The X-Files (season 4)

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The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016–18) is an American science fiction drama television series, which is a part of The X-Files franchise, created by Chris Carter. Starring Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny as FBI agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, investigators of X-Files; unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena.

Herrenvolk [4.1]

The Alien Bounty Hunter: Everything dies.

Scully: Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it. And that's a place to start. That's where the hope is.

Marita Covarrubias: Not everything dies, Mr. Mulder.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: The fiercest enemy is the man that has nothing left to lose.

Home [4.2]

Scully: (Listing the evidence she's found at the scene while Mulder plays with a baseball.) The angle of movement and deeper indentation on the right side of the mark suggest a left-handed individual. I've collected soil specimens and although numerous shoe impressions remain from the sandlot game, I think a couple of stone casts would prove invaluable to the investigation. (Pauses for response; he ignores her) Meanwhile, I've quit the FBI and have become a spokesperson for the ab-roller.

Mulder: Smell that. (Holds the baseball in front of her nose.) It's perfume. God this brings back a lot of memories of my sister... All-day pickup games out on the vineyard. Ride your bikes down to the beach, eat bologna sandwiches. Only place you had to be on time was home for dinner. Never had to lock your doors. No modems, no faxes, no cell phones.

Scully: Mulder, if you had to do without a cell phone for two minutes, you'd lapse into catatonic schizophrenia.

Mulder: Scully, you don't know me as well as you think you do. You know I'm a working man and I live in a big city, but if I had to settle down? Build a home? It'd be in a place like this.

Scully: (Dryly) It'd be like living in Mayberry.

Sheriff: This is my deputy, Barney.

Mulder: Fife?!

Barney: (Sighing, frustrated) Pastor!

Scully: (Discussing the murdered baby's long list of birth defects) Imagine all a woman's hopes and dreams for her child, and for Nature to turn so cruel... What must a woman go through?

Mulder: Apparently not much in this case, if she'd just throw it out with the trash.

Scully: (Sadly) I- I guess I was just projecting on myself.

Mulder: Why, is there a history of genetic abnormalities in your family?

Scully: No.

Mulder: (Grinning) Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic makeup and a really high tolerance for being second-guessed and start pumping out the little uber-Scullys.

Scully: (Smiles back) What about your family?

Mulder: Aside from the need for corrective lenses and the tendency to be abducted by extraterrestrials involved in an international governmental conspiracy, the Mulder family passes genetic muster.

Scully: We all have a natural instinct to propagate.

Mulder: Do we?

Mulder: Scully. (She stops walking and turns around. He smiles.) I never saw you as a mother before.

Mrs. Peacock: Right arm was torn off. Saw it sitting there across my dead husband's lap. Boys took me home... sewed me up just like the family learnt in the War of Northern Aggression. Whole time, felt the same as if been making breakfast...They're such good boys.

Scully: Mrs. Peacock, they murdered Sheriff Taylor and his wife. And Deputy Pastor.

Mrs. Peacock: I can tell you don't have no children. Maybe one day you'll learn... the pride... the love... when you know your boy will do anything for his mother.

Scully: I think the way it goes here is that Edmund is both the father and brother of the other two.

Mulder: Does that mean that when Edmund was a kid, he got to ground his brothers for playing with his things?

(After Edward and his mother escaped)

Scully: Don't worry, Mulder. In time, we'll catch them.

Mulder: I think time already caught them, Scully.

Teliko [4.3]

Unruhe [4.4]

The Field Where I Died [4.5]

[As Mulder and Scully look out over a misty field where Melissa claims she died during her past life.]]

Melissa/Sarah: [v.o., whispering] I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive, forevermore.

(Revelations 1:18)

[At both the beginning and ending of the episode, Mulder looks at aged photographs in the field where he died in a past life.]

Mulder: [v.o.] At times I almost dream I too have spent a life the sages' way, and tread once more familiar paths. Perchance I perished in an arrogant self-reliance an age ago. And in that act a prayer for one more chance went up so earnest, so... Instinct with better light let in by death that life was blotted out not so completely, but scattered, wrecks enough of it to remain dim memories, as now, when seems, once more, the goal in sight again.

(Robert Browning, "Paracelsus")

Sanguinarium [4.6]

Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man [4.7]

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: Life... is like a box of chocolates - A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you're stuck with this undefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. (sighs) Sure, once in a while, there's a.. peanut butter cup, or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast, and the taste is.. fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts - If you're desperate enough to eat those, all you've got left is a... is an empty box... filled with useless, brown paper wrappers.

Caller ID: Saddam Hussein Line 2.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: Call back.

Man at conference table: I'm working on next month's Oscar nominations - any preference?

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: I couldn't care less. What I don't want is the Bills winning the Super Bowl. As long as I'm alive that doesn't happen.

Frohike: (Talking about the Smoking Man, as he listens over the wiretap.) Henry David Thoreau wrote: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." His life has been anything but quiet - yet I believe, nothing but desperate. He's the most dangerous man alive - not so much because he believes in his actions, but because he believes those actions are all which life allows him... and yet, the only person that can never escape him, is himself.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man: I could kill you whenever I please... But not today.

Tunguska [4.8]

Krycek: (slams on door, panting) We gotta get outta here. They’re gonna torture us.

Mulder: How do you know?

Krycek: They questioned me. Trying to get me to confess.

Mulder: To what?

Krycek: To being a spy.

Mulder: (Pins Krycek against the cell wall) What did you tell them?

Krycek: That we were stupid Americans, lost in the woods. Mulder, you’re gonna need me in here. (Mulder lets go of Krycek) ..Don’t touch me again.

Terma [4.9]

Paper Hearts [4.10]

Scully: (to Mulder) You said it yourself, once - "a dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask."

Scully: Don't you think the car might've been searched at least once already?

Mulder: Not by me.

El Camino owner: (Excited) Honest to God? A serial killer owned my car? For real?

John Lee Roche: (Referring to the number of murders he confessed to) 13 sounds more magical.

El Mundo Gira [4.11]

Mulder: The truth is... Nobody cares.

Leonard Betts [4.12]

Scully: What are we doing here, Mulder?

Mulder: Did I mention that Mr Betts had no head?

Mulder: You check out how he died, I wanna see how he lives.

Scully: (Correcting him) Lived.

Mulder: Lived.

Mulder: Will the real Leonard Betts please stand up.

Never Again [4.13]

Mulder: (Scully wants a desk; Mulder is trying to figure out how to fit it in their tiny shared office) We'll put 'em really close together, face to face... maybe we could play some BATTLESHIP!

Mulder: (Explaining how he knew where to find Scully) I checked where we always stay in Philadelphia. I was sure you wouldn't abandon me.

Mulder: (Making fun of Scully's new tattoo) I was thinking of having an NY tattooed on my ass to commemorate the Yankees' World Series victory.

Mulder: (To Scully) Congrats on making a personal appearance in the X-Files for the second time!

Memento Mori [4.14]

[writing in her journal, to Mulder]

Scully: For the first time, I feel time like a heart beat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in its passage. I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me, knowing that you will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other. That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you–that are you–is a comfort to me now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago, and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions. If not for which I might never have been so strong now as I cross to face you and look at you, incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you.

Mulder: I refuse to believe that.

Scully: For all the times that I've said that to you, I am as certain about this as you have ever been.

Skinner: (About Mulder's tiny office) At least he doesn't take an elevator up to get to work.

Cigarette Smoking Man: (Snarky smile) You think I'm the devil?

Skinner: You can't ask the truth of a man who trades in lies.

Mulder: The truth will save you, Scully. I think it'll save both of us.

Cigarette Smoking Man: You wish to bargain for Agent Scully's life?

Skinner: (shouting) WHAT WILL IT TAKE?!

Skinner: (on the phone with Mulder) There's always another way. [Hangs up; camera pans around to reveal Cigarette Smoking Man]

Cigarette Smoking Man: Yes, I think there is. If you're willing to pay the price.

Kaddish[4.15]

Unrequited [4.16]

Tempus Fugit [4.17]

Mulder: I am hesitant to speculate.

Scully: (rolls eyes)

Scully: (to Mulder, sarcastically) You sure know how to make a girl feel special on her birthday.

Mulder: Does your policy cover the acts of extraterrestrials?

Mulder: (About to scuba dive to the bottom of a lake) Once, I got a quarter off the deep end at the Y pool!

Max [4.18]

Scully: (looking through Max's trailer) I think you were actually kindred spirits in some deep, strange way.

Mulder: What do you mean?

Scully: Men with Spartan lives, simple in their creature comforts, and willing to allow for the complexity of their passions.

Mulder: More people are trying to get their hands on this than a Tickle-Me-Elmo doll.

Skinner: Is this man on the plane?

Mulder: I think he got the connecting flight.

Scully: I, uh... actually, I was thinking about the- this gift that you gave me for my birthday. (takes out the Apollo 11 pendant/keychain and looks at it) You never got to tell me why you gave it to me or what it means. But I think I know. I think that you appreciate that there are extraordinary men and women and extraordinary moments when history leaps forward on the backs of these individuals. That what can be imagined can be achieved. That you must dare to dream, but that there's no substitute for perseverance and hard work. And teamwork, because no one gets there alone. And while we commemorate the greatness of these events and the individuals who achieved them, we cannot forget the sacrifice of those who make these achievements and leaps possible.

Mulder: ...I just thought it was a pretty cool keychain.

Synchrony [4.19]

Small Potatoes [4.20]

Scully: (sarcastically) What else about this interests you? Could it be... [reading from magazine cover] "visitors from space?"

Scully: Do you know who the father of your baby is?

Amanda: His name is Luke Skywalker. He's what's known as a 'Jedi knight.'

Scully: Did he have a lightsaber?

Amanda: No, he didn't bring it. He did sing a song for me though. (sings "Star Wars" theme)

Scully: How many times have you seen "Star Wars," Amanda?

Amanda: 368. I should break 400 by Memorial Day.

Mulder: Take your best shot, Scully, but I think there's more going on here than Luke Skywalker and his lightsaber.

Mulder: How would this happen?

Scully: The birds and the bees and the monkey babies, Mulder.

[Mr and Mrs Neiman, parents of one of the "monkey babies," are arguing as they head toward their doctor's office.]

Mrs Neiman: We're going to find the best lawyer we can, because I definitely plan to sue, that's all I'm saying, Fred!

Mr Neiman: Baboo, look, just let me do the talking, all right? [Mulder and Scully join the couple in walking toward the doctor's office entrance.]

Mrs Neiman: Just tell him we're gonna sue!

Mr Neiman: (to Mulder and Scully) Oh, you too, huh? [They exchange a confused look.]

Mulder: I have a theory. Do you wanna hear it?

Scully: Van Blundht somehow physically transformed into his captor and walked out the door, leaving no one the wiser?

Mulder: (pleased) Scully, should we be picking out china patterns or what?

Scully: So what are you saying, that Van Blundht's an alien?

Mulder: (grinning) Not unless they have trailer parks in space.

Mulder: Hey Scully, if you could be somebody else for a day, who would it be?

Scully: Hopefully myself.

Mulder: So boring! I mean, wouldn't you be tempted to try on somebody else's existence for a day, live your life as somebody else?

Scully: Looking like someone else, Mulder, and being someone else are completely different things.

Mulder: Well maybe it's not. I mean, everybody else around you would treat you like you were somebody else. I mean, ultimately, maybe it's other people's reactions to us who make us who we are.

Scully: (pauses for a while as they walk, thinking) All right then. Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mulder: (regretful) Ay. Can't be a dead person.

Scully: (slightly annoyed) Why the hell not?

Mulder: (as if it is a perfectly acceptable explanation) Because.

Mulder: (a decaying body just fell out of the ceiling) You think the fall killed him?

Eddie Van Blundht: (annoyed, looking at Mulder's "I Want To Believe" poster in his office, as Mulder) Good night! This is where my tax dollars go?!

Eddie Van Blundht: [As Mulder, walks in to Mulder's apartment and looks around] Where the hell do I sleep?!

Eddie Van Blundht: [To himself, as Mulder, looking in the mirror. Holds up FBI badge, practicing.] FBI. (slowly, exaggerated) F. ... B. ... I. FBI. (puts badge away; dramatically) You lookin' at me? There ain't nobody else here, you must be lookin' at me. You want a piece of this? (practices getting out his gun quickly; drops the clip as he does so; awkwardly puts it away again; sighs) You're a damn good lookin' man.

Scully: (pouring them each a glass of wine) Seriously, Mulder, what's going on? Are you okay?

Eddie Van Blundht: (as Mulder) Just kind of... knockin around. Just thinking. We never really, uh, talk, do we?

Scully: Well- what do you mean? Really talk? No, no we don't, Mulder.

Eddie Van Blundht: Well, what's stopping us?

[She pauses for a moment, as if considering. Scene cuts to the two of them drinking the last of the bottle of wine.]

Scully: So there we are, at 2 o'clock in the morning, me in my taffeta dress, and Marcus, wherever the hell he was, he was wearing a, uh, a tux. It had a... kelly green cumberbund on it. Anyway, so, I know that Marcus is thinking that it's now or never, and I'm thinking...

Eddie Van Blundht: (smiling) What are you thinking?

Scully: I'm thinking, "What is that siren I hear getting louder?"

Eddie Van Blundht: No way! Who called the cops?

Scully: Well it wasn't the cops, it was the fire department - my friend Silvia and her idiot prom date-

Eddie Van Blundht: Burwood?!

Scully: -had built this campfire that went totally out of control and so we all had to ride back on the, um... what do you call it, the, um- the pumper truck! ("Mulder" laughs) Marcus was the 12th grade love of my life. (Starts to take a sip of wine, then starts laughing) I can't believe I'm telling you this.

Eddie Van Blundht: I can't believe you haven't told me before.

Scully: Now I'm seeing a whole new side of you, Mulder.

Eddie Van Blundht: (hopeful) Is that a good thing?

Scully: I like it.

Eddie Van Blundht: Do you ever wish things were different?

Scully: What do you mean?

Eddie Van Blundht: The person you wanted to be when you grew up when you were in high school. How far off from that did you end up?

Scully: Career wise? Miles off target.

Eddie Van Blundht: No no, not just that. Do you ever wish... that you could go back and do it all differently?

Scully: (curious) Do you?

[Looks at her silently, scoots closer to her on the couch, then leans in close enough to kiss her. When he's about an inch from her lips, Scully closes her eyes, then the door is thrown open by the real Mulder. Scully makes a disgusted noise and pushes Van Blundht away; he sighs and turns back into himself. Scully looks horrified, he shrugs apologetically.]

Scully: I don't imagine you need to be told this, Mulder, but you're not a loser.

Mulder: Yeah, but I'm no Eddie Van Blundht either, am I.

Zero Sum [4.21]

Skinner: I have handled this like I've handled everything else you've asked me to do.

Cigarette Smoking Man: You're in no position to question the terms of our arrangement.

Skinner: Then we have no arrangement.

Cigarette Smoking Man: A man digs a hole, he risks falling into it.

Skinner: (to Cigarette Smoking Man) If anything happens to her, I will expose you! I don't care what happens to me!

Cigarette Smoking Man: Only yesterday you said you wouldn't be party to murder, and now, here you are.

Elegy [4.22]

Scully: (talking to her psychiatrist about Mulder) I guess I never realized how much I rely on him before this. His passion... he's been a great source of strength that I've drawn on.

Demons [4.23]

Scully: Although cleared of any wrongdoing in the deaths of Amy and David Cassandra, Agent Mulder still has no recollection of the events that lead to their deaths. His seizures have subsided, with no evidence of permanent cerebral damage, but I am concerned this experience will have a lasting effect. Agent Mulder undertook this treatment hoping to lay claim to his past, that by retrieving memories lost to him he might finally understand the path he's on. But if that knowledge remains elusive, and if it's only by knowing where he's been that he can hope to understand where he's going, then I fear Agent Mulder may lose his course. And the truths he's seeking from his childhood will continue to evade him, driving him more dangerously forward in impossible pursuit.

Gethsemane [4.24]

Scully: Four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned me to a project you all know as the X Files. As I am a medical doctor with a background in hard science, my job was to provide an analytical perspective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder, whose investigations into the paranormal were fueled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was 12. I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work. That it is my scientific opinion that he became over the course of these years a victim. A victim of his own false hopes and of his belief in the biggest of lies.

Scully: Mulder, everything this man [Kritschgau] described...you can't just guess at these details. I'm sorry, but the facts here completely overwhelm any argument against them!

Mulder: Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them!

Scully: Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe.

Mulder: After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's NOT true!

Scully: Because it's easier to believe the lie. Isn't it?

Scully: Early this morning, I got a call from the police asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment. The detective asked me...he needed me to identify a body...

Section Chief Blevins: Agent Scully...

Scully: Agent Mulder died... late last night... from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.