01 x 09: Space

Thank goodness for Scully and Mulder and their investigative prowess in this episode as they prevent a catastrophic failure from taking place on a harrowing NASA funded space adventure. Short of becoming astronauts themselves and flying off into space, these agents performed admirably in one of the greatest and memorable X-Files adventures yet! More importantly, they stuck to a respectable budget and didn’t squander money away as they have in episodes past.

Chris Carter captivates the viewer with compelling local news footage from 1977 of a mission to Mars where astronauts have discovered the presence of water on Mars. And even more fascinating is a picture taken of mountains on Mars that resemble a man’s face! 

An astronaut named Marcus Belt explains that this is just an illusion. But don’t be so quick to dismiss illusions. That very evening as Colonel Belt tucks himself in bed, an apparition which presumably has origins tied to the Mars rock visage leaps out of his ceiling and becomes one with Colonel Belt. It’s a space ghost. And now he’s possessed!

Queue the opening credits!!!!

Fast forward about 15 years, are now in Washington DC on what I deduced to be 12/2/1993 based on an archive of shuttle launches listed on the NASA website.

The episode opens with Mulder and Scully waiting for an informant to reveal themselves on the streets of DC. Mulder brandishes an x-ray taken of an Auxiliary Power Unit Valve of the space shuttle which appears damaged… perhaps intentionally.

While our heroes examine this piece of evidence, a woman in the background casually and inconspicuously walks by, only to return. She removes her sunglasses, thereby risking the exposure of her identity to the public before quietly introducing herself as none other than Michelle Generoo, the Mission Control Communications Commander at NASA in Houston. She’s the one who sent Mulder and Scully the X-rays. According to Michelle, it’s impossible for someone to have damaged that valve. Furthermore, those X-rays were mailed to her anonymously and now she is asking for Scully and Mulder’s help to find out who could have damaged this shuttle part. 

Let me pause the review of this spectacular episode to commend Mulder and Scully and their frugal spending on this investigation. In total the pair spent $1,710.76 on this case in today’s money!

Obviously a pair of FBI agents who work and reside in Washington DC, a city thousands of miles away from the launch site in Houston are substantially more equipped to find out who damaged the shuttle part mere hours before the shuttle launch than anyone at NASA. Michelle needs their help so badly that she didn’t even mention to mission control in Houston about the damaged part or her suspicion of sabotage. I must mention how fortunate Michelle was that there weren’t any postage delays and that Mulder and Scully received the x-ray and note she had mailed the very same day she flew to meet the pair in DC.

Luckily for Michelle, Scully and Mulder are able to take on the case immediately and depart for Houston the very same day.

Her driving force for finding the culprit though is love. Her fiancé is one of the astronauts aboard that mission. 

Mulder and Scully fly to Houston on 12/2/1993 ($302.80 + $32.00 cab ride to the DCA airport). They also must rent a car which in Houston today a midsize sedan rental runs about $74.29 per day. We can see in this episode that the duo only rents one car. Again, their expenses in this episode are surprisingly reasonable. 

While at NASA in Houston Mulder explains to Scully there has been self sabotage of space shuttles in the past by employees at NASA in order to prevent the discovery of alien life.

So not only are Mulder and Scully going to prevent the space shuttle from blowing up and arrest an unpatriotic menace who sabotaged the Auxiliary Power Unit Valve, their actions may lead to definitive proof of aliens! NASA, if you’re listening, hire these two agents and hand them their astronaut suits now! They are more than qualified to be up in space and their expertise will lead to unimaginable and numerous discoveries.

Mulder and Scully meet Colonel Belt who denies there’s any sabotage and refuses to postpone the shuttle launch. He’s totally flaberghasted at the mere insinuation that any employee at NASA might have damaged the space shuttle. Our agents are not reassured by Colonel Belt’s doubts and continue their intense investigation.

That evening the shuttle launches without issue so our pair travels to their hotel which is likely the Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake which each room runs $124 / night (a total of four nights = $744).

It’s a shame our heroes couldn’t just camp out at NASA because the moment they left there was some trouble with the solid rocket boosters! Communication also went down with the shuttle. It’s pouring rain outside when this happens, but evidently the communication issues with the shuttle is not related to the weather? So… the communications commander Michelle Generoo leaves her post, while there’s communication issues with the shuttle,to fetch Scully and Mulder at their hotel and retrieve them. NASA is utterly non operational and completely inept without our FBI duo at the helm!

While driving back to NASA in two separate cars, Mulder and Scully in one and Michelle in another, the space ghost swoops down causing Michelle to swerve off the road and flip her car. In the torrential downpour, Scully and Mulder crawl through mud and rescue the unappreciative Michelle from the wreckage and chauffeur her to NASA.

Upon their arrival, Colonel Belt is nowhere to be found and one of the NASA engineers explains that there is a digital “pro-cessor” interfering with the communications to the shuttle. NASA just doesn’t know where the interference originates. There’s literally NO TIME TO WASTE. Mulder and Scully strip off their soaking wet jackets and throw them onto control panels and proceed upstairs to a computer room with their weapons drawn. Someone’s hacking the NASA computers!

They discover a suspicious NASA engineer who explains he’s just examining the computers because he too wants to know who is interfering with the communications between NASA and the space shuttle. Unfortunately, our duo is at a loss and the culprit of this sabotage is yet to be found.

A press conference is held regarding the shuttle launch by Colonel Belt. Our agents are helpless onlookers to this conference as he misleads the press into believing the shuttle launched without issues. It’s a shame our duo here is not commended and lauded for their efforts thus far into this mission.

That evening while Colonel Belt rests in his home the space ghost leaves his body and ventures into outer space… towards the Space Shuttle.

The following day the space ghost slams against the space shuttle and creates an O2 leak which our pair are tasked with solving. Upon realizing Colonel Belt isn’t present, again, Mulder and Scully drive to his apartment to retrieve him and bring him back to NASA.

Scully begins to suspect that Colonel Belt knows about the sabotage. Mulder realizes the only way to find out if Colonel Belt is hiding this knowledge of sabotage is to literally search every schematic and diagram of every space vessel ever made by NASA. Somehow… I don’t even know.

Again, because she’s such an amazing investigator, Scully comes across a schematic almost immediately which proves Colonel Belt knew about the sabotage. Furthermore, this schematic also proves that Colonel Belt knew about the Challenger defect before that blew up! These guys deserve medals from the president himself for solving not one but two of the greatest space mysteries in the history of NASA. 

While stumbling across this damning evidence, Colonel Belt has a seizure in his office and naturally Mulder and Scully are the only people who can help him. There’s no time to put away the files they just rummaged through at NASA while on the floor, they must find Colonel Belt now. 

While saving this man’s life, they witness the space ghost face reveal itself in Colonel Belt himself. Despite his seizure and his apparent possession by an alien ghost, they are able extract vital information from Colonel Belt. Colonel Belt explains to Mulder and Scully that they must order the crew on the Space Shuttle to change their re entry trajectory to 35 degrees or else it will explode!

Of course Mulder and Scully alert the control crew and of course the shuttle and everyone aboard is saved! Short of going to outer space and bringing these astronauts home themselves is there anything these agents can’t do?!

Colonel Belt is brought to a hospital where the space ghost again possesses him and he jumps out the hospital window and falls to his death.

In perhaps the only preventable expense in this episode, Mulder and Scully must remain in Houston for one extra day ($248) to be present at Colonel Belt’s funeral. A small price to pay for saving the lives of those astronauts onboard and preventing a disaster instigated by a ghost that came from mountains on Mars from the year 1977…

And the flight back to DC costs $302.80 and a taxi back to the FBI Headquarters $32.00. That brings the total expenses for this adventure to around $1710.76 in today’s money.

Can I point out also here how Michelle Genroo is also at the funeral, but her fiance, whose life Mulder and Scully saved, is not shown? I mean, we don’t even get closure on that!

I’d also like to point out this is the second time Mulder has worn his QR code tie… once before in Conduit.