“Gethsemane” is episode twenty-four of season four of The X-Files and the season finale.
The episode opens with a video from a NASA symposium at Boston University in 1972 about the possibility of life in the universe and discovering it.
Scully enters Mulder’s apartment where there is a police presence and a body bag on the floor. The detective opens the book and asks Scully if it’s him. She says yes. The occupant of the body bag is never seen.
At the FBI headquarters, Scully enters a meeting. She says that, four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned her to the X-Files. Her job was to provide an analytical perspective on Mulder’s investigations into the paranormal, which were driven by a personal belief that his sister was abducted by aliens. Four years later, she is here to report the illegitimacy of Mulder’s work. In her scientific opinion, he became a victim of his own false hopes and his belief in the biggest of lies.
The opening phrase this episode is ‘Believe the Lie’.
A helicopter lands in the St Elias Mountains, Yukon, Canada. Two men get out and are greeted by another. He has seen it; it’s unbelievable. The newcomers want to head for the site before nightfall. The site is an ice cave, and inside a block of ice is what looks like a Grey.
Scully tells the others that recent events related to new physical and factual evidence on the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Mulder was contacted by a man whose pursuit seemed to coincide with his own. Mulder’s intense desire to believe resulted in him being fooled by scientific sleight of hand. She is going to expose the lie and Mulder’s work for what it is.
Scully is having dinner with her mother, brother and some friends. One of them, Father McCue, wants to know if she wishes to return to the church. She hasn’t felt the need. Then Mulder calls; a man called Arlinsky has just contacted him. Something has been found on a mountain in Canada. Mulder wants Scully to come with him to the Smithsonian, immediately.
Arlinsky is a forensic anthropologist and Mulder has been in contact with him for several years. He was involved in a UFO scandal, but professes his innocence. Arlinsky has a slide of the Grey. It was found by a Canadian team and is still on the mountain. He also has some ice core samples, one from each side of the body. This would be proof of the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Arlinsky needs to get it out so he can authenticate it.
Scully is less interested than Mulder; it’s his Holy Grail, not hers. Proving to the world that extra-terrestrial life exists is not her dying wish. Mulder says this proof could change everything. What if someone could prove the existence of God? Scully doesn’t appear to consider the examples to be the same. She isn’t going with Mulder, but agrees to take a look at the core samples.
Scully tells the committee that she didn’t tell Mulder something she had only just learned herself. Her cancer had metastasized and, short of a miracle, would aggressively invade her body.
On the mountain, the body is being cut out of the ice. The guide is leaving and Arlinsky’s colleague, Babcock, is remaining. He’s also loading a gun; he doesn’t know the others that well given he’s going to be alone on the mountain with them. One of those extracting the body has found something odd. Suggestive as of a bore hole where liquid was poured in.
Scully has the ice cores examined at the paleoclimatology laboratory at American University. The man examining them doesn’t believe they are anything but genuine. But he’s discovered odd cellular material, neither plant nor animal. A chimera; a hybrid. He doesn’t know from what or what it is.
At the frozen cave, someone shoots the occupants of the tents inside it with a shotgun. Mulder and Arlinsky land, but their guide isn’t there. They head to the cave and find him on the way. Dead; shot.
Scully, returning to the paleoclimatology laboratory, doesn’t find the man she was expecting to meet but another, who leaves. With, Scully realises, an ice core. She follows, but is knocked down the stairs.
Is the body genuine or not? There is evidence either way. It could be a very elaborate hoax, with even the murders being part of the hoax. The story continues in season five and “Redux”.