“Colony” is the most pivotal moment in The X-Files’s mythology since the pilot – in fact, it is effectively a second pilot. Even from the vantage point of our post-quality television era, the mythology on display here is quite remarkable. Chris Carter seems to know it too, opening with a Mulder monologue about belief in UFOs as abstract chunks of light congeal into a hyper-kinetic sequence in which he is rescued from a catastrophic event. The remainder of the episode takes place in flashback and is suffused with a dank conspiratorial atmosphere that often reminded me of The Americans. 

More specifically, as the title suggests, this is the beginning of the “colony” mythology. Up until this point, the ongoing narrative has affirmed the existence of extraterrestrial beings while the monster-of-the-week narratives often function as allegories of a digitally networked era. Now outer and inner space combine in a 90s adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as Mulder and Scully learn that aliens have been visiting the earth in the guise of human beings in order to prepare for an eventual colonisation. In this collapse of Cold War and UFO anxiety lies the primal fear of the series – that the United States is becoming a colony for someone or something else. One of the uncanny aspects of the episode is that all of the aliens look identical but nobody has picked up on it due to their dispersal across the vastness of America. The question of how we could even know if there was someone else, or many other people, who looked identical to our neighbours or colleagues, strikes to the very heart of the series’ anxiety about our places in a broader national and cosmic network.

At the same time, “Colony” marks the return of Mulder’s sister Samantha, played by Megan Leitch. At first Samantha claims that she lost her memory after her alien encounter and was then adopted by a new set of parents; later we learn that her adoptive parents were also alien colonists and that she has played a major role in the colonisation process. With Samantha temporarily replacing Scully as Mulder’s muse, the two agents have some of their tetchiest encounters yet. This only contours their sensual rapport, however, especially once the Alien Bounty Hunter, an extraterrestrial figure whose job is to hunt down and retire the colonising clones, takes on Mulder’s appearance. In a terrific cliffhanger, Scully is on the phone to Mulder while she greets the fake Mulder at the door, caught between his sonic and visual self in ways that anticipate the digital dissolution of identity but also enhance the tension between the two agents. It is as if Scully is momentarily caught between the reality and fantasy of Mulder and at that precarious juncture the episode cuts to black but doesn’t “conclude,” since more than ever before containment, whether American or alien, feels like a cipher for the television conventions working against the series’ improbable serial innovations.