'The X Files' Best Episode

The “Ice” Episode of “The X Files”

It was directed by David Nutter and written by Glen Morgan and James Wong. The debut broadcast of "Ice" was watched by 10.0 million viewers in 6.2 million households and received positive reviews from critics, who praised its tense atmosphere.

FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate the deaths of an Alaskan research team. Isolated and alone, the agents and their accompanying team discover the existence of extraterrestrial parasitic organisms that drive their hosts into impulsive fits of rage.

The episode was inspired by an article in Science News about an excavation in Greenland. Series creator Chris Carter has named the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, as an additional inspiration for the storyline. "Ice" exceeded its production budget despite being conceived as an episode that would save money by being shot in a single location.

Plot

A mass murder-suicide occurs among a team of geophysicists at an outpost in Icy Cape, Alaska. FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovney) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) head for the outpost accompanied by physician Dr. Hodge (Xander Berkeley); toxicologist Dr. DaSilva (Felicity Huffman); geologist Dr. Murphy (Steve Hytner); and Bear (Jeff Kober), their pilot. Along with the bodies of the scientists, the group finds a dog that attacks Mulder and Bear. Scully notices black nodules on its skin and suspects that it may be infected with bubonic plague. She also notices movement underneath its skin. Bear becomes ill and develops similar nodules on his body. Autopsies reveal no such nodules on the bodies of the scientists.

Murphy finds an ice core sample that is believed to originate from a meteor crater. He theorizes that the sample might be 250,000 years old. Bear insists on leaving, but the others are worried about infecting the outside world with a contagion. When asked for a stool sample, Bear attacks Mulder and tries to flee. Something moves underneath Bear's skin, and he dies when Scully removes a small worm from the back of his neck. The group is left with no pilot, and they are told that an evacuation is impossible because of the weather.

The worm removed from Bear is kept in a jar. Another is recovered from one of the corpses. Mulder believes that the worms are extraterrestrial and wants them kept alive, although Scully feels that they should be destroyed to prevent infection. The group check each other for black nodules and find none, although Mulder reminds Scully that the nodules disappeared from the dog over time. When Mulder finds Murphy in the freezer with his throat slit, the others—including Scully—believe that he has become infected and killed Murphy. Mulder is locked in a store room.

DaSilva discovers that two worms put together will kill each other. When the investigators place one of the worms into the infected dog, it recovers. Against Scully's objections, Hodge and DaSilva try to place the other worm into Mulder, but Hodge realizes that the infected one is DaSilva. He and Mulder restrain DaSilva and place the last worm inside of her. On rescue, DaSilva is quarantined and the others are released. Mulder wants to return to the site but is told that it has been destroyed by the government.

Conception and Writing

Glen Morgan began to write this episode after reading a Science News article about men in Greenland who found a 250,000-year-old item in ice. The setting, an icy, remote research base overcome by an extraterrestrial creature, is similar to that of John W. Campbell’s 1938 novelette Who Goes There? and its two feature film incarnations, The Thing from Another World (1951), directed by Christian Nyby, and The Thing (1982), directed by John Carpenter. Chris Carter has mentioned these as being the main inspirations for the episode. Though Carter has not mentioned it as a source, the device--a killer extraterrestrial parasite embedded deep in an ice sheet--also occurs in the 1992 Peter Hoeg novel “Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow.”  As in the novelette and movies, the characters cannot trust each other because they are unsure if they are what they seem to be. Carter in particular enjoyed this aspect, because it pitted Mulder and Scully against each other and gave "a new look on their characters early on in the series".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(The_X-Files)

Comment by the Blog Author

The blog author regards “Ice” as the best of all X Files episodes.  It is exceeded only by a scant number of episodes of Homicide: Life on the Streets as being the best of network television in the 1990s.  “Ice” is both gripping and haunting.  It also shows how rare cooperation has become among people in the workplace in the modern era.  Watch it if you get a chance, it was the seventh episode from the first season of the show.