1.17 "E.B.E" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Stopwatches

Mulder and Scully arrived at the site where the truck driver had reported that the incident took place, and Mulder detected an area of high radioactivity. Mulder started two watches at the same time, left one outside of the area and kept another with him.

After he left the spot of the encounter, he looked at the watches, and they showed different times. He said the temporal lag meant that it was a legitimate encounter. Later in the episode, when Mulder and Scully experienced what appeared to be another encounter, Mulder again used the stopwatches but found no evidence of time loss, so he knew that the encounter was staged.

Answer: Swamp gas

The truck driver had lost power to his truck and when he got out of his truck, the back door of the trailer swung open and he saw something at which he fired his rifle. After arriving at the location where the truck driver reported the encounter, Scully came up with a number of explanations for the incident.

She said the truck driver was probably tired and that it was probably a mountain lion that he saw. Scully also pointed out that there was a marsh in the area and that the lights people reported seeing may have been swamp gas.

It was Mulder's turn to look incredulous: "How could a dozen witnesses including a squad of police vehicles in three counties become hysterical over swamp gas?"

Answer: Gulf War Syndrome

The truck driver told a different story from his initial report; he originally described the UFO he saw as black and cigar-shaped, while he now claimed it was round with orange and green lights. When Mulder questioned him, he didn't explain the discrepancy.

He had a cough, fever and rash, which Scully told him were symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, but he denied being in the Gulf War and stated he'd been ill since last night. Scully still thought the symptoms resembled Gulf War Syndrome, so Mulder told Scully that he had some contacts that might be able to help them with this case, and he took her to meet the Lone Gunmen, a group of three conspiracy theorists. Mulder believed that there might be a link between UFOs and Gulf War Syndrome, and he told his theory to the Lone Gunmen, who told him that some of his theories were even weirder than theirs.

Answer: "She's hot"

Mulder and Scully were listening to the Lone Gunmen talk about the latest news in conspiracy theory. After Scully smirked when Byers (Bruce Harwood) said that the CIA was the "most heinous and evil force of the twentieth century", Langly (Dean Haglund) asked Mulder if this was his "skeptical partner", to which Frohike (Tom Braidwood) added, "She's hot". Frohike repeated the comment when Scully disputed Byers' assertions by noting that the government can't even balance its budget. Braidwood was a director on "The X-Files" series and only played Frohike because he thought it was going to be a one-time appearance.

But the quirky Lone Gunmen proved popular and Braidwood had to keep playing the role. Braidwood lamented his first lines about Scully because they "destined me to be a lech for the rest of my career".

Answer: In her pen

When Mulder and Scully were at the car rental counter in Tennessee, a woman had asked to borrow her pen. Back in the FBI office, the pen wasn't working so while she ranted that the Lone Gunmen "probably think that every call they get is monitored", Scully took the pen apart and found a listening device which she showed Mulder. Later in the episode, Mulder was told by Deep Throat that "they can still hear you", so Mulder tore his apartment apart and found another bug in one of his electrical outlets.

Answer: A photo of a UFO

Mulder was surprised to find Deep Throat there since Deep Throat usually met him in places where they were unlikely to be noticed; he was taking a chance by coming to Mulder's apartment. But Deep Throat said the evidence he had couldn't wait, and he gave Mulder a photo of a UFO taken over Fort Benning, where numerous UFOs had apparently been recently seen. Mulder believed that the UFOs were on a rescue mission so this meant that the crashed ship was in Georgia. Mulder excitedly showed the photo to Scully, who immediately questioned its authenticity, pointing out that the shadows and coloring didn't fit. Mulder said he was heading to Georgia, but the next morning he met Scully at work and told her that he'd had the photo checked and it was a fake.

When he confronted Deep Throat, Deep Throat admitted that he deliberately tried to throw Mulder off the trail because there were some things he couldn't be allowed to discover. When Mulder asked him why he even bothered telling him about the downed aircraft, Deep Throat said it was because "a lie is most convincingly hidden between two truths".

Answer: A truck

Scully had researched the truck driver and found out he had lied about his name and background. He was actual a special operations black beret in northern Iraq during the Gulf War and had been seen for Gulf War Syndrome at the Veterans Hospital several times.

The cargo manifest for his truck showed 3100 lbs of auto parts, but records from the weigh stations he passed through showed that the trailer weighed 5100 lbs. Mulder believed the truck was carrying the crash remains from the object shot down by the Iraqi pilot. Scully had determined that the truck was nearing Colorado, so they headed west, eventually meeting in Las Vegas.

When they met in a gift shop at the airport, Scully told Mulder the truck was headed to Washington so they needed to fly to Seattle.

Answer: Power plant

Mulder and Scully had followed the truck for a couple of hours when their car was suddenly hit with an electrical surge and a bright flash of light. When they got out, they saw the truck jack-knifed in front of them with no driver. They checked the trailer and found a make-shift hospital set up in the trailer behind the boxes of auto parts, but no alien. Mulder then realized that the scene was faked when he examined the stopwatches and saw no loss of time. So he contacted some UFO tracking organizations and discovered that there had been intense UFO activity 100 miles away.

They went to that location and were directed by the party-goer to the power plant. The Lone Gunmen were able to get their names on an authorized list of visitors, so they were allowed into the plant.

Answer: The crashed spaceship at Roswell

Mulder and Scully didn't have access to level six at the plant, where the alien was being kept. While they were looking for a way to access it, a guard stopped them, and Mulder dashed past the guard while Scully surrendered. He made it down to the room where the alien supposedly was, but Deep Throat stopped him right before he looked through the window. Deep Throat told Mulder that after Roswell, representatives of the industrialized nations had met and agreed that if any of them found an E.B.E. (extraterrestrial biological entity) alive, they would be responsible for "its extermination".

When Mulder looked in the room, which was set up like a mobile hospital room, the bed was empty.

Answer: To atone for his guilt over killing an alien

In an earlier episode, Deep Throat had told a colleague that he allowed Mulder to continue his investigations "to keep your enemies close". In this episode, Deep Throat revealed a more personal motivation. He told Mulder that he was one of three men who had killed an alien as part of the international agreement signed after Roswell.

It had happened in Vietnam during the war. Deep Throat said that he wasn't sure if the alien was trusting or just naïve, but it showed no emotion when he pointed his gun at it and that he had been haunted ever since by its eyes.

After Deep Throat's deception during the investigation, Mulder told him, "I don't know which lie to believe".