THE X FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE

THE X FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE. Rob Bowman, dir. USA: 20th Century Fox (prod. and dist.) / Ten Thirteen Productions, 1998. Frank Spotnitz, story, co-prod., and Chris Carter, story and prod. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, featured players.

Special Agent Fox Mulder's search for Special Agent Dana Scully leads him to a descent under the Antarctic surface into what turns out to be a giant alien spacecraft, where he finds Scully and others in greenish, liquid-filled, fogged but transparent tubes, where they are incubating aliens, in the manner of hosts for ichneumon wasps or, Aliens. Scully in the tube contains alien "viruses" while she is contained in the life-support system which is in turn contained within the mechanical and electronic environment of a very po-mo ship. Cf. descent in R. A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (listed under Fiction) and more generally; cf. descent motif and what we might call "the ichneumon theme" in ALIEN (film) and ALIENS (film).