The X-Files (season 6)

This article contains episode information and plot summaries from the television show The X-Files.

Season six ran from 1998-1999.

The events of this season are preceded by the movie The X-Files: Fight the Future.

Main and recurring cast can be found at the main X-Files page.

The Beginning

• Guest Starring Wendie Malick as Assistant Director Maslin

With the X-Files reopened, Mulder and Scully eagerly hunt for a deadly creature in the Arizona desert. What they find seems to support Mulder's revived belief in aliens, but is discredited when the agents are not reassigned to the X-Files, with Spender and Fowley taking over instead.

Drive

• Guest Starring Bryan Cranston as Patrick Crump
• Michael O'Neill as Patrol Captain

With Mulder trapped in a car by a seemingly deranged man, Scully races to determine if the man is suffering from a deadly illness — and if Mulder is in danger of becoming the next victim.

Triangle

Mulder goes in search of a ship that has disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1939. But when he gets on board, Mulder finds that he — and all the passengers and crew (as well as some strangely familiar ones)— are still stuck in the past.

• Gillian Anderson, William B. Davis, Chris Owens, James Pickens Jr and Mitch Pileggi play characters in 1939 as well as their regular ones.

• The episode was designed by Chris Carter to be similar in style to Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. Through manipulation of the camera, and editing, the episode is designed to look like it was shot in four uninterrupted eleven-minute takes. The second act, however, in which Scully traverses the halls of the FBI, was shot uninterrupted without any editing.

Dreamland

• Guest starring Michael McKean as Morris Fletcher
• Nora Dunn as Joanne Fletcher

An anonymous tip finally brings Mulder and Scully to the mecca of all UFO lore — Area 51. but when the agents witness the flight of a mysterious craft, their lives are profoundly — and perhaps irrevocably — altered.

Dreamland II

• Guest starring Michael McKean as Morris Fletcher
• Nora Dunn as Joanne Fletcher

Scully begins to suspect that her partner's strange behaviour is more than it appears to be, while Mulder fights to return his life to normal before it's too late.

How the Ghosts Stole Christmas

• Guest Starring Lily Tomlin as Lida
• and Edward Asner as Maurice

On the night before Christmas, Mulder convinces Scully to put aside her gift wrapping and stake out a reputed haunted house. But they discover a pair of lovelorn spectres living inside the house who are determined to prove how lonely the holidays can be.

• The episode with the least cast required. Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, Tomlin and Asner are the only actors involved.

Terms of Endearment

When a mother is accused of killing her unborn child, Mulder and Scully discover that the father has his own secrets, and he's not the only one.

The Rain King

• Guest Starring Victoria Jackson as Sheila Fontaine

In a small town plagued by drought, Mulder and Scully come upon a man who claims to be able to control the weather — at a hefty profit. Yet the agents discover a force of nature at work even more powerful than the weather, and just as unpredictable.

S.R. 819

• Guest Starring Raymond J Barry as Senator Richard Matheson

Mulder and Scully have 24 hours to save Assistant Director Skinner from being killed — but in order to do so, they must determine who wants him dead, and why.

Tithonus

• Guest Starring Geoffrey Lewis as Alfred Fellig

Agent Scully learns that she, but not Mulder, is being given a chance to prove her worth at the FBI, and – paired with a new partner – she investigates a crime scene photographer whose subjects may in fact be his victims. What she does not expect is for Death to play a role himself.

Two Fathers

When Cassandra Spender is returned, Mulder, Scully and Agent Spender find themselves facing the exposure of the conspiracy involving extraterrestrials; while the worried Syndicate take evasive measures.

One Son

While Cassandra reveals the truth about the alien conspiracy to Mulder, her ex-husband – the Cigarette Smoking Man – does the same to Agent Spender in an effort to convince him to work with the conspiracy. But even as Mulder is deceived by Agent Fowley, Scully stays true to the investigation, and the two find a surprise ally. Meanwhile, the Syndicate reach the climax of their plans, only to find that the end is not as they expected.

Agua Mala

• Guest starring Darren McGavin as Arthur Dales

Having been re-assigned to the X-Files, Mulder and Scully are looking forward to cases again. Instead, Arthur Dales, now living in a Florida trailer park, calls the agents for help when a neighbouring family disappears; and, with a hurricane approaching, Mulder and Scully find themselves trapped with a group of residents in a building where there really is something in the water.

Monday

Skinner arrives at the scene of a bank robbery to discover that, inside, Mulder has been shot and a desperate Scully is attempting to talk the robber out of blowing up the building. A young woman comes running up to him, and seems to know his name, telling him that it is all about to go wrong. He ignores her. Suddenly, the building explodes... or does it? The agents soon find themselves in a bad day that just keeps getting worse.

Arcadia

Several disappearances at an idyllic planned community lead Mulder and Scully to go undercover as a married couple. However, what 'Rob and Laura Petrie' soon discover is that, in this town, the rules are to be obeyed – at all costs.

Alpha

• Guest Star Andrew J. Robinson as Dr. Detweiler

An Asian dog thought to be extinct is blamed for several murders, leading Mulder and Scully to join an obstinate Sheriff, a seemingly eccentric hunter, and a reclusive canine expert with an eye for Mulder, on a desperate hunt.

Trevor

• Guest Star John Diehl as Wilson "Pinker" Rawls
• and Catherine Dent as June Gurwich

After a prison camp is destroyed by a tornado, an escape inmate is suspected of killing the warden. Only problem: the warden was found dead in a locked room, snapped in half; and the inmate was locked in a box. As Mulder and Scully set out to find him, they discover he has a seemingly unstoppable ability.

Milagro

A series of murders where the heart has been somehow removed is linked to a writer who lives next door to Mulder. But while Mulder attemts to take a more pragmatic approach to the case, Scully finds herself confused and drawn to the writer, whose novel seems to have been written about the murders... but before them.

The Unnatural

• Guest Star M. Emmet Walsh as Arthur Dales

• Written and directed by David Duchovny

Bookended by cute scenes with Mulder and Scully, the episode tells of young cop Arthur Dales (the brother of the Arthur Dales who started the X-Files) who, while working in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, stumbles across a baseball player with an unusual batting average, who hides a secret that is out of this world...

• Darren McGavin – who played the first Arthur Dales in two previous episodes, filmed two scenes before illness forced him to step down from the project. M. Emmet Walsh was called in, and the script rewritten, to accept the changes.

Three of a Kind

• Guest Star Michael McKean as Morris Fletcher
• Signy Coleman as Susanne Modeski

While at a conference in Las Vegas, Byers, Langly and Frohike run into the enigmatic Susanne Modeski who, ten years earlier, united them in their quest to unravel the world's conspiracies. However – after deceiving Scully into joining them – the trio soon find themselves in way over their heads, attempting to stop a wave of brainwashings.

Field Trip

When two skeletons inexplicably turn up in a field, Mulder and Scully head to North Carolina where they enter a world where nothing, not even reality, is as real as it seems.

Biogenesis

A bizarre rock inscribed with Navajo writing is found on the Ivory Coast, and its discovery is closely followed by the death of the African scientist involved. While its appearance in Washington begins to affect Mulder's mental health, leading him to turn to Agent Fowley for help; a disturbed Scully – determined to disprove the theory that life on Earth began with aliens – heads to New Mexico and finds a dying Albert Hosteen – who has discovered that the rock includes passages from the Bible, and a map of the human genome. While Mulder breaks down in a mental institution, Scully journeys unexpectedly to Africa, where the biggest revelation of all awaits her...

• Synopses courtesy of [Krycek's]