Deep Throat is Both Pure X-Files and Sharp Social Commentary

Where the pilot episode of The X-Files focused on familiarizing us with the characters, structure, and broader themes the series will explore, the second episode, “Deep Throat,” introduces us to the show’s sprawling mythology and Carter’s conception of his work as an ongoing dialogue, both with itself and with culture at large.

The teaser echoes and inverts the pilot as Military Police respond, guns drawn, to a situation in the home of Lt. Col. Robert Budahas. The swooping camera remains, but the dark Oregon forest is swapped out for midday suburbia. The cover-up remains, but we shift from local law enforcement to the United States Military. You can tell off the bat Daniel Sackheim’s direction is a lot more immediate than Thomas Del Ruth’s work in the pilot. He freely utilizes handheld shooting and dramatic camera movement like truck-ins and whip pans to viscerally draw the audience into the action. After this evocative opener, utilizing what will eventually become Frank Black’s house in Carter’s sister series Millennium, we get our first look at the series’ famous opening credits and theme.

The X-Files’ iconic opening credits sequence is a great introduction to each episode, joining Twin Peaks, Millennium, and assorted Star Treks as the best of the famously luxurious ’90s openers. Mark Snow’s haunting synth echoes over a number of fascinating images, quickly familiarizing viewers with the premise. We see the moody title card from the pilot. A picture of a UFO, cutting closer and closer in as if obsessing over its potential authenticity. A star chart taken from an old Rod Serling documentary, with someone marking points of interest. An electrical orb and a face twisted in distress. Seeds germinating with the words “paranormal activity” onscreen. Mulder and Scully’s badges. A ghostly presence walking down a hallway with the phrase “government denies knowledge” onscreen. A shot of Mulder and Scully entering a room taken from the next episode, “Squeeze.” A hazy figure falling with a Kirlian photograph of a hand in the background. An opening eye, and finally a shot of an unforgiving landscape with the classic tagline “the truth is out there” onscreen. In the span of a minute we’re introduced to the possibility of extraterrestrial life on Earth, weird science and its effect on the human form, ideas blossoming in the mind and taking root, auras captured by Kirlian photography, and finally understanding the harsh reality of the truth. It’s a beautifully abstract representation of Scully’s journey—after all she is our viewpoint character—and by Season 8 the opening eye will be replaced with Gillian Anderson’s own.

The story proper picks up four months later, with Mulder meeting Scully in a bar to give her the brief on Budahas. He swoops in from behind, almost as if for a kiss, capturing the more overtly flirtatious dynamic the two share in these early episodes. Then he goes to the bathroom, where he’s approached by an older man, Deep Throat, who tells him he should drop the Budahas case. It’s a great introduction, with the camera panning down from Mulder looking in the mirror to wash his hands, then up to reveal Deep Throat standing behind him. A great reminder that this is a show which always goes the extra mile, never settling for typical bland TV direction.

Deep Throat lends the episode its title despite the fact he’s relegated to the edge of the story, inviting the audience to consider his place in it. At this point he serves to bring to the surface a theme which was already bubbling in the background of the pilot: the idea of the bipartite nature of the state, an apparatus which exists to empower and help people even as it continually accumulates power of its own, which it uses to oppress those same people. Later that evening Mulder finds evidence he’s being watched, but that only strengthens his resolve.

After arriving in town the agents learn from the Colonel’s wife that another Air Force officer disappeared, and returned some time later as a neurotic shell of his former self. His wife isn’t willing to help, however, going so far as to praise the military for offering her husband therapy after shattering his mind. They’re stonewalled by the base director as well before being referred to a UFOlogist diner by Paul Mossinger, a local reporter.

Mulder plays on the enthusiasm of the restaurant owners and gets a map to the base. The agents stake it out, and that night they see lights dancing in the sky in ways impossible with known flight technology. Though on the whole “Deep Throat” lacks the moodiness of the pilot this scene is playful, wondrous, and memorable, a true highlight.

The agents spot a couple of stoners (one played by a young Seth Green) being chased from the base, and take them out for some of the worst hamburgers ever made to get some information about what’s inside. After dropping them off they get word from Anita Budahas that her husband has returned, but something isn’t right. Mulder grills him and finds he no longer possesses any knowledge about piloting.

With this, Mulder starts to build his theory. He believes the Air Force is using extraterrestrial technology gathered at Roswell to build the jets they saw the night before. He suggests the alien tech is so complex it’s taken over 40 years to make work, and the stress of flying it is too much for the human body to handle. The pilots burn out, and the Air Force then removes the memories from their minds. Scully is of course unconvinced.

They decide to return to the base to see what they can find, but get roughed up by some Men in Black and told to leave town. Back at the hotel they have an argument about whether or not to continue their investigation. Mulder pretends to be convinced by Scully’s plea to leave it alone, but then hops into the car and takes off, establishing his occasional bout of petulance.

He sneaks onto the base and walks right onto the airfield, another example of his recklessness. He’s quickly spotted by one of the experimental aircraft, an extremely creepy moment and another of the most famous images in the series. He’s chased down and taken inside, where at least part of his hypothesis is proven true as the memories of his time in the base are forcibly removed.

Back at the hotel, Scully is getting frustrated. The phones aren’t working due to signal interference from the base, and nobody knows when they’ll be back up. She’s approached by Mossinger, the reporter, and notices a radio in his car receiving instructions from the military. She takes him hostage at gunpoint, and forces him to drive to the base to exchange for Mulder. This establishes Scully’s ability to think quickly and take charge, an important aspect of her character. It’s also interesting to note how, in accordance with Carter flipping the gendered script in making Scully the rationalist skeptic and Mulder the sensitive believer, Mulder is the first to act as damsel in distress.

Scully gets Mulder back but he can’t remember what happened inside the base. Anita Budahas refuses to talk to them anymore, and they can’t even prove any crimes have been committed. Mulder and Scully have been soundly defeated. Suburbia has worked the agents, as well as truth and justice, out like a splinter.

After they return to DC, Mulder is approached again by Deep Throat. He basically came to say, “I told you so,” but it’s here he offers to be a reliable source going forward as long as Mulder heeds his advice. Mulder agrees, and Deep Throat throws him a bone. He implicitly confirms the rest of Mulder’s alien technology hypothesis, suggesting Roswell was just one of many salvage operations, and that “they” have been here a very long time.

With this, Deep Throat’s purpose in the story is revealed. Mulder and Scully will find nothing but quick reassignment or termination fumbling around in the X-Files on their own. The ability of the security state to rebuff them is too great. They will need to strike surgically to have any success, and as such need a guiding light, someone to show them which thread will unravel the sweater. This sweater will serve as the plot which winds its way through each ensuing season of the series.

Even aside from the importance of our introduction to the show’s dense, sprawling mythology, it’s just another good episode. It has true thematic richness and Carter again gives us a refreshing lack of closure. Who is this Deep Throat? Can he be trusted? What is his place in this conspiracy? These are all answers for another day. For now Mulder has what he needs to keep running, even though he was again unable to shut the book on a massive mystery. Critic Darren Mooney of Second Wind, whose own work on this series is invaluable, has identified a core theme of the show as being Mulder and Scully as witnesses to truths of events and stories otherwise forgotten. “Deep Throat” serves as a powerful introduction to this idea. They ultimately didn’t find anyone to arrest or ensure these crimes won’t happen again, but they cared, and they commiserated.

Mulder’s fevered trip through the base is another interesting twist. While I have misgivings with the show resorting to erasing a character’s memories as early as Episode 2, the sequence is mysterious and elusive; the quick cutting teases us with hints of revelatory imagery and introduces us to Carter’s interest in the historical relationship between scientific experimentation and violation of the body and mind.

With “Deep Throat,” Carter also mounts a powerful criticism of contemporary America. He decides not to give the town at the center of the episode a name. All we know is that it’s in the vicinity of a military base. The decision not to name the town is smart, allowing it to stand in just for about any suburban or exurban area. The extremely white, middle-class population of this town have accepted limitless encroachment on their own liberty and ability to live in the name of freedom, patriotism, and, implicitly, consumerism. A number of local businesses flourish in town due to the presence of the base, both servicing staff and their family, and counter-cultural tourists drawn in by the base’s legacy as a destination for some of the Roswell UFO wreckage. It all results in people making a buck off the base as they service it, with even those critical of the system in essence still feeding into it, in spite of all the horrors going on inside.

The Air Force, meanwhile, is breaking the minds of the men who serve them, kidnapping them, and experimenting on them, all in the name of black budget projects designed only to wage war, and typically destabilize developing nations. These projects are kept secret from the American people. Even those whose lives are directly, and negatively, touched by them, are kept in the dark. The episode was produced in 1993, with Carter perhaps inspired by Gulf War Syndrome, a chronic condition experienced by over a third of the US service members who participated in the first war in Iraq, reports of which began to trickle in around 1991. The US government wouldn’t formally recognize the existence of Gulf War Syndrome until 2025. In the episode, the local press has been completely co-opted by the military industrial complex, assuredly steering coverage in ways the administrators at the base would endorse. Carter reproduces in miniature conditions we’ve seen writ large in years since, notably with the lead up to the second war in Iraq. The people of this nameless town even have their ability to communicate with the outside world curtailed at random times. They accept this, likely due to the reactionary impulse to see a tightly ordered existence as comfortable.

“Deep Throat,” like the pilot episode before it, acclimates the audience to a number of core narrative concepts which will carry over for several seasons to come, all while telling a fun and entertaining sci-fi story. It has a different set of ideas and different visual style from the previous episode, allowing us to see the show’s restless creativity immediately. Carter and company are already stretching their legs. It’s an auspicious start in a time when television shows weren’t always firing at all cylinders in the early going, and the best part is that they’re only just beginning.