After having investigated the X-Files between 1990 and 1994, FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder was reassigned off those cases in 1994. (TXF: "Travelers", "The Erlenmeyer Flask") Mulder was briefly partnered with Agent Alex Krycek during this period. (TXF: "Sleepless" – "Ascension") Despite no longer being officially assigned to work in partnership with Special Agent Dana Scully, Mulder was still answerable to Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who was ultimately instrumental in ending this period of Mulder's career. (TXF: "Little Green Men" – "Ascension")
History[]
Mulder conducting wiretap surveillance in 1994.
Following the termination of the X-files, Mulder was reassigned to carry out routine general assignment duties. He was given the tasks of conducting electronic surveillance, including wiretapping, and investigating white-bread cases like bank fraud, insurance fraud and healthcare swindles.
One case that Mulder investigated was the surveillance of male suspects in Washington, D.C.'s Longstreet Motel. After three days, Mulder was sure he had enough evidence to arrest the men on charges of bank fraud but was restricted from doing so by AD Skinner. Mulder spent the next several months trying to acquire more evidence that the men were guilty. However, he was suspicious that other members of the FBI were simultaneously conducting surveillance on Scully and himself.
Because he had no solid evidence to substantiate the things he had seen while investigating the X-Files, Mulder began to doubt whether they had actually existed and even started to question if his sister, Samantha, had really been abducted.
Without notifying Scully or the rest of the FBI that he was leaving or where he was heading, Mulder left his current assignment and, on July 7, 1994, he journeyed to Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory in Puerto Rico to ascertain whether first contact had been made with extraterrestrials. Both his former partner and AD Skinner searched for him while he was gone and the FBI conducted surveillance on his apartment.
In Puerto Rico, Mulder thought he saw extraterrestrials visit the site. When Scully found him shortly thereafter, he was unconscious. Despite his claim of alien contact, the only item Mulder managed to take from the observatory was a recording of his findings he had made there, as he and Scully were chased away from the site by the Blue Beret UFO Retrieval Team, who had been authorized to use deadly force.
After the agents returned to the FBI, Mulder was criticized for having left his current assignment, which another agent had assumed while he had been gone. All the work he had done to incriminate the suspected bank frauds had been lost and he was therefore ordered to return to his assignment and continue the surveillance.
Mulder complied with the instruction but found that the recording he had taken from Puerto Rico was mysteriously blank. Once again, he was left with no solid evidence of what he believed he had seen. (TXF: "Little Green Men")
Mulder was soon relieved of his assignment, replaced by an Agent Bozoff, and began investigating a case that the FBI had classed as a murder investigation. He flew to Newark, New Jersey, where he met with a Detective Norman. In a sewer, the detective showed Mulder a body that had been found there. Although Mulder initially complained about the case, he relented after he was pressured to return to the assignment. However, he simultaneously contemplated leaving the FBI while investigating the case.
The creature Mulder discovered in the New Jersey sewage system.
At first, Mulder believed that the killer was a "giant bloodsucking worm" but, with the help of Scully, he eventually determined that the culprit was a human that had cross-mutated with a parasitic flatworm in a primordial soup of radioactive sewage salvaged from and disposed after the meltdown at Chernobyl. It was capable of spontaneous regeneration, which allowed it to secretly survive injuries Mulder had inflicted on it.
During this investigation, AD Skinner hinted to Mulder that the decision to close down the X-Files had not been his own, and Mulder was contacted by a secretive informant who told him that he had to ensure that reinstatement of the X-Files was undeniable. (TXF: "The Host") Mulder did not know at the time that the man was X, who had earlier overseen the elimination of ergotamine-histomine gas from a warehouse at 204 Fells Point Road after the gas had intoxicated Mulder in 1989. (TXF: "The Host", "Unusual Suspects")
Later in July 1994, Mulder was requested to investigate the Franklin incidents - a series of bizarre murders recently committed by several unrelated but similar killers in Franklin, Pennsylvania. The murders initially confounded Mulder and he once admitted that he had never had a more difficult time developing a profile of the various killers. By this time, Mulder had been reassigned to the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, based in Quantico, where he had returned to his previous assignment as a behavioral profiler. (TXF: "Blood")
- It is unclear when Mulder returned to the Behavioral Science Unit. In "The Host", after Mulder reveals to Scully that he is considering leaving the FBI, she suggests that he could "request a transfer to Quantico, come back to the Behavioral Science Unit". Referring to their superiors in the FBI, Mulder replies, "They don't want us working together". Although the agents do work together in that episode, no other mention is made of the BSU and it is not entirely clear what department Mulder is assigned to. When he first appears in the following episode, "Blood", a Sheriff Spencer refers to Mulder as a profiler for the Behavioral Science Unit.
After he returned to FBI Headquarters, Mulder attempted to investigate the death of Doctor Saul Grissom. The case fell under the jurisdiction of the New York City Police Department, who refused to work with Mulder unless the Attorney General permitted the assignment. He therefore asked AD Skinner to prompt the Attorney General to authorize the investigation. Although Mulder had a day's worth of wiretap tape to be transcribed, Skinner nevertheless granted him consent to investigate Dr. Grissom's death.
- The wiretap tape that Mulder works on in "Sleepless" is unrelated to the recordings he listens to in "Little Green Men" and "The Host".
Mulder was partnered with Agent Alex Krycek but was initially reluctant to be appointed his new partner, insisting that he worked alone. With Krycek's help, Mulder confirmed that Grissom had actually not been trapped in a burning building, as the doctor had incorrectly believed. The agents discovered that another man named Henry Willig had died in apparently similar imagined circumstances, although it seemed as if he had been the victim of gunshot wounds rather than exposure to fire.
With Krycek's assistance, Mulder managed to determine that the two deaths had been caused by Augustus Cole, who Mulder believed had developed the ability to remotely project telepathic hallucinations so real they could kill. Mulder and Krycek were successful in saving a Dr. Francis Girardi from being murdered by Cole, who was ultimately killed by Krycek.
Although Mulder had come to respect his new partner while they had been investigating the case, he was unaware that Krycek was actually working for a man with many pseudonyms, including "the Cigarette Smoking Man", who could often be found in AD Skinner's office.
During his first investigation with Krycek, Mulder alone met with his mysterious X contact, for the first time. X warned Mulder that closing the X-Files, separating him from Scully, was just the beginning and that the agents had never been in greater danger. (TXF: "Sleepless") X would continue to secretly provide Mulder with information, over the next several years. (TXF: "Sleepless", "Herrenvolk")
In August 1994, Mulder was requested to negotiate with an escaped mental patient named Duane Barry - a former member of the FBI who claimed he had been abducted by aliens on many occasions and that he was under their control. In a travel agency, Barry had taken four people hostage, one of whom was a doctor from the hospital where Barry had been confined. Mulder was briefed by qualified hostage negotiators who told him that Barry wanted safe passage for himself and the doctor to an alien abduction site.
Mulder with abductor and abductee, Duane Barry.
When Barry shot and injured one of the hostages, Mulder was sent into the travel agency to deliver medical aid. Rather than follow the advice of the hostage negotiators, however, Mulder endangered the situation by announcing that he believed Barry was an abductee. Barry released the injured hostage in return for Mulder, who ultimately managed to persuade his captor to also free the other two prisoners.
Mulder knew that several snipers were waiting outside but Barry was unaware of this fact. Although Mulder secretly saved Barry from being shot by one of the snipers, he told his captor that the door to the travel agency remained unlocked from when the last two hostages had been released. As Barry approached the door, he was shot by one of the snipers, allowing Mulder to finally escape from the situation.
Injured by the gunshot wound, Barry was taken to Jefferson Memorial Hospital, although he later escaped and abducted Scully. (TXF: "Duane Barry")
Mulder desperately searched for his former partner and managed to track Scully and Duane Barry to Skyland Mountain. Krycek secretly informed his superior of Mulder's discovery and journeyed to the site with Mulder, who took a tram to the top of the mountain while Krycek stayed with the tram operator at the bottom. In a successful attempt to stall Mulder, Krycek killed the tram operator and halted the tram before it could reach the top. Krycek eventually restarted the tram and Mulder arrived at the top of the mountain, only to find Scully gone. He saw a helicopter hover above the ground before it raced away and found Duane Barry, ebulliently pleased that an unspecified group had taken Scully instead of him.
Mulder later interrogated Barry in an effort to find his former partner, but momentarily lost control of his temper and strangled the suspect. He eventually released Barry from his grasp and left the room, telling Krycek that no-one else was permitted to interrogate the untrustworthy kidnapper. While Mulder was gone, however, Krycek secretly killed Barry. Mulder later determined that Krycek had been working for the Cigarette-Smoking Man, had killed Barry and may have killed the tram operator. However, Krycek did not return to work.
Soon thereafter, the X-Files were finally re-opened by AD Skinner, who realized that the Cigarette Smoking Man and those working for him were most afraid of that happening. (TXF: "Ascension") Mulder would later recall that he had "worked [his] ass off to get the files reopened". (TXF: "Never Again")
| Fox Mulder's history on the X-Files | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st stint on the X-Files | 1st closure of the X-Files | 2nd stint on the X-Files | 2nd closure of the X-Files | 3rd stint on the X-Files | Abduction |