731 (The X-Files)

In Perky, West Virginia , a group of soldiers arrives at an abandoned leprosy center full of mutilated people. Having driven all its inhabitants to the street, the soldiers take their field, having built in front of a deep ditch in a row. A leper who had previously been hiding in a hiding place by the name of Escalante watched in horror from the shelter as soldiers shot all the residents of the center, including children.

Having lost his phone while jumping from a bridge onto a moving train, Mulder loses touch with Scully. Faced with X at Mulder’s apartment, Scully demands answers about the contents of the train and her sister’s killer, which X points to looking for them in the implant that had previously been removed from Scully’s neck. Mulder, unable to get into the blocked white carriage, searches for Dr. Zama using the guide. The agent finds only the body of the doctor, who had previously been strangled by the Red-haired man, and a briefcase with notes in Japanese .

Agent Pendrell finds out that the chip from Scully's neck contains extremely sophisticated technologies and can read a person’s memory. The name of Dr. Zama is discovered on the processor, and Pendrell only manages to find the old postal receipt in the doctor’s name at the address of the complex in Perki. Scully sets off for the leper colony, where she finds a small surviving group of lepers. Escalante informs her that Zama experimented here on people, but has not appeared for a long time. He also tells her about the recent arrival of the "death squad" and shows a huge mass grave with shot bodies. Suddenly, the “death squad” arrives again, and Escalante dies, while Scully is led to a meeting with the First Elder, one of the leaders of the Consortium.

Returning to the mysterious carriage, Mulder discovers the door is open. Peering through the peephole into the locked compartment, the agent sees a strange creature there, looking like a hybrid of a person and an alien. At that moment, the Red-haired man attacks Mulder from behind, trying to strangle him. The agent is rescued by a conductor armed with an unloaded Mulder pistol, who, fleeing from the Red-haired one, closes the door to the car. Mulder picks up the Red-haired girl, but the latter receives a call from the First Elder, who hands Scully on the phone. She tells Mulder that she is in the same carriage and remembered how Zama and her subordinates conducted experiments on her, and the abduction by aliens is a "smoke screen". She also confirms the presence of a time bomb in the car (Mulder discovers an explosive device on the ceiling) and is afraid that the creature being transported could infect thousands of people with hemorrhagic fever during an explosion.

Mulder orders the conductor to be disconnected into the carriage in a remote place, after which, in a conversation with Redhead, he concludes that the creature in the compartment is a hybrid of an alien and a person that is immune to biological weapons . Zama tried to take the creature out of the country, but was ready to die with him, if only the results of the experiments did not fall into the hands of the US government. The red-haired one was supposed to kill both.

With Scully's help, Mulder picks up the code for the exit, but the Red-haired girl stuns him from behind and kicks her legs. When trying to leave the car, the Red-haired dies from a shot. X enters the carriage, who, having assessed the situation, pulls out Mulder a few seconds before a powerful explosion.

Having recovered, Mulder tries to find information about the blown up car, but he does not succeed. Scully returns the diary briefcase in Japanese, but Mulder realizes that both items have been replaced. Meanwhile, in a dark room, an elderly Japanese translates the contents of this portfolio in the presence of a Smoker smoking a cigarette ^{[5] [3]} .

According to screenwriter Frank Spotnitz, the inspiration for the episode was an article in the New York Times about war crimes committed by Detachment 731 . The detachment, operating during the Second World War , was engaged in conducting experiments on prisoners of war and civilians. From here came the name of the episode. The idea to shoot an episode inside a moving train came on the basis of the films “ North through the northwest ” and “ Train ” ^[6] . Spotnitz also noted that the episode allowed the scriptwriters to return Scully to her usual skeptic position after the events in the episode "Paperclip" when Scully personally saw a group of aliens ^[7] . The episode's tagline was changed to “Apology is Politics” ^[8] .

At the beginning of the episode, Mulder climbs inside a moving train, descending from the roof of the car. David Dukhovny refused the services of an understudy in this scene, and his safety cable was removed in the post-production period ^[9] . The interiors of the cars rested on inflatable chambers to create the illusion of movement ^[10] . To shoot these scenes, Rob Bowman used the Steadicam and deliberately avoided placing the characters in the center of the screen to create a sense of paranoidity . Scully's position on the screen when she is in another car during a conversation with Mulder contrasts with this decision: the heroine confidently stands strictly in the center of the screen, giving the impression of balance and strength ^[11] .

For a spectacular car explosion, 200 liters of gasoline and 120 powder bombs were required. The car itself was purchased from a local railway company and was decommissioned due to a bent wall. The explosion was synchronously shot from seven cameras ^[10] . The chief specialist of the series on physical special effects, Dave Gauthier, later handed Rob Bowman a carriage bell torn off by an explosion with an honorable engraving ^[12] . The image of X carrying Mulder was shot separately against a blue screen and, subsequently, superimposed on a video sequence with an explosion ^[9] .

It is also worth noting that in the scene with the demonstration of the leper’s mass grave, 25 actors took part, mainly children who were masked on a pile of artificial bodies ^[10] .

Bowman found the completed version of the episode similar to a real, full-length film. According to the director, this episode made a strong impression on Chris Carter , who, as a result, entrusted Bowman to direct the full-length film The X-Files ^[13] .

Air and reviews

The episode premiered on Fox network on December 1, 1995. Nielsen’s rating was 12 points with a share of 21.0, meaning that approximately 12 percent of all US-equipped households and 21 percent of all households watching television that evening were set to premiere the episode. The number of viewers watching the premiere is estimated at 17.68 million people ^[14] .

In the review of the third season from " Entertainment Weekly ", dated 1996, the episode received a modest rating of "B" (3 points out of 4 possible), since, according to the publication, it was "strangely deprived of tension" ^[15] . In later critique reviews, the episode received mostly positive reviews. The AV Club columnist, Zach Handlen, rated the series “A” (4 points out of 4 possible), describing it as “magnificent” ^[16] . Nick de Semlen and James White in an article for Empire magazine called "731" the second greatest episode of the series, suggesting that it is the best among all the "mythological" episodes. The authors described the series as "a high-octane mixture of action and mystery, filmed with the quality and dynamism of a Hollywood blockbuster" ^[17] .

In turn, director Rob Bowman called this episode one of his favorites ^[18] , while actor Steven Williams considered that the series added fans to his character ^[18] .

• Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin, Topping, Keith. X-Treme Possibilities. - Virgin Publications, Ltd, 1998. - ISBN 0-7535-0228-3 .
• Ted Edwards. X-Files Confidential. - Little, Brown and Company, 1996. - ISBN 0-316-21808-1 .
• Louisa Gradnitzer, Todd Pittson. X Marks the Spot: On Location with The X-Files. - Arsenal Pulp Press, 1999. - ISBN 1-55152-066-4 .
• Frank Lovece. The X-Files Declassified. - Citadel Press, 1996. - ISBN 0-8065-1745-X .
• Brian Lowry. The Truth is Out There: The Official Guide to The X-Files. - Harper Prism, 1995 .-- ISBN 0-06-105330-9 .