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(spoilers)

5.1 Unusual Suspects -- BBC1, Saturday 3 October 1998

A flashback episode takes us back to 1989, when the Lone Gunmen meet for the first time. The trio assist a Suzanne Modesky, who at first claims that her child has been abducted by its psychotic father, Mulder! She gets them to hack into a secret computer, and then changes her story, claiming the government plans to use asthmatic civilians as guinea pigs in a secret experiment. They break into a warehouse to confirm the story, pursued by Mulder (complete with clunky mobile phone), but things go wrong. They are arrested, and Mulder gets a faceful of the secret gas, and is left naked and raving on the warehouse floor. They are interrogated by Detective Munch. Modesky is bundled away, presumably by government agents, in a black limo.

Detective Munch --- Richard Belzer

5.2 Redux (part 2) -- BBC1, Saturday 19 September 1998

Some of the questions posed at the end of the last season [ 4.24 Gethsemene ] -- including the fate of Mulder -- are answered in flashback: Scully was lying to the FBI panel, in order to give Mulder time to uncover a further level of conspiracy. Other questions involving the health of agent Scully await future developments, as she collapses at the key point in her testimony. And new questions are raised, about the role of Skinner.

Kritschgau: John Finn --- Blevins: Charles Cioffi

5.3 Redux II (part 3) -- BBC1, Saturday 26 September 1998

Scully is in hospital, dying from her cancer, after collapsing at an FBI hearing. Mulder is shocked to see her unconscious body breathing with the aid of a ventilator -- but even more shocked when she later tells him Skinner is the mole operating within the Bureau. In triple or quadruple bluffs, Cigarette Smoking Man tells Mulder how to cure Scully, and lets him meet Samantha, in the hope of recruiting him. There is a hitman lurking, but who is he after? Then the section head tries to get Mulder to implicate Skinner. And more shocks as a major character is apparently assassinated (although no body is found).

5.4 Detour -- BBC1, Saturday 10 October 1998

Mulder and Scully are on their way to an FBI communication skills training weekend when they get stopped at a roadblock in deepest Florida. Two surveyors and a hunter have disappeared in the forest. "Civilisation is pushing hard into these woods. Maybe something is pushing back."

Michele Fazekas: Colleen Flynn --- Glaser: Anthony Rapp --- Agent Stonecypher: J C Wendel.

5.5 Christmas Carol (part I) -- BBC1, Saturday 24 October 1998

A mysterious phone call leads Scully to a young girl whom she suspects of being her dead sister Melissa's daughter. Emily's adoptive mother has just apparently committed suicide, and terminally ill Emily herself is the subject of a mysterious drug trial. Then a DNA check reveals that it isn't Melissa who is Emily's mother.

Tara Scully: Karri Turner --- Det Kresge: John Pyper-Ferguson --- Dr Calderon: Gerard Plunkett --- Emily Sim: Mecca Menard

5.6 The Post-Modern Prometheus -- BBC1, Saturday 17 October 1998

A stylish, humorous black-and-white episode (nominated for 7 Emmys), loosely based on the story of Frankenstein, and featuring a soundtrack by Cher.

Mulder and Scully investigate when several women in a rural community claim that they were seduced and left pregnant by a strange creature.

Dr Pollidori: John O'Hurley --- Shaineh: Pattie Tierce --- Izzie: Stewart Gale --- Booger: Chris Giacoletti --- Mutato: Chris Owens --- Jerry Springer: Himself.

5.7 Emily (part II) -- BBC1, Saturday 31 October 1998

Scully and Mulder search for a cure to Emily's illness, as she bleeds green. Mulder discovers an old people's home, which appears to be the source of mysterious children.

Dr Vinet: Bob Morrisey

5.8 Kitsunegari -- BBC1, Saturday 14 November 1998

Mulder and Scully hunt for serial killer Robert " Pusher " Modell [ 3.17 Pusher ] , after he escapes from prison. With his telekinetic powers letting him impose his will on his victims, he seems to be seeking revenge on the people who put him behind bars. First, prosecutor Bowman is found dead covered with blue paint, with "Kitsunegari" (Japanese for "fox hunter") painted on the wall, and then his wife Linda appears to be Modell's next target. But why didn't Modell kill Mulder when he had the chance?

Linda Bowman: Diana Scarwid --- Robert "Pusher" Modell: Robert Wisden

5.9 Schizogeny -- BBC1, Saturday 21 November 1998

A teenage boy undergoing counselling becomes the prime suspect in his stepfather's murder. But who is the strange man in the tree grove? And what are the trees themselves up to?

5.10 Bunghoney (RT title: Chinga) -- BBC1, Saturday 28 November 1998

(The Stephen King episode.) While holidaying in a sleepy fishing village in Maine, Scully investigates why a series of people appeared to suffer self-inflicted wounds at the behest of a strange girl. A doll with murderous intentions is terrorising the population -- but is it a simple case of witchcraft, or is there something more frightening out there?

(Just a classic haunted doll horror story, really, especially the ending. But the phone call between Mulder and Scully where she's listing all the signs of witchcraft is a classic.)

Jack Bonsaint: Larry Musser --- Buddy Riggs: William MacDonald ---- Polly Turner: Jenny-Lynn Hutcheson --- Jane Froelich: Carolyn Tweedle

5.11 Kill Switch -- BBC1, Wednesday 6 January 1999

(The William Gibson episode.) A mystery phone voice is tipping off minor hoods that the guy they're after is in the Metro Diner. In that diner a tired disheveled little man is hacking at his laptop. Suddenly cops arrive, all hell breaks loose, and everybody dies. Was the man an innocent bystander, or the intended victim?

Then a female ally with strangely black eyes turns up in a container, which is targetted by an orbiting missile. There's an AI loose on the Internet, trying to kill its creators. Mulder ends up in a gruesome hospital, steadily losing body parts, and Scully kung-fus her way to his side. But all is not what it seems...

5.12 Bad Blood -- BBC1, Wednesday 13 January 1999

The episode starts off with Mulder driving a stake through the heart of a teenage pizza-delivery boy, then Scully discovering his vampire teeth are false. Mulder and Scully then recount their respective differing version of events leading up to his death.

(The fun isn't so much in the gross difference between the accounts, but in the subtle ones, showing how each sees the other and themselves.)

5.13 Patient X (part I) -- BBC1, Wednesday 20 January 1999

This episode introduces Agent Jeffrey Spender [Chris Owens]. David Duchovny had threatened to quit if production did not move from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and it was rumoured Spender was Mulder's replacement. However, Duchovny remains, with the sixth X Files season to be based in LA.

Mulder and Scully search for clues to some horrific mass killings where the victims have been incinerated alive. All the victims are self-proclaimed alien abductees, and many have implants. Mulder doesn't believe any more, but Scully isn't so sure. The shadowy committee is worried -- this isn't the plan. Patient X -- Cassandra Spender -- says they are all being called to a meeting. Both she and Scully, along with other abductees, arrive for a third gathering, just as the flames start...

5.14 The Red and the Black (part II) -- ??? or Serve -- BBC1, Wednesday 27 January 1999

Scully survives the mass burning, slightly singed, with no memory of what happened at the dam. Under hypnosis she recalls the intervention of a spacecraft and the abduction of Cassandra. Mulder still doesn't believe. The Committee are worried about the Colonists, and get the black oil vaccine from Krycek. Krycek contacts Mulder, and tells him of the alien rebellion; Mulder finds a survivor, but now can't remember what happened. We learn that Cigarette Smoking Man is Agent Spender's father.

Cassandra Spender: Veronica Cartwright --- Maria Covarrubias: Laurie Holden --- Dr Heinz Werber: Jim Jansen

5.15 Travellers -- BBC1, Wednesday 3 February 1999

In 1990 Edward Skur dies with the name "Mulder" on his lips, and a bizarre corpse in his bath. But Skur was supposed to have died in 1952, suiciding after being arrested as a communist spy during the MacCarthy era. Following up an early X-file of a series of similar unsolved murder cases from 1952, Mulder unearths information about his father's involvement in the X-files (and we learn why they are so named). A double flash-back episode in which we see Mulder's father in 1952, and see Mulder smoking and wearing a wedding ring in 1990.

Agent Arthur Dales: Darren McGavin --- Young Arthur Dales: Frederic Lane --- Edward Skur: Garret Dillahunt --- Hayes Michel: Brian Leckner --- Roy Cohn: David Moreland

5.16 Mind's Eye -- BBC1, Wednesday 10 February

Marty Glenn, a young woman who has been blind since birth, and who is determinedly self-sufficient, is found at the scene of a murder, covered in the victim's blood. Does she have a sixth sense -- is she one of those blind people who can see through the eyes of a killer, as Mulder suspects -- or is she really the murderer? She is arrested, but keeps silent, and the police can't make the charge stick, so have to release her. Then there is a second murder, and now she confesses, to both. But actually she sees through the eyes of the man who killed her mother, and who has just been released from prison.

5.17 All Souls -- BBC1, Wednesday 24 February 1999

A priest asks Scully to investigate the death of a severely disabled girl, found with her eyes burned out. Scully discovers other six-fingered girls dying the same way, a strange priest, a worried social worker, and an apocryphal (or is it revelationary?) prophecy that may explain all.

5.18 The Pine Bluff Variant -- BBC1, Wednesday 3 March 1999

The Goatee Man, spotted by Skinner, Scully and Mulder sitting on a Washington DC park bench during an undercover operation, suffers the unsavoury fate of having his face and hands eaten away by some biotoxin. Mulderdeliberately lets him escape. A cinema audience is then attacked, and it seems as if terrorists are threatening to release the biotoxin. If that doesn't turn your stomach, perhaps the sound of Mulder's finger being snapped like a stick of celery will, as the terrorists try to discover if he is genuine, or a plant (Scully is also wondering this). Then he helps them rob a bank. But maybe the terrorists aren't all they seem, either.

5.19 Folie a Deux -- BBC1, Wednesday 10 March 1999

A telemarketeer sees his boss as a giant insect, and his co-workers being turned into zombies. A warning tape, talking of monsters "hiding in the light" gets Mulder's involvement. Then the guy holds everyone, including Mulder, hostage, in an attempt to broadcast his knowledge to the world. He shoots a 'zombie', and the FBI storm the place and kill him; Mulder saves the boss's life. But then he gets suspicious, investigates further, and ends up strapped to a psychiatric hospital bed. Scully, initially skeptical, finds a strange toxin in the zombie's body, goes to the hospital, sees the nurse as a zombie, and rescues Mulder from the giant insect.

5.20 The End -- BBC1, Wednesday 17 March 1999

A 12-year-old boy becomes the target of an assassination attempt by a US agent during a grand master chess championship. Mulder is convinced he is a mind-reading genetic mutant who holds the key to the entire X Files. Even Scully is convinced there is something special about him. But the Committee wants the boy dead, and send Krychek to find Cigarette Smoking Man to take on the job. The episode ends with Agent Fowley (Mulder's former girlfriend) shot and badly injured, the boy kidnapped, and Mulder's office gutted by fire, the X Files destroyed.

All of the characters from the X Files mythology -- from Cigarette Smoking Man to Well-Manicured Man -- make an appearance in the last of this series.