Ice
Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections:
XFiles:
Season One:
Ice
Synopsis: Mulder and Scully view a videotape log from an Antartic drilling team, which shows them suddenly going insane and killing each other. Mulder and Scully set off with Drs. Murphy, Hodge, and Da Silva, and a pilot, Bear. When they arrive at the site, Bear is attacked by an apparently rabid dog, who bites him before being sedated and caged. The dog is then observed to have a organism crawling under its skin. Examining the drilling team's findings, the group discovers that the drill reached a meteor that was buried under the ice for thousands of years, and Mulder postulates that the drillers may have found an alien life form that then infected them and caused them to kill each other. The truth of this is discovered when Bear suddenly becomes violent, and while holding him down, the team sees the same organism crawling under Bear's skin. In removing the worm-like creature, however, the scientists kill Bear. After studying the creature, the scientists decide that the creature feeds off a chemical in the brain that causes violent behavior, which caused the paranoid, murderous states of the team. Paranoia begins to set in to the group themselves, culminating in the murder of Dr. Murphy, with the evidence pointing to Mulder. Under the pressure of the remaining scientists, Scully locks Mulder away. By accident, the rest of the group finds that inserting another worm into an infected person will restore them to normal, as the two worms kill each other. The doctors want to put the worm into Mulder, but he struggles, and in the resulting fight, Hodge sees the worm under Da Silva's skin. Inserting the worm into her, she soon returns to normal. After rescue finally comes, Mulder expresses interest in returning to the site to conduct more research, but he is informed that the site has been destroyed.
By Anonymous on Monday, October 29, 2001 - 1:50 pm: This one's a shocker in these days, I tell you
By constanze on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 10:06 am:Phil wondered in his guide what happens when all the larvae in a host turn into adult worms - will they fight each other to death, too? I think that they might have the same "smell" since they are genetically same, and in the sample there are two different larvaes.
I almost laughed when they put these glass jars with the big worms next to each other and the worms react by getting rigid. These worms crawl around inside. Its likely they have no eyes, or very, very bad eyesight. Yet they react like herd-like animals about to fight each other.
I wonder how the writer mixed up his biology for this ep. I'm no expert in worms - anybody around here?- , but I have a hard time believing that worms would act like herd-living mammals. Worse, in fact, since they kill each other. This is a bad idea from the evolution point of view.
Phil wonders in the guide why da silva reacts differently to the worm. It may have to do with the fact that she is the first female, and therefore her hormonal balance is different.
By The Twelfth Man on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 11:47 am: It's an X-FILE! These are probably alien worms!
-12-
By Sophie on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 3:41 pm: I seem to remember that the dead worms were passed from Da Silva's body by defecation. How exactly does a dead creature get from under the skin into the digestive tract?
By MikeC on Monday, June 14, 2004 - 4:00 pm: Phil wonders how Scully found the wroms in the hypothalami of the AICP team, making a joke about her bringing a skull saw. I don't see anything out of the ordinary in this (the same nit pops up again in "Firewalker"). Scully is going on a criminal investigation; she knows that there are corpses. She is a medical doctor who apparently likes doing autopsies. I'm sure she would bring along her bag o'goodies.
Also, the guest cast here is pretty astonishing.
Xander Berkeley from "24" and many films, Steve Hytner (Kenny Bania from "Seinfeld"), and Felicity Huffman ("Sports Night").