TVSquad

(S01E09) Real events inspired this episode. Chris Carter says he wrote Space after seeing the real 'face on Mars' photograph. According to the experts over at The X-Files wiki, this episode was meant to be a cheaply made one with lots of NASA footage but the construction of the command center pushed them over budget and made Space the most expensive episode of the season. Whoops.

The episode opens with a reporter talking about photographs from Mars that show water was on the planet, and of the 'face on Mars' phenomenon. Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt chalks up that face to the solar winds that blow on the surface of Mars at 300 mph. Back at home, however, the 'face' photograph haunts Belt. He dreams about being on a spacewalk where something is out there with him. He looks up at the ceiling and sees the Mars face come down at him.

We see lots of video of NASA and a countdown for a lift-off and then it's suddenly aborted at just three seconds before lift-off. Two weeks later, one of the science techs at NASA has a secret meeting with Mulder and Scully about the failed launch. She thinks she has evidence of tampering in the space shuttle. She wants the agents' help because they're experts in unexplained phenomenon. The damage done to the shuttle would have been impossible to do without someone knowing.

The agents head on over to NASA, where Mulder has a very long monologue about possible suspects for sabotage of the space shuttle. He lists off terrorists, anti-government activists, futurists, humanists... and aliens. Of course. Mulder is starstruck when he meets Lt. Col. Belt and Scully can't talk him out of postponing the launch because of their suspicions of sabotage. At this point, we start to wonder whether Mulder took this case just to watch the shuttle launch.

Anyway, the agents do a little nosing around and begin to think the x-ray they received is bogus. They watch from mission control as the shuttle once again counts down to launch. This time we have a successful lift-off. The agents get the thumbs-up and prepare to leave town until their NASA contact, Michelle, notifies them of a problem. NASA has lost contact with the shutle. They follow Michelle through pouring rain where she sees the Mars face and crashes her car.

It turns out the orbiter maneuvering system is not functioning. The orbiter can't turn away from the sun to prevent itself from burning up. One NASA tech thinks it looks like someone is purposefully in the database and monkeying with the orbiter's controls. Mulder, Scully, and Michelle go looking through some cubicles and find some nervous scientist-looking fellow who is trying to troubleshoot the database. Lt. Col. Belt decides to cut off ground control to give the astronauts a chance to turn the orbiter manually. After a few tense moments, the crew reports their success.

Belt reports back to the media that the orbiter is responding perfectly. When Mulder questions him, he gives a very poignant (and still timely) speech about how America's space program is now ignored by the general public and the media unless something goes wrong. Belt returns to his hotel room and returns to his dreams about the face, only this time it has inhabited his body like a ghost. It flies out of his hotel room and into the air.

The next morning, the orbiter is once again suffering problems. The astronauts reported hearing a thump outside the orbiter and then discovered they have an oxygen leak. The agents retrieve Lt. Col. Belt from his hotel room, where he appears hungover. He tells the astronauts to put on their oxygen suits and drain the orbiter of the CO2 build-up and then deliver their payload. According to Michelle, this is a death sentence for the astronauts (one of them is her fiance).

Mulder and Scully go searching through hundreds of thousands of documents to look for proof that Lt. Col. Belt knew about a sabotage. Suddenly, inside mission control the astronauts start screaming about some sort of ghost outside the ship and Belt starts screaming, "No!" Cut back to Mulder and Scully with the documents and they discover that Belt may have known about the defect that caused the Challenger disaster. They find Belt moaning under the desk in his office.

Michelle announces that she's bringing the shuttle down and Belt responds with, "Noooo! It's out there!" Mulder gets Belt to focus and to tell him that the shuttle won't survive reentry because the heat tiles are damaged (geez- it's like Chris Carter predicted the future here). He says "they" sabotaged the shuttle and "they" can't be stopped. Belt's heart stops and when he's brought back to life, he tells Mulder to change the reentry trajectory. After some more tense moments, mission control re-establishes contact with the space shuttle, which has landed safely in Albuquerque.

At the end, the alien or whatever it is, returns to torture Lt. Col. Belt in his hospital room. He dives out of a window to his death. Mulder knows an alien was possessing him and Scully believes the doctor's assessment that Belt was suffering from dementia.

Great one-liner from Mulder:
Scully: "What do you think?"
Mulder: "I can't believe we put so much faith in machines."