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Scary Monsters
Your Mind Makes It Real taken to it's horrifying extent.
Written by Thomas Schnauz
Directed by Dwight Little
Directed by Dwight Little
Doggett: What are they? Some kind of animal? What?
Mr. Conlon: All I know is that they won't leave us alone and I'm dealing with this the best way I can. Now it's too late.
Mr. Conlon: All I know is that they won't leave us alone and I'm dealing with this the best way I can. Now it's too late.
FBI Agent Leyla Harrison contacts Scully with what she thinks is an X-File: a woman had (apparently) stabbed herself to death, but Harrison thinks she was killed by monsters her son saw. Scully is unconvinced, but Harrison ropes Doggett and Reyes in and the three of them go up to see the son, who is with his father in a remote cabin. When they get there they find themselves unable to leave, and the monsters may or may not be more real than anyone thought.
Tropes:
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The bugs look to be about the size of a grown man's forearm.
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: Scully and Agent Harrison's boyfriend spend the episode trying to reach the heroes to help them, and only succeed moments after Doggett has solved the case.
- Character Shilling: Agent Harrison says at the end that Doggett was better equipped to handle the situation than even Mulder would have been, since Mulder would have believed in the monsters and thus made himself vulnerable to them. (It's not too obnoxious, though, given that this was well into Doggett's run on the show and the audience generally liked him.)
- Chest Burster: Tommy can make people think this is what's happening to the point that they cut themselves open to get at what's inside them. But it's all in their heads.
- Creepy Child: Tommy Conlon. He is the one behind the mysterious bugs that killed Spanky and Ms. Conlon.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Doggett uses the fact that Tommy believes in the things he's creating against him by dousing the house with water but pretending it's gasoline and "lighting it on fire." Tommy sees real flames, and shuts down his power to save himself.
- Hydra Problem: Doggett shoots one of the bugs in two with his gun, but both halves grow their missing parts back, so now there are two bugs to deal with.
- Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Tommy draws things and they become real.
- Power Pincers: Some of the bugs have these.
- Reality Warper/Master of Illusion: Tommy's powers are somewhere between the two.
- Tears of Blood: Agent Harrison sheds these when Tommy targets her.
- That Came Out Wrong:
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Tommy is afraid of these.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Tommy claims to just be scared, but he later proves himself to be actively malicious when he begins targeting the FBI agents.
- Wham Line: As seen in the Wham Shot entry, Monica looks at the second drawing, showing the bugs inside a woman who appears to be Ms. Conlon. That woman stabbed herself repeatedly in the stomach, trying to get rid of the bugs she believed were inside her and failing. But Tommy clarifies who that person actually is, revealing his villainy."This one's you."
- Wham Shot: Reyes is happily sifting through Tommy's drawings... and then sees the mysterious bugs on his next entry, meaning he knew about them. If that wasn't enough, the one after that depicts a woman having those same bugs inside her stomach, revealing that Tommy is a Creepy Child who actually creates the monsters.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Doggett's inability to believe in the monsters ultimately protects him from them.
Scully: What's that?
Doggett: A way to stifle his imagination.
Doggett: A way to stifle his imagination.
