Season 4 Episode #7
Musings of a CS Man.

In the Lone Gunmen's office, Scully and Mulder listen, as Frohike reveals what he suspects to be the chilling, secret past of The Cigarette- Smoking Man. Hiding in a nearby high rise, The Cigarette-Smoking Man eavesdrops on them with electronic listening devices, his sniper's rifle trained on the office's front door. Who will be his next target?

Frohike believes The Cigarette-Smoking Man was orphaned as a baby. His father, a Communist spy, was electrocuted. His mother died of lung cancer. In 1963, he was an Army Captain (whose only friend is the proud father of 1-year-old Fox Mulder). Recognizing his capabilities, the right-wing conspiracy that operates within the shadows of the official government recruits the young officer - his first assignment: the assassination of JFK. In its successful aftermath, he lights his first smoke...and becomes The Cigarette-Smoking Man.

By 1968, even J. Edgar Hoover takes orders from the Cigarette- Smoking Man, and no President has ever suspected he exists. The Cigarette-Smoking Man personally takes charge of the operation against Martin Luther King. Yet, even The Cigarette-Smoking Man has a dream. He longs to be a published author, and writes political potboilers under a pen name. Despite a pile of scathing rejections, he keeps trying.

Christmas 1991. The Cigarette-Smoking Man has covertly started wars, assassinated world leaders, rigged elections, the Oscars, the Olympics, the Super Bowl and moved the Rodney King trial to Simi Valley. Despite his power, he's a lonely man leading an empty life. He still can't get his written works published. And with the Soviet Union gone, he doesn't even have any more enemies.

Then it happens. A survivor is discovered in the wreckage of an alien craft. His mysterious associate, known to Mulder and Scully as Deep Throat executes the only alien which survived the crash The Cigarette- Smoking Man has a new purpose, and new truths to conceal. He goes forth on this mission with a vengeance. Young FBI agents Fox "Spooky" Mulder and Dana Scully take on the "X-Files." Unknowingly they are part of The Cigarette-Smoking Man's plans.

This year. The Cigarette-Smoking Man is jubilant when a magazine finally accepts one of his stories. He prepares his resignation, and lights his last cigarette. Until he realizes the magazine is nothing but a cheap girlie rag -- whose editors even had the nerve to change the story's ending. With all his dreams destroyed, he sits on a park bench and muses about the similarity of life to a cheap, tasteless box of chocolates. Resuming his role, The Cigarette-Smoking Man lights up a smoke.

The present. The Cigarette-Smoking Man's finger is on the trigger of a sniper rifle, ready to repeat the act which started his shadowy career. He watches Frohike leave the office. Does he shoot? No. He can kill Frohike any time he chooses, and he revels in that power.

Season 4 Episode #8
Paper hearts.

Mulder experiences a series of vivid dreams that lead him to the discovery of the long-buried skeleton of a murdered child. Mulder is shaken, recognizing the M.O. of serial killer John Lee Roche, one of the first killers Mulder profiled. Between 1979 and 1990, Roche abducted girls between the ages of 8 and 10 from their homes, strangled them, and cut a heart-shaped piece of fabric from their clothes as a trophy. When captured, Roche confessed to 13 murders. Mulder fears that this discovery means there are more victims than those Roche had admitted to. When the girl is identified, it proves that Roche began his crimes as early as 1975. Another clue from the dream helps Mulder locate where the killer hid his trophies. He finds a total of 16 hearts, and realizes there are two more unknown victims.

Scully and Mulder interview Roche in jail. He won't tell them about the missing children, and toys with their questions. Oddly, he comments that he understands why Mulder is taking the case personally. His meaning becomes clear with Mulder's next dream. Mulder goes back in time to the terrifying night in 1973 when his sister Samantha was abducted--except the creature who bursts through door is not an alien--it is Roche.

Could Roche have abducted and murdered Samantha? Mulder tries to get the truth from Roche, who claims that he sold a vacuum to Mulder's father before Samantha's disappearance. When Roche won't answer Mulder directly, Mulder becomes enraged and punches Roche in the face.

Scully, who witnessed Mulder's loss of control, tries to convince him the dreams are nothing but images from his subconscious. She is certain that Roche is only cleverly manipulating Mulder's emotions. Mulder always believed Samantha was abducted by aliens, and now he doesn't know what to believe. His fears seem confirmed when, in the basement of his family home, Mulder discovers the same model of vacuum that Roche claimed Mulder's father bought for his mother.

When Skinner finds out Mulder struck Roche, he denies Mulder further access to the prisoner. Yet Skinner is sympathetic when Mulder tells him his fears about Samantha, and finally allows Mulder interview Roche again, as long as Scully keeps an eye on him.

Mulder finally agrees to give Roche what he had been demanding: the heart trophies he cut out of pajamas of his victims. Now, Mulder demands to know the truth about Samantha. Roche's description of the night Samantha was abducted is exactly the same as Mulder remembers. He refuses to tell Mulder if one of the cloth hearts was taken from Samantha's clothing. Instead, he makes Mulder choose one of the hearts at random, and tells them where to find the body. Another body is discovered--it's not Samantha.

When Mulder and Scully return, Roche is fully in control. Refusing to divulge anything more unless he's taken to the scene of the crime. Scully can't stand to listen anymore, and makes Mulder leave with her. She insists that Roche is playing Mulder.

Willing to risk everything to find out the truth about his sister's abduction, Mulder makes a difficult decision. Without notifying Scully or Skinner, he releases Roche from jail and takes him to his childhood home in Martha's Vineyard. Inside the house, Roche describes everything in great detail--except, Mulder says they are in the wrong house. He has tricked Roche by deliberately taking him to a house 6 miles away from his childhood home. Now he now knows Roche has been lying all along. Mulder guesses that his extensive knowledge of Roche enabled Roche to get into his head saying, "I profiled you...maybe some connection was created between us. And through it, you pilfered my memories of Samantha."

Mulder plans to return Roche to jail the next morning. In the motel, he has one final dream of Samantha -- and wakes up to find himself bound in his own handcuffs with Skinner and Scully pounding on the motel room door. Roche is missing; and so are Mulder's FBI badge and his gun. With Mulder's ID, Roche tracks down the whereabouts of Caitlin, a little girl he had spotted on their flight to Boston. Mulder shoulder's all the blame for placing Caitlin in such horrific danger. And he admits to Scully that she was right. Roche was just playing him.

Mulder's knowledge of Roche pays off when he correctly identifies where Roche took the girl. He shoots Roche to save Caitlin's life...still plagued by the doubts Roche planted about Samantha's fate. With Roche dead, will Mulder ever find out the truth?

Season 4 Episode #9
Tunguska.

While performing a random search of a suitcase being carried by a man claiming to have diplomatic immunity, an airport customs agent is attacked by a black oil that congeals into tiny worms which penetrate his skin.

An anonymous tipster warns Mulder about a right-wing militia organization planning a bombing which could be the next Oklahoma City. The informant turns out to be Alex Krycek, the traitor Mulder blames for his father's murder. Left trapped in an abandoned missile silo by the Cigarette-Smoking Man, Krycek says he was freed by a militia group during a salvage operation. Claiming he wants revenge on the Cigarette-Smoking Man, Krycek promises Mulder that he can help expose the Cigarette-Smoking Man and the Shadowy Syndicate. Despite his hatred for Krycek, Mulder reluctantly believes him.

Krycek leads Mulder and Scully to intercept a Russian courier at the airport. The courier escapes, but the diplomatic pouch he is carrying is recovered. The pouch contains a four-billion-year-old rock of extraterrestrial origin. Dr. Sacks, a government exobiologist, drills into the rock. The same black worms which killed the customs agent emerge from the rock and attack him. Scully and Pendrell investigate this deadly enigma. Mulder's possession of the artifact alarms the Well-Manicured Man, who orders the Cigarette-Smoking Man to take care of the problem.

Mulder seeks out his UN contact, Marita Covarrubias, who finds out the origin of the Russian courier's flight. Mulder learns the flight originated near Tunguska, Siberia and instantly recognizes the significance. In 1908, a fireball crashed to earth in Tunguska, igniting a series of cataclysmic explosions. It was the most massive and most mysterious event of its kind in history. Until now, no one had been able to discover what really happened. Maybe someone has finally found out the truth...

Marita helps Mulder with credentials that will get him to Tunguska. At the last minute, Mulder discovers Krycek is fluent in Russian, and brings him along as a translator.

Mulder and Krycek discover a Siberian Gulag located at the site of the crash -- its hard-laboring prisoners sentenced to mine the extraterrestrial rocks. Before they can learn any more, they are captured, beaten and jailed. Mulder realizes Krycek is in league with their captors. Krycek is freed, and Mulder is subjected to an inhuman medical experiment. Under the most primitive of conditions, Mulder and other prisoners are infected with the oily black worms, and injected on the left arm with an amber liquid.

Season 4 Episode #10
Terma.

In Tunguska, Mulder has survived his ordeal for now, but is still being held captive in a Siberian Gulag. The prisoner in the next cell explains that all the men in the camp are injected with "black cancer" until the toxin finally kills them. Escape is impossible. Resistance is futile. Mulder swears he will survive, long enough at least to kill Krycek. Impressed by Mulder's will to survive, the prisoner gives Mulder his own home-made knife. Back in Washington, Dr. Sacks is alive after being infected by the black worms from the rock that was recovered in the diplomatic pouch, although he is comatose. For Scully and Agent Pendrell, the medical mystery starts to unravel when tests reveal a black vermiform organism attached to his brain's pineal gland.

St. Petersburg. A former KGB assassin, Vassily Peskow, comes out of retirement when a messenger from "Comrade Arntzen" requests his help, and tells him the Cold War isn't over. Peskow makes his way to a horse farm which belongs to the Well-Manicured Man where he assassinates Dr. Bonita Chung-Sayre, a well-known authority on viruses and the Well-Manicured Man's personal physician.

Due to testify before the Senate Subcommittee hearing, Skinner presses a reluctant Scully for more information about the pouch and its contents. Skinner surprises her with his news: the pouch's intended recipient was the late Dr. Chung-Sayre, who was killed in a "riding accident."

Tunguska. The prisoners, including Mulder, are on the march. Nearby, Krycek is laughing it up with Mulder's tormentors. The sight spurs Mulder to action. Armed only with the knife, Mulder steals a battered truck and makes his escape, knocking Krycek into the back of the truck and taking him along for the ride. The chase ends when the truck's brakes give out. Krycek bails out before the crash, but Mulder is trapped inside. Krycek flees through the woods where he runs into a group of men - all of which are missing their left arm. Krycek tells them he is an escaped prisoner, and the men take him in. Meanwhile, Mulder has survived the accident and hides in the forest from his pursuing captors.

In Washington, Scully is jailed for contempt of Congress when she refuses to reveal Mulder's whereabouts at the Senate hearing. As she explains to Skinner, someone with a secret agenda is deliberately obfuscating the case: focusing on a missing FBI agent, rather than the existence of a toxic biohazard of extra-terrestrial origin and the deaths of those connected to it.

Mulder is discovered hiding in the woods by a family, who explains that the villagers' only means of saving themselves from the fatal experiments is a drastic one: amputation of the left arm. Mulder must persuade them to take him to St. Petersburg, or they may amputate his arm to "save" him. Unfortunately for Krycek, his rescuers "save" him as he sleeps.

Peskow continues his mission, paying a visit to the comatose Dr. Sacks whom he injects with the same amber fluid that had been shot into Mulder at the Gulag. The worms emerge, and he kills Sacks. At the Senate hearing, Scully is just about to be charged with contempt again...when Mulder appears, arm intact. Mulder's presence puts the attention back on the rock and the biotoxin, but when Scully tries to bring up the subject of the biotoxin's extraterrestrial origin, her claims are not taken seriously. Mulder interrupts the hearing, challenging the skepticism of the Senators when the most conservative scientists and science journals have every reason to believe that life exists outside our terrestrial sphere. Taken aback by Mulder's statement, the chairman of the subcommittee abruptly adjourns the hearing, calling for a recess until the evidence can be properly evaluated.

Following the lead that Dr. Chung-Sayre was the supervising physician at a nursing home in Boca Raton, Mulder and Scully travel to Florida to investigate. She and Mulder arrive too late. Peskow has already poisoned all of the patients and black worms have emerged from their deceased bodies. Mulder realizes a similar experiment to the one being conducted in Russia had been conducted at this nursing home. Still bent on finding a trace of evidence left behind, Mulder and Scully travel to New York where they interview the head of the militia group Krycek was running with. The militia member tells them Krycek told them his name was Arntzen, and that Krycek approached them. Everything Krycek told him was a lie. They also learn that the US government covered up their knowledge that Soviet-developed "black cancer" was deployed by Saddam during the Gulf War. Mulder now believes the whole thing was a set up from the beginning by someone who doesn't want the rocks in American hands. Finally, he discovers where Krycek is hiding another rock: Terma, North Dakota, in the stolen truck carrying the Militia's fertilizer bomb.

Again, Peskow is one step ahead of Mulder and Scully. He drives the truck to a Canadian oil refinery, intending to destroy the remaining rock. Mulder and Scully arrive too late to prevent Peskow from igniting a fiery explosion which engulfs the last piece of evidence. Both barely escape with their lives.

The final report on their investigation is turned over to the Senate subcommitte, but in vain. The Cigarette-Smoking Man controls the Senator who chairs the committee. In St. Petersburg, Peskow returns home to find Krycek, sporting a prosthetic left arm, who commends Peskow for a job well done.

Season 4 Episode #11
El Mundo Gira.

In a migrant workers' shantytown in California's San Joaquin Valley, Eladio Buente flirts with pretty Maria Dorantes while his brother Soledad watches jealously. Flakita, a nosy neighbor, bemoans the age-old story: "Two brothers. One woman. Trouble." Suddenly, three ear-splitting booms come from the sky, followed by a painfully bright flash, and a brief but torrential downpour of hot yellow rain. In its aftermath, Flakita discovers the mutilated corpses of Maria and one of her goats, their faces partially eaten away. Eladio is missing.

Mulder and Scully investigate the deaths. According to Mulder, the strange occurrences preceding Maria's death are called Fortean events, "An unusual or highly infrequent meteorological phenomenon...Fortean events have been linked to alien encounters, and cattle mutilations..." Scully greets Mulder's information with her usual skepticism. She can't tell much from the goat's corpse, and Maria's body is at the morgue.

According to Flakita, Maria was killed by El Chupacabra--the Goatsucker)--a gray hairless creature out of Puerto Rican folk tales with a small body, large head and bulging black eyes. Scully notes the amazing similarity between the descriptions of El Chupacabra and a gray alien. Soledad angrily refutes Flakita's story. He accuses his brother, Eladio, of killing Maria out of jealousy. This lover's triangle convinces Scully that Eladio is the killer, until she examines Maria's remains. The state of Maria's corpse shocks even Scully. It's hardly visible beneath mounds of greenish fungal growth. Meanwhile, Mulder locates Eladio with the help of Conrad Lozano, a cynical Immigration agent. Eladio is in INS custody, segregated from fearful prisoners who think he's El Chupacabra. Eladio denies killing Maria, claiming something or someone unknown mutilated Maria during the yellow rain. Mulder believes Eladio did not kill Maria, and Scully must agree. Scully's autopsy of the body revealed that Maria succumbed to a massive fungal infection--no one, she says, could deliberately do such a thing.

Eladio escapes from INS custody, and the agents discover the driver of the INS deportation bus dead from a different fungal infection. Mulder thinks there may be a connection between the fungi and the missing immigrant. Lozano and Mulder track Eladio to a construction site where he has found work, but the vengeful Soledad is also on Eladio's trail. Both brothers escape before Lozano and Mulder can take them into custody. The site's foreman is dead, his body ravaged by a myriad of fungi. Scully calls Mulder and warns him against touching or inhaling the lethal lichen. A mycology professor has isolated an enzyme that acts as a catalyst, accelerating fungal growth. If it escapes into the environment, there could be a biological hazard of frightening proportions.

Scully believes that Eladio is inadvertently responsible for deaths by spreading the enzyme which he somehow is carrying. Mulder now thinks the Fortean events could have been caused by something falling from space...which would mean the enzyme is alien. Scully,on the verge of losing patience with Mulder's theories, just wants to find the man who seems to be spreading it.

Now quite ill, Eladio begs his cousin Gabrielle for help. She reluctantly agrees to lend him money. Flakita, the village gossip, warns the agents that Soledad is planning to kill Eladio. Eladio eludes them again, but Lozano arrests Soledad.

When Eladio sees his own face for the first time, he can't believe the horror of it. He no longer looks human--Eladio has indeed transformed into El Chupacabra. Gabrielle tells Scully and Mulder that Eladio has run away to Mexico. But Mulder realizes it's a lie. Speeding on their way, he alerts a hazmat team to meet them at the shantytown...where it all began. Where the two brothers will finally settle their dispute over Maria.

What really happened that night? According to Flakita, Lozano brings Soledad to the camp, and orders Eladio to face his brother like a man. But Eladio is no longer a man...he is El Chupacabra. Flakita hides as gray aliens-- whom she calls Chupacabras--descend on the village. They kill Lozano, and take Soledad up in the sky with them.

Gabrielle weaves another tale. Lozano orders Eladio to face Soledad. In the horror of realizing his brother is El Chupacabra, Soledad can't shoot. He and Lozano struggle over the gun, and Lozano takes a bullet. The two brothers, now both Chupacabras, run away to Mexico.

The story Mulder and Scully report to Skinner isn't much clearer. All they know is that by the time they got to the camp, both the brothers were gone. Lozano was dead...brought down by two bullets and the fungus. And Los Chupacabras? The Buente brothers, their faces luridly disfigured, may have hitchhiked off into the Mexican night.

Season 4 Episode #12
Kaddish.

Mourners gather at a cemetery in Brooklyn to pay their last respects to Isaac Luria, a Hasidic man brutally murdered by three teenaged hate-mongers. Among the group is Ariel Luria, and her father, Jacob Weiss. When night falls, a shadowy figure enters the cemetery and shapes a man-sized sculpture out of mud.

Mulder and Scully investigate Isaac Luria's death. Isaac, who lived in a neighborhood with a history of racial tension, was severely beaten inside his market. Police ruled out robbery as a motive as nothing was stolen. They later retrieved a store surveillance tape from the VCR of a sixteen year-old named Tony Oliver, one of the teenagers who participated in the killing. Oliver was strangled by an unknown assailant. Most intriguing to Mulder is the discovery of Isaac Luria's finger prints on Oliver's body.

Weiss shows them an anti-Semitic pamphlet left at his door that very morning. Mulder tells his partner that whoever printed the pamphlets probably knows who killed Isaac. The agents interview Curt Brunjes, who owns a copy shop across the street from Isaac's market. When the agents show Brunjes photos of Banks and Macguire, (the teenagers suspected of beating Isaac), he claims their faces are unfamiliar. Unbeknownst to the agents, Banks listens in on the conversation via a security surveillance camera. Scully tells Brunjes there are rumors that Isaac has risen from the grave to avenge his murder.

Spooked, Banks and Macguire dig up Isaac's coffin. As Macguire walks to the car to retrieve some tools, Banks pries open the coffin lid and discovers Isaac's body inside. Later, Banks finds Macguire's body protruding from a mound of mud.

The agents are called to the crime scene. Mulder locates a slender leather book tucked beneath Isaac's burial shroud. But when he touches the old book, it suddenly bursts into flames. The agents turn to Kenneth Ungar, a scholar from the judaica Arcl-iives. Ungar explains that what Mulder found was a book on Jewish mysticism. He insists it would never have been buried with the dead. Ungar notes a name engraved into the leather: Jacob Weiss.

Ariel tells the agents that although she and her husband received their wedding license weeks before the murder, the marriage ceremony never transpired.

The agents locate Weiss in the attic of a synagogue. They also discover Banks' dead body hanging from a wooden beam. Weiss is arrested and charged with murder. He admits to both of the murders, but Mulder believes someone--or something--was in the attic with him.

Unger tells Mulder about the Golem, a creature from mystical text. He explains how early Kabbalists believed a righteous man could create a living being from the earth itself. A single Hebrew word, "emet," is inscribed on the back of the Golem's hand. To destroy the Golem, Unger explains, the first letter, "e," must be erased.

Brunjes is found murdered. When the agents examine the surveillance camera tape. they discover that the Golem whose physical features match those of Isaac Luria is responsible for the murder. Weiss returns to the synagogue after he is released from jail. There he discovers Ariel preparing for her wedding ceremony. When Weiss attempts to stop his daughter, the Golem attacks him. The agents rescue Weiss and, as Scully attends to his injuries, Mulder searches for Ariel. The Golem attacks Mulder, knocking him aside as he attempts to fend off the being. But Ariel intercedes. When the wedding continues, the Golem places a ring on Ariel's finger. Ariel expresses her love for Isaac, then wipes the letter "e" off the Golems' hand. The creature crumbles into dust.