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"Brand X" is the eighteenth episode of the seventh season of the science fiction television series ''The X-Files''. It premiered on the Fox network in the United States on April 16, 2000. It was written by Steven Maeda and Greg Walker and directed by Kim Manners. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Brand X" earned a Nielsen household rating of 6.8, being watched by 10.81 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed reviews from critics. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In this episode, Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) is horrified when the witness who was due to testify against the Morley cigarette company dies mysteriously. After being called into assist, Mulder and Scully soon discover that a new brand of cigarette has a dangerous secret. Inspired by the 1999 film ''The Insider'', "Brand X" was written by Maeda and Walker to be an exploration of the corporate evil inside the cigarette industry. The scenes featuring shots of beetles crawling out of corpses were shot and filmed using real insects as well as real actors. In one particular scene, over 3,000 live insects were used. Those scenes took up to a full day to film. ==Plot== In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) is charged with guarding the life of Dr. James Scobie, a former researcher who is testifying against his former employer, the Morley tobacco corporation. Prior to his trial, Scobie develops a cough, but shrugs it off. In the morning, Skinner and Scobie's wife find his body on the bathroom floor, with his face ripped away. Morley has created a form of "super-tobacco", which is inhabited by a genetically engineered tobacco beetle whose eggs can survive the process of cigarette manufacturing and are released in the smoke of the cigarettes. The cigarettes were tested on a range of subjects by Scobie and his colleague, Dr. Peter Voss. Of the four human test subjects, chain smoker Darryl Weaver is the only surviving participant. Prior to his death, Scobie agreed to give Weaver an unlimited supply of cigarettes in exchange for his silence; he subsequently pressures Voss into honoring his "arrangement" with Scobie. A chain of victims soon succumb to the eggs contained in the toxic smoke, all of whom are found with their bodies covered in the tobacco beetles. While interviewing Weaver, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is exposed to the smoke, later coughing up blood and needing his lungs invasively cleared as the beetles begin to hatch. Voss, who had until now been hiding behind his legal advisor, has a change of heart upon hearing of Mulder’s condition and tells Skinner of the aforementioned testing. Skinner goes to Weaver’s apartment after getting his name from Dr. Voss and finds a man tied to a chair with a gag in his mouth. When Skinner removes the gauze wrapper around the man’s mouth, the man chokes and beetles begin crawling from his mouth. At the hospital, Mulder is in grave danger due to the beetle eggs now hatching in his lungs, and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) attempts to find a way to save him, because he is now "too weak for thoracic surgery." Meanwhile, Darryl Weaver attempts to browbeat Skinner, threatening to light one of the toxic cigarettes. As Weaver attempts to leave the building, Skinner shoots Weaver's shoulder and the pane of glass behind him, leaving him injured and covered in glass. He drops his cigarette to the floor and Skinner dramatically snuffs it out with his shoe. Back at the hospital, Scully realizes that nicotine might save Mulder’s life. She is correct in her solution, noting that Weaver’s nicotine tolerance didn’t allow the tobacco beetles to develop in his lungs. Scully administers nicotine to Mulder, who in turn recovers, albeit with a sore throat, as well as a minor addiction to nicotine, which drove him to buy a pack of Morley cigarettes for himself. However, upon some chiding by Scully, he throws them out, but then stares at them pensively after she leaves.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brand X (The X-Files)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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