Beginning. A man is typing a letter to his son whom it is apparent that he is somewhat distanced from. As he types a boy marches through the snow in the woods to a cabin where the man has been living for a time. It is none other than the Cigarrette Smoking Man who last we knew had been shot in his office and left for dead. But we will not find this out until later. The boy has come to deliver the message for the man to: "Federal Bureau of Investigation". We find out immediately that not everyone has died in the faceless alien burnings. Scully is alive but in bad shape; she has no memory of how she got there or what happened. Later she undergoes hypnosis to recall the events and we learn that the faceless aliens were killed in the act of burning the abductees and then they took Cassandra Spender with them, leaving everything else. The theme of the episode almost seems to be the entire crew of people who have doubted Mulder's beliefs in the past trying believing his new theory of government plot and misdirection as even less plausible. Many important mythology facts are learned. The purpose of the faceless rebel aliens and the existence of the Russian vaccine for the black oil being key. A note on the crash of the rebel alien craft, maybe if they wouldn't have crashed if they had had at least the one flying the craft NOT sew his eyes shut? Just a thought. And as a Mulder honorable mention...
KRYCEK: You must be losing it, Mulder. I could beat you with one hand.
MULDER: Isn't that how you like to beat yourself? If those are my last words I can do better.
9 out of 10.
KRYCEK: You must be losing it, Mulder. I could beat you with one hand.
MULDER: Isn't that how you like to beat yourself? If those are my last words I can do better.
9 out of 10.