Pilot

Excerption from The X-Files Season 1, Pilot Episode, 12 years ago...The first meeting of Scully & Mulder, sweet memory.

(Note: The characters, plotlines, quotes, etc. included here are owned by Chris Carter and 1013 Productions, all rights reserved.)

(The elevator rings and the door slides open. Scully steps out into the basement and comes to an office secluded in the back. She knocks on the door.)

MULDER: Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted.

(She opens the door to see Agent Fox Mulder sitting at his desk, going over some slides. Walking slowly to him, she sees various pictures of UFO's and a poster that reads "I Want to Believe" with a UFO on it. He looks at her.)

SCULLY: Agent Mulder. I'm Dana Scully, I've been assigned to work with you.

(He shakes her hand.) MULDER: Oh, isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded? So, who did you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?

SCULLY: Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you.

MULDER: Oh, really? I was under the impression...that you were sent to spy on me. (He smiles.)

SCULLY: If you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials, th...

(He stands and takes out a paper from a pile with his telephone as a paper weight.) MULDER: You're a medical doctor, you teach at the academy. You did your undergraduate degree in physics. (He takes off his glasses and looks at the paper.) "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation. Dana Scully Senior Thesis." Now that's a credential, rewriting Einstein.

SCULLY: Did you bother to read it?

MULDER: I did. I liked it. (He takes a slide canister and puts it into the slide projector.) It's just that in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seems to apply. (He walks past her and turns off the lights. She glares at him slightly.) Maybe I can get your medical opinion on this, though. (He presses a button on the control and a slide comes up on theviewscreen of Karen Swenson, face-up.) Oregon female, age twenty-one, no explainable cause of death. Autopsy shows nothing. Zip. (He changes the slide to that of the two bumps on her back.) There are, however, these two distinct marks on her lower back. Doctor Scully, can you ID these marks?

SCULLY: Needle punctures, maybe. An animal bite. Electrocution of some kind. (She walks up to the viewscreen. He changes the slide to that of a molecular diagram.)

MULDER: How's your chemistry? This is the substance found in the surrounding tissue.

SCULLY: It's organic. I don't know, is it some kind of synthetic protein?

MULDER: Beats me, I've never seen it before either. (The next slide is of a boy face-down on railroad tracks, his shirt liftedin the back.) But here it is again in Sturgis, South Dakota. (The final slide is of a close-up of another set of bumps.) And again in Shamrock, Texas.

SCULLY: Do you have a theory?

MULDER: I have plenty of theories. (He walks over to her.) Maybe what you can explain to me is why it's bureau policy to label these cases as "unexplained phenomenon" and ignore them. Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials? (He whispers the last few words eerily and she smiles.)

SCULLY: Logically, I would have to say "no." (He nods, having expected that answer.) Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilties th...

MULDER: Coventional wisdom. You know this Oregon female? She's the fourth person in her graduating class to die under mysterious circumstances. Now, when convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?

SCULLY: The girl obviously died of something. If it was natural causes, it's plausible that there was something missed in the post-mortem. If she was murdered, it's plausible there was a sloppy investigation. What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.

MULDER: That's why they put the "I" in "F.B.I." See you tomorrow morning, Scully, bright and early. (He walks back over to his desk and sits down.) We leave for the very plausible state of Oregon at eight A.M. (She smiles and walks out.)