X-FILES, THE: THE HOST (TV)
Summary
One in this series of science fiction dramas about FBI agents Mulder and Scully and their investigations into "unsolvable" cases involving paranormal phenomena. On the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey, a sailor aboard a Russian freight ship is attacked by an unknown creature. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., Mulder is busy on a wiretapping assignment, but is obviously not enthused with such work. He is reassigned to New Jersey by Assistant Director Skinner to investigate a murder case. The local detectives show him the victim’s body in the sewer in a state of partial decay. Back at FBI headquarters, Mulder complains to Skinner and the FBI heads about the seeming irrelevancy of his recent assignments. Skinner orders him to forget about the X-Files and carry on with his new assignments. Mulder goes off on his own to contemplate his position and is joined by Scully. He tells her he’s considering leaving the FBI. Scully offers to perform the autopsy on the murder victim from New Jersey. During the autopsy she discovers a small worm-like creature attached to the man’s internal organs. Back in New Jersey, a sanitation worker is attacked in the sewer by the creature; his fellow worker pulls him out with a strange wound on his back. The sanitation worker is treated at Middlesex County Hospital, where Mulder comes to visit him. Scully calls Mulder about the worm-creature she found in the dead man. Mulder then immediately gets a second call from an unknown person claiming to be a “friend,” who hangs up before Mulder can find out anything more. Mulder visits Scully at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, where she has determined that the worm-creature was a fluke, a type of parasitic flatworm. She explains that the creature was feeding off of the man’s liver, but doesn’t know whether it entered before or after the man died. Mulder shows Scully the wound on the sanitation worker’s back, but she denies that it could have been a fluke, as the wound is far too large and flukes attack the host by having their eggs or larvae ingested. He asks her about the mysterious phone call, but she has no knowledge of it. Meanwhile, the sanitation worker from New Jersey experiences some distress, expelling a fluke from his mouth in the shower. Mulder interviews the foreman of the Newark Sewage Processing Plant in order to get some answers. One of the plant workers spots a creature in their tanks and manages to trap it; it is some bizarre vaguely humanoid monster. Scully, while researching flukes, has a tabloid newspaper slipped under her door by an unknown person. In it is a story about the attack on the Russian freighter; she realizes the dead body belongs to one of the sailors when she inspects the man’s Cyrillic tattoo. Mulder calls Scully about his discovery of the creature, which is being kept in a room at Middlesex County Psychiatric Hospital. She notes that it is some kind of fusion of primate and flatworm physiology. Scully also asks Mulder to reconsider his decision to leave the FBI. Mulder turns in his report on the case to Skinner, who is more interested in Mulder’s performance than the case itself. Skinner informs Mulder that the sanitation worker is dead from his injuries. Mulder insists that he and Scully might have been able to save him, and Skinner admits the case should have been an X-File, admitting that there may be something going on in the higher echelons of the FBI. The creature, while being transferred to another facility, manages to escape and hides in the toilet of a portable bathroom stall. The following morning, a tanker comes to clean out the stalls and the creature works its way up the pipe to hide in the truck. Mulder arrives to track the creature and receives another call from his unknown “friend,” telling him that he must solve the case and that “reinstatement of the X-Files must be undeniable.” Mulder realizes the creature has escaped in the tanker and returns to the sewage plant, believing that the creature will be trapped there. While waiting, he receives a call from Scully, who now believes that the fluke she found in the dead body was an incubating larva and that the creature is injecting its young into victims in order to reproduce. The sewage workers locate the creatures in an old section of the sewer that it could use to escape into the sea. Mulder and the sewage foreman go down to investigate and the creature attacks the foreman, but Mulder manages to rescue him. The creature tries to crawl out of the sewer but Mulder lowers a gate, bisecting the creature. Later, Scully and Mulder meet on a bench by the reflecting pool in Washington D.C. He tells her that his “friend” demands the return of the X-Files. Scully’s tests confirm that the creature was not created naturally and was created by exposure to radioactive waste from Chernobyl, which the Russian freighter was carrying. The episode ends as the fluke creature awakens in the sewers of Newark, still alive. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: FOX
- DATE: September 23, 1994 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:50:00
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:54749
- GENRE: Drama, fantasy/science fiction
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, fantasy/science fiction; Asian American Pacific Islanders Collection
- SERIES RUN: Fox - TV series, 1993-2002; 2016-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Chris Carter … Executive Producer, Created by, Writer
- James Wong … Co-Executive Producer
- Glen Morgan … Co-Executive Producer
- R. W. Goodwin … Co-Executive Producer
- Howard Gordon … Supervising Producer
- Paul Brown … Producer
- Paul Rabwin … Co-Producer
- Joseph Patrick Finn … Line Producer
- Daniel Sackheim … Director
- Mark Snow … Music by
- David Duchovny … Cast, Agent Fox Mulder
- Gillian Anderson … Cast, Agent Dana Scully
- Mitch Pileggi … Cast, Walter Skinner
- Darin Morgan … Cast, The Flukeman
- Matthew Bennett … Cast, First Workman
- Freddy Andreiuci … Cast, Det. Morgan
- Don Mackay … Cast, Charlie
- Marc Bauer … Cast, Agt. Brisentine
- Gabrielle Rose … Cast, Dr. Zenzola
- Ron Sauve … Cast, Foreman
- Dmitri Boudine … Cast, Russian Engineer
- Raoul Ganee … Cast, Dmitri
- William MacDonald … Cast, Federal Marshall