end of the episode, when Ruby is found alive and Scully notices that her white blood cell count is down along with other medical issues, Mulder tells her that those issues are common with prolonged weightlessness. An issue that astronauts often have. It makes Scully question what her scientific beliefs are, which is a recurring aspect of the show.
While Scully revisits the case file of Samantha Mulder, Fox Mulder sits in a church looking at his sister’s photo. Her unsolved disappearance still, and always will, haunt him. This sad scene gives us Mulder’s motivation to keep going, as heartbreaking as it is.
West Michigan Connection, Films, and The Pentagon
I was born and raised in Michigan, about half an hour from Lake Michigan. There are many small and medium sized towns there filled with people who, on March 8, 1994, claimed to have seen UFO type aircraft flying in the sky. This was about six months after The X-Files originally aired its first episodes. Thirteen-year-old me was having a field day with my area suddenly obsessed with UFOs. People were finally speaking my language. Even the local chief of the National Weather Service acknowledged that their radar had picked up fast moving phenomenon over Lake Michigan on March 8. Like Mulder, I was a believer.
That particular event made me feel more connected to the show, especially with three of the first four episodes being about UFO activity or abductions and about the conspiracy to cover them up. So did the film Fire in the Sky, released in 1993, the same year as The X-Files. It is a shockingly real depiction of what might happen if you were abducted by aliens and how people believe you are making it up upon your return. It stars D.B. Sweeney and Robert Patrick who ends up being cast as Agent Doggett in later seasons of The X-Files. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It is one of the few films that still frightens me when I watch it.
Not being believed or being judged for believing was a constant in sci-fi films about the existence of aliens. 1997’s Contact starring Jodie Foster followed a character who was ostracized in her scientific field for looking for little green men out in the universe until she heard a transmission from another world. When she is able to travel through wormhole to this alien world, she still wasn’t believed because everyone else witnessed something different than she did, even if her video feed recorded 18 hours of static while she was away – and.
More recently, 2013’s Dark Skies, a film starring Keri Russell, follows a family dealing with strange occurrences in their home until one of them is abducted by aliens and they are forced to move because everyone believes the family is responsible. This time, it is the aliens doing the gaslighting and making it impossible to prove that the family was not responsible.
In a modern-day 2020 version of a real world X-File, the Pentagon quietly released three videos of unidentified flying phenomena in our skies. In 2023, the Pentagon released further evidence with footage taken by MQ-9 military drones. They maintain that they have evidence of hundreds of these objects flying through our airspace, but much like the series that sent Mulder and Scully down countless rabbit holes, the Pentagon also denied knowledge of the existence of extraterrestrial life. I’m an everlasting believer so I question why they would release this information so quietly only to deny that life exists out there in the great, wide universe. How is Earth the only place to spawn life? That seems like a great impossibility.
Until next week, the truth is out there.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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