I like when X-Files episodes touch on topics I knew before the show existed. Sometimes their version is disappointing, like "Space" (Season 1, Episode 9). Most of us grew up seeing the Weekly World News cover stories of the "Face of Mars," but that script was pretty lame, even by Season 1 monster-of-the-week standards. "Tunguska" is another example. Approximately three decades ago, I first learned about the Tunguska Blast which occurred in Russia in 1908. (I think Ray Stantz got the date wrong, he said 1909 in Ghostbusters.) A then-unknown object supposedly exploded just prior to impact, decimating 700-plus square miles of the forest. The part that always stuck with me was how it took almost 20 years for researchers to trek to the location to begin their investigation. If people were close enough to describe what they saw and heard (which they did) then couldn’t -- and shouldn’t -- the response and research have occurred faster? This episode put me in research mode, now we know the blast was caused by a meteor which created a lake five miles from the estimate of the original impact site. It only took researchers 100 years to figure out what happened. (Play NBC’s "The More You Know" public service theme here.)
At the beginning of this episode, Scully is testifying before a Senate committee. Assistant Director Skinner and the Cigarette-Smoking Man are sitting quietly in the audience. The men on the panel are hounding Scully for Mulder’s location and threaten to hold her in contempt of Congress. They keep interrupting her while she reads from a prepared statement. Clearly their mothers never taught them manners. Ten days earlier, a man who looks like a balding Krycek with bad teeth passes through Customs at the Honolulu Airport. He takes umbrage to being detained since he has diplomatic papers. He also dislikes being strip searched. The clueless security guard removes the items from his briefcase even though the man said they contain biohazardous material. Of course the idiot guard drops a tube and black-oil leeches attack him. See, this is why you should always travel with papers.
Elsewhere, Mulder and Scully work on a case that sounds suspiciously like one that would be assigned to a normal FBI agent. There’s a shootout between the feds and the armed revolutionaries. Sculder stop one truck from getting away. The driver is shot to death, the passenger is Alex Krycek, who claims he sent the evidence to Fox to bust the would-be bombers. Krycek claims he wants to work with Sculder to find the man who killed Mulder’s dad, Scully’s sis and tried to off him. The agents and Alex detour to the airport to meet with a man carrying a diplomatic pouch. He runs from Dana but abandons the pouch, which only contains a piece of rock. I think he could have kept carrying it while he ran, it didn’t look that heavy. Krycek patiently waits for Sculder to return. Guess he’s trying to earn their trust. Fox shows up at Skinner’s place hoping to use it as a safehouse for Alex. Walter "greets" Krycek, and before Alex catches his breath, Skinner handcuffs him to the patio railing of the 17th-floor apartment. I’ll bet the view is lovely, but it seems a little chilly out there.
Upon analysis, Dr. Sacks claims the rock may be a meteorite from Mars. Cancer Man intercepts Walter to let him know about the problems Sculder caused by taking the pouch. Krycek is still sitting on the patio when Running Pouch Man ransacks Skinner’s house. Alex hides over the railing, and when RPM comes outside, Krycek pulls the man down to his death. That’s some impressive upper-body strength there, Alex. Mulder learns about the other diplomat (Non-Running Pouch Man? Standing Pouch Man?), who was carrying Russian soil samples when he was intercepted in Hawaii. Knowing Fox will go to any lengths for this case, Dana tells him she isn’t sure she can see it through with him. Sacks accidentally releases some of the black-oil leeches when he cuts into the meteorite. We hardly knew ye, Doc, but we appreciate you providing some exposition and moving the story along. Skinner informs Mulder there’s a dead body at the boss' building. The local police detective tells Walter there’s a man hanging from the balcony. So the local police made no effort to save the dangling man and instead only tended to the dead guy? Your tax dollars at work, people. Fox somehow manages to get up to Skinner’s floor, into the apartment and rescue Krycek before the on-scene police do. Sorry, but all of my suspension of disbelief was wasted on the black-oil leeches.
Scully finds Sacks, but despite her medical background, she can’t tell whether he’s dead or alive. Mulder goes to New York to get answers from Marita Covarrubias about the pouches. Fox falls asleep in Marita's apartment while she obtains the information. Boy, he must really trust her. Marita tells him the pouch’s path -- it left from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, but originated in Norilsk, which Fox claims is “just north of Tunguska.” (Since my S.O.D. level is at an all-time low, I looked up the distance from Tunguska to Norilsk. It’s more like 2,944 km.) Marita offers to provide Mulder with cover credentials because people like her believe in his search for the truth. (Clearly, she needs to fact-check him once or twice.) Fox returns to the car, where Alex has been handcuffed, and they’re off again. Agent Pendrell assists Scully, putting on a protective suit and wondering whether his crush on her is going to get him killed. Sacks shudders, but he’s still not breathing. Kryder go to the airport and Mulder is about to leave Alex behind when Krycek starts cursing at him in Russian. Now isn’t that convenient?? In Virginia, Cancer Man meets with Well-Manicured Man to tell him Fox may be on a flight to Krasnoyarsk, which is 3356 km from Tunguska. (The webpage is still open.) So what identification did Alex use to get on a flight to Russia? Cancer Man makes no mention of knowing Mulder has a travel companion.
Back in D.C., Skinner and his agents get summoned to appear before the Senate committee. Walter is irked that he doesn’t have all the information. Kryder start digging in the dirt under the fence to get onto the Tunguska site and Fox provides the outdated exposition about the blast of 1908. The clearly exhausted workers continue digging while men on horses whip them. The horsemen catch Krycek easily but have to chase down Mulder. Alex is brought to Fox's cell and claims he didn’t sell them out. But he's also had enough of Mulder being so rough with him. Well, stop murdering your former co-workers’ family members and maybe they’ll be less abusive. Skinner and Scully meet with Senator Sorenson, who asks Walter about the dead man who fell from Skinner’s balcony. Dana claims Fox is in the field trying to get answers for the senator but won't give his location. 
Back in the Russian prison, Mulder’s cell neighbor warns him Krycek is deceiving him. Men inject something into Mulder’s neck and he loses consciousness. He wakes up trapped on a cot with several other men in the same room and he can hear them being tortured. The black-oil leeches get sprayed into Mulder’s face and now he’s infected. At least now we know that doesn’t mean automatic death since David Duchovny is still under contract.
Sestra Professional:
Pretty stoked to start this two-parter having just gotten back from the first X-Fest in La Salle, Illinois. One of the runaway fan favorites at the event was Nicholas Lea (Krycek), who is probably as far removed from his character as it is possible to get. He always is so present and and genuinely interested in what you're saying. It makes for a top-notch fan experience.
At this point in our rewatch run, I'll put out my hypothesis that Lea gets hotter and hotter as the series goes on -- I'll respectfully disagree with Mulder's derision of Alex's "stupid-ass haircut." I told Lea he was the "the best-looking man in The X-Files universe," and after registering the sort of disbelief we might associate with Scully when Mulder posits one of his theories, he quipped, "Well, when Bill Davis is your competition ... just kidding!" So "Tunguska" opens with Scully -- Gillian Anderson is also getting better and better looking over the show's run -- trying to deliver a statement in front at the hearing. She's basically being the stand-up woman who inspired a generation of women (and men as well, no doubt).
You're an invertebrate scum sucker whose moral dipstick's about two drops short of bone dry: Krycek explains to Sculder of his liberation from the silo he was locked in back in North Dakota. He berates the revolutionaries' motives as bonehead ideologies. And then the line that launched his fandom nickname "Ratboy" -- "You go underground, you got to learn to live with the rats." But Alex also professes to love his country, and tells us something we already do know, that the men in the conspiracy can't be brought to justice. There is no truth for which Mulder seeks with Scully along for the ride. "These men they make it up as they go along," he says, and it sounds an awful lot like what X-Philes think of those crafting the ongoing storyline.Fan favoritism aside, the canvas is invariably more interesting with Krycek on it. We never really know what he's going to do next, who he will side with and how long that alliance will hold out -- particularly in situations like these when Fox and company are forced to work with them.
Beyond that, we're subjected to a lot of story padding from Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter. We've become accustomed to that sort of thing in two-part episodes. Mulder and Scully get in trouble for intercepting the rock from the spry older-looking man? Skinner gets taken to task by Cancer Man because of that? We're far more invested in concerns about Dana not up to following Fox however far this investigation will take him. (Good in this case, because I didn't really see a women's gulag.)The Cigarette-Smoking Man and Well-Manicured Man have a sharp scene, but according to the fourth-season episode guide, William B. Davis and John Neville were disappointed that a couple others were cut out of the episode due to time constraints. That's too bad, it really would have served "Tunguska" well to eliminate some other padding -- maybe with Senator Sorensen -- in favor of their part of the story.
Marita Covarrubias' progression isn't working quite as well as Alex's at this point. She definitely doesn't fit the mold as Fox's latest informant. And that's clearly by design, were they mulling over possible romantic inclinations between the two? The fan base at the time certainly thought so and derided her to no end because of it. The scene in the decontamination tank with the dead-but-not-dead Sacks is appropriately tense, and it's great to have Pendrell on hand to first be a bit concerned about donning the same gear as the departed doc. Luckily, Scully's there and she's got the balls to get the job done.
I always thought the Krycek beatings went a little overboard ... and I still do. We get it. Alex is a bad man involved in deaths of Sculder's family members -- none of which have been actually proved. No wonder Mulder was "deceived" when Krycek was able to get out of the Russian mining camp without offering assistance to the man who held him captive for large parts of the episode. By the way, they have to dig and then be hit by the black oil at night? That's harsh. Fox is going way beyond the scope of his duties in "Tunguska." And he wanted to find out about the black oil. Now he is ... the hard way.
Kim Manners finally gets the reins of a conspiracy episode and brings a lot of style to it. He started by directing bottle eps, but fully immerses himself in the show's life blood here with an arresting visual approach that enables viewers to buy into the more fantastic elements. He delivers movie quality from the early moments of Scully testifying before the committee to Krycek and Mulder being chased on horseback and Fox's subsequent dousing with the contagion. Meta from Mars: In the official fourth-season episode, Spotnitz recalled that NASA's August 1996 news conference suggesting primitive life existed on Mars over 3.6 billion years ago inspired the heart of the two-parter. ... Mitch Pileggi (another of the X-Fest fan favorites) admitted during his panel he regretted some of his "improvs" seen on outtake reels. Did he mean something like this? ... In The Complete X-Files, Lea said Manners had a platform for him at the balcony, but he told the director it would look better if Krycek's feet were dangling so they removed it. ... This episode sparked some continuing set humor, Anderson recounted in The Complete X-Files. "(Manners) was trying to remind us that what we were dealing with was from outer space, and we were treating it too casually. So right before we would shoot, he'd yell 'Rock from Mars!' and that became our running joke from that point on. Every time we needed to get it up for the scene, Kim would yell 'Rock from Mars!' and that would be his way of kind of sparking us into life again when we were just too exhausted."
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