These 2 episodes, written by the classic duet Frank Spotnitz & Chris Carter, are undoubtedly among the most complex hours of the X-Files. And among the best episodes XF has ever produced. Period. The Black Oil introduced in 3X15: Piper Maru is given more background, we hear more of variola, we are introduced to the vaccine, Mulder travels to Russia, Scully answers to a US Senate Committee, and XF takes on a whole new level of delicious post-Cold War East-West paranoia! The final scene of Tunguska, where Mulder is infected with the Black Oil, helplessly immobilized in a cold dark room far away, must be one of the most terrifying (and cinematically beautiful) scenes of the entire series.

Background: Tunguska and ALH84001

Tunguska, in russian Siberia, as Mulder says, is famous for the mysterious cosmic event that happened in June 30, 1908. An explosion was followed by devastating events on the environment, with trees being toppled over in a 2000km radius. It is true that nobody has given an entirely satisfactory answer as to what caused this, which has caused the wildest theories to pop around — like anti-matter, an alien spaceship, a wormhole in space-time… It is generally agreed upon that it was an asteroid that disintegrated upon entry in the atmosphere. The meteor ended up exploding while still in the air, creating the bang; what finally reached the ground were only tiny fragments.

The X-Files theorize that in fact it was a part of martian soil that somehow ended up travelling to Earth. Such martian asteroids really do exist, even if the idea that normal rocks being ejected from the planetary surface and turning into asteroids travelling throughout space because of another asteroid hitting Mars seems unreal. The famous  rock ALH84001 that made front pages in 1996 because of it possibly containing fossilized bacterial remains of martian life was one of them. ALH84001 was recovered by an expedition in Antarctica in 1984 and waited for years in storage before being examined and identified as a 4.5 billion years old rock from Mars. It is actually referenced by Dr. Sacks, the exobiologist from the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center who examines the Tunguska rock in the episodes: “This rock contains what are known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons fitting the approximate description of those in fragments of meteorite found in the ice fields of Antarctica. […] What you’re looking at is quite possibly from Mars, over four billion years old […] adding evidence to the debate over the fossilized remains of alien bacteria“. Indeed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were found on ALH84001 and are well known on Earth to come from organic matter when it decays (they can even cause cancer) — they are signs of life! On ALH84001 were also found carbonate (indicating the presence of water) and magnetite beads (arranged as produced by bacteria on Earth) — these 3 elements were enough to fuel debates over past (bacterial) life on Mars. Of course, these chemicals can form in natural processes as well, which could very well have been the case given the extremes of temperature and pressure the rock went through by being ejected from Mars to space. This is science: two theories opposing each other, waiting for more data to settle the debate.

More recent robotic missions on the surface of Mars haven’t revealed life on the martian surface, but it is suspected that most of the water lies under the surface — and who knows what’s going on there. In the recent years, in-depth exploration of extreme environments on Earth has opened Man’s eyes to how stubborn and tough Life is: bacteria and other life forms have been discovered in such wild places such as in the extreme cold of the Antarctic, the extreme warmth of desert sand dunes, floating high in the atmosphere, at the lightless bottom of the ocean, and (last but not least) inside solid rocks deep beneath the surface! Such extreme possibilities have made scientists reconsider what are the conditions under which life can pop up and opened an entirely new field in exobiology (that’s extraterrestrial biology — yes there are people who are being paid to think about these things). So if life can survive in such conditions, why not inside a rock travelling in outer space? The possibility has spawned the theory of panspermia: life on Earth originating from asteroids that carried life on them, asteroids that crashed here billions of years ago and fertilized the barren terran landscape. Similar space-faring asteroids could have given life to other planets as well: biogenesis, life born out of life. These concepts are further explored in XF in 6X22: Biogenesis / 7X03: The Sixth Extinction.

Black Cancer: modus operandi

In the X-Files, the Tunguska asteroid also contained what is referenced as “Black Cancer“, “the cancer that lives in the rock“. As Scully, Pendrell and the late Dr. Sacks find out, the rock came “quite possibly from Mars, over four billion years old.” and contains an oily black “vermiform organism” (ie worm-like). This points to the fact that Mars contains stocks of Black Oil underground, like Earth (Fight the Future). What probably happened was that 4 billion years ago, Mars carried life, like Earth at that time, its oceans full of mono-cellular organisms. At that point, Mars looked as promising for the development of more complex organisms as Earth; the Black Oil Colonists left stocks of Black Oil and spaceships (7X03: The Sixth Exinction) on Mars as well as Earth to prepare a future colonization. Only that in the billions of years that followed, martian life died out and terran life thrived (but the Black Oil survived!).

It moves around forming small worms of black oil, worms that crawl under the skin and reach the head. This kind of behaviour, as strange as it may sound, is not unheard of in terrestrial life forms: organisms called cellular slime moulds, such as Dictyostelium, can live as monocellular bacteria-eating amoeba or gather together into a multicellular slug (not unlike how a Black Oil worm forms!) or fungus. Nature can surpass fiction oftentimes! Again, many thanks to Anne Simon, scientific advisor to Carter, for all these details!

Once inside their host, the Black Oil worms form a layer of oil in the eyeball but more importantly (and less visually), they nest around the pineal gland, a small endocrine gland at the centre of the brain, between left and right hemisphere. The pineal gland has been referred to as the ‘seat of the soul’ (by Descartes) because of its connection to different neurological and psychological disorders; this is perhaps linked to the coma induced by the infection. This gland is also identified with the physical location of the ‘third eye’, the symbol of enlightenment for hinduism, buddhism and some New Age beliefs. Evidently, there is a connection between the pineal gland, telepathic abilities and the Black Oil in XF mythology (further explored in 7X03: The Sixth Extinction). It would seem that when the human host dies, the Black Oil can no longer survive on its own, exits the host body and dies off (as seen in the euthanasia in the teaser for Terma and all the dead elderly later in the episode).

Black Cancer: why the coma?

At this point one could hesitate to say the black oils in 3X15: Piper Maru / 3X16: Apocrypha and here are the same, but with later episodes it will become clear that they are one and the same. The Tunguska Black Oil simply puts the infected host in some kind of coma with a lowered metabolic rate. It leaves behind the same oily film as on Gauthier and his suit in Piper Maru (see Dr. Sacks’s faceplate) and can cross any substance: in Piper Maru it was a deep sea suit, in Tunguska it’s a highly secure biohazard suit.

However, compared to other instances where we meet the Black Oil again, Black Oil from Tunguska is not very potent: it cannot control and move around the host body (as it does in Piper Maru) and it is barren, it cannot trigger a gestation of a larger alien (as seen in Fight the Future). This makes it the ideal raw material for the research of a cure as it doesn’t take control of the subject nor does it kill it, but why is it so different?

The most probable explanation is that the millions or even billions of years of the martian rocks wandering in cold and empty space coupled with the violence of the Tunguska crash in 1908 must have been what made it very weak. The vaccine weakens it even more. Another element weakening it even more is the cold it encounters: on Mars, in outer space, in Siberia. As we learn in Fight the Future, the Black Oil is most potent at warm temperatures, lowering the temperature has the effect of stalling it; perhaps prolonged exposure to cold made it completely inert. There are no different strains of the Black Oil in the history of XF, as in there are no Oils that are biologically different; there is only one Black Oil, only that we meet it under different circumstances and with different purposes.

The Russian conspiracy and research

The Russians discovered the Tunguska Black Oil not so long ago: Mulder’s prisoner neighbour was one of the geologists that first uncovered “the first fragments. This was before the mining, before we knew what lived in Tunguska rock“. This man looks to be in his thirties-forties, placing the discovery of the Tunguska rocks in the 1980s. The Russians immediately saw the huge military potential of this virus, so they turned one of their gulags into a mining and research facility. A gulag is the soviet equivalent of the labour concentration camp. The objective was to extract the virus, test its effects, weaponize it and find a cure for it (it’s always better to have a cure against one’s own weapons!). As hinted at in 5X02: Redux, they managed to turn it into a biological weapon by 1991 and the Gulf War, but the seach for the cure is still ongoing. “The search for a cure goes slowly.“

The labour force in the gulag are left in the dark (“they tell us nothing. We are left to guess and imagine the reasons for our torture. But what else could it be [but for a cure]?“). Thanks to the stealthness this remote loaction provides, and after “hundreds, maybe more” deaths, the Russians were able to create a rough version of a cure. It is not yet a vaccine per se: prisoners still die because of the exposure (“It becomes easier each time… until it kills you.“). A complete immunization treatment would be a one-time injection that lasts for the entire life of the subject. It is merely an incomplete vaccine, a one-time shot that kills the Black Oil that infected the host and cures it for once but does not provide protection against later infections. The term ‘vaccine’ has been used excessively by the XF writers; a vaccine normally provides full immunization, whereas here this ‘weak vaccine’ is a one-time job. If the test subjects were immune against the Black Oil thanks to the vaccine, it would be useless to continue tests on them (see the case of Marita Covarrubias in 5X14: The Red and the Black and 6X12: One Son as well).

This vaccine is injected right before the prisoner is exposed to the Black Oil. It is injected in the base of the neck, close to the pineal gland — you can see it is of an amber colour, when Mulder is injected, as it will be in later appearances (eg 5X13: Patient X). It is not entirely effective; some of the weakened Black Oil must remain in the prisoner after each exposure, the accumulation acting as a poison and ultimately causing death — earning its name “Black Cancer“. This russian treatment seems to act as a poison to the Black Oil worms, expelling most of them from the host body and killing them. This is seen on Dr. Sacks when he’s injected with the vaccine; we hear no more of hime, but he must have fully recovered like Mulder later offscreen. Mulder’s one-time exposure here will be of extreme relevance in the events in 6X22: Biogenesis and its sequels.

This russian conspiracy is not part of the global Syndicate of which the american branch we are well acquainted with. This is because the Syndicate began in the time of the Cold War; the Syndicate grew out of the Western Block, eventually becoming global as it became evident that the West was winning. The Russian/Soviet governmental conspiracy concerning the Black Oil survived independently. The Cold War climate is very strong in these episodes (“He wants you to know that the Cold War isn’t over.“) and makes for an interesting political spy thriller.

The American research effort

The Americans (and by extension the Syndicate) don’t have a research program for a vaccine as developed as the russian one. This is mainly due to lack of raw material: Black Oil. The Syndicate is not very familiar with Black Oil, despite the fact that it has been dealing with alien biological material and DNA for a long time. Black Oil behaves quite differently from cells and DNA captured in lab tubes; it is like a fully autonomous virus. In 3X16: Apocrypha, the Well-Manicured Man confesses there are still aspects of the Black Oil that are a “mystery” to them. The discovery of Black Oil deposits at Blackwood in Fight the Future is a major one, further explored in 6X01: The Beginning. The Syndicate is still discovering what the Black Oil really is this late in the game, nearly at the same time as Mulder and Scully.

Thus the american branch of the Syndicate, in need of raw material for their experiments, steal Black Oil from the Russians; this is the main focus of these episodes. Using undercover spies onsite in Russia and at Tunguska, rocks containing Black Oil are smuggled out of the gulag. Couriers who were provided with diplomatic papers follow complicated and misleading air routes in order to get the rocks to american soil (two routes we know of are Russia – Russian Georgia – Japan – USA, and Russia (Moscow) – USA (Virginia) using a turkish airline).

The Americans/the Syndicate then enlisted the help of the virologist Dr. Bonita Charne-Sayre to conduct their experiments. This whole project is top-secret even among the Syndicate (WMM: “But how could this be? How could the Russians know we were working on our own inoculation? Six of us knew!“) as the research for a vaccine must be kept secret from the alien Colonists (as we discover in 6X11: Two Fathers). Dr. Charne-Sayre gave the Syndicate access to test subjects: the unsuspecting elderly in convalescent homes, which are another group of subjects that allow low-key secret experiments (“Dr. Bonita Charne-Sayre is a board member and a chief physician for a chain of elder-care convalescent hospitals across the country“). The elderly of the Harrow Convalescent Home in Boca Raton, Florida, were infected with the Black Oil and tested upon by Dr. Charne-Sayre, which made it look part of their normal-run treatment. When these test subjects die, much of the Black Oil comes out; this indicates that the treatment developed by Dr. Charne-Sayre is still imperfect compared to the russian one as it does not kill much of the Black Oil but just paralyzes it and puts it dormant.

Variola and the left arm

Charne-Sayre also happens to be member of the World Health Organisation, a virologist whose specialty is the variola virus — smallpox. This made her a good asset to the Syndicate’s work, as we know tagging and identification is done through smallpox vaccinations (2X25: Anasazi, 3X02: Paper Clip, 4X01: Herrenvolk). Before being exposed to the Black Oil, Mulder gets a vaccination with the russian vaccine and also has a sample taken on his left arm, a sample of his smallpox vaccination protein which will later identify him for all the experiments he’s subjected to.

This is similar to the tagging of the failed hybrids in the Anasazi boxcar and abductees in general, as proven by Scully in Herrenvolk: a genetic tag that allows a subject’s medical history to be known and his progress to be monitored, catalogued and easily processed. However, up till now we had seen this method for experiments concerning hybridization; here it is used for the research for a vaccine, and not only by the Americans but by the Russians as well. The Russian dwellers around the gulag have found a solution to escape “the test“: simply cut off the arm that carries the smallpox tag. No tag, no identification process, no possibility for the test to be monitored. “No arm. No test.” The local population is terrified it may be taken to be part of the test and this small one-armed group of resistance has formed. Even the employees of the gulag themselves are afraid: the truck driver that ends up helping Mulder had his son’s arm cut off.

Charne-Sayre’s expertise on variola and her support of “eliminating the last remaining stores of the smallpox virus” would indicate that she’s also the designer behind the test of spreading variola through bees in real conditions carried out in 4X21: Zero Sum. As Scully sums up, “the death of Doctor Charne-Sayre, given her field of expertise, not only suggests that she knew something about the toxin, but also its origins, and that knowledge may be directly linked to [the case]“. On a side note, she was also the WMM’s personal physician and lover. As it has already been the case with the Cigarette-Smoking Man releasing Jeremiah Smith (3X24: Talitha Cumi) and will be again, the conspirators are sometimes “foolish as to put the project at risk for the sake of [their] personal pleasures” (as per the CSM).

Krycek’s double role

The CSM: “Wake the Russian Bear and it may find we’ve stolen its honey.” The Russians discover the Oil leak and decide to stop it, destroying any competition in the USA. As Frank Spotnitz commented, the Russians and the Americans were effectively on an “arms race” for the best biological weapon and cure, not unlike that of the Cold War nuclear missiles and missile defense.

Krycek is revealed to be Russian (with a name like that, he was definitely from the Eastern Block!). His explanation to Mulder for his knowledge of Russian “my parents were Cold War immigrants” is false as he’s not a second-generation American but really a Russian spy, a double agent who had successfully infiltrated the american Syndicate all this time ever since 2X04: Sleepless. This is a big revelation that puts his thirst for power we saw in 2X06: Asension in a new perspective. Krycek, under the name Arntzen, would attempt to destroy the american research chapter into the Black Oil on behalf of the Russians. In fact at this point, Arntzen might very well be his real name and Krycek an alias he used with the Syndicate!

We last saw Krycek left to rot in an abandoned missile silo in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota (3X16: Apocrypha). Here he is caught among a nationalist militia. Krycek explains he was freed by this militia sneaking around governmental bases (“They liberated me on a salvage hunt.“); in order to survive among them, Krycek must have sympathised and told them he shared their beliefs.

But this escape is somewhat of a mystery. Another possibility is that the UFO we see in the silo in Apocrypha was reactivated when Black Oil re-entered it, it lifted off and somehow got out of the silo, freeing Krycek along the way. The militia leader Terry Edward Mayhew says “I ain’t never been in no missile silo. I don’t know nothing about that“, then “He came to us, with some building materials and big ideas.” This is probably only partly right: Mayhew is only trying to divert all the charges from him to Krycek and clear his name. Krycek/Arntzen’s information on the Black Cancer may also be half-lies, created specifically to fuel the militia’s beliefs: “Developed by the Soviets. Saddam used it in the Gulf. […] Why do you think they made them servicemen take all them pills? U.S. Government knew about the Black Cancer. They lied.” Anti-governmental conspiracy theories only strengthened the militia’s determination, but there might be some truth in these stories (as hinted at in 5X02: Redux, with Black Oil genetic material reaching the Pentagon through Saddam’s bioweapons). The back-story of how Krycek got in this mess is unclear, but that’s part of the charm of the character.

The Russians strike back

The plan Krycek and the russian conspiracy made up would go as follows: Krycek would use the militia to make two bombs; with them he’d destroy all Black Oil samples in the possession of the Americans; he would inform Mulder of the bombs so as to attract his attention, because Mulder is always the one that usually digs up evidence and puts the Syndicate in grave danger of exposure; he would poison the American test subjects and so as to erase all traces of the Black Oil. Everything went well in the beginning: deceiving the militia group, Krycek sent Mulder receipts that informed him of his actions (“I’ve received receipts over the past few weeks for detonation cord, for racing and diesel fuel, and for 80 bags of ammonium nitrate […] for first and last on this storage space, and one to rent a two-ton truck yesterday“). Mulder organized an FBI blockade and the militia group was arrested with the first of two bombs. Krycek, always a good actor, convinced he and Mulder and Scully were fighting for the same cause: justice. From there on, he wanted to draw them to the pouches traffic and risk exposure of the Syndicate’s work (“These men, they fear one thing; exposure. You expose him [the CSM], you expose his crimes, you destroy the destroyer’s ability to destroy“). When Mulder takes Krycek to Skinner’s apartment, Krycek tries to attract as much attention as possible and expose the Syndicate: when the courier comes looking for his pouch, Krycek throws him over Skinner’s balcony.

But instead of going to the destination (Krycek: “I say follow the pouch.“), Mulder chooses to follow the source: Krasnoyarsk and Tunguska. Mulder uses the help of Marita Covarrubias (here in a sexy gown in the middle of the night), who plays along without involving herself too much — apparently she was unaware of Krycek’s involvement here and acted without consulting with the Syndicate (both connections with Marita to be introduced later anyway). Krycek had to follow Mulder to limit the damage and the exposure of the russian conspiracy. So Krycek/Arntzen had to use someone else to do the work for him: “KGB line-X stringer working out of Moscow center” Vassily Peskow. Krycek sent word for him probably right before leaving American soil and ‘activates’ the retired agent of KGB (the Soviet CIA). With deadly efficiency, Peskow entered US soil, murdered Dr. Charne-Sayre making it look like an accident (Skinner: “A horse stepped on her throat in a riding accident in Virginia.”), used the vaccine on Dr. Sacks (killing the Black Oil there), and killed the convalescent home patients (and thus the Black Oil they carried) by switching their drugs for poison pills. He then took the rock sample from Dr. Sacks’ lab and used the militia’s truck in Terma, North Dakota (which was the militia’s base of operations and where Krycek met them), to cross the USA-Canada border. Peskow reached Alberta, Canada, where he used the militia’s second bomb to get rid of the rock sample in a big bang in an (abandoned?) oil refinery; if any of it would survive, the Black Oil would be hard to find in all that common oil. All traces of russian Black Oil in the hands of the Syndicate are gone.

The Syndicate under siege

Meanwhile, as Krycek had forseen, this is a crisis situation for the Syndicate. The WMM and the CSM handle the matter quite differently. The WMM moves his “friend” the Senator Sorenson into investigating Mulder, Scully and Skinner’s doings.

This eventually leads up to special hearings of the Senate Select Subcommittee On Intelligence and Terrorism, whose only purpose is to slow down the investigation (Scully: “lawyers ask the wrong question only when they don’t want the right answer“). This is done by backstage politics and silent tips (for example, during Scully’s statement, Senator Sorenson sends a note to Chairman Romine, who then interrupts Scully). Thanks to a machiavellian strategy, the WMM blocks everything. Romine: “This is not why we are here today.” Scully: “Then why are we here, sir?” Carter & Spotnitz even add a Shakespeare reference in the cynic words of the WMM: “Senator Sorenson is an honorable man. They are all honorable, these honorable men.” (Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar“, Act III, Scene II: “For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men“).

The CSM’s methods are less subtle (“Call off this Congressional investigation.“). He uses the huge information networks that all the US agencies provide to those who have access to them. In real time he is informed that Mulder arrived in Tunguska, then that he escaped; this is thanks to his spies onsite that also provide the couriers with Black Oil samples. Using the video surveillance at the international airports, he identifies Charne-Sayre’s killer and gives him a name thanks to Peskow’s probably voluminous file with the CIA databases as a KGB agent. He then lets Mulder & Scully do all the work for him and hunt down Peskow (they are used like in 2X22: F. Emasculata): “If my intelligence sources are right, I think there’s someone who might save us the trouble.” But Peskow outruns them and completes his mission with no trouble.

Mulder & Scully use the same intelligence information routes as well: Mulder gets Marita’s address through an “FBI database“; then he gets to Peskow thanks to a complex but fast search for “the license numbers for any two-ton trucks stolen in North Dakota in the last six months. Then call Canadian border authorities and have them stop any truck fitting that description“. The surveillance systems and the cross-referencing power of governental agencies are tremendous.

In the end…

While Mulder was having holidays in Russia, Scully used some very scientific methods to investigate the alien virus and, at least for this time, she comes as close to a believer as she’s ever been. The two agents use the senatorial hearings as a soapbox to cry out for injustice and lawlessness; justice and truth are the underlying themes of these episodes. The tagline for Terma is “E Pur Si Muove”. It’s latin for “And nevertheless it moves”. It was said by Copernicus when answering to the Church. Copernicus challenged the commonly accepted view that Earth was in the middle of the Universe and the Sun moved aroud it; he supported that the Earth was round and moved around the Sun. In the same way, Mulder & Scully speak of alien biotoxins before a sceptic senatorial committee. Despite all this, the CSM ends up collecting all the evidence presented and the recordings of the hearings and literally drops them in the garbage can.

Krycek came out of all this a real winner. Ok, he ends up being the joyful owner of a prosthetic arm, but we discover he was not dead at all but that he enjoys a very high rank in the russian conspiracy. Tensions between him and Mulder are now even greater, as evidenced by their edgy confrontations. His allegiance after all still seems to be with Russia; perhaps this mission won him back a rightful place among its ranks after he lost it when he failed with his mission in the Syndicate (3X02: Paper Clip). He seems well acquainted with how the gulag works, and he’s very close to the bald director. More on this would have been revealed in the unfilmed ‘Krycek episode’. These episodes are really among the best hours of the X-Files.

Title note: Incidentally (?), ‘tyurma’ means ‘jail’ in russian. It might refer to the gulag, keeping with the two episodes being titled after russian words.

Tunguska

Scully’s statement: “I left behind a career in medicine to become an FBI agent four years ago because I believed in this country. Because I wanted to uphold its laws, to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. I still believe in this country. But I believe that there are powerful men in the government who do not. Men who have no respect for the law and who flout it with impunity. I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer possible to carry out my duties as an FBI agent.”

Scully: “What I am saying is that there is a culture of lawlessness that has prevented me from doing my job. That the real target of this committee’s investigation should be the men who are beyond prosecution and punishment. The men whose policies are behind the crimes that you are investigating.”

Krycek: “Hey, you go underground, you gotta learn to live with the rats.”
Mulder: “I’m sure you had no trouble adapting.”

Scully: “What do you want, Krycek?”
Krycek: “Same thing you do. To find the man who tried to kill me. The same man that was responsible for your father’s death; your sister’s.”
Scully: “You want this man brought to justice?”
Krycek: “You can’t bring these men to justice. They’re protected. The laws of this country protect them in the name of national security. They know no law.”
Mulder: “Then why don’t you put a bullet in his head like you did that man out there?”
Krycek: “These men, they fear one thing: exposure. You expose him, you expose his crimes, you destroy the destroyer’s ability to destroy.”
Mulder: “The only thing that will destroy this man is the truth.”
Krycek: “The truth, the truth!  There’s no truth. These men, they make it up as they go along. They’re the engineers of the future. They’re the real revolutionaries. I can get them for you too.”

CSM: “Wars have broken out over far less, Mr. Skinner. Far far less.”

Terma