| "Tempus Fugit" | |||
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| The X-Files episode | |||
An alien spaceship |
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| Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 17 |
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| Directed by | Rob Bowman | ||
| Written by | Chris Carter Frank Spotnitz |
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| Production code | 4X17 | ||
| Original air date | March 16, 1997 | ||
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| Episode chronology | |||
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| List of season 4 episodes List of The X-Files episodes |
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"Tempus Fugit" is the seventeenth episode of the fourth season of The X-Files television series. "Tempus Fugit" surrounds the agents' investigation of a plane crash that Mulder suspects was intercepted by a UFO.
Contents |
Max Fenig is on Flight 549 as it travels over upstate New York. He watches another man on the plane who seems to be following him. The man heads to the plane's bathroom, where he assembles a zip gun. However, when he comes back out, the airliner begins shaking and a bright light flashes outside, showing that the plane is encountering a UFO. The emergency door next to Max's seat is opened.
At a pub in Washington, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully celebrate her birthday. They are approached by a woman named Sharon Graffia, who claims to be Max's sister; she tells them that Max planned to deliver something to Mulder, but that his flight to Washington has crashed. The agents head to the crash site in Northville, Fulton County, New York, and attend an NTSB meeting. They listen to Flight 549's final transmission with air traffic control. Mulder's theorizes that the plane was forced down by aliens attempting to abduct Max; the NTSB team, led by chief investigator Mike Millar, dismisses his claims.
When the agents survey the crash site the next day, they realize that there is a nine minute disparity between the crash and the time on the victims' wristwatches, indicating missing time. Mulder believes that Max was abducted from the plane and that his body will not be found. Meanwhile, Scott Garrett, an NTSB agent, steals the zip gun from the assassin's body, and erodes his face and fingerprints with an acidic spray. Larold Rehbun, a passenger who sat next to Max on the flight, is found alive in the wreckage. His facial injuries indicate an exposure to radiation; Sharon denies that Max bought a radioactive substance aboard the plane, but soon divulges details about his underground life to Scully.
Scully tells Mulder that Max worked at an environmental energy plant in Colorado under an alias, and believes that he may have caused the crash after bringing plutonium aboard; Mulder, however, believes that Max was taken off the plane by a UFO, and that Rehbun's injuries were caused by exposure to the craft. Scully informs Mulder that Max's body has already been pulled from the crash site. Meanwhile, Sharon is abducted from her hotel room.
After identifying Max's body, Mulder finds that the wristwatches have been stolen from the other victims. He disbelieves the NTSB's official explanation of malfunction as a cause of the crash, and is doubtful that the true cause will be found unless they discern what happened during the nine minutes of missing time. The agents visit Sergeant Louis Frish, an air traffic controller from the U.S. Air Force on duty during the crash. Frish denies anything unusual happened. After the agents leave, Frish and another controller, Sergeant Armando Gonzales, argue over whether to reveal the "truth" about Flight 549's demise.
After finding Sharon's trashed hotel room, Mulder meets with Millar who tells him that the door was blown off the plane from the outside while it was in flight. Later, Frish finds his colleague Gonzales, who was thinking of revealing the truth, dead from a faked suicide. A group of commandos arrive with Garrett to capture Frish, but he escapes.
Frish goes to see Mulder and Scully, telling them that he lied before and that he was responsible for the crash. He tells them that his commanding officer ordered him to track the plane's coordinates and that a second aircraft intercepted the plane's flight path. Seconds later there was an explosion and the plane disappeared from his radar. Mulder believes that a third aircraft, a UFO, approached the plane and was destroyed by the second aircraft, also causing the Flight 549 crash. The agents leave with Frish and are soon chased by those who were after him earlier. Millar meanwhile returns to the crash site where he spots a UFO and finds Sharon nearby, having just been left there by the UFO.
Scully returns to Washington with Frish while Mulder heads to Great Sacandaga Lake, searching for the crashed UFO. Scully brings Frish to a local pub where they run into Pendrell. Garrett soon enters the pub, seeking to kill Frish, but when he shoots at him Pendrell accidentally walks in the line of fire and gets hit with the bullet instead. Meanwhile Mulder arrives at the lake where he finds a team of men already searching for the crashed UFO. He dives underwater and finds the craft, including an alien body. [1]
Chris Carter had an idea to do an episode involving a plane crash early in the fourth season, and the desire to add to Fox Mulder's emotional involvement by having someone he knew on board led to the writers bringing back the character of Max Fenig to be that person. Scott Bellis, who appeared in the first season episode "Fallen Angel," had auditioned for other roles on the show but had always been rejected by the producers because his character was so memorable. Co-writer Frank Spotnitz did not want to milk the character of Fenig or do something the show had already done, so he came up with the idea to kill off Fenig in the first part of the episode.[2]
The show's producers wanted the plane crash site and investigation to be as authentic as possible, so they used a National Transportation Safety Board official to act as their technical advisor on the episode to ensure that everything was properly recreated.[3]
This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 11.9, with an 18 share. It was viewed by 18.85 million people.[4] Twelve members of the show's post-production crew won the Emmy Award for Best Sound Editing in a series for their work on this episode.[1]