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How Homicide: Life on the Street sparked the X-Files conspiracy canon

tabnews August 19, 2024
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The trio is in prison in Baltimore. Lieutenant John Munch is the interrogating officer. “Special Agent Mulder is currently being held in five-point restraints and is babbling like a monkey,” Munch informs Byers at the start of the questioning. “The FBI doesn't talk either. So what I'm seeing here is a warehouse break-in where nothing was stolen, a shootout but no guns, lots of blood but no bodies, and an FBI agent who likes to take off all his clothes and talk about aliens. Enlighten me.”

Byers tells Munch that he works for the government “right now.” He's an FCC employee handing out buttons at an electronics convention and a campaigner against pirated cable. Competitors Frohike and Langly, who sit in neighboring booths, sell stolen cable. Byers helps Susanne Modeski (Signy Coleman), who is trying to get her daughter back from an abusive ex-boyfriend.

The seemingly classic noir femme fatale lies about her identity, convinces Byers to hack into the Department of Defense's computer network, and tricks three strangers into committing federal crimes, accusing Mulder of being the psychotic ex-boyfriend. Watching the bumbling special agent from afar, this seems downright unlikely.

When Byers and Frohike meet Mulder, he identifies himself as an FBI agent and asks if they can identify a suspect in a photograph. They recognize the mysterious woman but deny seeing her. Langly hacks into the FBI mainframe and confirms that Susanne is wanted for murder, sabotage, and terrorism at an advanced Army weapons facility. The document states that Dr. Susanne Modeski killed four people from her research team and the military police officer who tried to arrest her. Modeski is considered armed and extremely dangerous and people are warned not to approach her. She is considered mentally unstable and her interactions with the Lone Gunmen seem to confirm the diagnosis. At one point, Susanne pulls out a hotel Bible and explains how it is used to monitor citizens' movements. She also pulls out a tooth that has a highly visible tracking device attached to it.

Dr. Modeski explains that she is a top chemist and worked on the team that developed ergotamine (EH), a gaseous weapon that induces fear and paranoia. The decrypted file proves that she was framed after she quit because the government planned to secretly test the gas on civilians in Baltimore. The file also contains an address where the gas is stored. They find the supply agent, asthma inhalers, in the warehouse. Mulder arrests Susanne, but two men try to detain her. They shoot Mulder, hitting the gas and leaving the agent squirming. Susanne shoots her would-be captors and flees in Mulder's car. Syndicate member X (Steven Williams) arrives, bags the shot men, one of whom is not yet dead, and orders a cleanup just before the actual police arrive. One of the side effects of the chemical warfare agent is hallucinations, and Mulder sees the Syndicate crew as aliens.

The events and cover-up involve a “creepy” Mulder, pre-X-Files, who hasn't yet been assigned an office in the basement. Frohike reads the hacked 1989 FBI dossier on Fox William Mulder, who graduated top of his class at Quantico, won countless awards, and is now in the violent crimes division. He's single, so Fox is a good catch. The wedding ring he's wearing at the shooting has to be part of a covert cover-up. The X-Files' Canonically, Mulder became a federal cop because his sister Samantha was abducted by aliens while young Fox was frozen in place. Since the flashback in “Unusual Suspects,” he no longer harbors any notions of a sinister Earth conspiracy.

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