The X-Files - 4.

French title: Le baiser de Judas
translation: The Kiss Of Judas

US Airdate: May 18, 1997

writer: Chris Carter

director: R. W. Goodwin

STARRING:

David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder

Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully

Guest Cast:

Rob Freeman as Det. Rempulski

Charles Cioffi as Scott Blevins

Matthew Walker as Arlinsky

James Sutorius as Babcock

John Oliver as Rolston

Sheila Larken as Mrs. Scully

Pat Skipper as Bill Scully Jr.

Arnie Walters as Father McCue

Barry W. Levy as Vitagliano

John Finn as Scott Kritschgau

Nancy Kerr as Agent Hedin

Steve Makaj as Ostelhoff

MULDER AND SCULLY SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH WHEN AN ANTHROPOLOGIST DISCOVERS WHAT COULD BE THE FROZEN REMAINS OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE.

Scully enters Mulder's apartment, where a group of detectives and forensic technicians are waiting. Detective Rempulski introduces himself, then pulls back a sheet draped over a body lying on the floor. Scully positively identifies the victim. Later, Scully appears before a group of FBI officials led by Section Chief Scott Blevins. During the meeting, Scully recounts how, four years earlier, Blevins assigned her to a project known as The X-Files. She states that the purpose of the current meeting is to report on the illegitimacy of Mulder's work. In flashback, a pair of anthropologists, Arlinsky and Babcock, are flown by helicopter to a snowbound camp at the base of a mountain. Accompanied by a guide, the pair make their way up the steep terrain. Upon reaching the summit, the men enter a cave where the body of a gray alien is perfectly preserved in ice.

A group of guests gather at Mrs. Scully's house for a dinner party. Amongst the attendees are Dana's brother, Bill Scully, Jr., and a Catholic Priest, Father McCue. Scully realize McCue was invited by her mother for the purpose of discussing her faith at a time when Scully's health is at great risk due to her cancer. After dinner, Father McCue and Scully briefly talk about her drifting from the church before their discussion is interrupted by a phone call from Mulder. He has received information about a something that was discovered in Canada. Mulder arranges for Scully to meet he and Arlinsky at the Smithsonian. Arlinsky claims that, based upon ice core samples taken from the scene, the alien body is some two hundred years old. He asks for the agents' assistance in verifying the alien remains. Mulder and Arlinsky fly to the base camp, which is eerily deserted. Unbeknownst to them, a mysterious assassin armed with a shotgun pistol has murdered the Summiteers. Upon reaching the summit, the men discover the bodies of Babcock and a foreman. Inside the cave is a rectangular hole where the alien body had been entombed. Later, Babcock, injured but alive, tells the pair that he buried the alien body beneath his tent.

Meanwhile, Scully and lab scientist Vitagliano examine ice core samples taken from the cave. Later that night, Scully returns to the Bio Lab, where she is assaulted and thrown down a flight of stairs by an unidentified attacker. Agent Hedin matches fingerprints found on the stairwell to a Michael Kritschgau, who works for the Pentagon's research division. After viewing a personnel file, Scully positively identifies Kritschgau as her attacker. Later, she confronts Kritschgau inside a parking garage and places him under arrest. But Kritschgau warns that if he is taken to jail, the same people who gave Scully cancer will kill him.

Mulder and Arlinsky transport the alien body to a warehouse where an autopsy can be performed. Scully contacts her partner at the warehouse and arranges a meeting so he can hear Kritschgau's story firsthand. Soon afterward, the assassin, Ostelhoff, shoots and kills Arlinsky and Babcock at the warehouse. Meanwhile, Kritschgau, who claims to have run the Department of Defense's agitprop arm, tells the agents that the government has been orchestrating an elaborate hoax to divert attention away from itself. The alien corpse, Kritschgau claims, was forged from bio-materials and frozen into place over the course of a year. He insists Mulder was only meant to see the alien -- to make him believe the lie. Mulder counters that it is Kritschgau who is the liar. But when Mulder returns to the warehouse, he discovers the dead bodies of Arlinsky and Babcock--and the alien specimen missing. Shortly thereafter, Scully tells him the men behind the hoax gave her cancer all in an effort to make him a believer in their lies. Mulder is stunned by the revelation. Back in the current day, Scully tells FBI officials that she received a phone call from the police department asking her to identify a body inside Mulder's apartment. Struggling to maintain composure, Scully reveals that Mulder died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

To Be Continued...

the information above came from The Official X-Files Web Site

The title "Gethsemane" refers to the place where Jesus was betrayed by Judas.

Tagline changes to: Believe The Lie. Sure, but which one?!

WARNING: Strictly personal opinion coming up!

Okay now, hands up all xphiles that were sorely disappointed with this thing? Uh huh, just like I thought, me too. Can we have a look at the previous season finales and see where it all went horribly wrong?

Season one, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", who can ever forget the punch to the stomach Deep Throat's untimely death was? I'm not ashamed to say I loved that man, this one was a shocker.

Season two, "Anasazi ", does it get any better than Cancer Man yelling "Burn it!"? Man oh man, that great boxcar scene made for a loooong summer!

And season three, "Talitha Cumi", I mean, come on, a classic if only for that conversation between Cancer Man and Mrs. Mulder, we're still arguing about that one! And the scenes with Jeremiah Smith and Cancer Man in the cell, where he morphs into Deep Throat and Bill Mulder? Creepy.

And now we have this season ender. Excuse me, but, yawn. My biggest complaint, where the heck was everybody else? No Skinner, no Lone Gunmen, not even Krycek (which we'd been led to believe was a sure thing). Where was Skinner when one of his agents supposedly killed himself?! And how can you even THINK about having a conspiracy-laced ep without good old Cancer Man?! For me, regardless of some terrific Mulder and Scully scenes, this was a huge disappointment.

Now for the important stuff, and I'll try to be gentle .... get a grip people, Mulder's NOT dead!! You have no idea how many frantic fans wrote to the newsgroup in a panic, how can he be dead?! Will season five all be a flashback?! Are they not telling us the truth and this really was the final episode of The X-Files?! Relax fans, both Gillian Anderson AND David Duchovny have signed their contracts for next season, and from Chris Carter's lips this line: "The episode is about a hoax, and that should tell you something." For whatever reason, Mulder's "death" was a hoax, now the only questions are, does Scully know and why did he do it? The most popular theory we've reached is that he's gone underground to try and find a cure for Scully's cancer, the reasoning being that with Mulder gone, the people in charge will lay off Scully and the x-files department will be closed down, thus ensuring she won't be tampered with anymore.

So after waiting for months, heck, years even, we finally see one of the previously unseen Scully brothers. What a waste this was! He basically has one good scene, the one with Scully in the bathroom after she's been attacked in the stairwell, and even that wasn't worth waiting all this time for. How long before the other "missing" brother shows up? And can he have a meatier role please?

Speaking of meaty, how about that alien autopsy huh? Tells you all you need to know about Mulder, as he stands transfixed watching every slice and dice. This is the same guy that gets squeamish everytime Scully performs a human autopsy! Side note, 'cause it cracked me up; my autistic son was watching this with me as I recorded the quotes, and as the doc was cutting through the alien ribcage (really gross), he yelled out, "Barbecue!" He, he, that's my boy :-)

After extensive searches for anything related to the 1972 UFO Convention that Mulder is watching footage of at the beginning and end of this ep, I gave up. But, I did find two terrific articles by Carl Sagan, the recently departed scientist that spoke at this convention and who is heard talking at the end. If you're interested, and believe me these are fascinating, check here:

You're welcome :-)

Section Chief Blevins: "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?"

Scully: "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 fuelled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was twelve. I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work. That 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."

____________________________________________________________

Blevins: "Agent Scully, I presume you have a basis for this break from Agent Mulder?"

Scully: "Yes sir. Recent events have shed new light on the factual and physical evidence that would serve to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life. Which is the foundation of Agent Mulder's consuming devotion to his work."

Blevins: "What factual evidence?"

Scully: "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 slight-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 me and him into it. And to expose Agent Mulder's work for what it is."

____________________________________________________________

at the Scully family dinner party

Father McCue: "I feel awkward sitting here, I'm sure you do too."

Scully: "No, I'm sorry."

Father McCue: "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."

Scully: "Father McCue..."

Father McCue: "At a time of personal crisis, a threat to your health, turning back to your faith is important and essential."

Scully: "Father McCue, I appreciate my mother's concern, and yours, but I'm being treated for my cancer, and I'm taking every precaution."

Father McCue: "Faith can make you stronger."

Scully: "I haven't felt a need, I.... 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."

____________________________________________________________

Arlinsky: "I know what your first thought was, but the St. Elias range?! That's a long way to go for a hoax."

Mulder: "If you're gonna go, why not go all the way?"

____________________________________________________________

after hearing the story Arlinsky has to tell about the alien body in the Yukon

Mulder: "You think it's foolish?"

Scully: "I have no opinion actually."

Mulder: "You have *no* opinion?"

Scully: "This is your Holy Grail, Mulder, not mine."

Mulder: "What is that supposed to mean?"

Scully: "It just means that proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish."

Mulder: "How about Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny? This is not some selfish, pet project of mine, Scully, I'm as sceptical of that man as you are, but proof? Definitive proof of descension beings sharing time and existence with us? That would change everything. Every truth we live by would be shaken to the ground, there is no greater revelation imaginable, no greater scientific discovery!"

Scully: "You already believe, Mulder, I mean, what difference will it make? I mean, what will proof change for you?"

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

Scully: "Only if it had been disproven."

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

Scully: "I don't think about it actually. And I don't think that it can be proven."

Mulder: "But what if it could be? Wouldn't that knowledge be worth seeking? Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie?"

Scully: "I can't go with you, Mulder."

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."

Scully: (as Mulder leaves, we first hear her voiceover, then the scene changes to the FBI room where she was speaking previously) "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, had metastasized (begun to spread to other organs). And the doctors told me, short of a miracle, it would continue to aggressively invade my body. Advancing faster each day towards the inevitable."

____________________________________________________________

after Scully was attacked in the stairwell, her brother comes to see her with a change of clothes

Bill Scully, Jr.: "I didn't tell Mom what happened. So, what did happen?"

Scully: "I was ... ahhh ... knocked down a flight of stairs, but I'm okay, luckily."

Bill: "You're not okay, Dana. I know about your cancer."

Scully: "I told Mom not to tell you."

Bill: "Why?"

Scully: "Because it's very personal. Because I don't want sympathy."

Bill: "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, gettin' knocked down, beaten up? What are you trying to prove? That you're gonna go out fighting?!"

Scully: "Oh, now come on, Bill..."

Bill: "Do you know what Mom's going through? Why do you think I didn't tell her when they called?"

Scully: "What *should* I be doing?!"

Bill: "We have a responsibility! Not just to ourselves, but to the people in our lives!"

Scully: "Hey, look, just because I haven't bared my soul to you, or to Father McCue, or to God, it doesn't mean that I'm not responsible to what's important to me!"

Bill: "To what?! To who? This guy, Mulder? Well where is he, Dana? Where is he through all this?"

____________________________________________________________

Kritschgau: "The lie you believe, that they have cleverly led you to believe, Agent Mulder, is that there is intelligent life, other than our own, and that we have had contact with these lifeforms."

Mulder: "So you're saying this has all been orchestrated? A hoax?"

Kritschgau: "Which you've been used to perpetuate."

Mulder: "You come by this knowledge how?"

Kritschgau: "Working for the D.O.D. (Department of Defense) 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."

Mulder: "And just by chance, you run into Agent Scully?"

Scully gives an ironic-type smile

Kritschgau: (gives the comment a snort and smile) "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 even born."

Mulder: "Why come to me now? Why not four years ago?"

Kritschgau: "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?"

Mulder: "And the thousands of UFO sightings?"

Kritschgau: "Above top secret military aircraft, concept-designed to feed hysteria."

Mulder: "Evidence of alien biology?"

Kritschgau: "Unclassified, but naturally occurring biologic anomalies science will eventually explain."

Mulder: "The body that was found?"

Kritschgau: "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 sentiment and materials that would bear out its age, poured through a small channel drilled in the rock above."

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

Kritschgau: "The body will never be tested, Agent Mulder."

Mulder: "What do you mean?"

Kritschgau: "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."

Mulder: (to Scully) "This man is a liar."

Kritschgau: "You can see for yourself, Agent Mulder. The body is already long gone."

____________________________________________________________

after finding the murdered bodies of Babcock and Arlinsky, and the alien body gone

Scully: "Who did this, Mulder? Mulder?" (as he starts to angrily walk away)

Mulder: "What we had here was proof, Scully, there's no way it could be anything else."

Scully: "You said it yourself, Mulder. More tests needed to be run."

Mulder: "Yeah, but, the ice core samples checked out. If the ice hasn't been tampered with, how could the body within be a fake?"

Scully: "Cellular material found in the ice core samples were a direct match for what this man Kritschgau described. Hybrid cells, chimeras within the matrix."

Mulder: "Do we know for sure that those cells are not extraterrestrial?"

Scully: "Mulder, everything this man described, you can't just guess at these details. I'm sorry, but the facts here completely overwhelm any arguement against them!"

Mulder: "Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them!"

Scully: "Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe."

Mulder: "After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's NOT true!"

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

Mulder: "What the hell did that guy say to you, that you believe *his* story!?"

Scully: "He said that the men behind this hoax, behind these lies, gave me this disease to make you believe." Mulder walks off and leaves her alone

____________________________________________________________

Mulder sits alone in his apartment, same as opening scene, watching a video of a 1972 UFO Convention, this is what is said on the video, as best I could make out

Ashley Montague: "What we generally mean is, of course, intelligent life, something resembling our noble selves. It's entirely 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."

(unidentified voice): "I think there's no question but that we live in an inhabited universe, that has life all over it."

Carl Sagan: "By finding out what the other planets are like, by finding out whether there are civilizations on planets among the stars, we reestablish a meaningful context for ourselves."

Ashley Montague: "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."

Issac Asimov: "I can conceive of no nightmare as terrifying as establishing such communication with a so-called superior or, if you wish, advanced technology in outer space."

we see a close-up of Mulder's crying face, which morphs into Scully's face, also beginning to cryScully: "Earlier this morning, I got a call from the police, asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment. A detective asked me ... he needed me to identify a body..."

Blevins: "Agent Scully ... "

Scully: "Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."