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Lazarus (episode)

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Series: The X-Files
Original Airdate: February 4, 1994
Production Number: 1x14
Date(s): Unknown
Written by: Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon
Directed by: David Nutter

After a fellow agent and friend of Scully's is shot by a criminal who Scully shoots in turn, the agent is revived but Mulder suspects that he is not who he appears to be.

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[edit] Summary

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) assists a former colleague, Jack Willis in apprehending a pair of bank robbers, Warren Dupre and Lula Phillips. Due to an anonymous tip, the two agents wait for Dupre at a bank he's about to rob. Dupre shoots Willis with a shotgun, but is killed by Scully immediately afterwards. Medics work on Willis, continuing with Scully's insistence. Willis eventually is brought back, but Dupre's corpse reacts to the final jolts with the defribilators.

Willis wakes up in the hospital a few days later, but with Dupre's consciousness. He cuts Dupre's fingers off to access his wedding ring then flees the hospital. Scully explains to partner Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) that Willis has been obsessed with the case for the past year and admits her relationship with him, that they dated while he was her instructor in the academy. It is found that left-handed shears were used to cut off Dupre's fingers, despite the fact that Willis is right-handed. Mulder and Scully visit Dr. Varnes at the University of Maryland who explains that during near death experiences an energy release can occur that could radically change someone's personality.

Willis, who finds Dupre's tattoo appearing on his arm, confronts Lula's brother Tommy and kills him, blaming him for selling them out to the FBI. When Mulder and Scully investigate the next day, Willis arrives. Willis passes the tests that Scully recommend he undertake, but when Mulder gives him a fake birthday card for Scully which is months away, he signs it. Scully is skeptical of Mulder's claims that Dupre is in Willis's body, thinking its stress due to him being shot.

When a landlord calls the FBI regading Lula, Scully and Willis head there. When Scully captures Lula, Willis holds her at gunpoint and forces her to handcuff herself. He then successfully convinces Lula that he is Dupre. Willis calls Mulder, telling him they are holding her hostage. After drinking some soda, Scully reveals that Willis is a diabetic, so the pair rob a drugstore for some insulin. Lula refuses to let Willis use the insulin, and admits to being the one who sold them out to the FBI. She calls the FBI, demanding a $1 million dollar ransom for Scully. By using audio of a plane nearby, they are able to track their general location, and a cop going door to door spots the house.

Willis plays dead and when Lula drops her wedding ring on him he grabs her gun and kills her. He dies seconds later due to the lack of insulin. Later Scully retrieves his things from the morgue, including a watch she gave him for his 35th birthday. The watch stopped at 6:47, the moment he died.

[edit] Background Information

  • In this episode's original plot, Dupre was to have jumped into Mulder's body. There was, however, a train of thought at the time that neither Scully nor Mulder should directly experience such phenomena; Fox and the studio argued against the idea of using Mulder in such a way. With more than a little reluctance, the producers agreed to make the shift. As writer Howard Gordon later recalled, "We'd wanted Mulder to experience the soul switch". The writer ultimately came to believe that the final decision was almost certainly for the best and saw the benefit of introducing Scully's former boyfriend as it provided a welcome opportunity to delve into her history.
  • This episode features the first of several occasions in which Scully is abducted and, also for the first time, her birthday is revealed as being on February 23. The year of her birth, 1964, would not be established until the Season 2 episode "One Breath", in which she is returned after having been abducted in an earlier episode.
  • In this episode's script, Dupre reveals that he was born in the Year of the Dragon which, in the Chinese calendar, is the same year Scully was born - 1964. In the filmed version of the episode, Dupre says he was born in the Year of the Rat - 1960, the same year as actor David Duchovny.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Guest Starring

[edit] Co-Starring

[edit] Featuring

[edit] References

SEMICOLON-SEPARATED LIST OF ITEMS/LOCATIONS REFERENCED IN EPISODE (BUT NOT LINKED TO IF ALREADY LINKED IN SUMMARY OR GUEST STARS SECTIONS)

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Gender Bender 		The X-Files
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Young at Heart
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