“Tithonus” is episode ten of season six of The X-Files.
At night, a woman pushes her trolley of mail out of a lift in what may be an office building. She’s delivering to the offices when she notices a man from the lift has followed her. She starts getting worried and heads back to the lift. Before it can leave, the man who was following her enters. He seems to see everyone else reflected in the lift doors as being grey, and gets out at another floor. He starts running down the stairs. Inside the lift, the light flickers and there are some worrying metal noises, followed by a jolt and the cables snap. The man reaches the basement entrance to the lift and takes out a camera. There are screams and wind as the lift plunges down and then crashes. He starts taking photos as the doors open slightly and the woman’s arm falls out, hand twitching, followed by a lot of blood.
Mulder and Scully are doing background checks, both clearly bored. Mulder isn’t ready to quit; it would take too many people happy. Scully gets called to Kersh’s office. Just her.
Kersh is looking at Scully’s file when she enters. He introduces her to Agent Peyton Ritter from the New York field office. Ritter says they are updating the case filing system and he was scanning old crime scene photos into the computer when he noticed something. A woman whose cause of death was overdose. She was found by a neighbour at 11:14. The time on the photo says 10:29. Scully says the clock could be wrong. Ritter agrees. He checked the Post the next day. Almost identical photo; the clock now says 11:52. Two different negatives; same photographer. Alfred Fellig. The man from the lift. Fellig works as a stringer for the wire services and occasionally as a photographer for the NYPD.
Does Ritter suspect Fellig? Well, he might have poisoned the woman and got his jollies snapping photos. And he might have done so on more than one occasion. Ritter found three other photos with measurable shadows for telling the time of day. A suicide, heart attack and an obvious murder for which another person was convicted. There’s no consistency in the MO. No consistency in anything, according to Ritter. He could use Scully’s help. Kersh asks Ritter to step outside. He tells Scully that her background could be useful on the case. Not her and Mulder; just her. She had a bright future but Mulder is now beyond hope.
A man gets off a bus, rubbing his chest. Fellig sees him as being grey and follows. And takes photographs as the man suffers what looks like a heart attack.
Mulder is looking at the photos of the crime scenes when Scully returns. She says it isn’t an X-File; Mulder comes up with lots of reasons why it could be.
At the 15th Precinct in New York, Scully and Ritter are asking about Fellig. They have a press pass yearly renewal and there isn’t much information on it. They want to see the original, and head to the archives. Scully finds the first, dated 1964. Fellig does not appear to have aged on any of the photographs since then. Ritter thinks it’s a dead end.
In the Bronx, someone is being chased. He is eventually grabbed in an alley and stabbed, and his killer steals his trainers. The killer hears a camera and sees Fellig photographing him from above, and runs off. When Fellig comes down, the killer attacks him from behind, stabbing him multiple times and leaving the knife in him before stealing the camera. Despite bleeding profusely, Fellig pulls out the knife and gets up and walks away.
At the crime scene, Ritter says the prints on the knife matched Fellig; he had them put in the database. Scully asks about the blood pool where Fellig was lying. There must have been a second victim. Scully asks where the body is. They are told that Fellig has been brought in.
At the precinct, Fellig is escorted to Scully and Ritter. He looks to be in paid. He’s asked how come he’s always there when someone dies and why his prints were on the weapon. Can he account for his activities last night? Fellig was on the Bronx on a job. He saw what happened. Was he himself attacked? The blood at the scene will be tested. Fellig admits he was cut some. He shows them his back. The wounds go well beyond being cut some.
Mulder calls Scully to ask how her X-File is going. He knows what’s happening; Scully says they had to let Fellig go, as there was another set of prints leading to a convicted murderer. Mulder knows far too much about the case, as he’s been intercepting Ritter’s emails to Kersh. He says he will do a background check on Fellig. It’s what he does now, after all.
There’s some conflict between Ritter and Scully, as Ritter seems determined to prove Fellig is the killer and Scully is more interested in finding the truth. She eventually confronts Fellig, as their surveillance of him was compromised. Given everything, either Ritter or Scully is bound to turn grey at some point. And there’s even a call back to something all the way back in season three.