UFO Conspiracy Theories (The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 2: Deep Throat)

Mulder? What's Going On? (The Plot)

[Turns out it's unreasonably dangerous to search anything related to the term "deep throat" on public wi-fi in Panera, even in FamilySafe mode, so more pictures will be added when I have privacy. Whoopsie.]

When the episode begins we're in Idaho, watching as a military SWAT team breaks into a home to find the Victim of the Week huddled in a corner, covered in red welts. Back in Washington DC, Mulder runs into a spooky guy in the bathroom who tells him to stop poking his nose into things.

Turns out our VotW was a test pilot, and after the SWAT team incident he never returned. His wife reported this as a kidnapping, which is why the FBI got wind of it. Mulder and Scully head to Idaho to investigate.

They interview the wife and meet another test pilot who reappeared after similar circumstances and is now behaving strangely. No one wants to talk to them, except a journalist, but they don't want to talk to him.

They head over to a UFO diner, where Mulder buys a picture of a triangular UFO for twenty bucks. Scully calls him a sucker. In return for buying the picture, Mulder got a map to the secret airbase drawn on a napkin. Mulder calls Scully a sucker. 

They both head out to the airforce base, where they see spooky lights! The effects are not very good, but our heroes nobly ignore this. A helicopter seems to be chasing off two teens who are sneaking around the base, and Mulder and Scully help them out and buy them dinner.

The VotW is returned to his wife, semi-catatonic and unable to remember anything about flying.

Back on the road, Mulder and Scully get pulled over by a gang of Men In Black who drag them out of their cars, take all their evidence, and tell them to get out of town.

Mulder, insensed, sneaks into the base. (It's only episode two. I can't hold it against him -- he's still innocent, he didn't know better.) He apparently walks for ten miles in the dark until he has a spooky encounter with a triangle-shaped space ship. Then he gets kidnapped and mind-wiped by the military folks.

Scully can't call Washington and learns that the "journalist" from earlier is actually working for the military. Scully jumps in his car, steals his gun, makes him call the military and arranges for Mulder's return, and exchanges him as a hostage before driving the "journalist"'s car back to town. Man, I love her so much.

Spooky guy from the bar in the beginning of the episode, the eponymous Deep Throat, returns. We learn that not only are "they" real, they've been here for a long, long time.

First Impressions

This strikes me as a much stronger story than the first episode's. Don't get me wrong, I love the character establishment that happens in the pilot, but the actual plot is confusing as heck and doesn't make a ton of sense. (If you've forgotten, the big reveal is "the boy in the coma did it, but because aliens".)

With Deep Throat, we're seeing a story that resonates much more: a mysterious government informant mirroring Watergate's Deep Throat, mysterious Air Force technology. The narrative we're seeing here also follows actual beliefs surrounding the U.S. government and aliens, which personally makes me feel like I'm on steadier ground. I might not know exactly what's going on, but I have seen it before.

The setting feels more like a real place than what we got in the first ep, too, what with the local stoner kids, two diners, and a cute-but-boring neighborhood. And it's charming how close Mulder and Scully already seem to be. I'm listening to appropriate episodes of The X-Files Files as I watch, and Kumil and his guest observe how warm the relationships are here. Scully and Mulder don't spend the first five episodes bickering before warming up to each other -- they trust each other deeply, enjoy each others' company, and get stuff done right from the get-go. The show also avoids the "oh, look at these weirdos" undertone -- Scully doesn't believe the stoner kids, but she likes them and is willing to help them out without a second thought. 

Mulder, Are You Implying...?

(Folklore & History)

Alright, kids. Today I'm pulling out the big guns. Today we're talking about UFO conspiracy theories in the U.S.

Let's step back and look at what we mean by "conspiracy theory". I'll be using the stitched-together definition that author Anna Merlan uses in her book Republic of Lies: "a belief that a small group of people are working in secret against the common good, to create harm, to effect some negative change in society, to seize power for themselves, or to hide some deadly or consequential secret." Importantly, people believe conspiracy theories against all reasonable evidence. When a small group of people is actually working in secret against the common good et. al., then we're looking at a real conspiracy.

A rare picture of a UFO that's truly unexplained,

despite the Navy doing its best. While a high percentage of "UFOs" can be explained,

701 of the sightings from 1947-1969 that the military investigated

in Project BLUE BOOK remain inexplicable.

Looking at conspiracy theories as a whole is way outside of the scope of this blog post. If you're intrigued, Jon Ronson's Them and Merlan's book (mentioned above) are both readable intros.

That the government knows more about UFOs than they're letting on is actually a pretty widespread belief. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 68% of Americans answered "yes" to the question "In your opinion, does the U.S. government know more about UFOs than it is telling us?" 

A Micro History of the Government and UFOs

For the pilot, we looked at abduction narratives. The modern wave of UFO sightings actually started well before the Hills had their experience when something crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. While people had reported alien and UFO encounters before, this seems to be the first major case of the US government getting accused of a cover-up. (Interestingly, an official declassified report on Roswell notes that the case didn't get fully integrated with UFO beliefs until the late 1970's.)

A hoaxed "alien autopsy" video combined with reports of bodies (that were almost certainly military crash test dummies contributed to the belief that the US government is hiding alien corpses somewhere. Or that they buried them deep in the desert in tiny little coffins. Or both. Depends on who you ask. (Picture is mine, from the museum in Roswell, NM.)

Beginning in 1947, the Air Force opened Project BLUE BOOK, which investigated reports of Unidentified Flying Objects until the project closed in 1969. (This coincides with the Roswell incident, but as Project BLUE BOOK makes no note of anything happening in Roswell, this seems to be incidental.) UFOlogists frequently mention "Majestic-12" or "M-12" -- a supposed top-secret memo detailing recovered alien technology and cover-up efforts. While the FBI declared the document bogus in 1988 and the National Archives undertook an exhaustive debunking, UFO buffs are still convinced that M-12 is proof of a cover-up conspiracy.

Let's pause here, in 1969, and ask ourselves: what are they supposed to be hiding? As far as I can tell, there are two levels to UFO conspiracy theories. In level one, people simply believe that the government is hiding evidence of alien life. Perhaps they don't know what to make of it, perhaps they think it would freak us out -- either way, they're hiding the truth from the public. Level two sees more insidious motives: the aliens are a major threat to us and we're wandering around unawares, or the aliens have life-saving technology that the government doesn't want to have. (Sometimes both are true -- while the pop-culture view of aliens is mostly limited to "greys", many theorists believe in multiple species of aliens, some helpful, some dangerous.)

Not all aliens look like this, sayeth the believers!
(Pic is mine, again from the museum in Roswell.
You really should go.)

This is the world in which The X-Files premiered: Roswell has widely been associated with UFO for only 15 years, abduction narratives are familiar in the UFO community but aren't as common in pop culture. The public knows about Project BLUE BOOK, but doesn't have access to the documents yet. Area 51's existence is unconfirmed. The Watergate scandal was 20 years in the past but far from forgotten. Chris Carter marries the rumors of UFOs that swirled around the fringes of polite society with the post-watergate knowledge that, yes, big ol' conspiracies actually do exist.

Here's something that's easy to forget about watching the early seasons of The X-Files: this show was trailblazing. TXF brought aliens to prime time TV, and autopsies, and tiny gun-toting women detectives in frumpy suits. It drew on tropes and folklore that existed, but it helped codify them. The reason that, upon re-watch, the early seasons of TXF's myth arc feel so mythical is because the X-Files codified those tropes and brought them into the homes of millions of Americans. Which is why I'm bothering with this whole massive project in the first place. 

Anyway! For the sake of thoroughness, let's move onto 

Recent History:

After dragging their feet for years on responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, in 2013 the government finally confirmed the existence of Area 51 when it declassified documents about the development of the U-2 spy plane. The declassified document confirms that classified planes can, technically speaking, be considered UFOs, saying that "in the sense that people sighted U-2s in a time that they were very secretive and at very high altitude and didn’t know what they were, [U-2s] were UFOs.”

In 2017, we learned that the government started a new BLUE BOOK type-project, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), that ran from 2007-2012. This news was released to the public along with an incredible UFO video that balances on the line between "spooky" and "unbelievable".

And that's where we are now! Is there any actual evidence of a massive government conspiracy to cover up the existence of alien life on this earth? Nope. Does the government have a history of keeping UFO-related secrets? Oh, heck yes.

Roswell continues to be a mecca for UFO-interested people, including yours truly.
This is the part of the post where I tell you that Area 52 (Dugway Proving Grounds) is a real place
and that they have a secret, alien-themed gift store there.
No, I'm never selling this shirt or telling you how I got it.

Renee's Nitpick Corner has been canceled this episode due to good research on the part of the production team. Good job, production team. In lieu of that, I'd like to offer

A BRIEF RANT ON THE GALLUP POLL QUESTION

As Mulder points out in this episode and as my dad is fond of saying, UFOs are just things in the sky you can't identify. I think the reasonable person's response to the question "does the government know more about UFOs than they're telling us" is "yes", given everything we've just looked at. Heck, I've seen Navy conducting night live-fire drills offshore. Those are spooky enough, even when we knew what was going on. This is essentially Scully's position: the Air Force is testing secret technology. While they're kinda being jerks about it, that doesn't mean aliens are involved. Given what she saw during the episode, I think it's entirely reasonable.

SOURCES / FURTHER READING:

2019 Gallup poll on UFO belief. 

The Conversation on a recent uptick in UFO belief.

Kumail Nanjiani's The X-Files Files.

Declassified USAF report on the Roswell incident.

Archives.gov on UFOs.

FBI vault: purported Magestic-12 document.

Washington Post on 2017 declassifications.

Reuters on Area 51 existing.

I also referred to the UFO chapter in Anna Merlan's Republic of Lies and some material about Roswell from Mary Roach's delightful Packing for Mars.

Questions? Comments? Corrections?

Please let me know, either below or privately. 

I care about accuracy! 

☕