Tunguska (The X-Files)

"Tunguska"
The X-Files episode
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 8
Directed by	Kim Manners
Written by	Chris Carter Frank Spotnitz
Production code	4X09
Original air date	November 24, 1996
Running time	44 minutes
Guest appearance(s)
Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner Nicholas Lea as Alex Krycek William B. Davis as The Smoking Man John Neville as Well-Manicured Man Laurie Holden as Marita Covarrubias Brendan Beiser as Pendrell Fritz Weaver as Senator Sorenson David Bloom as Stress Man Malcolm Stewart as Dr. Sacks Campbell Lane as Committee Chairman Stefan Arngrim as Prisoner Brent Stait as Timothy Mayhew Dawn Murphy as 1st Customs Officer Andy Thompson as 2nd Customs Officer Phillip Heinrich as Assault Agent Jano Frandsen as Older Agent
Episode chronology
← Previous "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" Next → "Terma"
List of season 4 episodes List of The X-Files episodes

"Tunguska" is the eighth episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premièred on the Fox network on November 24, 1996. It was directed by Kim Manners, and written by Frank Spotnitz and series creator Chris Carter. "Tunguska" featured guest appearances by John Neville, Nicholas Lea and Fritz Weaver. The episode helped explore the series' overarching mythology. "Tunguska" earned a Nielsen household rating of 12.2, being watched by 18.85 million people in its initial broadcast.

In the episode, FBI special agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) travels to Russia to investigate the source of a black oil contamination. His partner Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and assistant director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) are summoned to attend a United States Senate hearing on Mulder's whereabouts. "Tunguska" is a two-part episode, with the plot continuing in the next episode, "Terma".

"Tunguska" was inspired by reports of evidence of extraterrestrial life possibly being found in the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite, while the gulag setting was inspired by the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The story offered the writers a chance to expand the scale of the series' mythology globally, although production of the episode was described as troublesome and expensive.

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