The X-Files: Season 1, Episode 1
Mulder? What's Going On?
(The plot)
The episode starts with a notice that this story is "inspired by" true events. We open to a red-headed woman running through the woods. Spooky stuff happens -- bright lights! strange noises! The woman is identified as being part of the class of 1989. She's got two weird little dots on her lower back. "It's happening again, isn't it?" the local detective on the case intones.
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| Behold, children! An ancient technology! |
Now we're in the FBI headquarters. Everything is very busy and very nineties. Nineties phones! Nineties power suit! Nineties computers! Dana Scully, bright young medical doctor with a physics background, is being tasked with babysitting self-described "FBI's most unwanted", Fox "Spooky" Mulder. Mulder, an Oxford-educated criminal profiler, has become obsessed with "The X-Files", unexplained cases that come across the FBI's metaphorical desk. They kinda flirt, mostly by insulting each other.
They head to foggy Oregon to investigate the case of the opener's victim. On the drive to town, something weird happens with the electronics. Mulder marks the spot with a spraypainted X. M&S decide to exhume a body of another class of '89 student who died in similar circumstances. The coroner shows up with his adult daughter. He manhandles his daughter back into their car before demanding that Scully and Mulder stop investigating already!! Stop accusing him without evidence!!! The backhoe drops the coffin which somehow barely pops open after tumbling 30+ feet down a hill filled with gravestones. Inside is not a person and we must be very hush-hush about this. (Scully thinks it's an ape. Mulder is very demanding about getting tests done.)
They interview a psychiatrist who's been treating people related to the case. He breaches doctor-patient confidentiality right and left and we learn that there's one young man who's in a "waking coma" in the mental institution, along with a young woman who has a serious psychiatric illness and seems to use a wheelchair to get around. Scully and Mulder meet these two -- the girl has a dramatic episode that seems to be an excuse for Mulder to lift her shirt and find those two little dots again.
Scully and Mulder go on a night hike, armed with guns but apparently not any sort of search warrant. There's a three-gun standoff between our FBI friends and one of the shady local authorities that ends in Scully and Mulder heading off in the pouring rain. Weird lights! Weird noises! They loose nine minutes of time and end up right where Mulder put that giant X in the beginning! Mulder is pumped about this!
(So smol, much '90s.)
Scully spots two marks on her lower back and freaks out. Mulder assures her they're bug bites and she hangs out in his hotel room for a little while while she calms down and he tells her about his sister, abducted out of her bed when they were both children. A mysterious phone call - Peggy, the girl from the mental hospital, has died. Mulder and Scully's hotel rooms catch on fire while they're gone. Theresa, the coroner's daughter, shows up and requests protection. She has the marks and thinks she's going to die. Blood suddenly shoots from her nose. Just as suddenly, her father and his buddy show up to take her "somewhere safe", and Mulder and Scully just sort of let her go.
Back in the hospital, Scully discovers that the man in the "waking coma" has dirty feet -- dirty with a mysterious substance that Scully found out in the woods earlier. Mulder has a theory! But they must go re-collect a dirt sample, since the last one was destroyed in the fire.
Out in the woods, Theresa is screaming. There's more tension with local authorities, then we see the young man from the hospital holding Theresa, bridal-carry style. Bright lights and loud noises again! Theresa's got a bruised eye but seems okay. The young man suddenly recognizes his father, the detective.
Back in FBI central, Scully turns in her report. "This is kinda weird," her supervisor says. "Yeah, I know, I'm just one person and I'm just writing my subjective opinions," she says, and leaves. "But here's this weird metal thing from one of the victims' noses. You can just have it, I guess."
The Cigarette Smoking Man is there. He hides the weird metal thing with a bunch of similar weird metal things in a box somewhere inside the pentagon.
<deep breath> aaannnndd SCENE!
Folklore
Folklore-wise, there’s so much going on here. Sure, the episode pretty well contains itself to your typical alien abduction narrative, but there’s so much going on in that that I’m going to need to pace myself. Implants, the driving element, the gendered element, the physical evidence angle, the physical appearance (or lack thereof) of the aliens -- that can all wait for later. This time around, we’re going to start at the beginning: today, we’re talking about alien abduction narratives.
If you’ve got a minute, I have a challenge for you. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s experienced an alien abduction. Narrate it in first person, start to finish.
Done? It probably reads something like this:
(To be clear, that was my attempt at my own exercise and not a real encounter claimed by me or anyone else.)
Sound familiar? That’s because a handful of big stories brought these tropes into pop culture, and The X-Files codified them, to the point where you can rattle a convincing-sounding supernatural abduction narrative off the top of your head.
Supernatural abduction isn’t a new phenomenon by any stretch: people have reported being taken away by strange creatures for a damned long time. In Bill Ellis’s Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults (‘AGC’, from here on out), the author cites Anne Jeffries’ reports of abduction in 1645. Her experience was chalked up to fairies -- at the time, this was who you blamed if you experienced an otherworldly entity kidnapping you from your bed.
In the 20th century, three major alien-related tales (the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, the Betty and Barney Hill case, and Whitley Striebler’s Communion’s) captured the public’s imagination and guided the narrative. All informed writers of The X-Files. Today, we’re focusing on the Betty and Barney Hill case.
If you’ve got a minute, I have a challenge for you. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s experienced an alien abduction. Narrate it in first person, start to finish.
Done? It probably reads something like this:
“I woke up to found small creatures standing around my bed. I couldn’t move. The creatures had big heads, big eyes, no noses, small mouths, and no real clothes. They transported me from my bed to a spaceship, where they did experiments on me, then they returned me to my bed and I was able to move again.”
(To be clear, that was my attempt at my own exercise and not a real encounter claimed by me or anyone else.)
Sound familiar? That’s because a handful of big stories brought these tropes into pop culture, and The X-Files codified them, to the point where you can rattle a convincing-sounding supernatural abduction narrative off the top of your head.
Supernatural abduction isn’t a new phenomenon by any stretch: people have reported being taken away by strange creatures for a damned long time. In Bill Ellis’s Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults (‘AGC’, from here on out), the author cites Anne Jeffries’ reports of abduction in 1645. Her experience was chalked up to fairies -- at the time, this was who you blamed if you experienced an otherworldly entity kidnapping you from your bed.
In the 20th century, three major alien-related tales (the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, the Betty and Barney Hill case, and Whitley Striebler’s Communion’s) captured the public’s imagination and guided the narrative. All informed writers of The X-Files. Today, we’re focusing on the Betty and Barney Hill case.
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| Universal History Archive/ UIG via Getty Images |
“Using the binoculars, Barney claimed to have seen about 8 to 11 humanoid figures, who were peering out of the craft's windows, seeming to look at him. In unison, all but one figure moved to what appeared to be a panel on the rear wall of the hallway that encircled the front portion of the craft. The one remaining figure continued to look at Barney and communicated a message telling him to "stay where you are and keep looking." Barney had a recollection of observing the humanoid forms wearing glossy black uniforms and black caps. Red lights on what appeared to be bat-wing fins began to telescope out of the sides of the craft, and a long structure descended from the bottom of the craft. The silent craft approached to what Barney estimated was within 50–80 feet (15–24 m) overhead and 300 feet (91 m) away from him. On October 21, 1961, Barney reported to National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) investigator Walter Webb that the "beings were somehow not human".
Barney "tore" the binoculars away from his eyes and ran back to his car. In a near-hysterical state, he told Betty, "They're going to capture us!"[11] He saw the object again shift its location to directly above the vehicle. He drove away at high speed, telling Betty to look for the object. She rolled down the window and looked up. Almost immediately, the Hills heard a rhythmic series of beeping or buzzing sounds, which they said seemed to bounce off the trunk of their vehicle. The car vibrated and a tingling sensation passed through the Hills' bodies. The Hills said that then they experienced the onset of an altered state of consciousness that left their minds dulled. A second series of beeping or buzzing sounds returned the couple to full consciousness. They found that they had traveled nearly 35 miles (56 km) south, but had only vague, spotty memories of this section of road. They recalled making a sudden, unplanned turn, encountering a roadblock, and observing a fiery orb in the road.”
The Hills reported the strangeness followed them home -- there were strange marks on the car and a strange powder on Betty’s dress, among other oddities. There were three hours of their trip that they couldn’t account for. Betty began having strange dreams, and eventually (about two years after the incident), the couple decided to be hypnotized. Under hypnosis, the couple told parallel tales of abduction and experimentation. They went about their lives until a reporter heard their story, then more reporters investigated, then Hollywood made a movie.
Though they’d never intended to, the Hills were making national news. They were also popularizing the details of an alien abduction narrative that would be popular for years to come. While we seem to be witnessing the tail end of this narrative’s popularity, it informed much of our alien-related pop culture from the 1970s’ through the early 2000s.
Though they’d never intended to, the Hills were making national news. They were also popularizing the details of an alien abduction narrative that would be popular for years to come. While we seem to be witnessing the tail end of this narrative’s popularity, it informed much of our alien-related pop culture from the 1970s’ through the early 2000s.
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| Bettmann/Getty Images |
This episode doesn't stick close to the familiar narrative, but it does lean on it. With these narratives, like with writing, you get to break the rules only when you’ve learned them in the first place.
WELCOME TO RENEE’S NITPICK CORNER!
Today we’re talking about missing time!
Missing time isn’t, as our heros bizarrely assume, the result of some strange force manipulating time. It’s generally assumed by UFOlogists and other people who have opinions on such things that missing time is a mental thing that happens to the experiencer, not something happening to time as a whole. (Here’s Mysterious Universe on the subject.) This was a weird call, honestly -- didn’t add anything to the story and doesn’t really make any sense.
Missing time isn’t, as our heros bizarrely assume, the result of some strange force manipulating time. It’s generally assumed by UFOlogists and other people who have opinions on such things that missing time is a mental thing that happens to the experiencer, not something happening to time as a whole. (Here’s Mysterious Universe on the subject.) This was a weird call, honestly -- didn’t add anything to the story and doesn’t really make any sense.
FOR MORE:
Imaginary Worlds, one of my favorite podcasts, just came out with a phenomenal episode on the Betty and Barney Hill case. It’s well-researched, empathetic, and approachable, and I’d strongly recommend anyone new to looking at alien abduction narratives through a folklore lens to check it out.
If you’re interested in the importance of narratives as a way people explain strange experiences, I highly recommend Bill Ellis’ Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live.
Susan Lepselter’s book Resonance of Unseen Things is odd and strange but also a lovely book about what these myths mean for us as a nation.
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