In order to get you ready for the premiere of The X-Files limited series on Sunday, I’ve decided to share with you each day one of my favorite episodes of my favorite TV show of all time. If you would like to see any of my other posts, click here.
Season 3, Episode 20: Jose Chung’s From Outer Space
Promo Spot
Synopsis
An alien abduction of two teenagers with different versions of the same facts prompts a science-fiction novelist, Jose Chung (Charles Nelson Reilly), to write a book about the incident. However, no one involved with the investigation can tell him the full story with any accuracy.
Analysis (spoilers)
We are tricked into seeing what looks like a spacecraft. A couple’s car breaks down on a country road. They are seemingly abducted by aliens who do not appear to be aliens who are then come across what looks like a different alien. A novelist named Jose Chung, appears in Mulder and Scully’s office who Mulder refuses to speak to. He is interested in writing about people’s accounts of alien abductions. He is questioning Scully about one of their cases involving an alien abduction of the couple at the beginning. Mulder believes the couple was abducted and Scully is skeptical. Both abductees appears to show symptoms of post-abduction syndrome. Their recollections of their experiences are very similar. Mulder and Scully see another past abductee who claims to have been confronted with a man in black who threaten his life. He appeared to have witnessed the first couple’s abduction. Some of his story is out there but some also corroborates the first male abductee. The aliens who abducted them may not have been aliens at all. They later find a dead alien body on which Scully performs an autopsy. The alien is really someone in a costume. The man who found the body, who Chung also interviewed, is later confronted by the first man in black. The abductions appear to have been committed by the military. The accounts of the people who Chung interviewed, including a restaurant owner, continue to contradict Scully’s account. Mulder and Scully are confronted by two men in black who appear to have hypnotized them. They find the spacecraft responsible and are told its an experimental spacecraft. Mulder finally meets with Chung and asks him to not write his book. He ends up writing it.
The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.