Quagmire (The X-Files)

"Quagmire (The X-Files)"

"Quagmire" is the twenty-second episode of the third season of The X-Files. When a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances are reported near a lake in a small town, Agents Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate. With local folklore of a killer sea serpent running rampant amongst the locals, the agents must take their search for the truth to the water. Text taken from the Quagmire summary here.

Trivia

• The title itself, Quagmire refers to the type of area in which most of the episode is set.
• Queequeg, as is revealed, is the harpoonist from Moby-Dick, which is the inspiration for what Agent Scully names her dog. Dana inherited the dog itself from a previous episode.
• Furthermore, Moby-Dick seems to be the inspiration for the nicknames Dana and her father used for each other in the first season, which were Ahab and Starbuck, respectively.
• The name of the location of the 'sea monster' sightings, Heuvelmans Lake, is likely a reference to French 'father of cryptozoology' Bernard Heuvelmans, given the cryptozoological nature of the episode.
• The episode bears many similarities to the 1999 film Lake Placid, in which a community is threatened by a giant alligator.
• The Legendary Creature in the episode is nicknamed "Big Blue". At almost 13 minutes into the episode, in a possible hidden play-on-words reference, a "Great Blue" Heron is seen flying along the lake.
• The teenagers featured licking the toad in the scene on the dock later appear two seasons later in the episode "War of the Coprophages."

External links

• Quagmire at IMDb
• Quagmire at TV.com