The X Files, Alien Implants

replica movie prop

Alien Implants

1) Ray Soames’ Implant 

From: The Pilot Episode

(Seen in the black lid specimen vial)

On their first case together Mulder and Scully traveled to Bellefleur, Oregon to investigate a possible alien abduction scenario involving the graduating class of 1989. One of their first duties was to exhume the body of Ray Soames, one of the first victims of the class to die in connection with the abductions, however the body was far from human in appearance. During the autopsy of the body, Scully discovered a small grey metallic implant in the nasal cavity which would become the only evidence from the case that survived at the resolution of the story. That is, until it was handed over to the Cigarette Smoking Man who placed it in a basement storage faculty in the Pentagon with other implants just like it. 

For the replica in my collection Demijan Omeragic and I studied screen caps which he then turned into a 3D render for a machinist to make. We also used Scully’s on screen description for the approximate width and based the height on a similar specimen jar which I had found on eBay.

2) Duane Barry's Implant 

From: “Duane Barry”

(Seen in the upright white lid specimen vial)

Duane Barry was a former FBI Agent and multiple abductee who was relieved of his position after being shot in the line of duty in 1984. Scully theorized that this injury, which had pierced his bilateral frontal lobes, left Duane with brain damage causing him to be a pathological liar and had warned Mulder not to trust his stories of alien abductions. However, after Duane was shot once again in 1994 during a hostage situation in which he was the hostage taker, doctors had found small shards of metal right where Duane told Mulder they would be. He had said that the implants were a means of tracking him. When Scully took one for analysis it had first appeared to be simple piece of shrapnel that Duane could have gotten during the Vietnam War, however under closer examination it had what looked like a very small barcode etched into it. On a whim Scully chose to run the implant shard through a scanner at a local grocery store and it made the computers go haywire. 

For the replica in my collection I had drawn the shape of Duane’s implant on a thick sheet of aluminum, cut it out, and then distressed it to match the screen used prop. After that it just needed to be placed in the screen accurate specimen jar. 

3) Scully’s Implant

First seen in: “The Blessing Way”

(Seen in the sideways white lid specimen vial)

Sometime after her abduction in Season 2, Scully became aware of an implant in the back of her neck while passing through a metal detector at the FBI. She would soon learn that her implant was made from alien technology but was manufactured in Japan. It was used by the Syndicate in their abduction and Alien-Human Hybrid experiments. Once removed from Scully’s neck she soon became sick with a terminal cancer.

The chip in my collection is actually the head of a nail that I felt had approximately the correct shape and size. I did try to detail the one side of it to match a close up of the chip as seen in the show, however it is a very small prop and the detailed close up we saw in one of the stories was an enlarged prop made specifically to show the detail. The vial I had found on eBay and it matched the size, shape and look of the one seen in “The Blessing Way”

4) Dana Scully’s Replacement Implant 

From: “Redux” & “Redux II”

(The file card, the implant & petri dish and the metal vial)

In Season 5 Mulder gained access to the to the Pentagon by using the ID of a Department of Defense operative that had he caught spying on him. He originally had hoped to find those responsible for giving Scully cancer but was interrupted by Michael Kritschgau who had informed him that the ID he was now using gave him clearance to much more information. While there Mulder found a catalog system which contained an index card file for Scully. This card had a long serial number and a catalog ID which lead him to another storage area full of metal vials with the correspondingly catalog number. Later, with the help of the Cigarette Smoking Man - as strange as that may be given his involvement in Scully's abduction - and the Lone Gunmen, Mulder became convinced that this chip could cure Scully’s cancer and soon after she agreed to have it placed in the base of her neck her cancer went into remission. Whether or not the chip was actually responsible was left up to viewers to decide.

The implant in my collection was made in the same way as the one listed above but this implant came with a few more bells and whistles in the show. First up is the catalog card which I recreated in Photoshop using screen caps as a base. The metal vial was designed by Demijan Omeragic, machined by Dark Energy Creations, and the vinyl letters were made by Justin Monk. Before applying those letters I first polished the piece and painted the screw cover lip (the lid is removable) to match the screen used prop. Lastly, for some extra nerd points, I found the same Kimex Petri Dish used by the Lone Gunmen when Mulder found the implant in the metal vial.