【China】

Somewhere in northern Alaska,China in the remote halls of a scientific research facility, on a bitter winter night, two TV shows spun similarly chilling mysteries two decades apart. And for both, it was bad, bad news for scientists.

In 2024, True Detective: Night Countrysends you to a station on the snowy outskirts of the fictional town of Ennis, where an entire team of biologists and geologists suddenly vanishes. In 1993, The X-Filessent us to a similar outpost in Icy Cape, where a team of geophysicists met a grim end.

SEE ALSO: Could 'True Detective: Night Country's tribute to 'The Thing' be a clue for the rest of the season?

If you're watching the fourth season of the HBO series and want a thematic chaser between episodes, of course, hit up John Carpenter's The Thing, and then join Scully and Mulder for a cold, cold case.

The best. Credit: Merrick Morton / 20th Century Fox / Kobal / Shutterstock

What happens in The X-Files episode "Ice"?

Here's the set-up in "Ice," Season 1, episode 8 of The X-Files.

Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Everyone's favourite hot FBI agents who regularly dabble in the unexplainable find themselves with a humdinger of case on their desk. This time, the truth is wayout there, in Icy Cape, Alaska, at a research facility 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The members of the Arctic Ice Core Project, responsible for drilling into the ice sheets to extract cylinders of ice for climate analysis (kind of like the scientists in True Detective), have been found strewn about the halls, brutally killed.

A bloody lone survivor has left a message. "We're not who we are," he broadcasts. "It goes no further than this. It stops right here, right now." The ever-excellent Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) are called in to investigate with a small team of project consultants, and their time in the Icy Cape is about as relaxing as you'd expect. What exactly did the team extract in those ice cores? And what's affecting the members of the investigation team one by one?

---

Featured Video For You

---

Who Are the UAP Whistleblowers and What Are They Telling Congress?

---

The episode shares a lot with True Detective's first episode, including the remoteness of the location, scientists scrambling to unpack the mystery of the outpost's fate, and the self-recorded videos of the team goofing around before their untimely demise. I'm not going to ruin the ending, but this is The X-Files,so while the answer to real-life space questions is never aliens, in this show, it's almost always aliens.

---

Related Stories

---

• 'True Detective: Night Country': What's the deal with the spirals?
• 'True Detective: Night Country': Is the long night a real thing?
• 'True Detective: Night Country's writer/director could be a clue to its mystery
• Every 'True Detective: Night Country' opening credits clue you may have missed
• Top streaming deals in January: Lock in a free month of Paramount+ ahead of the Grammys

Ultimately, The X-Filesis paying its real homage to The Thing, and all the shape-shifting extraterrestrial possibility that screenwriters love to imagine lurking beneath the ice — that's millions of years of life under there. But it's the perfect TV pairing for True Detectivefans, if you're feeling comfortable out in all that sinister ice.

How to watch:True Detective: Night Countryis now streaming on Max, and The X-Filesis now streaming on Hulu.

Topics HBO True Detective

• Entertainment
• Life
• Tech
• Games
• Digital Culture
• Social Good
• Shopping
• Deals

• Asus VivoWatch 6 AERO measures blood pressure and ECG
• Trump's first foreign trip is already a disaster and it hasn't even started
• Le Mans 24 embraces esports for its 88th annual race on June 13
• Samsung Galaxy Note 20 to be launched in August at online event, report says
• Put Me In, Coach!
• 5 Game of Thrones spinoff ideas we had in case HBO is interested
• Chrome's newest update brings revamped safety controls, tab groups
• Can Google Ads data predict the next coronavirus outbreak?
• Big-League Bluster
• Steve Carell's photo taped over real Space Force chief in clever museum prank

• classpass learns the hard way you can’t just ‘figure out the business model'
• 'Parks and Rec' predicted the Cubs' win
• A Tale of two Indias: An emerging tech superpower or market for the rest of the world
• 'The Crown' could well cure your 'Downton Abbey' nostalgia
• Aziz Ansari, Jimmy Fallon invest in Momofuku's delivery
• The Chicago Cubs just won their first World Series since 1908
• These live
• Facebook's mobile business is bigger than ever
• Cat trying to catch baseball on TV screen should be World Series MVP
• 'The Hamilton Mixtape' track list is here and it's glorious

• NYT Connections Sports Edition hints and answers for May 19: Tips to solve Connections #238
• Disney Springs partially reopened with new social distancing rules
• Twitter tests feature that limits who can respond to tweets
• Pedro Pascal shouts out the stuntmen who helped create his Mandalorian
• The EPA axed its climate change websites, but NASA's are still intact
• Google's Search app adds dark mode setting for Android and iOS
• Everything coming to (and going from) Netflix in June 2020
• Here's how Ed Helms and Rashida Jones joined 'The Office'
• NYT mini crossword answers for May 12, 2025
• Over 100 students walked out of a commencement speech in protest of VP Mike Pence

• Best Samsung deal: Save $60 on 64GB Samsung Galaxy Tab A9
• Twitter's co
• One florist is beautifying NYC with flower arrangements in unlikely places
• Apple launches 2 new Pride
• Amazon Prime Grubhub deal: Save $10 off orders of $20 or more
• Note to Comey: Avoiding a hug from Trump takes practice. Just ask Hillary Clinton
• Turns out 'Red Dead Redemption 2' is a perfect platform for work meetings
• Twitter goes nuts over Trump's 'nut job' comment
• President Trump says semiconductor tariffs are next
• Miley Cyrus performs 'The Climb' in honor of 2020 graduates