“Redux” is episode one of season five of The X-Files.
In the season four finale, “Gethsemane”, Kritschgau, the man Scully had caught, had told her and Mulder that the alien body found was a fake, that everything Mulder believed was. That the people who had created it had given Scully her disease to make Mulder believe. Certainly, some of this seemed genuine, as there had been a conspiracy to make it look as if the alien was genuine. Mulder had apparently shot himself over this.
This episode opens 24 hours before Scully was giving her testimony. Mulder is watching the video from 1972 and crying. He picks up his gun and the phone rings. Kritschgau is on the other end; he says he was followed after their conversation. They may be listening. They may be watching Mulder. Mulder looks up and sees a camera in the ceiling. He heads to the apartment above, inside which the man who killed Arlinsky and everyone else is destroying material. The killer picks up a shotgun and a gunshot is heard from outside the apartment. The door shuts.
Scully arrives home to find Mulder sitting in the dark in her bedroom. She rightly questions his presence. Mulder says he couldn’t sleep in his apartment; it’s too crowded. Scully wasn’t kidding. Neither was Mulder. There’s a dead man on the floor of his apartment and he explains that it’s been under electronic surveillance for at least two months. Mulder has a DoD ID for a Scott Ostelhof; he died from a gunshot wound to the face. Mulder can’t go to the authorities because Ostelhof worked for the military.
Everything is connected; the hoax, the military, Scully’s cancer. And it leads back to the FBI. Ostelhof was destroying phone records and the same number was called 17 times. That of the PPX operator at the Bureau. Mulder says this may even go back to the beginning. Some can be trusted; he wants to find those who cannot. Lie to them as they’ve been lied to.
The lie being that the dead man in Mulder’s apartment is Mulder. Skinner arrives as Scully is leaving. He asks if it’s true, and how she made the ID, given the report was a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the face. Mulder was wearing the same clothes as the last time Scully saw him. Skinner tells her that Section Chief Blevins wants to see her. Elsewhere, Mulder arrives at a DARPA building and uses Ostelhof’s ID to get in.
Scully is questioned by Blevins, in the presence of Skinner and another. Blevins has heard that Scully may have been contacted by a DoD employee, who gave her classified intel. Scully says the alien body was a hoax, but they have no hard evidence. They want to know the DoD person’s name and she will be able to explain herself tonight at a joint FBI panel. Skinner shows Scully a photo of Kritschgau and asks if that’s the person she spoke to. It is.
Kritschgau sees Mulder in the DARPA building and goes to him. How did he get in? Mulder walked through the door. He shows the ID, which he took off a dead man. Kritschgau says that has Level 4 clearance; Mulder can access everything, things he can’t. Mulder might find what he wants more than who inflicted the cancer on Scully. A cure to her cancer.
The CSM picks the lock to Mulder’s apartment. He seems upset as he looks at a photo of Mulder and his sister. Then he notices the hole in the ceiling and it looks like he realises Mulder had discovered some surveillance. He may suspect that Mulder is not dead.
Scully heads to Mulder’s office and contacts Holly in the communication centre. She wants to track the number that was called at the FBI. It leads to an executive level extension; it could be anyone on that level. To Scully’s question, Holly confirms that Skinner is one of the possibles. Then the scientist from American University contacts Scully; he has something she will want to see related to the ice samples.
Kritschgau escorts Mulder to the Level 4 wing, explaining things on the way. They have DNA samples of nearly everyone in the U.S. and that the military fanned the flying saucer stories to deflect people away from their arms strategy; they couldn’t win the PR battle. The business of America is war and a reason for justifying money on it was created; the Cold War. America and the Soviets squared off, but no-one dropped the bomb. Aliens provided a war chest and every experimental plane was a UFO sighting. Alien abduction stories were used to cover up the abduction of citizens who were then experimented upon. Mulder has only seen what they wanted him to see. The alien body was good, but the right person would have seen the fraud. Such as Scully.
Kritschgau is acting out of self-interest, for his son came home from the Gulf War sick. But what is the truth? Is the entire alien thing a fabrication, or is it wholly or partly true? There’s an awful lot of narrating by Mulder and Scully. The episode is ending with Scully in front of the committee, though it goes a bit further. The story continues in the next episode, “Redux II”.