Episode Guide: Season 5

Unusual Suspects - Redux - Redux II - Detour - Christmas Carol - The Post-Modern Prometheus - Emily - Kitsunegari - Schizogeny - Chinga - Kill Switch - Bad Blood - Patient X - The Red And The Black - Travelers - Mind's Eye - All Souls - The Pine Bluff Variant - Folie à Deux - The End

Unusual Suspects

Episode Number: 5X01
Original Air Date: November 16, 1997
Summary: Set in 1989, the story of the founding of The Lone Gunmen is finally told as we see how a straight-laced federal employee, a sex mad AV expert and a nerdy computer hacker meet Susanne Modeski, a strange woman with evidence of a government conspiracy. When their plan to expose the conspiracy fails and Susanne is captured by a group of men-in-black, led by none other than X, they soon become a paranoid group of government watchdogs.

Redux

Episode Number: 5X02
Original Air Date: November 2, 1997
Summary: Scully helps Mulder fake his own death in order for him to go undetected through the Department of Defence and find out the answers to his new questions about the government hoax concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, at a joint FBI/DOD inquiry, Scully's attempt to drive out the Conspiracy's informant is halted as her cancer takes a bad turn.

Redux II

Episode Number: 5X03
Original Air Date: November 9, 1997
Summary: Cigarette Smoking Man helps Mulder to obtain Scully's cure and also lets him see his real sister who doesn't turn out to be as happy to see Mulder as he would've liked. In return for this, CSM asks that Mulder quit the FBI and work for him in the Syndicate where he could have power and respect which Mulder turns down, deciding to stay on the side of justice. While Scully's cure appears to have worked, CSM faces his own enemies and disappears, presumed dead.

Detour

Episode Number: 5X04
Original Air Date: November 23, 1997
Summary: While on their way to an FBI group communication seminar, Mulder and Scully manage to escape when they come across a situation in the Florida forest area where three men have recently disappeared.

Christmas Carol

Episode Number: 5X05
Original Air Date: December 7, 1997
Summary: On her christmas vacation with her brother's family, Scully recieves a mysterious phone call from a familiar voice who says 'She needs your help. Go to her'. The phone call leads Scully to a murder case where the victim's 3-year-old adopted daughter bears an uncanny likeness to her sister, Melissa, at that age. The emotional rollercoaster that follows has Scully believing that her sister had a baby during a period when she travelled the country and she tries to adopt the child, knowing that caring for the little girl would change her life.

The Post-Modern Prometheus

Episode Number: 5X06
Original Air Date: November 30, 1997
Summary: Filmed in black and white with a comic book feel to it, this is a modern retelling of Frankenstein as Mulder and Scully get caught up in a town where the residents live on Jerry Springer episodes and fear a two-faced monster who has been impregnating the women.

Emily

Episode Number: 5X07
Original Air Date: December 14, 1997
Summary: DNA testing on Emily reveals that she is actually Scully's daughter and Mulder comes to assist her and to find out where and how the girl was born while Scully tries to help Emily with her own serious illness, a rare form of anemia.

Kitsunegari

Episode Number: 5X08
Original Air Date: January 4, 1998
Summary: Pusher returns as Robert Patrick Modell escapes from the mental hospital and the FBI promptly organises a manhunt assuming that he will continue where he left off; but is he really trying to get revenge on Mulder or does he want to warn him of another evil?

Schizogeny

Episode Number: 5X09
Original Air Date: January 11, 1998
Summary: A therapist working with children from abusive families is found to be implanting them with the memories of her own abuse suffered at the hands of her late father, when one of her patients tries to kill his stepfather.

Chinga

Episode Number: 5X10
Original Air Date: February 8, 1998
Summary: Master of Horror Stephen King's first effort at an X-File sees Scully's well deserved vacation going terribly wrong and landing her in a small Maine town where one of the residents is believed to be a witch and her autistic daughter's doll has frighteningly evil powers.

Kill Switch

Episode Number: 5X11
Original Air Date: February 15, 1998
Summary: A super-intelligent virus program is let loose on the Internet and begins to grow and expand by itself, eventually killing its creator when he tries to eradicate it.

Bad Blood

Episode Number: 5X12
Original Air Date: February 22, 1998
Summary: After Mulder chases down and kills a young man whom he believes to be a vampire but Scully realises that his fangs are fake, the agents return to DC aware of the mistake they just made. Faced with a lawsuit from the family of the man, they recount each of their sides to the story leading up to the event.

In the extremely humourous stories that follow we see how Scully and Mulder both perceive each other. (On this case at least)

Scully sees Mulder as overly-exuberant with childlike giddiness as he explains the case which may concern vampiric activity.

On the other side, Mulder sees Scully as totally unenthusiastic, questioning all of his theories about the case and more content with lusting after the cute Sheriff Hartwell. (Whom Mulder observes has big buck teeth!) In the end, the Agents return to the town where they learn that all the residents are actual vampires who, except for one, have learned to live in civilised society.

Patient X

Episode Number: 5X13
Original Air Date: March 1, 1998
Summary: When Mulder and Scully meet Cassandra Spender, a woman who claims to be a multiple abductee, Mulder's now disbelief in aliens is stretched while Scully forms a special bond with the woman.

The Red And The Black

Episode Number: 5X14
Original Air Date: March 8, 1998
Summary: After the gathering at the abduction site where everyone is killed by the bounty hunters, Cassandra Spender disappears and Mulder is blamed by her son, Jeffrey, who is an up-and-coming FBI agent and opposed to Mulder's work. Meanwhile, the Syndicate are continuing their tests to create a vaccine for the Black Cancer and Marita Covarrubias becomes an unwilling test subject.

Travelers

Episode Number: 5X15
Original Air Date: March 29, 1998
Summary: In 1990, Agent Fox Mulder visits an aging FBI Agent Arthur Dales and listens to a story of the agents assigned to a would-be X-File in the Cold War era of the 1950's and how Mulder's father was connected to a series of strange deaths.

Mind's Eye

Episode Number: 5X16
Original Air Date: April 19, 1998
Summary: Mulder and Scully try to get answers out of a stubborn blind woman found at a murder scene who may have the ability to look through the killer's eyes in her mind.

All Souls

Episode Number: 5X17
Original Air Date: April 26, 1998
Summary: Scully faces her Catholic faith and the loss of her daughter Emily when she is asked to help a family whose adopted daughter was found dead in a position that it looked like she was struck down by God himself.

The Pine Bluff Variant

Episode Number: 5X18
Original Air Date: May 3, 1998
Summary: Scully fears that Mulder has gone to the other side when she sees him assisting a federal suspect escape custody. In truth he has infiltrated a terrorist group testing a deadly biological weapon that can eat through a person's flesh.

Folie à Deux

Episode Number: 5X19
Original Air Date: May 10, 1998
Summary: Mulder is held hostage inside an office where a man claims his boss is a monster and has clouded all their minds while he turns them into zombies one by one, which is disbelieved until Mulder opens his mind and allows himself to see it too.

The End

Episode Number: 5X20
Original Air Date: May 17, 1998
Summary: Cigarette Smoking Man returns as Mulder investigates the attempted assassination of a young boy with psychic powers who may be the proof that he has looked for all his life. On his way he encounters many enemies especially in the finale' as his office and every X-File is torched by CSM.

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