731 (The X-Files)

In Perkey, West Virginia, a group of US Army soldiers arrives at an abandoned leprosy research compound, seizing most of the patients. One patient, Escalante, hides beneath a trapdoor during the arrival and follows the group to a secluded field nearby. He watches as the soldiers shoot the other patients, who are all apparent alien-human hybrids, into a mass grave.

Fox Mulder loses his cell phone after jumping on top of the moving train, losing contact with Dana Scully. When questioned by Scully, X tells her to analyze her implant, saying that it will give her answers about the train and her sister Melissa's murder. Meanwhile, Mulder enters the train and finds that the secret railcar is quarantined and protected by a security system. He searches for Zama, enlisting the train conductor for help. In Zama's compartment, they find hand-written journals in Japanese. However, elsewhere on the train, the Red-Haired Man intercepts and strangles Zama.

Scully sees Pendrell, who tells her that the implant contains highly advanced technology that can replicate the brain's memory functions and enable someone to know a person's very thoughts. The manufacturer of the chip was Zama, who created the implant at the West Virginia compound. Scully travels there, meeting a group of deformed patients who have eluded the "death squads." Escalante tells her that the patients were experimented on by Zama, who departed long ago; since then, the death squads have set out to massacre them. Escalante shows her the mass grave but is killed when US Army soldiers arrive to capture Scully, who is delivered to the First Elder.

Mulder returns to the railcar, seeing its door ajar; an alien-human test subject is locked in a room inside. The Red-Haired Man attacks Mulder, causing the conductor to lock them both in the car. The Red-Haired Man claims to work for the NSA, and that a bomb in the car was triggered after he gained entry with Zama's pass code. Mulder doesn't believe him, but he is called by Scully on the Red-Haired Man's cell phone. Scully—who is with the First Elder in a similar railcar—tells Mulder that unwitting subjects, including herself, were operated on by Zama on the secret railway, with the alien abduction theory used as a smokescreen. She also confirms that a bomb is in the car and believes that the quarantined patient is infected with hemorrhagic fever. She fears that thousands will die from the disease if the car explodes. Mulder finds the bomb in the ceiling.

After the car is disconnected from the rest of the train on a remote rail siding, Mulder questions the Red-Haired Man, who says that the patient is immune to biological warfare. Zama had tried to sneak the patient out of the country, but the government would rather see it destroyed than let their research fall into Japanese hands; the Red-Haired Man was sent to kill them both. Mulder, however, believes that the patient is an alien-human hybrid. With help from Scully, Mulder successfully unlocks the door of the railcar, but he is knocked unconscious by the Red-Haired Man. As the Red-Haired Man is about to leave, X appears and shoots him. Realizing that the bomb is about to explode and that there is not enough time to both save Mulder and secure the patient, X decides to save Mulder. X exits carrying the still unconscious Mulder shortly before the bomb explodes.

After recovering from his injuries, Mulder attempts to find information on the railcar, but he is unable to do so. Scully returns the journal that he found on the car, but Mulder realizes that it is a rewritten substitute. Meanwhile, the real journal is translated in a shadowy room as the Smoking Man watches.[1][2]

Jan Delasara, in her book '"PopLit, PopCult and The X-Files" argues that episodes such as "731" and "Nisei", or the earlier third-season episode "Paper Clip", show the public's trust in science "eroding". Delasara proposes that "arrogated" scientists who are "rework[ing] the fabric of life" are causing the public's faith in the scientific method to fade drastically, "a concern ... that is directly addressed by X-Files episodes". Moreover, she notes that almost all of the scientists portrayed in The X-Files are depicted with a "connection to ancient evil," with the lone exception being Agent Scully.[11] In "731," and earlier in "Nisei," the scientists are former Japanese scientists who worked for Unit 731. In their attempts to create a successful human-alien hybrid, they become the archetypical scientists who "[go] too far," a serious factor that Delasara argues "'alienates [the public] further from science and its practitioners".[11]

Critical opinion has also noted that both parts of the story arc offer an alternative explanation for the events of the series so far, a "less romantic" outcome that paints the ongoing plot as an elaborate hoax to defer attention from the government's experiments, both military and medical. Reviewer Emily VanDerWerff feels that such an explanation would "speak more to the sadness at the core of the X-Files to have Mulder find his answers and be forced to accept they weren't what he was looking for", comparing such a realization to the hero of Don Quixote.[12] This "hoax" plot device would later be revisited in both the fourth season finale "Gethsemane" and the fifth season's opening two-part episodes "Redux and Redux II", although to a much lesser degree of effectiveness.[13]

• Delasara, Jan (2000). PopLit, PopCult and The X-Files: A Critical Exploration. Mcfarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-0789-1.
• Edwards, Ted (1996). X-Files Confidential. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-21808-1.
• Lovece, Frank (1996). The X-Files Declassified. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-1745-X.
• Lowry, Brian (1996). Trust No One: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. ISBN 0-06-105353-8.

Wikiquote has quotations related to TXF Season 3.

• "731" on The X-Files official website
• "731" at IMDb