PAGE 1: X-PLOTS

Believe the lie was the slogan of the Gethsemane/Redux/Redux II Trilogy - and this was based on the tales of Michael Kritschgau who told Mulder and Scully that all has been a lie from the beginning, that there was no such thing as alien abduction, UFOs and extraterrestrials. He gets Scully to believe this, and judging from Mulder's mood just before he gets to know that he is being observed, he believes it too, well, at least most of it. And when he enters Level 4 of the DOD/Pentagon, all that he has believed in during the past seems to vanish. He sees fake alien bodies, medical experiments on seemingly abducted women, run by the DOD. All that he sees leads back not to extraterrestrials, but to government institutions.

Believe the Lie. But which lie? A lie that would have continued to irritate and influence the Agents over years, and not only the agents but also Skinner, the Lone Gunmen and all those who did experience those things. Who is the liar?

Kritschgau sais that he has no access to level 4 - and that all he tells Mulder is something he was being told himself. What if Kritschgau doesn't lie on purpose, what if he doesn't know better? The crucial question seems to be: How much contact does the (X-Filean) government have to aliens, and which conspiracy belongs to which facts? Whom is CSM working for? Whom the Elder? Whom the Well-Manicured Man (=WMM)?

Aside from the fact that I don't believe Chris Carter will ever give us the whole truth, I think that Kritschgau is right in one point: There are a lot of lies. What if Mulder really did see only what he was intended to see? That would make sense in some episodes, but not in all of them. But then one has to call to mind the situation the show is set into. One mustn't think that all governmental branches and agencies have built up a conspiracy. It might be the work of some small group - the Elders?

But all theories have a major problem: Tempus Fugit / Max. We (and not just Mulder) see a UFO. We see Max being pulled out of the aircraft by some kind of tractor beam. Has the in-show conspiracy an influence on us viewers? Or does CC want to lie to us via pictures? That wouldn't make sense. Additionaly it doesn't fit that the conspirators would build a UFO as the only possibility to take back what Max has stolen. A human group of conspirators would have found other means.

March 2nd, 1998

The alien bodies Mulder had the chance to see seem to be fake. If they were real, why not store them in special containers? No, the setup looked like they were fake. Perhaps Mulder should have believed just this? No, because he was not expected to enter this room, he did it with the ID of a dead man who was supposed to be him. But why fake alien bodies when one is supposed to be in contact with them?

One does fake sth when there no possibility to get the real thing. Well, what if 'they' don't work together with the aliens after all? But at first: What aliens? Up to now, there seem to have been established about six groups of aliens:

• the Grays
• the Shapeshifters and their clones (the Gregors)
• the Black Cancer slime-worms



• the unidentified cloked creature from 1x10 Fallen Angel
• the Genderbenders
• the Mars-face ghost from 1x9 Space

Which of the groups are real - and which not? The Genderbenders seem to be real, but I don't know of what importance they really are. It looks like they were only needed for story effect for a season one episode, but then it is The X-Files. Who knows - they might return. The Black Cancer also seems real. The ghost from Space seems to be just this - a ghost. But definitely no fake.

The Shapeshifters look real, too. They might even be Changelings...

But when do we ever have seen a real Gray? Except the bodies? We have seen shapes, as in 'Duane Barry', but then we know that Scully has not been abducted by aliens. (Do we know that? Do we really know anything?) The hybrids from 'Nisei'/'731' look like they were made with Gray DNA. The bodies from 'Anasazi' are corpses. As are the bodies from 'Tempus Fugit'. And the creatures in the archive room? They would fit the profile. But then there are episodes like 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space'...

So my conclusion: The Grays are real, too. But there is something different: They are not in cooperation with humans. There are Alien Abductions performed by them, but only on special occasions: When they really want to explore sth new (but this phase should be over by now), or when they want to save sbd/sth ('Fearful Symmetry'), or when they want to retrieve sth that is their property ('Tempus Fugit' / 'Max'.). That explains why there is this 'Shoot the Alien'-agenda Deep Throat described in 'E.B.E.', and it explains why Bill Mulder didn't want to participate in the project anymore - the aliens that were recovered at various crash sites were used for experiments.

So the conspirators have created fake aliens, fake alien obductions to conduct their own business under a perfect comouflage - to create stories no 'sane' mind is supposed to believed, to discredit the people that talk about it. That's the point where Kritschgau was right and where the fake bodies fit in: The Grays are propagated as the enemy. Perhaps they really are? And the position of the Shapeshifters? The Bounty Hunter tells Mulder that Jeremiah Smith is not to be trusted, and he seems to work together with CSM. And then they probably are no real shape shifters - they may only alter their face like the poor guy Eddie van Blundht in 'Small Potatoes'.

Who then is the enemy? It is the enemy within, the conspirators who betray the people, who kill innocent citizens, who fight the truth.

March 2nd, 1998

(For a list of all major 'conspiracy episodes' beginning with the pilot, please see Chain of Events.) I didn't include those who had only secondary importance to the conspiracy like 'Conduit', 'Eve', 'Tooms' or 'Soft Light'.

As one might see from the table above, putting the pieces together could be quite difficult. But on the other hand, it mightn't be - as the answers come slowly. Also, as I've shown, the levels of conspiracy don't always mix. But let me try.

The general idea behind any of these episodes is a conspiracy that somehow seems to be linked to some part of the X-Filean government. Also all these episodes center around the question of extraterrestrial life on this planet. The season one episodes establish that idea as something to think about, they create a shadowy Deep Throat character who is guiding Mulder through the mist of lies, Cancer Man is yet quite silent. 'The Erlenmeyer Flask' in a way doesn't stick to this scheme, as this episode seems to give some other elements to the story. The death of Deep Throat creates a seriousness and desperateness that will go on with every season.

'Blood' and its season three counterpart 'Wetwired' add the 'real life level' to the whole aspect. It is not any more just a question of aliens or not, 'this is about control' as Kritschgau said. In a way this is true about the 'Black Cancer' episodes as they continue the story of a governmental conspiracy. But they neither link to abductions nor the Smallpox Project nor Purity Contriol. But what abductions after all?

Is there such a thing as alien abduction? Season one said yes, but all the other said no. But again, there is the problem of 'Tempus Fugit' / 'Max' as discussed above. With 'Nisei' / '731', 'Demons' and the 'Redux' Trilogy it seems to be clear that neither Samantha nor Scully have been abducted by aliens but by the conspiracy men. Or was Samantha perhaps kidnapped to be given to the Grays to pefect some deal? Is the Samantha CSM presents Mulder in 'Redux II' real?

Does one arrive at an answer this way? At least one can see what projects might exist: The Smallpox Project seems to catalog the population, to get an overview on the DNA pool, perhaps to prepare colonization and hybridization by the Shapeshifters. The Black Cancer could be something that began with a disease and could change to biological warfare. But what the aims of the Shapeshifters and the Grays are, remains unclear.

I will discuss the referring episodes on the review pages, you can get there by following the links in the above table or via the episode guide.

March 6th, 1998 / June 6th, 1998

A Transcript attempt, source: The X-Files: The Album, track 15 at 10:13

The following quote is taken from the above mentioned CD. When you find two dots indicating omission (..), I had had severe problems with one or two words, even after checking all my heavy dictionaries. If you can help me with that, please give me feedback. And, of course, the following quote is full of spoilers for those who didn't follow the show on a regular basis.

"The method, as they call it, though it was more so a germ-line procedure of singular medi-scientific complexity, have been given to them by the alien colonists as a quid-pro-quo. The Syndicate would help them to create a population of alien hybrids, who would hide in plain sight, cloned from human ova and alien bio-material. So there would be a cloned race immune to the effects of the Black Oil when they returned to the planet again. For this, the Syndicate would be sequestered, granted a sort of immunity or asylum, given a place in the grander scheme. They were the Vichy government to the German final solution, collaboration as soon as motivation was simple self-directed survival.

These cloning operations were spread across the country, the cataloging a record keeping done through a complex intra-institutional system that connected to every branch of government, from the social security administration to the department of defense. The operation under the working title 'Purity Control' had been launched in 1948, its original conception that brain-child of German scientists given immunity to themselves for war-crimes and allowed to continue the eugenic experiments that were Hitler's dark legacy.

The Syndicate had begun as a sub-set of a shadow intelligence agency whose original orders were to create plausible denial and an effective cover-up of Purity Control. But through fifty years, numerous US and UN administrations, the principles began to rest control, accumulating power and influence across international borders. Since then by 1990 the operation ceased to have a member accountable to any one government, and whose only orders would be taken from a man named Strughold, a German industrialist who had fled his homeland to Northern Africa. These men, whose knowledge and access provided control over foreseeable future, had in spite of this everything to lose. Their secret work, the cloning preparations and the cataloging, constituted their greatest vulnerability: Exposure. Their detection would ensure not just their own demise but a far-reaching dissolution of social and religious order around the globe.

To protect against this, the Syndicate employed methods of disinformation using covert government programs that had been regretably discovered as a kind of smokescreen. They'd dodge or blind with the transgression of congress and countable agencies, served to hide their own .. undertaking. They had even at times used the UFO phenomenon to create an hysteria that science and the intelligence .. denounced so completely as to make belief and believers seemed ridiculous and completely discreditable. They had also in a crisis used the tool of the colonists themselves: Alien bounty hunters who policed the cloning operations and perforced the rule and the countdown of the colonization. A double-edged sword whose cold-blooded tactics could help to skim? a leak or threat, but it also kept a watch on the Syndicate.

A threat in itself as the Syndicate had something to hide that not even the colonists knew of: a vaccine against the Black Oil, an inoculant against the substance in which the alien life-force was held, in fact the very medium of the life-force itself. To guard the secret was perhaps even more critical than the truth of the existence of alien life and of colonization. If the Syndicate's own secret vaccine were discovered, a vaccine that would make themselves immune from the effects of the Black Oil, they would certainly be destroyed and the time-table for colonization stepped up. They would protect this secret with their lives, they would kill to protect it as assemblelizing the only hope they had of avoiding enslavement when the planet was overtaken.

That they had been able to over decades conduct their work on the vaccine undetected was the result of a code among the Syndicate members, that put honor and the future above personal politics. But now this code is beginning to break down, an incipient scramble for power beginning to develop, a threat from within that doubled the threat from without, from Agents Mulder and Scully and the X-files."

[Chris Carter]

Remarks on the text

What Chris Carter has provided us with is nothing really new, just sort of a loose summary of what has happened during the first five years of The X-Files. A universal truth that would include concrete persons, concrete events, remains again shadowy. The Syndicate stays a mysterious group of the style of the MJ12 theories, there is nothing said about how real UFOs really are, about who the aliens are that want to colonize the planet: Is the Black Oil an alien life form in itself, does it need a host, is it used for biological warfare merely?

It would not be the same show anymore if the truth were revealed completely, for there is no real truth, information has changed and has been changed so drastically that even the Syndicate members or their associates would not tell the same story. The general truth consists of single truths, semi-truths, semi-lies and lies, it is not dividable because it can never be objective. We do not have access to something like a universal truth (see also: General Discussion Pages).

June 29th, 1998

There exist different courses of action to work out a topic or a certain problem. The usual option would be overt action; not really a public one but at least no deliberate attempt to cover one's tracks or to let others stay unaware what one's doing. The direct and overt approach might sometimes be a bit hindering when it comes to privacy, but it is the most honest one - and the safest, seen within long-term calculations. Anyway, one might need some cover or would not want anyone to know what one's doing, for instance if one would want to make a visit to the kitchen in the middle of the night and open the freezer to eat some ice cream (This is not a confession. Our ice cream isn't located in the kitchen).

A single incident and an action which is performed by just one person is not really a conspiracy. To conspire with someone, one would need this someone to conspire with. So if two or more persons were to agree on a timetable or so to organize their nightly visits to the freezer, it would be some weak form of conspiracy (Still no confession - I work alone). Well, somehow the conspiracies The X-Files include might not really center around nightly ice cream events. In this case, conspiracy is of a bit larger extend, reaching into higher levels of power.

The X-Files focuses on conspiracies bound to lies and deception; lies covering a truth which is not supposed to get known. What exactly this truth would be, stays unknown. We only get to see pieces of the puzzle, aspects of the grander scheme without being enabled to understand the processes behind the processes completely. But that is not really important: It is for now sufficient to know how the conspirators work, what they are doing to 'protect' their interests and motivations.

It is not really intentions and words which are important; much more interesting and revealing are means and actions. The conspirators' work consists of lies, deception, manipulation of the media, blackmail, infiltration of governmental agencies, obstruction of justice, perjury, kidnapping, illegal medical experiments, illegal possession of weapons, industrial espionage, bodily injury, assassinations and murder. A long list, and it could probably be much longer. So whatever the motivation for such acts would be, the taken path determines the following events. Good intentions are no worth when paired with criminal actions - the actions then speak for themselves and reveal the true mind behind the masks. The conspirators say that they have to work together with the alien colonists. But why? If the aliens were able to take over the planet on their own, they would do it for sure. So the conspirators seem to be a clique of people eagerly greedy for some power and money; they are being bribed by the aliens to concur with their actions and plans.

The extent of the conspiracy reaches into every country that would be able to conduct resistance. The vaccine against the Black Oil could have been developed faster when it wouldn't have been done secretly; somehow it looks as if the Syndicate wants colonization - it is a similar situation as in Nazi Germany or any other dictatorship: There will always be people conspiring with the oppressor; they have done it and will do it for money and a share of power. It has always been this way and it will always stay this way. So the story of The X-Files isn't so new; on the contrary: It is a very old and very sad story. And now I will get myself some ice cream.

August 30th, 1998

Within The X-Files, it is really difficult to say who is on whose side. There are just a few people who seem to be trustworthy, and I would count Assistant Director Walter Skinner amongst them. Skinner's position hasn't always been very transparent, but since 2x06 'Ascension' and 2x08 'One Breath' it should be quite clear that he belongs to Mulder's allies. He has a difficult stand within the FBI, but nevertheless he supports Mulder - which doesn't make his position any easier. He has always reopened the X-files when they had been shut, he has thrown CSM out of his office, has made CSM an enemy. He has done dirty work for CSM in 4x21 'Zero Sum' to save Scully's life, he has supported Mulder during the Redux trilogy, he has helped him escape from the hospital in the movie.

The relation between Skinner and Mulder hasn't always been easy. But observing recent character interactions and past conflicts between the two, I think that Skinner is somehow a father figure for Mulder. The best scene between Mulder and Skinner is the moment when Mulder has to testify in 5x03 'Redux II'. With Scully not trusting Skinner ("Mulder, Skinner is dirty.") and Skinner knowing that and also knowing how close Mulder and Scully are, he really fears Mulder could blame him as the man responsible - but Mulder knows that, he plays a bit with Skinner's fears, at last not blaming him. Mulder trusts Skinner, he values him as someone who has protected him for years. Also in 3x21 'Avatar', Mulder is the only person to believe in Skinner's innocence. And unless Chris Carter wants to shock us really hard some time by suddenly revealing the opposite, Skinner seems to be quite a solid ally for Mulder.

The other allies Mulder and Scully have are the Lone Gunmen. There is not much to say, they have supported him for a long time. The whole thing is not without fun for them; they are technology freaks and would have invented paranoia if not someone had done it before. They also seem to have accepted Skinner within the couter-conspiracy of Mulder's, at least that's how I would interpret their common action to let Mulder escape from the above mentioned hospital. I see no hint they could suddenly turn against Mulder unless Mulder would turn against them.

August 30th, 1998

He smokes Morley cigarettes. He has an irritating stare. He almost always appears everywhere lighting a cigarette. He has a son, Agent Spender. He has worked together with Mulder's father. He has had some relationship with Mulder's mother. He has supervised Krycek for some time. He has had opportunities to kill Mulder or the Lone Gunmen, but somehow he has refrained from doing so. When entering Mulder's appartment after hearing that he's dead in 5x02 'Redux', he has a very interesting facial expression. He has made Mulder an offer to work for him. He has been the superior for X and a colleague for Deep Throat. He belongs to an international conspiracy, the Syndicate. He is hired by the Syndicate to solve problems. He has had an interesting talk with Jeremiah Smith in 3x24 'Talitha Cumi'. He has forced the Bounty Hunter to heal Mulder's mother in 4x01 'Herrenvolk'.

Those are the facts. Inofficially, he seems to have had a deal with Jeremiah Smith in 3x24 'Talitha Cumi': Letting Jeremiah escape in return for healing CSM's lung cancer. He seems to have a child with Mulder's mother, and it seems to be logical that it would be Samantha. That could explain her 'obduction'. But it could also be Mulder, which could explain why he's protecting him more than he should. And it explains the introduction of 5x14 'The Red and the Black': "Twin war gods...". He doesn't care about Scully (explains her obduction) but about Mulder (explains her return).

His main job within the Syndicate seems to be that of a 'problem solver' - an assassin. He deals with delicate problems, hires his own men and has some liberties within the organization. But when it becomes evident that he wants to become a greater player and that he subsequently increases his range of action, the Syndicate begins to watch him. When it becomes evident that he has failed solving the problem of the Russian assassin in 4x09 'Tunguska' / 4x10 'Terma', they start to be less fond of him. When it becomes evident that he is somehow protecting Mulder and trying to make a deal with him, they decide to kill him. But he survives. They might have discovered by now that they somehow need him, but have to control him better, so they get him back into the organization. This move could also be the result of agitation by Strughold, one of the leaders of the group. To conclude, CSM is less than he wants to be but more than the Syndicate thinks he would be. He is definitely having his own ideas of running things.

August 30th, 1998

Within the Syndicate, there would be several groups and sub-levels of power and of control. Such an organization can only work with manpower; they would take anyone they could get (explains why Krycek works for them). The organization is - like any other - vulnerable to treason and individual actions. Like The Pretender's 'Centre' the Syndicate would have local offices, laboratories, sub-directorates and sweeper teams (the assassins). But being an inofficial structure, the organization cannot have a large bureaucracy and is therefore dependent on every single member. That's why individuals would have more influence in such a group or in the mafia: Such organizations cannot afford to do it otherwise.

Such a structure is different from a governmental structure in a dictatorship; a dictatorship like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or the GDR could re-define illegal acts and make them legal without protests from justice. Death camps, imprisonment because of political reasons, the organized murder of refugees (e.g. at the Berlin Wall), a direct propaganda for supporting their own efforts - all this is not possible when there is no government supporting and implementing these measures. So any conspiracy or illegal conspiratory group has to rely on persons to control other members. Such a way of managing things allows certain loopholes and individual management; so that there will always be leaks and people who's conscience is somewhat more active than that of the others within the organization.

Deep Throat was like CSM possibly one of the leaders of a sweeper team with the special order to go after stranded extraterrestrials. But he was not really working for Mulder, he has never given him waterproof evidence. He only did what his frame of action allowed. But then, he gave his life for Mulder and Scully. Of all the shadowy allies of Mulder, he seems to be the best one.

X is a bit more hard-edged, he is much more afraid of the Syndicate than Deep Throat was. But he saves Mulder from the exploding train in 3x10 '731' (without telling Mulder, so he didn't do it for the credit); and he risks his life just as Deep Throat did. We see him kill people, we didn't see Deep Throat kill people, but that's not sufficient evidence. I think Deep Throat was as much a killer as X was.

Marita Covarrubias (It took a while for me to memorize this name) cannot be compared to her predecessors. She works with an official agency, for the United Nations, she would have enough power of her own and doesn't need to get it from the group. But she is associated with the Syndicate anyway; but I don't think that she's supporting Mulder. She is using him - in 4x09 'Tunguska' she enabled him to travel to Siberia because she wanted somebody to spy on the Russians, or she wanted to get Krycek there. How the relationship between her and Krycek developed stays somewhat mysterious.

The Well Manicured Man is a strange character. But he at least openly admits to Scully in 3x01 'The Blessing Way' that he's working for his own sake and not for that of the X-files department. His cooperation with Mulder in the movie comes unexpected somehow, but then he has always had some seperate position within the Syndicate. He doesn't agree with CSM's methods but kills Kurtzweil anyway, shortly thereafter giving Mulder the vaccine and the location to rescue Scully and to conduct suicide thereafter (probably).

The problem with those informants of Mulder's is that they are not really reliable sources. All of them manipulate him and use him to somehow satisfy their own conscience. They never provide him with the knowledge he really wants, never see him as a player but more as a pawn.

August 31st, 1998

Krycek is perhaps the best-hated men within the The X-Files community, and there are a lot of reasons for that. He spies on Mulder for CSM when he becomes Mulder's partner with the FBI. He betrays the FBI - that makes him an enemy of Skinner's. He assists in the obduction of Scully. He either performs of assists in the killings of Mulder's father and Scully's sister. But suddenly, his behavior changes after he is almost killed in 3x02 'Paper Clip' by a car bomb installed by his fellow assassins. Now he seems to start his own secret business.

Krycek still has the DAT tape, but through infection by the Black Oil (3x15 'Piper Maru' / 3x16 'Apocryphia') he is brought back to CSM who imprisons him in an abandoned missile site together with a UFO and the Black Oil. 4x09 'Tungska' / 4x10 'Terma' show him working for the Russians. But in 5x13 'Patient X' / 5x14 'The Red and the Black' he steals the vaccine from them and brings it to the Syndicate. He now seems to be very well a player in the Syndicate. When CSM is brought back by him, he doesn't really like this - CSM was the one who wanted to kill him.

The attitude of Krycek towards Mulder is quite difficult to determine. It still is not clear whether or not Krycek is really the shooter of Mulder's father and Scully's sister. But anyway, the drifting apart from CSM has made him come closer to the Well Manicured Man, and he could very well become an ally for Mulder in the future. Although a very shadowy one.

August 31st, 1998

After having talked about the odds against them, about conspiracies and conspirators as well as the shadowy characters around them, I will now finally and at last arrive at an article on the two lead characters. There doesn't really remain much to say, there is a lot of stuff about both on the internet. The premise of the show is quite simple: Mulder is the bright but a bit crazy UFO guy with the FBI, Scully is his skeptical partner, initially assigned to him to report on the legitimacy of his work and - when possible - to undermine it. But the events have put them closer together and made them a team, even some odd kind of couple. They won't have an intimate relationship, but they clearly love each other in a way.

Mulder is someone who wants to investigate everything. He touches everything, enters every dark room or cave, crawls into every hole and digs out any amount of dirt if he was sure that the truth would be there. Over the time he gets a bit more moderate (due to the influence of Scully) and even gets a bit more skeptical than before. His personal tragedy, the obduction of his sister Samantha when he was still a child, and for what he feels responsible, is still motivating his search for the truth. He is a tragical hero, but not without humor and sarcasm.

Scully - being a medical doctor - is bound to science as first and only valid explanation of everything. As much as Mulder is obsessed with alternative explanations, she is obsessed with science. She has the more solid basis though, although after some time it becomes quite clear that she should rethink her positions concerning science a bit. The influence of Mulder has also provided her with a certain paranoia. The two agents are the ideal investigation team; they are complementing each other every time. And they will go on hunting down monsters, mutants, ghosts, serial killers and conspirators.

August 31st, 1998