Case Profile

Mulder gets very passionate about the disappearance, or alien abduction, of teenager girl Ruby in Okobogee Lake, which reminds him of his sister's abduction. The mother, Darlene, had seen UFOs while she was young, and the girl's younger brother, Kevin, acts as an unwilling conduit of information from the aliens. Ruby, unlike Samantha, is returned.

Field Report









Another episode on alien abductions, written by Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa. No real mythological elements here, no connection to the subsequent episodes, no complex unanswered questions. Scully still answers directly to Blevins and Mulder's search for his sister is really established here.

The final emotional scene is the most interesting here: Mulder's hypnosis with Dr. Werber (seen in the Pilot, and later in 5X13: Patient X). The narration of Samantha's abduction is very different from what will become the standard version, seen in detail in 2X01: Little Green Men. This could be because Mulder, under hypnosis, has a version of the events that has changed over the years, or that what we see in Little Green Men is what really happened. The tape of the hypnosis session is dated June 16, 1989.







Many UFOlogy elements again, as always with those first episodes. The NSA agents could be seen as a version of Men in Black. Extreme temperatures melt sand into glass and burn the top of a trailer.

Mulder's attracted to this case because the mother of the abductee had already had an encounter with aliens in 1967. It seems to run in the family. This could be attributed to the genetic experiments the abductees go through, as 2 subjects with close genetic patterns make very good subjects for comparative experiments.

Mulder seems to know the NSA agents (Mulder: "It's your call, Holtzman."), so there's no reason to think they're not NSA. They say Kevin's written down secret satellite transmissions; the point of aliens sending this information down to Kevin is obscure to say the least, to the point that there may be no satellite at all. It is possible the NSA agents were fed with the lie of secret satellite transmissions by the Syndicate, and told to fed up the Morris family in order to give a good alternate explanation for Mulder & Scully, so that the FBI can leave this case alone, and maybe to make Darlene stop running around telling her stories of alien sightings and abductions.

The series of 0's and 1's Kevin got, on top of forming an ASCII model of Ruby, are binary transcriptions of various data, such as pictures (Da Vinci's Universal Man), 3D objects (a DNA double helix) and sound files (Bach's Brandenburg concertos). The resemblance of these examples with the content of the data sent with the Voyager missions is striking. We hear the Voyager transmissions again in 2X01: Little Green Men; and as in this episode, the aliens send this data randomly, with no apparent reason.








Surveillance Recodings







Werber: "But your eyes are open?"
Mulder: "Yeah, they're open but it's like, nothing's happening."
Werber: "Try turning your head."
Mulder: "I can't."
Werber: "Why not?"
Mulder: "I don't know. I can't move, so I don't... I just lie there in bed."
Werber: "Can you see your sister?"
Mulder: "No, but I can hear her."
Werber: "What is she saying?"
Mulder: "She's calling out my name, over and over again. She's crying out for help but I can't help her. I can't move."
Werber: "Are you scared?"
Mulder: "I know I should be but I'm not."
Werber: "Do you know why?"
Mulder: "Because of the voice."
Werber: "The voice?"
Mulder: "The voice in my head."
Werber: "What's it telling you?"
Mulder: "Not to be afraid. It's telling me no harm will come to her, and that one day she'll return."
Werber: "Do you believe the voice?"
Mulder: "I want to believe."


E.T.C 2004-2006