Season 1, Episode 14: Gender Bender

Synopsis

Young people between Boston and Washington, D.C. are dying of coronary attacks after sex, with the latest security footage showing a woman entering the dead person's hotel room and a man exiting. Mulder and Scully's investigation of a possible killer takes them to Massachusetts and an Amish-like religious sect in Massachusetts known as The Kindred. After their first attempt to get some answers from the sect is unsuccessful, the agents sneak back onto their property. One of the men at the village, Brother Andrew, gives Scully some information, while Mulder observes a strange ritual involving the body of another brother, which seems to bring him back to life.

Scully is seduced by Brother Andrew, but rescued by Mulder. They find another man who survived a night club encounter. They attempt to apprehend the Gender-Bender with the information they've gathered, but are unable to capture the culprit. Or any of the sect, which disappears mysteriously and leaves only a crop circle behind.

Strangely enough, the man who survives the night club seduction is played by Nicholas Lea...the same person who would play a major role in future X-Files episodes as Alex Krycek (credit to Mulder's Big Adventure on this one).

Episode Body Count

Club guy: dies of a blown artery after sex with the Gender-bender.

Four other deaths: recent cases of healthy young persons' deaths by massive coronary arrest during sex.

Dead UMW organizer: a similar case in Massachusetts that Mulder mentions in the past year.

Dead man: killed by Marty the Gender-bender.

Humans: 7
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (14/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 79
Creatures: 7
Aliens: 4

Grand Total: 90

Season 1, Episode 13: Beyond the Sea

Synopsis

Scully's parents leave after visiting for Christmas, and Scully gets the news that her father has died shortly before she sees a vision of him. Mulder and Scully begin investigating the abduction of two Jackson University students (under similar circumstances to a previous kidnapping that left two students dead), and whether a death row inmate named Luther Lee Boggs has visions that can help them or if he's orchestrating the kidnappings from the inside.

The agents visit Boggs to see what visions he can get, though Mulder determines that he's a fraud when he receives visions from a piece of cloth unconnected to the kidnapping. When he starts singing the song played at Scully's father's funeral, however, Scully follows the clues he gave and finds evidence related to the kidnapping.

With Boggs' assistance, the FBI finds the kidnapped girl, but Mulder is shot and seriously wounded in the process. The girl IDs a man named Lucas Henry, whom the FBI believes assisted Boggs with his murders. Scully suspects that Boggs set Mulder up because of his role in putting him away, but Boggs is steadfast in demanding a deal in exchange for information. In a role reversal, Mulder thinks Boggs is just playing mind games while Scully is more open to the supernatural.

Under a false deal arrangement, Boggs gives Scully information on the kidnapped boy's whereabouts before saying that he knew all along it was a setup. With the information, the FBI rescues the boy, and Scully becomes convinced that Boggs was not involved in the kidnapping. Boggs is nevertheless executed. Though he promises to give Scully her father's final message, she does not show up as a witness, telling Mulder she is afraid to believe.

Brad Dourif, who plays Boggs, was also Grima Wormtongue in the Lord of the Rings movies; I haven't seen Deadwood, but he's been in several episodes as Doc Cochran. I've also never seen Stargate SG-1, but Don S. Davis (who plays Scully's father) played Major General George Hammond on that show; Davis died last year.

Episode Body Count

Captain William Scully: Dana Scully's father, dies of a heart attack at the beginning of the episode.

Two Duke University students: abducted, tortured, and killed a year prior to the episode.

Five of Luther Lee Boggs' family members: strangled by Boggs at Thanksgiving, after which he takes in the football game; also killed every animal in his housing project, and perhaps other people, though those numbers aren't specified.

Lucas Henry's girlfriend and mother: killed in a car accident, somehow prompting Henry to commit murders on the anniversary of the crash.

Lucas Henry: falls through a catwalk to his death.

Luther Lee Boggs: executed.

Humans: 12
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (13/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 72
Creatures: 7
Aliens: 4

Grand Total: 83

Season 1, Episode 12: Fire

Synopsis

British Parliament members are being burned alive, and Phoebe Green, a British investigator and old classmate of Mulder's, requests help from the FBI. Specifically, a fellow named Malcolm Marsden is staying with his family in Cape Cod after escaping a blaze in England.

A man named Cecil L'Iveley is present as a gardener at one combustion, and redubs himself Bob the Caretaker to begin work at the Marsden's Cape Cod house. L'Iveley manages to sicken the Marsdens' chauffer so he can drive the family to a party in Boston. Scully ponders whether diluted rocket fuel could be diluted to be put into hand cream or other such substances, while Mulder and Scully discuss the possibility that the assassin is pyrokinetic.

A fire breaks out at the hotel where the party is taking place, and L'Iveley saves the children from harm. Scully finds that L'Iveley was hired as a gardener by some of the victims and has entered the country at Boston. With a sketch of the suspect from a mysterious bar fire, Scully is able to determine that the new driver is the culprit. In a final showdown in the rocket fuel-laced house, Mulder rescues the children and Phoebe douses L'Iveley with accelerant. L'Iveley is admitted to the hospital with fifth and sixth degree burns over his entire body after bursting into flames, but manages to survive and begin recovery.

Mark Sheppard, who played the pyro caretaker, has appeared in a number of small sci-fi roles, notably Badger in Firefly, Romo Lampkin in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, and Tanaka in Dollhouse.

Episode Body Count

Three ranking members of parliament: Phoebe says a person has been giving the aristocracy a good scare by burning blokes alive...and Windsor Castle.

Dead caretaker: killed and ineptly buried by Pyroman to take over responsibilities at the Marsden residence

The driver: burns to a crisp, apparently thanks to some diluted rocket fuel in his cough syrup

No, I doubt Phoebe was being serious with the story of the British Minister of Parliament blown up by a tape cassette.

Humans: 5
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (12/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 60
Creatures: 7
Aliens: 4

Grand Total: 71

Season 1, Episode 11: Eve

Synopsis

A man is found dead by blood drainage in Connecticut, and another man is also found dead by the same means in San Francisco; both have traces of the poison digitalis in their system. The Connecticut man's daughter, Teena Simmons, recalls red lightning occurring shortly before her father's death. The San Francisco girl, Cindy Reardon, is an identical twin of Simmons but her mother tells Mulder and Scully that Cindy was an only child. Simmons is kidnapped.

The agents suspect Dr. Sally Kindrick, who was an in vitro fertilization specialist for both families. Deep Throat informs Mulder that the girls were part of a eugenics experiment modeled after Russian tests, with the girls all named Eve and the boys all named Adam. Visiting a twin of Kendrick imprisoned in an insane asylum, the agents discover that the children were given extra chromosomes to heighten strength and intelligence, though it also leads to increased psychosis. Reardon is also kidnapped.

Kendrick reunites the girls, and asks why they killed their fathers. The girls say they "just knew," and that they were created and not born. They also poison Kendrick with digitalis and claim that she was trying to poison them all. The girls also try to poison Mulder and Scully, though Mulder discovers the murder attempt before it can do any harm. The girls are captured and imprisoned in the same asylum as Eve 6...and then visited by a doctor who looks just like Kendrick.

Fun fact: the band Eve 6 took their name from this episode.

Episode Body Count

Joel Simmons: death by hypovolemia (low blood volume).

Dead cow: at least one cattle mutilation is shown on slide by Mulder.

Tina Simmons' mother: died of ovarian cancer two years prior to episode.

Doug Reardon: dies in same manner, and at the same time, as Joel Simmons.

Sally Kendrick? Eve 8?: death by four ounces of digitalis in her soda placed there by Simmons and Reardon. I'm presuming this is Kendrick; there's a lot of clones flying around this episode.

Eve 6 says the children are prone to suicide, but there is no clear number as to how many died.

Humans: 4
Creatures: 1
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (11/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 55
Creatures: 7
Aliens: 4

Grand Total: 66

Season 1, Episode 10: Fallen Angel

Synopsis

A deputy observes strange lights in the woods outside Townsend, Wisconsin. A military tracking station picks up a UFO crashing outside Townsend. Deep Throat lets Mulder know that a reported chemical spill that evacuates the city is a cover-up, and Mulder is off to the cheese state.

Mulder is captured trying to infiltrate the military operation, where he meets conspiracy theorist and UFO chaser Max Fenig. Scully arrives to free Mulder, tell him the section chief is pissed over his stunt, and reveal the cover-up story that the cover-up is based on: that a Libyan fighter jet with a nuclear warhead crashed in Wisconsin. Max and Mulder bond a bit over the paranormal, as well as some transmissions Max picked up from local emergency responders.

Several soldiers are attacked and severely burned by some sort of cloaked creature after the military tries to kill it. Mulder finds Max having an epilectic seizure and discovers marks on his ears suggesting he was abducted. A second UFO is tracked heading to Townsend, and Mulder grows suspicious of Max's trip being coincidental. Max is apparently summoned by the aliens and abducted.

At a disciplinary hearing, Mulder is openly insubordinate to his superior, Section Chief McGrath, and warns that the government cannot keep the truth hidden forever. Deep Throat countermands McGrath's order to shut down the X-Files, telling McGrath that it is better to keep Mulder from being exposed to the wrong people and that you always keep your friends close and enemies closer.

Episode Body Count

Deputy Wright: killed after he's attacked by something when investigating the bogey

Three firefighters: Dr. Oppenheim says Wright and three other people were dead on arrival with severe burns

At least four soldiers: die after they are attacked and severely burned by the alien

Two more soldiers: killed after trying to capture Max

Humans: 10
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (10/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 51
Creatures: 6
Aliens: 4

Grand Total: 61

Season 1, Episode 9: Space

Synopsis

The episode begins with a news broadcast of the Observer mission to Mars, which includes images of the enigmatic Face on Mars. The project director and one of Mulder's heroes, Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt, dismisses the Face as being wind-sculpted. However, Belt had something of a close encounter while an astronaut on Gemini 8 and continues to be haunted by the Face and ghostly images.

A space shuttle launch is aborted during present day, and mission control communications commander Michelle Generoo tips off Mulder and Scully that the shuttle may have been sabotaged. Belt and other NASA workers deny any sabotage or continuing problems.

A replacement shuttle, with Generoo's husband commanding, launches without an issue but experiences problems with its communication and maneuvering abilities soon after. It is determined that something is interfering with the shuttle telemetry, and a risky move restores shuttle control. Soon after, however, the shuttle starts losing oxygen. The agents and Generoo are horrified by Belt's determination to deliver the shuttle's payload, despite the risks, to avoid bad press or lost federal funding.

Belt melts down when the astronauts report a ghost outside the shuttle. He tells Mulder that he didn't sabotage the shuttle, but couldn't stop whatever did, that it "lives in me" and "they don't want us to know." He helps the shuttle make an emergency landing, but commits suicide soon after.

Episode Body Count

Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt: jumps out of a hospital window, seemingly in an attempt to escape the ghosts.

Humans: 1
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (9/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 41
Creatures: 6
Aliens: 4

Grand Total: 51

Season 1, Episode 8: Ice

Synopsis

Mulder and Scully, and a team of scientific redshirts, head to Alaska after a disturbing transmission from a project that has been drilling into a meteorite crater in the Arctic ice in Alaska. When they get there, they discover a strange organism that was found by the original team as well as a dog showing signs of the plague. The team is marooned after their pilot is killed by the parasitic organism.

The isolation and deadly parasitic alien organism spark a little bit of paranoia amongst the castaways, with Mulder being quarantined after a scientist is found dead. The team discovers that two parasites will kill each other, and that another scientist is infected. They're able to save her by introducing another worm into her system. Mulder wants to further explore the parasite, only to discover that the research station has been destroyed.

Felicity Huffman, later of Desperate Housewives fame, appears in this episode as Dr. Nancy DaSilva.

Episode Body Count

Five team members: considering that only a dog greets the agents and scientists when they arrive at the Arctic Ice Core Project, it's safe to assume that the original team has died, including these two who point their guns at each other before committing suicide and a couple of dead bodies seen in the opening.


Bear: nope, not an animal; the inevitable pilot death. Dies after a parasite is removed from his neck.

Denny Murphy: shows up dead in a freezer.

Four dead worms: Two parasitic worms kill each other, leaving the dog and Dr. DaSilva unharmed.

Humans: 7
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 4

Cumulative Body Count (8/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 40
Creatures: 6
Aliens: 4

Grand Total: 50

Note: edited to count the worms as aliens. I'm guessing the fact that the research was being done over a meteor crater would be a sign of that.

Season 1, Episode 7: Ghost in the Machine

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Season 1, Episode 6: Shadows

Synopsis

Mulder and Scully are called to examine two bodies which are electrostatically charged and have had their throats crushed from within. They are able to determine that they are members of an Iranian extremist group who attacked a woman named Lauren Kyte at an ATM. Kyte shows several signs of having telekinetic powers.

Scully begins to suspect that Howard Graves, Kyte's boss and a CEO at a technology company, may have faked his death, but is disproved by medical tests. Other government agents reveal that the company was under investigation for selling restricted parts to the extremist group. It later appears that the incidents are a result of Graves' ghost, who spares the man who murdered him to gain control of the company and instead shows Mulder where to find incriminating evidence.

Lorena Gale, who plays a medical examiner in this episode, also played Priest Elosha in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series.

Episode Body Count

Howard Graves: Murdered prior to the start of the episode, disguised to look like a suicide.


Mohamed Amalaki and another man: Two members of an extremist group killed by Graves' ghost.

Sarah Lynn: Graves' daughter, who drowned at age three.


Two more hoods: Killed while trying to attack Kyte, again by Graves' ghost.

Humans: 6
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (6/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 31
Creatures: 6
Aliens: 0

Grand Total: 37

Season 1, Episode 5: The Jersey Devil

Synopsis

Mulder and Scully find an uncooperative detective in the investigation of a homeless man found dead and partially cannibalized outside of Atlantic City. Mulder brings up the Jersey Devil, a legendary "East Coast Bigfoot" which attacks cars from the woods. Mulder begins conducting his own investigation, and spots a creature in the outskirts of the city. Scully, meanwhile, gets into the dating scene.

When the remains of a long-dead male beast are found, Mulder realizes that a female beast may have killed the homeless man. In trying to find and tranquilize it, the beast attacks Mulder but doesn't kill him, leading him to think that it only kills when threatened. However, the beast is shot and killed after trying to escape into the woods. An autopsy finds that the beast woman gave birth, and the episode ends with a father and son hiking in the state park, near the daughter of the beasts, as they discuss the Jersey Devil.

Episode Body Count

Paul: Father of two children, killed in 1947 after stopping to fix a flat tire. Scully dismisses this as a tall tale, but it was in the introduction and I say it happened.

Roger Crockett: Crockett, a homeless man, is found dead in a state park outside Atlantic City missing his right arm and shoulder.

The "beast man": Mulder says a giant man was gunned down by police responding to the 1947 death and found to have human flesh in his digestive tract.

Rabbit: a park ranger finds a dead rabbit with a human tooth in it.

Another beast man: the park ranger reports to Mulder that he's found the body of a man that seems to be a male beast


Beast woman: shot by the police

Humans: 2
Creatures: 4
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (5/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 25
Creatures: 6
Aliens: 0

Grand Total: 31

Season 1, Episode 4: Conduit

Synopsis

Mulder and Scully travel to Iowa to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl, Ruby Morris, from a family camping trip. The area is known for UFO sightings, and the girl's mother had previously spotted a UFO while a Girl Scout. The girl's brother, Kevin Morris, shows Mulder a drawing of a binary code and says he's receiving it from the television. The code is later determined to be a transmission from a defense satellite and the NSA raids the Morris household. Mulder believes Kevin to be a conduit of information.

Kevin and his mother are released after it is determined that the rest of the binary codes Kevin has recorded are fragments of random information. The body of Ruby's boyfriend is found, and the agents get a confession from a friend of Ruby's to his murder. Scully believes the friend also murdered Ruby, but Mulder isn't so sure. After finding a large binary portrait of Ruby at the Morris household, Mulder and Scully return to the site of the campsite. The Morrises are there, and find Ruby shortly thereafter. Her medical charts hint that she may have experienced prolonged weightlessness. The episode ends with Scully reviewing a tape of Mulder's hypnotherapy regarding his sister's abduction.

Episode Body Count

Greg Randall: found in a shallow grave near the Morris campsite, presumably murdered by Ruby's friend Tessa.

Humans: 1
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (4/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 23
Creatures: 2
Aliens: 0

Grand Total: 25

Season 1, Episode 3: Squeeze

Synopsis

The agents investigate a series of murders in which people are killed and robbed of their livers. Mulder finds that there are similar cases in the X-Files, spaced out at 30-year intervals. During a stakeout of a murder site, the FBI arrests Eugene Tooms, a public worker, after he is found in a vent. Tooms passes a polygraph test, excepting questions Mulder put in about his age and whereabouts in 1933.

Tooms is seen to get into enclosed spaces by elongating his body, leaving elongated fingerprints at the crime scenes. Mulder posits that Tooms may be a genetic mutant who hibernates and requires sustenance every 30 years. His hunch is supported by an interview with a retired sheriff and a newspaper-and-bile cocoon found at Tooms' residence. Tooms is arrested after attempting to attack Scully, but seems particularly intrigued by a small opening in the door to his padded cell.

Doug Hutchinson, who plays Eugene Tooms, played Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile and more recently Horace Goodspeed on Lost.

Episode Body Count

George Usher: killed when the Eugene Tooms attacks him in his office.

Two other victims: Tom Colton notes that two other killings preceded Usher's death, including a college girl killed in her dorm room.

Eleven other murders: Mulder says the X-Files record five similar murders from the 1960's, five from the 1930's, and one from 1903 that includes the removal of the liver, all in the Baltimore area. Mulder says this is a pattern of five murders every 30 years, meaning there would logically have been four more in 1903, but since they're not mentioned they won't be recorded.

Cat: a detective mentions that a dead cat was found in the vents, leading to a bad smell and a call to bring Eugene Tooms to the vents.

Thomas Werner: killed in his home by Tooms.

Humans: 15
Creatures: 1
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (3/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 22
Creatures: 2
Aliens: 0

Grand Total: 24

Season 1, Episode 2: Deep Throat

Synopsis

Mulder and Scully travel to Idaho to investigate the disappearances of test pilots at an Air Force base in Idaho, an area also noted for UFO sightings. Prior to their departure, an informant known as Deep Throat advises Mulder to leave the case alone. One pilot returns to his family, unable to remember certain things.

The agents also observe aircraft doing incredible maneuvers over the air base, leading Mulder to believe that the government is building planes based on alien technology. With the help of some local teens, Mulder sneaks onto the base and observes a strange triangular ship up close. However, he is captured and wiped of his recent memories. Back in Washington, Mulder asks Deep Throat if extraterrestrials are on Earth, and Deep Throat replies that they have been for a long time.

First use of the distinctive X-Files theme and opening credits featuring "The Truth is Out There." Also, of course, the first appearance of the Deep Throat character as well as the Men in Black. A mullet-headed Seth Green of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Family Guy, and Robot Chicken fame makes an appearance as a stoned UFO spotter.

Episode Body Count

A few fuzzed-out memories, Scully pulls a gun on a security guard at the air base, and Deep Throat warns at the agents' lives might be in danger. For all that, everyone and everything lives to see another day.

Humans: 0
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (2/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 7
Creatures: 1
Aliens: 0

Grand Total: 8

Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Synopsis

In the first episode of the series, Agent Dana Scully is assigned to The X-Files, run by Agent Fox Mulder, to determine the validity of the project. The two travel to Oregon to investigate the unexplained death of a woman found in the a national forest, the fourth in her graduating class to die without explanation. An exhumation of the grave of one of the classmates discovers a non-human body with a metallic implant in the nose, but the body is stolen from the autopsy lab and the agents' motel room is set on fire, destroying the evidence they collected.

Eventually, Mulder theorizes that one classmate, a boy in a vegetative state named Billy Miles, is delivering people to the forest under some sort of alien impulse. The agents interrupt such a delivery, saving one girl, and Miles testifies that he and several of his classmates were abducted during a graduation party in the forest and fitted with the nose implants. He says the deaths in the forest were a way of the aliens disposing of the evidence after the tests went wrong. Scully presents her superiors with a nose implant, which was not destroyed in the fire. The episode ends with the Cigarette-Smoking Man storing the implant in a storeroom hidden in the Pentagon.

The episode establishes the general relationship between the agents, as well as Mulder's affinity for sunflower seeds. The creators also waste no time in introducing the Cigarette-Smoking Man or Mulder's personal history involving the abduction of his sister.

Episode Body Count

Karen Swenson: found dead in Collum National Forest in Oregon after a strange vortex of light and light.

Two unidentified bodies: similar deaths noted by Mulder in South Dakota and Texas

Three other members of the Swenson's graduating class: mentioned by Mulder as dying under mysterious circumstances


Coffin body: mammalian replacement found in grave of Ray Soames, one of the three other members of Swenson's class. The body is stolen and documents related to it are destroyed in a fire at the autopsy lab. Mulder and Scully also look to see what's in the other two coffins of Swenson's classmates, but find the bodies have been taken. For the purposes of this blog, I'll record this as one creature death.

Peggy O'Dell: another classmate of Swenson's, killed after running in front of a tractor-trailer truck in a "lost time" incident.

Humans: 7
Creatures: 1
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (1/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)

Humans: 7
Creatures: 1
Aliens: 0

Grand Total: 8

The X-Files Body Count Begins!

Against better judgment, I've decided to start a third blog, though this one will at least have a start and a finish. I'm going to go through The X-Files again and keep track of the body count of humans, monsters, and aliens. The show's been off the air for some time, but I'm guessing there's still a big enough fan base out there and TV body counts are popular on the Interwebs these days. Be sure to tell all your friends.

So I'll start the first of the 202 episodes and two movies tonight, watch episodes as I'm able (hopefully fairly steady during the summer when not much is on, likely less so once seasons start up again), and eventually get a full count of however many people and creatures bite the dust on the show. Beginning estimate: 1,689.

A few disclaimers: I've seen most of the series before, so I know that some people don't remain dead, but I'll approach this as if it's the first time I'm watching it and scratch people off if it's applicable. Also, it will follow the rules of Gimpy from Undergrads:

"Alternate dimensions don't count!"