FIRST POST EPISODE NIT: Why does sicking a needle in Crumb's ear make him deaf in both ears?

I thought this one was pretty cool.
No real nits that I saw.
One comment though, my mom and I where watching the beginning, she thought the police chase was real for the first few minutes.

And the Millenium Effect continues! Loved the opener-- we didn't tape the first 30
secs 'cause we thought it was a bulletin about Iraq.
Evidently I wasn't alone, seeing the similarity to Speed!
It would have to be ravens, wouldn't it?
Attention LOMIG members: A SIGHTING! (To the rest of you: Mulder wore glasses.)
I think I'm going to like this new AD. There are definitly possibilities.
I noticed Scully pronounced Nevada the civilized way, 'Neh-vad-a'.
I think I speak for all shippers when I say: Can't Wait Til Next Week!!
Best Line Nominee: "Big piles of manure."

I was almost fooled by the police chase. In the opening seconds I saw a small "X" near the TV14 rating.

This was the first episode that actually scared me. I almost jumped when the 2nd "ear bomb" went off.

I like Scully's new "Star Trek" phone. Her number is (201) 555-0166, I think.

Darn, Charles took my favorite nit. :-) It raises the point, though, of why only one ear explodes in each victim, and not both. Mrs. Crump had two explosions in one ear cavity, but zero in the other.

If that opening car chase was 100 mph, as the chopper announcer claimed, I'm Evel Knievel.

Just wondering ... why were Scully and Mulder kept together? Wouldn't it be more effective in breaking Mulder's spirit to separate him from his partner of five-plus years, on whom he admits he depends so greatly?

Here's a first: Scully enters a dark room, and she's carrying a flashlight! :-)

Aside from dramatic purposes, *why* did Scully remove her helmet? I wouldn't take such a chance on a hypothesis of mine, especially considering the penalty for being incorrect.

Why dosen't Scully turn on the lights when she enters the old lady's house. Also, they should have made it more clear that she was deaf.

Got some questions on those quarentine suits.
First of all, Scully says that she wants the aprehending officers in at least "level 2" quarintine suits. Now, I have no idea exactly what such a suit looks like, but I am curious as to how easy it would be to aprehend a kicking screaming felon in one of those "Outbreak" moon suits!

Then they aproach a dog wearing those suits. If I wanted a bblood sample, I would have tried to have tranquilized the dog first. Can't a German shepard bite through one of those suits?

Shane mentioned Eval Keneval. He crossed my mind, too when I saw the guys waiting at the road block witht the moon suits topped by motorcycle helmets! "Eval Keneval, M.D."

There's probably more, but It'll have to wait.

Glad I'm not the only one fooled into thinking the first 30 seconds was a real car chase! I thought maybe it was one of the guys from AMW in the car and he was being chased.

The first 30 seconds really looked like a regular news flash. What threw it off for me was that it was Fox 11 (it's Fox 10 here in AZ). :-) Plus the fact that I already had an idea of what Drive was going to be about. But I did think that the hostage was Mulder before the view came "into" the car.

I've noted that at 100 mph, there's nothing much one can do to save the victim. Before Mrs. Crump's ear explodes, Mr. Crump was running at 100 mph. When Mr. Crump was telling Mulder to go faster (~90mph), I thought "it's almost time for the ear explosion."

When Mrs. Crump was put into the back of the police car, why wasn't any of the officer making sure she was fine. There were enough officers I think tackling Mr. Crump.

Nits :

Shouldn't the light in the examination room be focused on Mrs. Crump's head? That way Scully can "see" better. I mean how could she have concluded by visual inspection that there was no gunpowder when that side of the head was in the dark.

Why didn't Scully lock the room before calling Mulder? If it was truly to be quarantined, she should've done that first. ;-) And that way, the guy who comes in wouldn't have. Oh yeah, then we wouldn't know that the room should be quarantined eh.

Yup, this episode does have "Speed"-esque written all over it ... don't go below 60 mph or kaboom! ;-) Wonder why Mulder didn't name the movie. They've done MIB.

For a classified project, we see a wall painted with Project Seafarer in huge letters ... go figure. And the officer who talks with Scully doesn't need to see an ID to verify her identity as FCC personnel?

I think Phil noted that Mulder was very brave in the last episode. Well, it's Scully's turn this time. She's in ground 0 and takes off her suit's helmet on a hunch.

I agree, why didn't they all think of tranquilizing the dog first. If it was a rabid dog, they'd all be bitten.

I'm sure everyone have always wondered how Mulder and Scully could just zoom off or zip coast to coast without worrying about the costs of their trips. Well, now they've got an auditor-boss who wants every penny accounted for and knows exactly where they are before he even hears the answer to his question "Where are you?"

There are still more to pick on but I'll give it a rest for tonight.

'twas fun. :-)

Speaking of lights, how does anyone expect the ME's to get any work done with the mourge that dark? Our heroes are in darkness most of the time. It gets silly about half the time. It gets ridiculous about 10% of the time. This, IMHO was one of those times.

Also, do MEs wear masks when they operate on people? I don't know any ME's so I'm not sure, but it seems to me that Scully and the other mourge lady should have been masked.

Is there really a route 36 and does it stop at a place named Lolita CA? I'm curious and I don't have my atlas on me.

That Mulder! What a hero! He's totally cool and collected when he has a gun stuck in his neck, but if you take away his cell phone he freaks out! Yes I know the phone was very important, his only communication line to Scully and all that, but his reaction amused me. I would have gone crazy long before that point.
Maybe it's just how familier he is with certian crises. He's been on the wrong end of a gun plenty of times, but I wonder if he's EVER been seperated from his beloved cell phone!

Hmmm. Is the government testing out those VLF radio waves as a weapon on the human populace, or is this one big gross wacky accident? My guess is accident. After all, if you were the US government, and you testing out a new sort of weapon on an bunch of unsuspecting people, wouldn't you want to keep those unsuspecting people unsuspecting? That is NOT leave a box in the ground labeled "Property of US Government"

Somebody would do me a big favor if they could explain the science behind this episode in 50 words or less. I understood what Scully said when she mentioned "resonent frequency of the skull" but everything after that was a bit of a quick talking, techno babble blurr.

Brian, I agree about Mulder. His affection for his cell phone is legendary. After all,
one Guild member made this comment about the movie: 'When that German dude said
"Then we must take that away from Mulder without which he cannot survive" I
thought they were going to take his cell phone for a moment, until they flashed
Scully on the screen.'
Speaking of which, not really appropriate to the ep, but why does the Consortium
only percieve *Mulder* as a threat? Isn't Scully even a *little* problem??
Moving *right* along, Ithought those anti-contam suits looked pretty cool, with the
lighted helmets. BTW, we had another TOAL; and I agree that there should have been
more light in the autopsy room. I mean, I could barely see anything.
Did the guy have time to read Scully's number and dial it? From my POV, she slapped it
on the glass and took it back almost in one movement.
Charles, am I missing something here? unless it's a Voyager thing, Scully's number
looks innocent

I do believe that they wear masks and gloves when doing autopsies. In Scully's line of work I personally would ensure that *every* part of my body was covered before doing anything to them.

And when that guy came in and Scully shouted at him...uh I don't exactly think that is what would happen. The place has been quarentined, if someone wanders in they've just joined the club. This is even backed up by the fact that the next time anyone else goes in there they are wearing "at least level 2" suits.

Ok, I'm going to attempt to explain the whole thing about the skull...
The hum from the wire surge is of a certain frequency. The frequency also happens to match the resonant frequency of the skull. This would, in turn, cause the human skull to start vibrating. Now, after a while, the vibrations would, I think, cause pressure to build up inside the human head. Easiest way out is through the ear canal.
This explanation, however, doesn't explain a lot of stuff in the episode.
1) The dog definitely wasn't moving at a high rate of speed in a Westerly direction. All it was doing was jumping around. Theoretically, it's head should have exploded already, just like the little bird's did.
2) Being deaf would probably NOT prevent the problem. A vibration need not be heard to have an effect. You would think the a vibration of the magnitude to set the human skull resonating would start the downward spiral whether you were deaf or not.
And just one little thing to add to a "nice touch" list...did ya notice that as Scully got closer to the voltage box, the reception on her phone got spottier and spottier. Just a thought

I was expecting an unconventional episode, experimental even, with all the press this one's been getting, but it really wasn't that special. The gore level really wasn't all that high though. The autopsy was no gorier than that in "The Host".

Who exactly was the second victim?

Why didn't they hear the dog on the lead before they did?

RE: Skull resonent frequency
Would everybody's skull have the same resonent frequency?
On top of that, would the resonent frequency of a person's skull be the same of a parakeet, crow, or dog? Seems kinda wierd to me.

Gotcha, Matt. But I just rewatched the ep and I have a LOT of problems: How come it
took so much longer for Mr. Crumb to be affected? Was the pulse still emitting? Why
does going faster relieve the pressure? From what I understood, the reason heading
west helped was lines of electromagnetic forces, which carried the pulse, contoured
in a certain way that heading west took you away from them. But would this be so
ALL the way west? It seems probable that the lines would contour in another
direction eventually... And what you said about being deaf not helping made a lot of
sense...
Is it just me or did Scully, while doing the autopsy, say something about some sort of
tube in the lateral sinus? Did this have anything at all to do with the death?
BTW, when Mulder passed the California sign, it looked to me like it was on the wrong
side of the road. Bear in mind that I don't drive, so I may be wrong. :-) You know, they
just *had* to get some California scenes in, didn't they? ;-)
Is the hospital east or west? If I was driving my (hypothetical!) wife to the
hospital, and she started to bang her head against the window and scream that i was
going the wrong way, I would figure she was delirious and keep going. And why did
Crumb steal a car? Did he run out of gas?
Okay, a couple little things... If the guy whose car Mulder stole was done pumping,
why was he inside the station? It's pay before you pump... Okay, maybe he decided to
go ahead and buy those Twinkies, but why did he leave the pump in the car? Next one:
After the new AD was done chewing Mulder out and Mulder made his somewhat
insolent reply, the AD said, "You know, you could leave the FBI." Get a feeling that
there was someone else behind those words?
You know, after all that I kinda hafta wonder: *Is* Mulder a Jewish name? Just
curious...
Second Best Line Nominee: "You see it all the time on TV." (My other nominee for Best
Line was in my first post. Love it! It shows a whole new facet of Scully...) Shippers,
grab on to your remotes and sit in breathless anticipation of next week's ep... it
going to

It's unprofessional for a tv reporter to use on air the four letter word beginning with the letter "H" and ending with the letter "L." He shouldn't have used the word "Heck" either.

This is the 6th season of the show, and the producers still don't have an authentic looking ID badge for Mulder or Scully. It's Department of Justice, not Department of Investigation.

Wasn't the assignment given to Mulder and Scully to check on farmers purchasing ammonium nitrate outside the FBI's normal jurisdiction? Wouldn't that task normally be handled by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents?

That station wagon Mulder commandeered must have had a huge gas tank. I would think that ancient gas guzzler would have run out of fuel long before Mulder made it to the California coast.

Shouldn't Mulder have been going over the Sierra Nevada mountains? Driving through mountain passes should have slowed Mulder down considerably, even if he were able to avoid the roads with hair pin curves. If he wasn't going over the Sierra Nevadas, then I think he would have traveled on desert roads instead.

My favorite scene was with the CHP chasing Mulder and Crumb and holding up the cell phone.

-12-

Why did the navy (or military guy) think Scully was with the FCC, not FBI. She would *have* to show a badge. (Or, does Scully have a fake ID from the FCC? Or, mabye its not that classified?)

This episode finally establishes Mulder's religion, (other than the paranormal).

Let's grant that there is this harmonic vibration set up in the skull which continues to build up pressure. I still don't see how it's going to explode.

Let me explain. An object explodes when its internal pressure suddenly becomes greater than can be contained by the object. Usually this is because of a very rapid increase in the internal pressure, less often due to a suddenly imposed weakness in the container.

But if the pressure is building gradually, and really is in the ear, it would rupture some non-critical structure long before it got to the point of the kind of violent explosion we saw occur. Put another way, the kind of pressure it would take to cause the damage we saw on the autopsy is far beyond what anything in the head can contain; it should have ruptured out non-explosively far earlier. The weakest point would be the eardrum, which ruptures with the pressure of an ear infection or slapping the water when falling from water skis. If Skully was going to be able to save his life by puncturing the eardrum, it should have just ruptured by itself! Even the bones around the ear would be able to rupture open non-fatally long before the process bulit to the enormous pressures required to literally explode the skull.

I think we're to assume that Mulder is a nonreligious Jew.

Are there any instances of Mulder eating non-kosher food?

I don't think that Mulder necessarily is Jewish... he just didn't want to piss off the guy with a gun to his head that way. If he denied it, "Mr." Crumb would not have believed him anyways...

Great Line. Mulder: "On behalf of the International Jewish Conspiracy..." What was the second half of this line?

Shalom,

-12-

Twelfth Man: "...it's my duty to inform you we're running out of gas."

Charles (we know who you really are!) I agree. And, Bwebber, I think it's "...it's my
duty to inform you that we have about another mile before we run out of gas."
'Course, I've only seen it twice, so I could be mistaken!
Other people: I don't think Mulder is Jewish, but if he is, yes, he's eaten non-kosher
food. There was at least one episode where he was eating barbeque. Unless it was
bee

Doesn't matter, if it's beef. It has to be ritually slaughtered in a humane way to be kosher.

Incidentally, Mulder did know all about Golems (season 4?, can't remember the ep title), which are part of Jewish mysticism (though, as usual, the writers got some specifics wrong).

-12-

Personally I loved the opening of the first
act when it indicated they were in Buhl,Idaho.
My dad was the Presbyterian minister in Buhl
back in 1957 so when I saw that I thought
"COOL!"

Great line:"We can always leave you a copy of
The Watch Tower!"Mulder to farmer after the
farmer mistakes them for JWs.

That lieutenat in charge of the project as a
great carrier ahead of him as an ensign!I mean
only an idiot would assume that Scully was with
the FCC without asking for creditials(another
case of military intelligence at work!!)

Finally Mulder,as far as I know is not and I
do repeat NOT Jewish.(The name that is)
It is actually DUTCH,being one of the most common
last names in Holland(along with de Boer).

Ah.
(bemused Christian here who had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.)
Long live LINUX!

A couple comments about the (hopefully) psuedo-science in the episode.

1. The resonance frequency wouldn't have been for the skull, but for bone. Theoretically, every substance has a frequency that if you match it with a corresponding frequency, it will vibrate, and perhaps shatter-such as a crystal glass shattering because of Ella Fitzgerald singing a specific note. Unlike most of the bones of the body, where there is some room to vibrate, the brain is very tightly packed into the skull, causing immence amounts of pressure to build up as the skull vibrates, and the pressure may build up to cause an explosion.

2. For those of you who thought ELF was a myth-there is an ELF base in Northern Michigan, and when it was being built, there were many protests about how the research on extremely low frequency radio waves and their effect on animals and humans is almost non-existant.

Actually, Fred, it *WOULD* be for the skull, because the shape (and size) of an object as well as its composition determine its resonant frequency (otherwise all tuning forks would play the same pitch).

The nit, therefore, is that it exploded everything's brains within the area: birds, dogs, people... And it *SHOULD* have affected the deaf neighbor.

If the shape and size matter, then how would animals and humans with varying skull
sizes have their skulls shatter?
Long live LINUX

K.N.D, please riddle me this ...
What the Helsinki does LINUX mean?

Let's Investigate Nits Upon X-Files?
Legumes Initiate Nasty Underwear X-periences?
Lions Irritate Norman's Underwater xylophone?

I've tried to figure this one out, but I'm waving a white flag ....

Linux=A new, highly overrated OS

Exxcuse me, do I dis *your* fav OS? I think not. (Unless it's Win 3.1. Win 95 is a little
better. And I've had all three, plus MacOS [sys. 8.5] so I know what I'm talking about,
more or less

Oh, cool. I got an answer and I started a fight. This was a productive day.
I really thought LINUX would be an acronym for something nitcentral related.

No, but I'm sure we could come up with something for Windows. WImpy Nit-crammed
Dorky Os for WusseS, perhaps. (sorry, sorry. most of that was uncalled for. My
complaint is with Bill Gates more than Windows. But you do know what they call
DOS...)
LINUX Rul

it hasnt happened yet but we do know that from the last scene of the movie that the xfiles will be reinstated problbly after the next mythology episode.

Sorry, KND...I meant no disrepect...I just don't see what the big hoopla over LINUX is...personally...I prefered DOS myself...cringed when I had to convert to Win 95...if you like LINUX, that's your peroggative...but as it says on the front page of the board...everyone gets there own opinion...

Okayy. i'm sorry, I overreacted. Have you ever tried Mac OS? If you like GUIs, this
system is a lot better than Win 95, IMHO. (I use the two, LINUX and sys. 8.5
interchangeably.) And might I point out that in a recent X-File ep, Mulder was seen
using a Mac. Da da da da

I've used Macs many times...the Journalism dept. at my college is Mac-based...they drive me up a wall...although we do have the newest Mac OS on most of the computers...never really had a chance to try it though...

Machine
Always
Crashes
If
Not
The
Operating
System
Hangs

OK, although it's caused a lot of "energetic" discussion, I'm going to have to call a stop to the OS debate before we clog up the discussion group with off-topic posts. Let's just all be happy with our own systems and get along, huh?

Yes sir, whatever you say, sir. GR&D

I didn't understand why they had to drive West...if it's magnetic fields we're talking about, shouldn't they either go North or South?

Do you guys really think that this episode was so boring or well made that you are resorting to talking about Operating Systems?

The latter...and I'm trying not to go insane waiting til Triangle. I am, of course a
shipper, as are all right-thinking people. Let the flames begin!
(Sorry, I didn't mean that, but I'm REALLY going nuts.)

I too would like to know who the third vitom was thay they mentioned! BW windows 95 stands for

Weyoones
Iritating
Nerotic
Dimented
OS
Works
Superbly

Ahem.
Anyway, in the preview, Scully is sitting at one of a long row of desks when the Lone
Gunmen come up to her. I'm thinking that this is the Domestic Terrorism section. So,
she may get a desk, but not an private office. :

Let me clarify that-- in the preview for Triangle.

Fave line: "That was stupid!!! That was really stupid!!!" After "Mr." Crump threw Mulder's cell phone out the window. My friend and I just got a kick out of that line.

Oh, and wasn't it nice of the blood that exploded onto Scully, to miss her pretty blue blouse and hit the strap of her plastic apron?

The opening car chase sequence did fool me for a minute, but that was mainly because I WAS watching it on KRXI Fox 11, which is the local Fox affiliate here in Reno, NV.

This brings up two nits, however,1) KRXI Fox 11 does not have a news chopper, and 2) they don't have a news team/crew. KRXI rebroadcasts the news from Fox 2 in Oakland.

This may not be a nit, but the Highway patrol cars used in the episode did not look like the current paint scheme. Here in the Reno area the NHP cars are painted a solid midnight-blue with the gold seal and stripe on the door, an no light bar on top. Someone from the Elko area would have to confirm if some of the older cars are still being used there.

How well would the little headlights work on the Inside of the helmet? Wouldn't that turn the visor into a one way mirror?

This is one of those "thoughts" that probably is pretty obvious to most others. Was it just me or did Crump seem to commit a form of suicide at the end of the program? It looked like Crump was agonizingly trying to hold on (to keep his head from blowing up). I felt that he died partly because he stopped trying to hold on.

Why do I feel this? In one scene, he tells Mulder that a man without dignity is not worth living, and that it would be better if he would die. When Mulder tells him that he would be alive (but deaf, and possibly a vegetable), that would take away Crump's dignity. He seems kind of shocked at it, and when I think we cut away, I believe he loses the will to live. Mulder probably realizes this too, but doesn't feel like telling Scully.

I don't think you can stop your head from blowing up just by holding on. For one thing, the pressure build up was described as being inside the auditory canal. "Holding on" wouldn't have any effect, because the canal is inside the skull. Crump (or any human) couldn't exert enough pressure to compress the bone and reduce the pressure.

The reason Crump was holding his head was because it hurt. If you've ever had a migraine, you'd know.

Yes, I knew why he was holding his head. I just was wondering, if to paraphrase "The Naked Time", Crump "lost his will to live."

This was an episode for Heavy Metal fans... After all, there was a lot of head-banging going on...

Sorry, I couldn't resist...

-12-

If "losing the will to live" really caused people to die, the world would be littered with corpses.

I don't know...I'm just trying to make a (wrong?) connection between Crump's lines about "dignity", and then the scene in which he is told he will be deaf. That's what I saw in the show when I watched.

When Scully runs over at the end, ready to plunge the needle into Crump, why isn't she wearing any protective gear? She knows there's a chance she'll get a faceful of blood, given the exploding ears of the other victims.

Nice touch time... PROJECT SEAFARER ACTUALLY EXISTS!!! Well, kinda. it was the codename for one of the original proposals for the US Navy ELF station that Fred Longacre mentioned.
Well, it impressed me anyway.

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