“Ice” is episode eight of season one of The X-Files.
The episode opens at the Arctic Ice Project, Icy Cape, Alaska, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It’s dark outside and snowing, and more than 30 degrees below zero. It’s also 8:28 in the morning. Inside, a dog is rummaging through a bin. There’s a dead man on the floor and the dog leaves, whining, revealing the arm of another.
A third man, alive but bloody, is holding a gun. He puts the gun down, turns on the radio and sits in front of the camera. He starts saying that they are not who they are. It goes no further; it stops right here, right now. Then another man grabs him from behind. There’s a fight, and the first man knocks down the second and grabs his gun. The second man also has a gun. The first lowers his, then so does the second. Then the first man points the gun at his own head, as does the second. There are two gunshots.
A video of the same men, five in total plus a dog, has the leader saying that half an hour ago they passed the previous record for drilling down into an ice sheet. Mulder stops the video and tells Scully that the men were sent to Alaska by ARPA nearly a year ago to drill into the Arctic ice. They found trapped gasses, dust and chemicals, evidence of what the Earth’s climate used to be like. The mission was successful and nearly completed; there had been no problems.
The last transmission received is the recording seen at the beginning, although it ends when the man is grabbed. Nobody has been able to reach the base because of bad weather. Mulder says that they are considered to be either brilliant or expendable, for they have been chosen to investigate. Scully suggests the effects of severe isolation, but all the scientists were trained and screened, which included psychological tests. The two of them will meet three scientists familiar with the project and fly there; the National Weather Service has given a 3-day window before the next storm.
At Doolittle Airfield in Nome, Mulder and Scully meet with Dr Murphy, a professor of geology from San Diego. Two more doctors arrive; Hodge, a medical doctor, and Da Silva, a toxicologist. Hodge wants everyone to show ID. To prove they are who they say they are. They assume that Mulder and Scully, working for the government, know more about what is going on. Then a vehicle arrives and a man gets out. He introduces himself as Bear, their pilot. No, he isn’t going to ID himself to Hodge; he’s the only pilot willing to fly them. If they don’t like that, they can always walk.
At the base, it is still dark, cold and snowing. Inside, the power is out and the men from the video are on the floor. Mulder says they need to document the scene first. Inside a freezer are melting ice cores; presumably there was some residual warmth in the place even with the power out. When the generator is turned back on, the dog appears and attacks Mulder. Bear intervenes, and it bites Bear. Hodge grabs a needle and sedates the dog.
Hodge doesn’t think it looks like rabies. There are black nodes, swollen lymph glands, in the dog’s armpits, a sign of the bubonic plague. The dog also has skin irritation on its neck; it’s been scratching its hair off. Underneath the skin, something moves. That doesn’t look good for the dog. Bear bandages himself in the toilet, and, following a pain, discovers he also has black nodules. That doesn’t look good for Bear.
Scully says the autopsies revealed the men killed each other. Three of them were strangled; the other two shot themselves. They also had tissue damage due to fever. Bear wants to know if they had black spots too. No. He’s relieved, saying the black spots had nothing to do with what happened. Hodge tells him that can’t be ruled out. The nodes on the dog have gone; they could simply be symptoms of the early stages of a disease. Mulder picks up some stuff and speaks to Murphy about, satellite remote sensing photos. They show that the ice 2heet is 3,000m thick. Only the team found it to be twice that depth. Murphy replies that the area is concave; it must be a meteor crater.
Hodge is arguing with Scully, saying she must be wrong. She’s analysed two samples and both had ammonium hydroxide in them. Which would vaporise at human body temperatures. Da Silva hasn’t found any such toxins in the air. Murphy has in the ice. There is a high ratio of ammonia to water in the ice core, which isn’t possible on Earth. Mulder suggests the introduction of a foreign object. Under a microscope, there is something wriggling about in a sample and Scully has seen the same thing in a blood sample. A single celled organism that may be the larval stage of a larger animal.
Murphy wonders if what was in the ice core got into the men. Bear wants to leave and Hodge agrees. Mulder rejects the idea; they may be infected with an unknown organism and need to be quarantined. Bear doesn’t plan to wait and Hodge doesn’t think they could be infected. Scully points out that the dog bit Bear. They need to determine if any of them are infected with blood and stool samples. Bear refuses, and Mulder puts it to a vote to confine Bear. Bear seemingly agrees, then attacks Mulder. He’s restrained and something is seen moving under his skin as well. Hodge cuts out and removes a worm-like creature.
Mulder tries calling for help, saying there is a biohazard, and they need an air pickup and quarantine. There’s a heavy storm moving in so nothing can move. Mulder tells the others that if they can’t immediately leave, they will be stuck for several days, and wants to know if Bear is able to fly. Bear is dead. That would be no.
Mulder believes they have an alien lifeform, and thinks it needs investigating. Scully believes it’s too dangerous and needs destroying. Mulder tells her if they do that, they won’t know how to properly deal with it. Both have a point.
So, the team are trapped in a very cold outpost with something that infects and changes them. Which causes paranoia to set in. The whole plot is very similar to The Thing, either the original short story or the film versions.