442:. Mulder declines Scully's request that he go to the hospital and goes to visit his mother, demanding she explain what really happened when they had to make a choice between him and Samantha. Mulder believes that The Smoking Man forced them to take Samantha. Mulder also questions who his father really is. Mulder's mother gets upset and refuses to provide him answers. Later Mulder visits Goldstein, and convinces him to again treat him so he will remember what really happened. Mulder has further visions of the past. Scully and the police arrive soon after to arrest Goldstein but find Mulder gone. Scully finds him at the family's summer home in Rhode Island and is able to calm him down. While Mulder is cleared in the deaths of the Cassandras, what truly happened when he was a child remains a mystery.
415:. Mulder has a pounding headache and has no memory of what he has done in the past two days. Scully finds that two bullets have been fired from Mulder's gun and that he has keys belonging to a David and Amy Cassandra. Scully wants Mulder to check into a hospital, but he wants to find out if he was involved in a crime before doing so. The agents arrive at the Cassandras' house where the housekeeper tells them they are not at home. Mulder recognizes a house in many of the Cassandras' paintings: a house that is near his parents' summer home in Rhode Island. When they arrive there, Mulder has striking pains in his head and flashes back again to when he was a child, seeing a younger version of
504:, the actor who played the character, later noted, "As the story developed, we developed a relationship between Cigarette-Smoking Man and Mulder's apparent father, and Cigarette-Smoking Man and Mulder's mother; then we started backfilling with an historical connection." Carter explained that the episode was the start of the series' greater conspiracy: "It's an interesting development because it really was the development of the conspiracy. The elements of the conspiracy were part of his development. But back story, of course, intertwined with Mulder's." For this episode, actor
431:, an anesthesic substance that has hallucinogenic properties. The substance was detected in Mulder's blood as well. Meanwhile, one of the officers at the station kills himself; he has similar symptoms to that of the Cassandras. Mulder suffers a seizure and flashes back to his childhood again, witnessing his parents arguing with The Smoking Man. Scully sees Mulder the next day, telling him that she believes that the Cassandras killed themselves after receiving psychiatric treatment and that Mulder was visiting them about their alien abduction experiences.
343:. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In this episode, Mulder wakes up in a hotel with blood all over him and no memory of what happened. Mulder and Scully soon discover that Mulder was involved in a double homicide and may have been the killer. It is soon revealed that Mulder had been seeing a doctor who had allowed him to view glimpses of his past memories. After evidence becomes paramount, Mulder is cleared of the murder charges.
519:(a group of behavioral phenomena, of which one is the ability to recall every memory of one's younger life) can be self-induced by using a unique combination of technology and drugs—something that is not supported by modern medicine. When writing the episode, Goodwin was aware of the idea's implausibility and admitted that he took significant creative liberties with the disorder. In fact, the technology used in the episode to induce Mulder's flashbacks was based on various
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616:, rated the episode one-and-a-half stars out of five, calling it "the wrong episode at the wrong time." The author argued that the attention given to Mulder's potential "aneurysm" are oddly juxtaposed next to Scully's real, life-threatening brain cancer. However, they did call the flashback sequences "masterpieces of editing", but noted that their contents "lack information".
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The agents call the police, who take Mulder with them due to the circumstantial evidence against him. Scully performs an autopsy on Amy
Cassandra, finding a scab on her forehead. The detective in charge of the case tells Mulder that they have found David and Amy's blood on his shirt. Mulder refuses
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wrote highly of the episode and awarded it an A−. Handlen praised the episode's exploration of Mulder's mind, noting that the entry allowed the audience to see Mulder's views of the world. He argued that "Mulder's desperate need to understand what happened to his sister drives him to expect
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gave the episode a largely positive review and awarded it three-and-a-half stars out of four. She wrote that "Demons" works "as a character study of Mulder" and praised the episode's "hyper-realistic flashback" sequences. Vitaris, while calling the structure of the story "not particularly
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betrayal, because at least with betrayal, the world makes some kind of sense." He did write, however, that he was "a little disappointed at how "Demons" doesn't really hold up in retrospect from a story perspective," but noted that "what does work here is great." Paula
Vitaris from
438:, who was treating Amy with an aggressive method to help her recover her abduction memories. Goldstein also treated the police officer, but says he has not met Mulder before. Mulder has another painful flashback of The Smoking Man arguing with his mother,
489:(1995), which details a man who could recall every detail of his childhood. Interested in this idea, Goodwin developed a story in which "Mulder wakes up in a strange place no idea how he got there". After receiving approval from series creator
543:" had been filmed. The show's art department rented and refurbished the house, took photographs of the building, then returned it to its original state for the actual filming. The paintings of the house were then manipulated with
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of 11.8, with an 18 share, meaning that roughly 11.8 percent of all television-equipped households, and 18 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 19.10 million viewers.
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of 11.8, being watched by 19.1 million viewers in its initial broadcast. The episode received mostly positive reviews from television critics, with many complimenting the episode's look into Mulder's mind.
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was "continuously stopped and started" to give the captured scenes an "out-of-time" feel. The scenes' colors were then manipulated by having the film strips negatives filtered with
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featuring a man who could recall every detail of his childhood. During the flashback sequences in the episode, various effects were created by manipulating the camera and its film.
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The show's camera operators and editors made use of several distortion techniques to give the flashback sequences a hazy, uneasy, and "dystemporal" feel. First, the camera's
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in a flashback. The sequence's colors were manipulated during film development; the film's negatives were filtered with strobe lights.
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and director for the show. Goodwin was inspired to write the episode after reading "The
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and director for the show. This marked the second instance where a member of the production crew wrote an episode, after the
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to confess to the murders, not remembering anything. Scully arrives, saying she found in Amy's blood traces of
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while their parents are arguing downstairs. Back in the present, Mulder wakes up in a hotel room in
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Wanting to
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Wanting to
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Critical response to the episode was mostly positive. Zack
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The cottage used in the episode was actually a farmhouse located in
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in the United States on May 11, 1997 and in the United
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582:"Demons" was originally broadcast in the United States on the
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I Want to
Believe: The Official Guide to the X-Files Volume 3
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374:The Landscape of Dreams
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319:The show centers on
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699:(booklet).
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572:Paul Rabwin
506:Chris Owens
477:neurologist
421:Chris Owens
405:Dana Scully
333:Dana Scully
305:Kim Manners
289:Fox network
284:The X-Files
191:Bill Mulder
148:Chris Owens
136:Jay Acovone
79:Kim Manners
75:Directed by
35:The X-Files
1220:Categories
1181:Gethsemane
1125:Unrequited
1020:Herrenvolk
836:0061053864
446:Production
385:Fox Mulder
325:Fox Mulder
233:Gethsemane
197:Fox Mulder
121:44 minutes
110:1997-05-11
85:Written by
70:Episode 23
1146:Synchrony
620:Footnotes
578:Reception
309:mythology
1205:Category
1160:Zero Sum
1069:Tunguska
1011:Season 4
921:episodes
876:"Demons"
870:"Demons"
541:Tunguska
429:ketamine
397:Samantha
360:Wetwired
276:American
248:season 4
216:Previous
62:Episode
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931:Seasons
746:24 June
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556:shutter
539:" and "
527:Filming
521:New Age
451:Writing
391:) mind
358:entry "
341:X-Files
293:BBC One
274:of the
270:of the
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1034:Teliko
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264:Demons
26:Demons
1167:Elegy
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52:with
1027:Home
880:IMDb
850:ISBN
831:ISBN
808:ISBN
748:2012
547:and
537:Home
387:'s (
380:Plot
227:Next
98:4X23
1139:Max
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512:".
321:FBI
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174:as
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