“Patience” is episode three of season eight of The X-Files.
In Burley, Idaho, a car arrives outside a house in the middle of the night and a tall man gets out and quietly enters the house. A sleeping woman wakes up – and asks the man what he thinks he’s doing. Trying to be quiet. She says she can smell the embalming fluid; go outside and take off those clothes. He steps out on the porch and is doing so when he looks up, seeing what appears to be a bat. His wife hears a scream and goes to look. Something is eating her husband. If it is a bat, it’s the size of a human. And it goes for her, too.
For the first time, David Duchovny isn’t credited.
Scully is pottering around Mulder’s office when Doggett arrives, joking with a couple of friends. Scully says they are there to work. Doggett, who got assigned to the X-Files in the previous episode, “Without”, says he is too. He was in all weekend looking through the files, and early this morning. He just left to get coffee. He has questions. Starting with, which is Scully’s area an which is his? Scully says it’s Mulder’s office; they’re just using it for a while.
Scully explains the two homicides in Idaho. COD was blood loss. from bites. The man had two fingers bitten off. The bites on the wife appear to be human.
In Idaho, Detective Abbott isn’t that happy to see them. Scully explains that Doggett has only just been assigned. According to the detective, they aren’t so sure now that the bites are human. They’ve found a strange print, with only four toes, at the scene. Abbott doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to anything Scully says. It could be the bodies suffered post-mortem predation, but there’s only one print. Animals would leave more. They might not be dealing with a man, though.
Doggett finds what might be a second print inside the house. Maybe there are no prints in the yard because whatever it was went inside. They appear to lead upstairs and Doggett finds another in the bedroom. He suggests a psychotic killer with a deformed foot. Scully finds an open loft access in the closet. In the loft, Doggett finds the missing fingers. Regurgitated, according to Scully. She also finds marks in a rafter, and had found similar on the porch. Where the bat-thing had been hanging.
At another house, an elderly woman is in her loft. She finds a photo album, and is looking at it when she’s attacked.
Scully is at Cassia County Morgue when Doggett enters. Scully is now leaning more to an animal attack. Some elements may be human, but there are traces of an anticoagulant that’s only found in bat saliva. She may owe the detective an apology. Doggett isn’t so certain. He’s got a newspaper clipping from 1956; hunters killed a human bat. The coroner was disembowelled with regurgitated body parts found and 5 men died. 44 years later and the human bat is back.
At the elderly woman’s house, Doggett finds marks like those seen at the other scene. The detective says they look like claw marks; whatever did this isn’t human. Doggett thinks both he and Scully are ready to concede that. He shows Abbott the newspaper article. Scully has found the photo album. The victim had a daughter whose dead body was pulled from the river. Abbott dealt with the call. The body was inexplicably burnt. The daughter hadn’t been seen since the date to the first killing.
Scully thinks the daughter is the connection. The killings only started up again when her body turned up. She wants the body exhuming.
Abbott is not impressed with Scully it looks like. Scully is having to fill Mulder’s role, a role that, outside of religious cases, she’s not very happy with, because Doggett is basically filling her role as a sceptic. They’re also clashing a fair bit. And there is a man-sized bat stalking the county.