I’m re-watching some of The X-Files series over from the beginning and trying post a write-up about one episode a week.
Ice is one of those classic episodes that must be watched repeatedly. It’s the episode where the X-Files crew really showed how well they’d come together as a team. Everything from the opening scene, characters, tension building, and let’s not forget overall dose of paranoia throughout. Like I said, great stuff!
The episode begins in the lab of the Artic Ice Core project. One man is bloody and haggard looking. He records a video message, “We are not who we are.” Then he gets attacked by another man and the two end up with guns pointed at each other. It ends with them redirecting those guns in a joint suicide. And that right there is just the teaser.
Mulder and Scully get tapped for the case. They head up to the research station with three scientists and one crazy pilot, Bear. There they discover and infected dog and all the crewmen are dead. Upon further investigation, they learn of the parasitic worm and just how quickly infection of it takes hold and turns the host into a raging fiend. Thus begins the paranoia. Who can you trust? Which one is infected? Nice tension building throughout.
I liked the quirky scientists. The one that listened to old football games to help calm himself was amusing. Felicity Huffman was in this episode as another scientist and she played that one well indeed. They all did well with portraying different types of ways people panic and with testing alliances.
This episode also proved just how out of the loop Mulder and Scully are with government knowledge. They are the last to find out that the ice station was blown up at the end.
All in all, this is a fantastic episode, chock full of the stuff that makes this a damn fine show!
Fun Tidbits:
- The dog in this episode is the dad of Duchovny‘s dog, Blue.
- This episode was based on the movie, The Thing. And both were based on the short story, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell
