“Deep Throat” is episode two of season one of The X-Files.
The episode opens near Ellens Air Base in southwest Idaho. Armed MPs are surrounding a house and a woman comes to the cordon and says that it’s her house. She’s let through and the MP in charge tells her that her husband has violated base security, commandeered a military vehicle and is believed to be armed. The MPs enter the house and find the man. They say they need a doctor. Or something. The man is mostly naked and trembling, and most of his skin is covered in a rash.
Scully is waiting in a bar when Mulder approaches her. He has something to show her and leads her to a table. A man at the bar takes notice of them as they sit down. Mulder has a photo of a Colonel Robert Budahas, the man from earlier. The colonel was a test pilot who suffered a psychotic episode four months ago. MPs removed him and he was hospitalised for treatment. The military will not comment on Budahas at all; his wife has neither seen nor heard from him in over four months. She contacted the FBI and reported it as a kidnapping. Since 1963, six pilots from Ellens have been reported MIA. There are differing rumours as to why. Last week, the FBI dropped the case without investigation. Mulder thinks there’s something off about the whole thing.
Mulder heads to the bathroom where the man from the bar greets him by name, and warns him off the case. The military will not tolerate FBI involvement. The man says he can be of help, and has an interest in Mulder’s work. But he should drop this case and not jeopardise his future efforts. That night, Scully rings Mulder; he left out the UFO part of the case. She doesn’t want to submit a report with UFOs in it. Mulder hears a couple of clicks on the line, suggesting it is being monitored.
In Idaho, Mrs Budahas says that two years ago her husband developed a rash under his arm. It was thought to be a reaction to a paint stripper. Then his personality became unpredictable, and he started doing things like adding fish food flakes to his food. He’d yell and shake and not discuss work, but he never would even before. Something similar happened to Verla McLennen’s husband, who definitely seems a bit off. She’s rather more accepting, and is not happy that Mrs Budahas involved the FBI.
Scully mentions the Aurora Project, a new kind of surveillance project using suborbital spy craft. Perhaps the two pilots were washouts from the programme. Neither is able to get a meeting, although a Colonel Kissel promises one, a week on Friday. He’s also in the phone book. He doesn’t want to talk when Mulder and Scully arrive at his house. A Paul Mossinger comes over and says he is with the local paper. When Mossinger mentions UFO nuts, Mulder asks where they can be found. Which is at a local diner, and Mulder buys a copy of a photo of a triangular-shaped craft.
They head to the outskirts of the air base and Scully is asleep in the car when the back window shatters. Mulder comes and tells her to watch something, two lights in the sky manoeuvring impossibly. Scully thinks they might be lasers, because they can’t be aircraft. Then another light comes towards them, but this one is the searchlight on a helicopter. They spy two kids sneaking through the fence and get them to hide from the helicopter before going to a restaurant.
The two had been watching the show for about a year. The boy talks about the craft he’s seen, but he doesn’t sound like the most reliable of witnesses. He doesn’t think they are UFOs, but experimental military hardware. He also agrees that the craft look like the one in the picture Mulder bought.
Scully is still not convinced, even when Mulder shows her a similar photo from the time of the Roswell crash. Especially as their witnesses were stoned. According to Mulder, Ellens is one of six possible sites wreckage from the crashed UFO was taken. He doesn’t think the military are flying UFOs, but experimental planes built with UFO technology. Scully may not be able to explain it, but that doesn’t mean she believes in UFOs. Mulder thinks what they saw fit the description of Unidentified Flying Object quite accurately.
Then Colonel Budahas is returned to his wife. Who insists he’s not her husband. Although he looks like him, sounds like him and knows the stuff her husband would know. Mrs Budahas insists he has been changed – and there’s something definitely up with him.
UFOs, men in black, mysterious phone taps, surveillance and interference by unnamed government agents and a possible new source of information for Mulder.