“Biogenesis” is episode twenty-two of season six of The X-Files and the season finale.
The episode opens with Scully narrating about the origins of life on Earth, the great extinctions that killed nearly every species and how man has appeared. And that all life is descended from the first single cell. No-one can say for certain what ignited the single spark. will humanity pass into oblivion, as scientists think we are on the verge of another great extinction. The mystery may be revealed in a sign or a symbol. On the African coast, men find a piece of strangely-marked metal on the shore.
The coast is that of the Ivory Coast and the men tell a man working at a table about the metal. Later, at the Universite Côte d’Ivoire, the man from the beach is in his office with the metal fragment. He has a similar piece of metal already, and they fit together. The pieces join and the conjoined piece flies across the room, impacting itself deep in a Bible lengthways. The man retrieves the metal and places it on the desk. It starts to spin until he grabs it. He wraps it up again and makes a phone call. The Bible is open at a passage from Genesis; later events suggest this is not a coincidence.
Three days later and the man arrives at American University in DC. He asks students for the office of a Dr Sandoz. Someone is watching him from inside a lab; when the man arrives at the lab, he asks if the second is Dr Sandoz. He is Dr Merkmallen. His plane was delayed; problems with the X-ray machine and the fragment as well. Merkmallen takes out the joined piece and the monkeys in the lap start going wild. He hopes the piece Sandoz has will fit. Sandoz asks Merkmallen if he’s had a any luck reading the inscription. Later, a man arrives at the lab to find the piece gone, Merkmallen dead and no-one else there.
At the FBI, Skinner is telling Mulder and Scully that he thought this case would interest Mulder, given Merkmallen’s theories. Mulder is familiar with his work. Merkmallen was apparently murdered, but his body is missing. He was seeing Dr Sandoz, who is not the man Merkmallen thought was Sandoz, but the other person to enter the lab. Mulder says the two espoused fringe theories of panspermia. Scully knows what that is and says almost any scientist would accept them as being theoretically possible. Skinner has a rubbing from the metal artefact. Merkmallen thought it would prove his theories about Mars and the nature of human existence. Less plausible, according to Scully. Sandoz make a similar claim, in a science – emphasised – journal and claimed to have found a similar artefact. Sandoz is missing.
In the lift on the way out, Mulder starts hearing sounds. Scully asks if he heard a word she said. No. Not because he didn’t want to; he couldn’t. Scully tells Mulder he won, he exposed the conspiracy, the men were all killed in “One Son”, what more can he possibly hope to find. His sister.
At the university, Scully speaks to a detective. They have what is probably the murder weapon and probably has Sandoz’s prints on it. The man who met Merkmallen, the likely actual murderer, is also there. Dr Barnes., the head of the department. Barnes says his colleague is capable of almost anything. Mulder starts having hearing problems again and leaves. Barnes doesn’t have a high opinion of Sandoz; however, he’s likely lying as well. Outside, Mulder explains what happened to Scully. It happened before, and both times when the rubbing was seen. No, he isn’t kidding.
Mulder arrives at his office, to find Scully there with Chuck Burks. Chuck is excited by the aural dissonance Mulder is suffering, because Scully says the artefact is a fake. The writings are phonetic Navajo, but make no literal sense. And it was found in Africa. Barnes has made a career of exposing religious and science fraud. Mulder suggests Barnes would hide something he couldn’t disprove. Scully asks how a Native American artefact was found fused in rock on the West African coast. Mulder points out that rocks from Mars were found on Earth. Yes, they came from outer space. That’s Mulder’s point. Mulder is once again affected by the rubbing. Scully wants his dissonance looking into. Mulder believes Barnes killed Merkmallen. And he’s going to show Scully where the body is hidden.
Sandoz, it seems, has been in contact with the Navajo codetalker Albert Hosteen. Mulder is sounding rather paranoid at times, though it turns out with good reason. His condition is also deteriorating. Though the Syndicate may have been destroyed, not everyone involved with it died, and they show up. The story continues in season seven and the next episode, “The Sixth Extinction”.