F. Emasculata

In the rain forest of Costa Rica, entomologist Robert Torrance stumbles upon a decomposing boar carcass covered with dark purple pustules. As he extracts an insect from one of the pustules, it erupts, spraying him with fluid. By nightfall, Torrance himself has developed the boils and tries to radio for help. When a group of soldiers arrive the next morning, Torrance is dead.

At a prison in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, an inmate—also named Robert Torrance—receives a package containing a boil-covered piece of meat. He becomes infected and dies thirty-six hours later. Two other inmates, Paul and Steve, escape in a laundry cart after being sent to clean Torrance's cell. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are sent to help the U.S. Marshals find them. The agents note that the FBI does not normally investigate prison escapes, and become suspicious as the prison is quarantined by the CDC and the National Guard. Mulder joins the Marshals to hunt the fugitives, while Scully stays behind to investigate the situation in the prison.

Scully learns that the lockdown population is infected with an exceedingly deadly contagion, finding a pile of body bags stored for incineration in the prison's boiler room. Scully cuts open Torrance's body bag and examines his corpse, but Dr. Osbourne, a member of the CDC team, tries to stop her. A pustule on Torrance's body erupts in Osbourne's face, causing him to flee the room. Meanwhile, the fugitives steal an RV and stop at a gas station, where Paul calls his girlfriend, Elizabeth, looking for shelter. The station's clerk finds an infected Steve in the restroom; he is knocked unconscious by Paul. Scully calls Mulder after the Marshals raid the gas station, telling him that the contagion could spread into the population if the fugitives are not captured. Mulder sees a CDC biohazard team arrive at the scene, forcibly taking away the clerk in a helicopter.

The fugitives arrive at Elizabeth's house, where she tends to Steve, in the late stages of his infection. One of Steve's pustules erupts in her face, killing him and infecting Elizabeth. At that moment, Mulder and the Marshals raid the house and arrest her, but find Paul missing. While in police custody, Elizabeth tells Mulder that Paul is planning to flee to Toronto by bus later that evening. Meanwhile, Scully traces Torrance's package to Pinck Pharmaceuticals, a major drug developer. She also finds an insect in the body of another prisoner. Dr. Osbourne, who has become infected, reveals that his team works for Pinck and are researching a dilating enzyme produced by the insect. However, the insect has a parasitic life cycle that kills its hosts. Osbourne claims that the insect and its contagion were deliberately introduced into the prison by Pinck as an experiment. He tells Scully that since she was next to him when he became infected, she may have contracted the contagion as well. Osbourne tests Scully for infection and she is revealed to be healthy. Osbourne soon dies from the contagion and his body is incinerated in the prison boiler room.

Mulder confronts Skinner and The Smoking Man, believing that he and Scully were deceived into taking the case without knowing about the contagion. Mulder is adamant that the public should know the truth, but the Smoking Man counters that that would create mass panic and do more harm than good. Mulder tries to take his case to Scully, but she agrees that exposing Pinck may result in a deadly hysteria. Mulder and the Marshals track Paul down to a bus station. As the heavily-armed Marshals surround Paul's bus, Mulder gets on and tries to negotiate with Paul after he has taken a teenage boy hostage. Mulder persuades Paul to let the boy go and has the other passengers evacuate the bus. Mulder tries to convince Paul to divulge the contents of Torrance's package, but Paul is killed by the Marshals before he is able to do so. Mulder and Scully later confront Skinner in his office, telling him that Pinck deliberately sent the package to the wrong Robert Torrance, not only to experiment on prisoners, but so that their involvement could be chalked up to a simple postal error and that the agents' investigation could be discredited. The episode ends with Skinner warning Mulder to be more wary of the situations he will find himself in.[1]

While F. emasculata and Pinck Pharmaceuticals are fictitious, the show was inspired by the fact that pharmaceutical companies do send researchers the world over looking for unique plants or animals that might prove to have medicinal use.[2] Initially, the show's producers were worried about releasing the episode around the same time as the film Outbreak—a movie in which a deadly, contagious disease spreads in a California town. In the end, however, they realized that the two entities were substantially different from one another.[3] Notably, the Smoking Man appears in this episode; his appearance in stand-alone or monster-of-the-week episodes was unusual, as Chris Carter preferred not to mix the show's overarching mythology with its self-contained episodes.[4]

The exploding pustules were carefully rigged to burst on command. Makeup supervisor Toby Lindala created a device that was connected to the fake sores by discreet tubing. When the device was activated, the sores would explode. Filming the scenes with this device was particularly arduous, and Lindala later noted, "[In one scene] I was jammed underneath one of the bus seats with these extras basically stepping on my head."[3] The X-Files director Frank Spotnitz remarked, "When we saw the pustule bursting on film, we just laughed because it was just so over-the-top grotesque."[4] The Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, North Vancouver stood in for the Costa Rican jungle; this location had previously been used for the season opener "Little Green Men".[5] Both the gas station and the bus station used the same set, which was actually a redecorated car dealership located in Delta, British Columbia.[6]

"F. Emasculata" was originally broadcast in the United States on the Fox network on April 28, 1995, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on February 6, 1996.[7] This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 8.9, with a 16 share, meaning that roughly 8.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 16 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode.[8] It was viewed by 8.5 million households.[8]

The episode received generally mixed reviews from television critics. Entertainment Weekly graded the episode a C, writing, "A good idea is tainted by plot holes as gaping and disturbing as the pustular boils you'll be treated to in this hour".[9] Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club was positive, grading it an A. He particularly praised the way the darkness was handled which made it a "tense, gripping mini-movie", and also praised the guest stars.[10] Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode three-and-a-half stars out of five. The two wrote positively of the first part of the entry, noting that it "jogs along quite merrily as a simple contagion story".[11] They were, however, more critical of the second half, noting that the story "takes a left turn and becomes a thoughtful analysis on disinformation, on cover-up, and the public right to truth."[11] Shearman and Pearson called both parts "two really interesting rough drafts", but concluded that the two halves were ill-suited for one another.[11]

• Gradnitzer, Louisa; Todd Pittson (1999). X Marks the Spot: On Location with The X-Files. Arsenal Pulp. ISBN 1-55152-066-4.
• Hurwitz, Matt; Knowles, Chris (2008). The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series the Myths and the Movies. New York, US: Insight Editions. ISBN 1-933784-72-5.
• Lowry, Brian (1995). The Truth is Out There: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. ISBN 0061053309.
• Simon, Anne (2001). The Real Science Behind the X-Files: Microbes, Meteorites, and Mutants. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-684-85618-6.

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• "F. Emasculata" on TheXFiles.com
• "F. Emasculata" on IMDb
• "F. Emasculata" at TV.com