“Alpha” is episode sixteen of season six of The X-Files.
On the freighter T’ien Kou in the Pacific two crew are in the hold. One is telling the other about something in a crate loading in Hong Kong, something that tried to bite him. He opens the peephole and whatever is inside leaps at the slit. The box is rattling violently, then stops. One is concerned that they’ve killed whatever is inside and they open it. Probably a bad idea. It seems they see something surprising.
In port, the T’ien Kou‘s captain is telling the authorities that the hold was secured in Hong Kong and the cage is still locked but two men are missing. There’s another man there, Detwiler (he may sound, but not look, familiar; it’s Andrew Robinson who played Garak in DS9), the owner of the cargo, an animal needing care. There’s blood on the outside of the box and inside there isn’t the animal, but the two missing crew, dead.
Mulder is putting photos of the crime scene up in his office when Scully arrives. He isn’t going home. Two merchant marines were found dead in San Pedro from multiple bite wounds. From what’s listed as a dog. They were found inside a container locked from the outside, the dog gone. Doggone. Scully says bites are rarely lethal in and of themselves. Is Mulder really telling her a dog did this? A bad dog.
In Bellflower, California, a dog is barking at a shadow of a dog. Her owner tells her to go inside, then heads to drive away the other dog. Which is gone. Inside his house, his own dog isn’t responding. He finds her on the floor, probably dead. Then a dog with glowing eyes – never a good sign – attacks.
Mulder introduces him and Scully to Jeffrey Cahn of the Department of Fish & Wildlife on the T’ien Kou. Cahn says they’ve looked round the ship and the dog is probably gone. No droppings. He isn’t sure on the dog, but the owner, a Dr Ian Detwiler, is a cryptozoologist. Mulder, of course, knows what that means. Detwiler says the dog is a priceless specimen, a Wanshang Dhole, believed extinct for 150 years. It’s not a predatory animal. Then another person reports the attack in Bellflower.
The dead man’s bitemarks match those of the freighter victims and he’s had a hand bitten off. They think he might have been involved in the theft and the dog turned on him. How else could it get inside a house with closed doors? Mulder asks how, in that case, did the dog get out afterwards? They’re calling it a dog, but it’s acting with human intelligence. Mulder has someone he wants to speak to.
They head to see a Karin Berquist, an expert in canid behaviour. And the one who told Mulder about the case. She runs a kennels and, inside, even has a poster like the one that used to be in Mulder’s office before the CSM torched the office in “The End”. Karin doesn’t think a canid is responsible. The meeting is curiously short. Mulder met her online.
Another person from Fish & Wildlife is in an alley looking for an animal he thinks is there. There’s a severed human hand. He enters a building and calls out to a man whose shape he sees. The man doesn’t respond, but turns into a dog.
Mulder and Scully are on the scene the next day. Cahn says the dead man was a friend of his. This sort of thing doesn’t happen. He wants to kill the animal, not catch it. Karin arrives as she thinks they might need help. A canid killing for no other reason than to kill is strange. Almost human. It’s extraordinary for one to kill for sport, especially ranging miles to do so.
Detwiler is there as well; he caught it once and will do again. Karin, afterwards, says she dislikes him already. Detwiler couldn’t find any prints but Karin looked for them herself. Outside, Cahn is saying over the radio that they’re going to live rounds when Detwiler startles him. Detwiler says if Cahn kills the Wanshang Dhole, Detwiler will kill him.
Karin did find tracks on the scene, and without too much difficulty. Prints with five toe pads. Canids don’t have five toe pads. It’s been suggested that once they might have had a prehensile thumb. Such a thing would allow it to open doors. Scully doesn’t trust Karin; she thinks Karin has an ulterior motive to get Mulder down there. That ulterior motive being to, well, get Mulder down there out of personal interest in him. Then there’s the Wanshang Dhole, a dog that is clearly not, or not just, a dog.