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, each of the agents takes an own approch of searching for the truth to the water: while Scully is so sure it's only a myth that every morning she goes for a naked swim in the mysterious sea, Mulder believes that there actually is something out there. Text taken from the "Quagmire" summary here.
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (September 2007) |
- 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.
- In Heuvelmans Lake appears on souvenir mugs in The X-Files: The Game.
- 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 appeared earlier in the season in the episode "War of the Coprophages."
- This episode would be one of the few notable episodes in which the story line does not deal with any paranormal or supernatural forces. The ending of the episode is, however, designed to remove that possibility.
