“Terma” is episode nine of season four of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night at the Harrow Convalescent Home in Boca Raton, Florida. A woman enters a room with a torch, checking the patients in the beds. She finds one, who she calls Auntie Janet, and tells her it’s time. Outside, there is a man in the back of a van waiting. It seems he’s going to help the old lady die; she says she’s tired of the pain. Afterwards, the man says there’s something wrong as he checks on Auntie Janet, and black worms come out of her face.
The opening line is ‘E Pur Si Muove,’ Italian for ‘And yet it moves,’ supposedly whispered by Galileo after being forced to recant his claim that the Earth moves around the Sun.
In St Petersburg, a man is making tea and listening to music in an apartment when there’s a knock on his door. The man outside greets him as Comrade Peskow. There’s an urgent communique from Krasnoyarsk. Peskow is retired. This response was anticipated. The Cold War is not over. Peskow is given an envelope.
At the end of the previous episode, “Tunguska”, Mulder was one of many men who were having the black oil poured on them whilst restrained. He wakes up in his cell at his neighbour’s prompting. The neighbour says Mulder has been lying there for hours. The first time is very bad. It gets easier. Then you die. The man was a geologist who was there when they brought up the first fragments, before they knew what lived in Tunguska rock. They search for a cure, killing hundreds in the process, he thinks. Mulder asks about Krycek. Most likely dining with those responsible for their torture. Mulder wants to kill Krycek. The other passes him a shiv.
Scully is at the Goddard Space Flight Center where Dr Sacks is being kept in isolation. The doctor she is working with has found something, he doesn’t know what. what appears to be a nest, a black organism on Sacks’ pineal gland.
Peskow is in Richmond, Virginia, and he gets on a bus to Charlottesville. At some stables, a woman comes out to check on the horses who are disturbed. She finds Peskow there, who introduces himself. She tells him he has to leave. He says he came to see her, greeting her by name. Does she know Peskow? No, he can’t see how she could. Then he kills her. Obviously, the job he was supposedly retired from was not a very nice job.
Scully arrives home and Skinner approaches. He’s been trying to get hold of her all day after being asked questions about the contents of the diplomatic pouch, as he’s being asked questions by Congress. Scully explains where she was. Skinner has found the intended destination of the pouch. Dr Bonita Charne-Sayre. Scully knows the name; an authority on smallpox who has been calling for the last remaining stores to be eliminated. Skinner tells Scully the doctor was killed in a riding accident.
Mulder and the other prisoners are rousted and marched out. Mulder sees a truck appear, and Krycek start talking to another man. Mulders runs towards them, attacks Krycek and steals the truck with Krycek in the back. They are pursued by gunmen on horses. The truck’s brakes appear to be broken. Krycek bails off the back before the truck goes off the road and down a slope.
CSM is meeting the Well-Manicured man. D. Bonita Charne-Sayre was the latter’s personal physician. No, she didn’t die in a riding accident; she was murdered. CSM asks by whom. The other doesn’t know. He needs CSM to find out. CSM is rather smug that the Well-Manicured Man needs him now wants the congressional investigation called off. The well-manicured man says he can’t. CSM mentions that Mulder was captured but escaped. Throughout the conversation he seems smug and to be enjoying the other’s discomfort.
The horsemen find the crashed lorry. There’s blood in the cab but it’s empty. Krycek is fleeing through the woods but there are others there too. He’s surrounded by a group of men, al missing an arm. Krycek says he’s American, accused of spying, and that he escaped from the camp. He’s told they can protect him.
The episode is finally up to where it was at the beginning of the previous one, with Scully giving evidence in front of the committee. She does get locked up for contempt of Congress. Trying to present evidence as to what is going on is difficult when those involved are dead and evidence gets stolen. Krycek finds out just how he will be protected. He likely isn’t happy.