Alien Space Worm
by Hilary A. Thomas
When I learned that the impeachment trial would be televised I did what any concerned citizen would do. I drove an hour to the nearest appliance store and bought a TV. Of course, being the techno whiz that I am, it took hours and several embarrassingly pathetic phone calls to get the darn thing set up. In truth, after a quick trip to the local hardware store (because one can never have too much cable) and then a return trip (to get the correct cable), I had it all plugged in and fired up in less than 10 hours. But, I digress.
One would think that on the long drive through the Southwest desert in search of a TV my thoughts would take a philosophical turn or, at the very least, contemplate the woes that Americas will collectively face with the forthcoming impeachment trial. Fortunately, my alert mind focused on more important matters like the television show X-Files. In particular, I recalled an episode where sex bomb FBI special agent Dana Scully brandished two X-ray films clutched in her hot little hands and dramatically announced that part of her DNA was alien (and we’re not talking south of the border here). No, we’re talking about an alien space worm she discovered in her terrestrial travels.
Now, I took it in stride that Scully was part alien. In fact, I believe my exact thoughts at that moment were, ‘Cool.’ Since I view much of the Hollywood scene as living on a different planet, this was no stretch for me. I did, however, take great exception to the way science was presented in this episode.
As I recall, Scully had a two hour time frame to do all the necessary lab work and get to her meeting. Anyone who has lived within a hundred mile radius of Washington, D. C. knows that it takes two hours to get across the street let alone across town. However, being in a generous mood, I will assume that some miracle befalls our heroic agent and that she is able to by pass that troublesome commute thing.
This brings us back to the lab and some of the technical stuff (my forte!). Dana wanted to test the alien DNA. Basically, she was looking for some kind of pattern that would help her identify it. A more definitive test would have been DNA sequencing but that would take years and hundreds of scientists and more importantly this approach would leave the viewing audience scrambling for their remote controls. So, I can live with her going for a pattern. Now you just can’t throw a worm under a microscope and see its DNA. You need to dig around in it and pull some of that stuff out. Again, being a magnanimous type person, I’ll overlook the pesky task of getting rid of the tissue and I will assume that Scully has in her possession a big ol’ hunk of DNA. Now if she were to cut the DNA as it is and it showed the same pattern as her DNA then this would mean that she is, in fact, an alien space worm. Since we know that this isn’t the case, I strongly suspect several steps in this process were left out. In fact, it would take many, many extraction procedures to obtain a portion of DNA with each stage taking all day to complete. So, lets assume that with the magic of Hollywood Scully has indeed only a portion of DNA. And again, with the wonder of Hollywood, I’ll grant that all the interim tasks to arrive at the fateful X-rays films are completed in a timely fashion. Perhaps they performed this lab work in another dimension which would explain a lot about the show in general!
For those who saw this episode, you may recall that each of the X-ray films had two black blobs positioned next to each other. While it looked pretty nifty, it neglected to show a pattern which was the entire point of the experiment! I’m also assuming that one of the black blobs on each of the films was a control sample, as all good scientists run controls. After looking at these films, it showed that Scully’s DNA, the alien space’s worm DNA and the control were all the same. My final question would have to be, what the heck did she use as a control sample? Maybe she used sex bomb FBI special agent Fox Mulder’s sister’s DNA as a control. Of course, this means that Dana and Fox could never be a couple as they would, in fact, be brother and sister.
