"Ice" is the eighth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files, which premiered on the Fox network on November 5, 1993. It was directed by David Nutter and written by Glen Morgan and James Wong. The debut broadcast of "Ice" was watched by 10 million viewers in 6.2 million households and received positive reviews at large from critics, who praised its tense atmosphere.
The plot of the episode shows FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the deaths of an Alaskan research team. Isolated and alone, the agents and their accompanying team discover the existence of extraterrestrial parasitic organisms that drive their hosts into impulsive fits of rage.
The episode was inspired by an article in Science News about an excavation in Greenland, and series creator Chris Carter also cited John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There? as an influence. Although the producers thought that "Ice" would save money by being shot in a single location, it ended up exceeding its own production budget.
Plot[]
A mass murder–suicide occurs among a team of geophysicists at an outpost in Icy Cape, Alaska. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully head for the outpost, accompanied by physician Dr. Hodge (Xander Berkeley), toxicologist Dr. Nancy Da Silva (Felicity Huffman), geologist Dr. Denny Murphy (Steve Hytner), and Bear (Jeff Kober), their pilot. Along with the scientists' bodies the group finds a dog, which attacks Mulder and Bear. Scully notices black nodules on its skin, and suspects that it may be infected with bubonic plague; she also notices a rash on its neck and movement beneath its skin. Although Bear, who was bitten by the dog, becomes ill and develops similar nodules on his body, autopsies reveal no such nodules on the bodies of the scientists.
Murphy finds an ice core sample believed to have originated from a meteor crater, and theorizes that the sample might be 250,000 years old. Although Bear insists on leaving, the others are concerned about infecting the outside world. When Bear is asked to provide a stool sample, he attacks Mulder and tries to flee. Something moves under Bear's skin, and he dies when Hodge makes an incision there and removes what turns out to be a small worm from the back of his neck. Now without a pilot, the group is informed that evacuation is impossible because of an oncoming storm.
The worm removed from Bear is kept in a jar, and another is recovered from one of the scientists' bodies. Mulder, believing that the worms are extraterrestrial, wants them kept alive, but Scully feels they should be destroyed to prevent infection. The group check each other for black nodules and find none, although Mulder reminds Scully that the nodules disappeared from the dog over time. Mulder wakes in the night and finds Murphy in the freezer with his throat cut; when the others arrive just as he discovers the body and see him standing over it, all of them, including Scully, suspect he has become infected and killed Murphy. They lock Mulder in a storeroom.
Scully discovers that two worms placed in the same host environment will kill each other. When they investigate by putting one worm into the infected dog, it recovers. Against Scully's objections and after trapping her in the freezer, Hodge and Da Silva try to put the other worm into Mulder. Hodge sees movement under Da Silva's skin and realizes she is the one infected as well as Murphy's murderer. Da Silva breaks free and the rest pursue her through the outpost until Scully and Mulder restrain the hysterical Da Silva while Hodge places the last worm inside her. After they are evacuated, Da Silva and the dog are quarantined and the others are released after showing no sign of infection. When Mulder declares he wants to return to the site, Hodge tells him that it has been destroyed by the government.
| The X-Files TV series | ||
|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | Pilot • Deep Throat • Squeeze • Conduit • The Jersey Devil • Shadows • Ghost in the Machine • Ice • Space • Fallen Angel • Eve • Fire • Beyond the Sea • Gender Bender • Lazarus • Young at Heart • E.B.E. • Miracle Man • Shapes • Darkness Falls • Tooms • Born Again • Roland • The Erlenmeyer Flask | |
| Season 2 | Little Green Men • The Host • Blood • Sleepless • Duane Barry • Ascension • 3 • One Breath • Firewalker • Red Museum • Excelsis Dei • Aubrey • Irresistible • Die Hand Die Verletzt • Fresh Bones • Colony • End Game • Fearful Symmetry • Død Kalm • Humbug • The Calusari • F. Emasculata • Soft Light • Our Town • Anasazi | |
| Season 3 | The Blessing Way • Paper Clip • D.P.O. • Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose • The List • 2Shy • The Walk • Oubliette • Nisei • 731 • Revelations • War of the Coprophages • Syzygy • Grotesque • Piper Maru • Apocrypha • Pusher • Teso Dos Bichos • Hell Money • Jose Chung's From Outer Space • Avatar • Quagmire • Wetwired • Talitha Cumi | |
| Season 4 | Herrenvolk • Home • Teliko • Unruhe • The Field Where I Died • Sanguinarium • Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man • Tunguska • Terma • Paper Hearts • El Mundo Gira • Leonard Betts • Never Again • Memento Mori • Kaddish • Unrequited • Tempus Fugit • Max • Synchrony • Small Potatoes • Zero Sum • elegy • Demons • Gethsemane | |
| Season 5 | Redux • Redux II • Unusual Suspects • Detour • The Post-Modern Prometheus • Christmas Carol • Emily • Kitsunegari • Schizogeny • Chinga • Kill Switch • Bad Blood • Patient X • The Red and the Black • Travelers • Mind's Eye • All Souls • The Pine bluff Variant • Folie à Deux • The End | |
| Season 6 | The Beginning • Drive • Triangle • Dreamland • Dreamland II • How the Ghosts Stole Christmas • Terms of Endearment • The Rain King • S. R. 819 • Tithonus • Two Fathers • One Son • Agua Mala • Monday • Arcadia • Alpha • Trevor • Milagro • The Unnatural • Three of a Kind • Field Trip • Biogenesis | |
| Season 7 | The Sixth Extinction • The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati • Hungry • Millennium • Rush • The Goldberg Variation • Orison • The Amazing Maleeni • Signs and Wonders • Sein und Zeit • Closure • X-Cops • First Person Shooter • Theef • En Ami • Chimera • all things • Brand X • Hollywood A. D. • Fight Club • Je Souhaite • Requiem | |
| Season 8 | Within • Without • Patience • Roadrunners • Invocation • Redrum • Via Negativa • Surekill • Salvage • Badlaa • The Gift • Medusa • Per Manum • This Is Not Happening • Deadalive • Three Words • Empedocies • Vienen • Alone • Essence • Existence | |
| Season 9 | Nothing Important Happened Today • Nothing Important Happened Today II • Dæmonicus • 4-D • Lord of the Flies • Trust No 1 • Joe Doe • Hellbound • Provenance • Providence • Audrey Pauley • Underneath • Improbable • Scary Monsters • Jump the Shark • William • Release • Sunshine Days • The Truth (Part 1) • The Truth (Part 2) | |
| Season 10 | My Struggle • Founders Mutation • Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster • Home Again • Babylon • My Struggle II | |
| Season 11 | My Struggle III • This • Plus One • The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat • Ghouli • Kitten • Rm9sbG93ZXJz • Familiar • Nothing Lasts Forever • My Struggle IV | |