War of the Coprophages

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Mulder gets caught up investigating what could be super-human cockroaches with metal bodies.

[edit] Summary

An exterminator in a basement lectures about the cockroach. He tells the home owner, an alternative fuel researcher named Dr. Eckerle, that he has a new method of extermination, a fungus that not only kills the infected roach, but is passed on to other roaches it comes into contact with. After the home owner leaves exterminator to finish the job, a particularly "arrogant bug" resists the fungus, so the exterminator flicks it to the floor and stamps on it. Immediately he feels something happening to his body, and he stumbles to the wall where more cockroaches appear covering his body as he falls to the ground. The home owner returns to find the exterminator on the floor covered in roaches.

Meanwhile Agent Mulder is in his car looking out for reported lights in the sky. He has a phone conversation with Scully with regard to his whereabouts when he is interrupted by a local sheriff. That too is cut short when the sheriff is called to the roach incident, the third such incident in a week.

He calls Scully to report on the three mysterious deaths, but she gives him a standard scientific explanation that many people are allergic to roaches.

There is another attack, this time on a young man, who was taking drugs with friends; the insects crawl into his arms and he dies. Again Mulder calls Scully from the scene, this time she puts it down to a drug-induced vision, but Mulder discovers a roach carcass that he thinks is actually made of metal.

After more roaches attack the medical examiner, the sheriff tells Mulder of a secret government experiment taking place locally. Again Mulder calls Scully, and this time she puts the death down to an aneurysm due to straining too hard while on the toilet. The doctor's blood shot eyes and dilated pupils confirm her suspicions. Mulder visits the government site, a two story house with "moving walls" due to the number of roaches. A government agent, Dr. Bambi Berenbaum of the US agricultural research service says they are studying cockroaches to find better was to eradicate them.

Dr. Berenbaum tells Mulder she thinks that UFOs are actually insect swarms. He takes a call from Scully but hangs up after saying only, "Not now." There is obviously an attraction between Mulder and Dr. Berenbaum. Mulder phones Scully later that night from his hotel room and confesses he hates insects. He hears a scream and goes to a room down the hall to find a hotel guest dead. The death is put down to a heart attack, he gets the medical reports back and all of the attacks are put down to the method of death Scully had told him, but the roach exoskeleton was made of metal.

Dr. Berenbaum tells Mulder about a robotics expert who may know something about the roaches. Mulder visits Dr. Alexander Ivanov, who explains about his experiments based on insects. Mulder asks Dr. Ivanov if aliens might use robotic bugs to search Earth, he says it's possible, but when he shows the doctor the metallic roach legs he can't believe it.

Scully arrives but the town is in mass panic; everyone is trying to leave as quickly as possible. Scully calls Mulder with a new theory: that the roaches have been imported with manure used in methane experiments. When Mulder visits the methane plant, the researcher shoots at Mulder believing he is a cockroach. Scully arrives at the plant (and is less than impressed with Dr. Berenbaum, who is waiting for Mulder outside), and begins searching for her partner. However, when she calls Mulder and his phone sounds like a roach, Dr. Eckerle shoots at Mulder again, and, as the two agents flee, the building explodes.

The roach incidents stop, although the sheriff lists the other incidents (fires, car accidents, and so on) that came as a result of the town's panic. Mulder's report focuses on man's development; the next advancement may be a species that does not have the emotion that holds back man and is simply reactive to the environment, like insects.

[edit] Background Information

The word "coprophages" literally means "dung eaters."

[edit] Links and References

[edit] References

Doctor; Bambi Berenbaum; Miller's Grove; Massachusetts; dung; methane gas; looting; razor blade; exoskeleton; aneurysm; Choco Droppings; Breakfast at Tiffany's; Die Bug Die; Queequeg; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); entomologist; Alt-fuel

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Revelations

The X-Files
Season 3

Next episode:
Syzygy


Series:	The X-Files
Original Airdate:	1-26-96
Production Number:	3x12
Date(s):
Written by:	Darin Morgan
Directed by:	Kim Manners