"Patient X" is the thirteenth episode of the fifth season of American science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written by series creator Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, directed by Kim Manners and aired in the United States on March 1, 1998, on the Fox network. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 12.6, being watched by 20.21 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received moderately positive reviews from critics.
The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In this episode, as a rebel alien race secretly attacks several groups of former alien abductees, the agents meet Cassandra Spender (Veronica Cartwright), a woman who claims to be a multiple abductee and wants to deliver a positive message about aliens. Agent Mulder, now skeptical about extraterrestrial activity, is disturbed when Agent Scully forms a special bond with the woman.
In Kazakhstan, two young boys see an unknown object fall from the sky. Seconds later, they witness a man being burned alive, and one of the boys is killed by an Alien Rebel who has his eyes and mouth sewn shut. The next day, Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden) leads an investigation of UN peacekeepers of the area. She runs into Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea), who has caught Dmitri, the other Kazakh boy. Krycek tells Marita to tell her superiors that "it is all going to hell".
Meanwhile, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) attends a lecture at MIT, where the testimony of Cassandra Spender (Veronica Cartwright), an alien abductee, is being presented. Mulder argues against other members of the lecture over the existence of alien life, claiming that it is a lie created to cover up a program of medical experimentation on civilians run by the military industrial complex. When the lecture ends, Mulder is met by Dr. Heitz Werber, who is surprised to see that Mulder has lost his belief in alien life since the last time they met. Werber tells Mulder that he is Cassandra's doctor, and asks him to visit her.
Meanwhile, Krycek, who has beaten Dmitri into telling him what he saw, orders his Russian colleagues to infect him with the black oil. Back in the United States, Werber introduces Mulder to Cassandra, who considers him a hero of hers. She claims that the aliens are in a state of upheaval and that she will be abducted by them again. Mulder tells Cassandra there is nothing he can do for her and leaves.
In Russia, Krycek, working against the orders of his superiors, kidnaps the infected Dmitri and flees to the U.S., sewing shut the boy's eyes, nose, and mouth to keep the black oil from leaving his body. At FBI headquarters, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) meets Agent Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens), Cassandra's son, who fears the damage to his reputation if his colleagues learn about his mother. He tells Scully to keep Mulder away from her.
Marita reports to the Syndicate, which expected colonization at a much later date. Krycek offers Dmitri to the Syndicate in exchange for all their research on a vaccine. Meanwhile, Scully talks to Mulder about his meeting with Cassandra. She realizes that she has much in common with Cassandra, including being abducted at Skyland Mountain and having an implant inserted in the base of her neck. Scully visits Cassandra, who immediately realizes that she's a fellow abductee. Scully tells her not to remove the implant. Cassandra assures Scully that she never will, as she looks forward to being abducted again.
A group of abductees meet at Skyland Mountain and are burned alive by more faceless Alien Rebels. Scully and Mulder visit the scene, with Mulder continuing to be very skeptical of any alien involvement. The Syndicate is shocked by the massacre. Mulder and Scully visit Cassandra again, who knew many of the people who died. They encounter Spender, who is upset about their visit with his mother. Krycek is met by Marita and it is revealed that they are secretly lovers, conspiring against the Syndicate. When Krycek returns to the cell where Dmitri is held, he finds him gone, and the Well-Manicured Man there instead.
Mulder finds that the victims of the attack had implants in their necks and all claimed to be abductees. He believes they were led there by the military, not aliens. Mulder is called by Marita, who kidnapped Dmitri. Dmitri pulls the stitches off his eyes, resulting in Marita getting infected with the black oil. Mulder calls Cassandra, looking for Scully, but Jeffrey answers and reveals that Cassandra is gone. At that moment Cassandra is with a group of abductees, including Scully and Dmitri, at the Ruskin Dam, brought there by Syndicate assassin Quiet Willy. The abductees see a UFO appear in the sky. Suddenly screams are uttered as a man is set on fire and two faceless aliens arrive.[1]
Production
Veronica Cartwright's performance in the episode was lauded by critics and resulted in an Emmy nomination.
Casting
This episode marks the first appearance of Chris Owens as Jeffrey Spender. Owens previously appeared in earlier episodes, the first being "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", in which he played the younger version of The Smoking Man.[2] Owens later reprised this role in episode "Demons".[3] During the fifth season of the show, Owens was cast as The Great Mutato in "The Post-Modern Prometheus".[4] After his stint on The X-Files, Owens attempted to get a job as a waiter in Vancouver, to no avail. One day, however, he ran into series creator Chris Carter at a bar, who humorously told him, "I didn't know they served guys with two faces here", a reference to his portrayal of The Great Mutato.[5] Carter explained that David Duchovny had "taken careful notice" of Owens' acting abilities and requested that he return to the series in some capacity. Heeding Duchovny's advice, Carter created the role of Jeffrey Spender just for him.[5]
"Patient X" also introduced the recurring character of Cassandra Spender, played by Veronica Cartwright. Rick Millikan, the series' casting director, was very pleased with Cartwright's performance, noting, "She's got a voice that adds a little creepiness and a little mystery that I thought played really well. She was just the perfect X-Files person."[6]
Because the script called for a number of Russian characters to appear, the show's casting scouts hired a number of Russian expatriates living in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area. Alex Shostak Jr., a teenage Ukrainian immigrant, was selected to play Dmitri. He worked 12–14 hours a day, much of which was spent applying the elaborate make-up effect that gave the appearance that his eyes and mouth had been sewed up. During filming, he was "literally" blind and guided by the crew members throughout the filming of his scenes.[7] When it came to the dialogue, Shostak provided the Russian translation for his own lines.[8]
Both Nicholas Lea and Laurie Holden had to learn Russian for the episode,[7] which, according to the former "was 'not hard'."[5] Holden and Lea worked diligently together to perfect their pronunciation, with Holden explaining, "We'd come up with these fun ways to test ourselves to know if we had really nailed it. Show tunes come to mind, but I also remember this one time my dialect coach had me call a Russian friend of his on his cell phone to see if he could understand me. I passed the test."[9] "Patient X" was the first episode in which Lea was credited under the Also Starring tag, alongside Mitch Pileggi and William B. Davis.[7]
Filming and visual effects
Filming the scene with the burning camp was "tricky", according to Kim Manners, as the production crew was forced to follow a number of limiting safety precautions.
To light the fires in the episode, the crew made use of propane. Manners wanted the shots to be as close to the fire as possible, so they also used fireproof cameras. According to Manners, "They used a half a million dollar camera on a crane wrapped in asbestos" and ran it through the fire.[7] For the scene in which the alien rebels incinerate people, the production crew used a "very dangerous" stunt known as a "full burn", in which a person is set on fire with the aid of a special suit.[7] In total, the stuntman who performed in the scene was on fire for about 30 seconds—quite a long time by filming standards.[7] Special effects supervisor Toby Lindala supervised the creation of the faceless alien rebels, Dmitri's mutilation, and the incinerated victims of the rebels. Lindala also designed the rig used to infect Dmitri with the black oil.[8]
The set for the Russian gulag was erected at North Shore Studios, under production designer Graeme Murray's supervision. The ship scenes were filmed at a warehouse in Vancouver. When filming the Syndicate meeting, Manners wanted Marita Covarrubias to look as strong as possible since this marked the first appearance of a woman in the Syndicate meeting room. Since very little movement occurs during these scenes, the director tried to make things visually interesting by mixing wide shots with unique camera angles.[7]
Reception
"Patient X" premiered in the United States on the Fox network on March 1, 1998.[10] This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 12.6, with a 19 share, meaning that roughly 12.6 percent of all television-equipped households, and 19 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode.[11] It was viewed by 20.21 million viewers.[11]Veronica Cartwright was nominated in the category "Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series" in the 1998 Emmy Awards for her performance in this episode and its follow-up, "The Red and the Black".[12] The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth.[13]
Critical reception to the episode was largely positive. Television Without Pity ranked "Patient X" the eighth most nightmare-inducing episode of the show, citing, in particular the abuse of Dmitri.[14] The article noted that "If The X-Files has taught us anything, it’s that if a G-Man asks us if we know anything about anything and we foolishly say yes, our mouths and eyelids will be sewn shut and we will be brainwashed to kill on demand."[14]The A.V. Club reviewer Emily VanDerWerff gave "Patient X" a B+, and wrote that the episode "feels epic, in a way the mythology episodes do at their best".[15] However, VanDerWerff noted that "The problem with breaking the status quo on a TV series is that your audience is always going to know in the back of its head that the status quo isn’t really broken."[15] She reasoned that the audience never fully believed that "Mulder could lose his belief in the all-consuming alien conspiracy" or accept the idea that "Scully could find herself dabbling with belief in [aliens]."[15] Despite these setbacks, however, she noted that "Patient X" was the episode where the series' mythology "gets moving again, after chasing its own tail throughout much of season four and reaching a sort of climax in the opening episodes of season five."[15]Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode four stars out of five. The two described the tone of "Patient X" as "truly visceral", citing the faceless men incinerating people as well as the mutilation of the innocent Dmitri, who was "at the wrong place at the wrong time". Furthermore, Shearman and Pearson praised the episode for "shift[ing] the goalposts" and allowing Mulder and Scully to switch roles as the believer and skeptic.[16] Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a moderately positive review and awarded it two-and-a-half stars out of four.[17] Vitaris praised the episode's premise and writing. "'Patient X' is a rare episode in that it actually advances The X-Files mythology, with the news of a vaccine to combat the black oil".[17] However, she was critical of the episode's reliance on shock value, noting that the "camera seems to take a perverse delight in death, pain, and mutilation, with the distressing effect of numbing the viewer to the horror."[17]
Hurwitz, Matt & Knowles, Chris (2008). The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series the Myths and the Movies. New York, US: Insight Editions. ISBN978-1-933784-72-4.
Meisler, Andy (1999), Resist or Serve: The Official Guide to The X-Files, Vol. 4, London: HarperCollins, ISBN0-00-257133-1
Shearman, Robert; Pearson, Lars (2009). Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen. Mad Norwegian Press. ISBN978-0-9759446-9-1.
The fourth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files commenced airing on the Fox network in the United States on October 4, 1996, concluding on the same channel on May 18, 1997, and contained 24 episodes. Following the filming and airing of the season, production began on The X-Files feature film, which was released in 1998 following the show's fifth season.
The fifth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files commenced airing on the Fox network in the United States on November 2, 1997, concluding on the same channel on May 17, 1998, and contained 20 episodes. The season was the last in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; subsequent episodes would be shot in Los Angeles, California. In addition, this was the first season of the show where the course of the story was planned, due to the 1998 The X-Files feature film being filmed before it, but scheduled to be released after it aired.
The sixth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files commenced airing on the Fox network in the United States on November 8, 1998, concluding on the same channel on May 16, 1999, and consisted of twenty-two episodes. The season continued from the 1998 feature film and focused heavily on FBI federal agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully's separation from the X-Files Division and the demise of the Syndicate—a "shadow government" group attempting to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials—in the two-part episode "Two Fathers" and "One Son".
Marita Covarrubias is a fictional character on the American science fiction television series The X-Files. She was initially introduced as an informant, leaking diplomatic information to FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder to aid his investigation of paranormal cases, dubbed X-Files. However, she was revealed to be an agent of the secretive Syndicate, although ultimately betraying that organization on several occasions. Introduced in the fourth season opener "Herrenvolk", the character remained a recurring presence until the series' finale, "The Truth".
In The X-Files television show and feature film, the Syndicate is a shadow government group. They were also known as The Elders, The Consortium, and The Group. Because of their cover-up of extraterrestrial life, they were the primary antagonistic force opposing Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, John Doggett, and Monica Reyes during the series.
FBI Special agent Jeffrey Frank Spender is a fictional character in the American Fox television series The X-Files, a science fiction show about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of alien existence. Spender was in control of the X-Files office after Fox Mulder's and Dana Scully's forced leaves in "The Beginning". The X-Files office is concerned with cases with particularly mysterious or possibly supernatural circumstances that were left unsolved and shelved by the FBI. Portrayed by Canadian actor Chris Owens, Spender was a recurring character during the fifth and sixth seasons, before returning for the ninth season of The X-Files in a guest role. He returned for the eleventh season of the show.
Volume 2 of The X-Files Mythology collection is the second DVD release containing selected episodes from the third to the fifth seasons of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. The episodes collected in the release form the middle of the series' mythology, and are centered on the discovery of a mind-altering extraterrestrial "black oil".
The X-Files Mythology – Volume 3 collection is the third DVD release containing selected episodes from the fifth to the eighth seasons of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. The episodes collected in the release form the middle of the series' mythology, and are centered on alien colonization efforts, the fall of the Syndicate, and Fox Mulder's abduction.
The X-Files Mythology – Volume 4 collection is the fourth DVD release containing selected episodes from the eighth to the ninth seasons of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. The episodes collected in the release form the end of the series' mythology, and are centered on those that involve the alien "Super Soldiers" and Dana Scully's son, William.
"The Red and the Black" is the fourteenth episode of the fifth season of American science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written by series creator Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, directed by Carter and aired in the United States on March 8, 1998, on the Fox network. The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 12.0, being watched by 19.98 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received moderately positive reviews from critics.
"The End" is the 20th and final episode of the fifth season, and 117th overall of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States and Canada on May 17, 1998. "The End" subsequently aired in the United Kingdom on March 17, 1999, on BBC One. The episode was written by executive producer Chris Carter, and directed by R. W. Goodwin. "The End" earned a Nielsen household rating of 11.9, being watched by 18.76 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed to positive reviews from television critics.
"The Beginning" is the first episode of the sixth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network in the United States on November 8, 1998. The episode was written by Chris Carter, and directed by Kim Manners. It helps explore the series' overarching mythology. "The Beginning" earned a Nielsen household rating of 11.9, being watched by 20.34 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed reviews from television critics.
"Two Fathers" is the eleventh episode of the sixth season and the 128th episode overall of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States and Canada on February 7, 1999, on the Fox Network and subsequently aired in the United Kingdom on Sky1. It was written by executive producers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz and directed by Kim Manners. The episode earned a Nielsen rating of 11.5, a total of 18.81 million viewers. The episode received mostly positive reviews.
"One Son" is the twelfth episode from the sixth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It first aired on February 14, 1999, on the Fox network. The episode was written by series creator Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, and directed by Rob Bowman. It explores the series' overarching mythology and concludes the Syndicate story arc.
"Requiem" is the twenty-second episode and the finale of the seventh season of the science fiction television series The X-Files, and the show's 161st episode overall. It premiered on the Fox network in the United States on May 21, 2000. The episode was written by Chris Carter, and directed by Kim Manners. The episode helped to explore the series' overarching mythology. "Requiem" earned a Nielsen household rating of 8.9, being watched by 15.26 million viewers in its initial broadcast. The episode received mostly positive reviews from television critics. Many applauded the way it made the series' increasingly marginalized alien mythology relevant again, although others lamented the partial loss of David Duchovny.
"Deadalive" is the fifteenth episode of the eighth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written by executive producers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, and was directed by Tony Wharmby. It explores the series' alien mythology story arc. Following its North American premiere on April 1, 2001, it received a Nielsen household rating of 7.3 and was watched by 12.4 million viewers. It garnered mixed reviews; while most critics were happy with the return of actor David Duchovny, some criticized the episode's plot holes. It later won the show's last Emmy Award, for Outstanding Makeup.
"This Is Not Happening" is the fourteenth episode of the eighth season and the 175th episode overall of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States on February 25, 2001, on the Fox Network, and subsequently aired in the United Kingdom. It was written by executive producers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, and directed by Kim Manners, and forms part of the series' overarching mythology. The episode received a Nielsen household rating of 9.7 and was watched by 16.9 million viewers, making it the highest-rated episode of the season. "This Is Not Happening" was received positively by television critics.
The mythology of The X-Files, sometimes referred to as its "mytharc" by the show's staff and fans, follows the quest of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder, a believer in supernatural phenomena, and Dana Scully, his skeptical partner. Their boss, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, was also often involved. Beginning with season 8, another skeptic named John Doggett, and Monica Reyes, a believer like Mulder, were also introduced. The overarching story, which spans events as early as the 1940s, is built around a government conspiracy to hide the truth about alien existence and their doomsday plan. Not all episodes advanced the mythology plot, but those that did were often set up by Mulder or Scully via an opening monologue.
The Colonists are an extraterrestrial species and are also the primary group of antagonists in the science fiction television show The X-Files as well as the first X-Files feature film. The mystery revolving around their identity and purpose is slowly revealed across the course of the series. In the series' plot, the Colonists are collaborating with a group of United States government officials known as the Syndicate in a plan to colonize the Earth, hence their name.
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