“Detour” is episode four of season five of The X-Files.
Two surveyors are in the woods of Leon County, north Florida. One is happy for them to be paving over this swamp; the other insists that it isn’t a swamp. They should be sad about the demise of an ecosystem that has lasted a thousand years. He tells the other to move the position of the pole. The other says he can’t; it’s stuck. He feels the ground where the pole went in. It’s wet. And red. It looks like blood. Then red eyes open in the ground and he disappears from the view of the other. There’s something in the woods. The second surveyor runs and hides behind a fallen trunk. He looks at the ground and sees something that looks like a face. It opens red eyes.
A boy is out with his father and their dog hunting. The dog is released and the boy, Louis, sees the surveyors’ equipment. The dog starts barking; he’s found some bloody clothes. Louis’s father tells him to take the dog and run straight home. Don’t stop for anything. The father starts loading his gun. Louis complies, even when he hears two gunshots. Then nothing.
On Route 43, a man and a woman in the front of a car are reminiscing about a team building exercise. Mulder and Scully are in the back. Mulder would rather be elsewhere. They are asked if they have ever been on team building exercises before. No; Mulder, for one, usually has a medical problem. There’s a roadblock ahead set up by the police. The officer tells them it’s going to be a few minutes. Mulder gets out and has a wander. A woman comes up to him and asks if he’s from Search & Rescue. She’s the wife of the hunter and wants to know what happened, but they won’t tell her. Mulder heads off to see what he can find out and Scully follows to see where he’s going.
Mulder is escorted to meet Michele Fazekas who is running the search it seems. He introduces himself and explains they were stopped by the roadblock. He heard there was a shooting. Fazekas says shots were reported but no evidence of anyone being shot. A survey team didn’t report in and a man’s bloody jacket has been found. It looks like an animal attack, but she isn’t sure what kind. There’s a third set of tracks she can’t identify as animal or human. Where the father fired the shot, there were more tracks, two distinctly different. Not panther; not bear. Mulder asks for a motel recommendation; Fazekas thinks they can handle it. Scully arrives and says they are going to be late for the conference. Mulder doesn’t think they need it; Scully knows what he’s thinking.
At the Asekoff home that night, Louis doesn’t think his father is coming back. The dog is looking outside and whining. Mulder is in a motel room researching animal attacks when Scully arrives. They’ve missed the wine & cheese evening at the conference, so she’s brought wine and cheese. Mulder asks her what sort of animal attacks the strongest and leaves the weakest. The answer is none. This is no ordinary predator. Scully thought this was just a ploy to get out of going to the conference. Mulder decides to head out; he wants to check something.
The dog is barking and Mrs Asekoff lets him out, then heads after. He stops barking, then she finds him, but he doesn’t seem to want to go back in the house. She plans on leaving the dog outside, but she’s been locked out. She calls for Louis. He gets out of bed and sees something mostly unseen but for its red eyes and runs. Into Mulder, who was coming there.
Scully checks Louis’s bedroom and heads downstairs with the video he was watching. She tells Mulder she thinks she has insight into the invisible creature, showing Mulder The Invisible Man. Mulder replies that it wasn’t invisible; it had glowing red eyes. He’s found tracks. Not the dog, because they have five toes, but they don’t walk like a human either. Fazekas arrives and looks at the tracks; she says the same as Mulder. Mulder wants to head out into the forest to find whatever is attacking people before it finds somebody else.
Fazekas is accompanied by Jeff, their techead who has a Forward-Looking Infrared device. She exp0lains that, once inside the forest, they will only have shortwave radio and gives them some safety tips. Scully tells Mulder the police are looking for a transient wanted for a double homicide. Mulder thinks there are two of whatever is in the woods, working on divide and conquer. They may be objecting to the encroaching development.
Fazekas is leaving pebbles to mark their path; however, something is taking them. Jeff isn’t getting anything on the FLIR, not even wildlife. Yes; that is unusual. He’s never seen it before. Scully thinks it’s beautiful. Jeff warns her that that’s what gets people killed, admiring nature’s beauty.
They are in the woods, out of contact with the outside world, up against something that seems to be the ultimate form of chameleon, capable of hiding in the forest, even from the FLIR. That’s not really the position of a hunter; that’s more being in the position of the hunted.