The X Files 108 Ice Trivia, Facts, Goofs & Description

 Mulder and Scully are sent to investigate when a team of geophysicists stationed at a remote Alaskan outpost are killed by a parasitic alien life form.

Trivia

• The dog is David Duchovny's father's dog, Blue.
• This is known in the trade as a "bottle episode". In order to cut costs, the action of the episode is largely confined to just one or two sets.
• The alien parasites seen in this episode are the larvae of the darkling beetle, also known as super worms. They are commonly available as reptile food.
• One of the men in the teaser who shoots himself is played by Ken Kirzinger, the stunt co-ordinator on the series.
• It's likely that the character of Campbell is named in honor of John W. Campbell Jr., author of the story, "Who Goes There?" upon which The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982) and The Thing (2011) were based.
• Many have remarked on this episode's similarity with John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). Coincidentally, the series' production designer Graeme Murray also worked on Carpenter's movie.
• Richter's final video message is dated November 5, 1993. This was the same day that this episode aired.
• A meteor crater in an icy climate, parasites in meltwater and suspicious deaths are all important elements in "Smilla's Sense of Snow". Although the film came out four years after this episode, the novel was published in 1992 and was a worldwide bestseller.
• The aircraft flying Mulder, Scully and the team to the Arctic station is a New Zealand registered (ZK-CKT) Cessna 185D s/n 185-0929. As the ZK is part of the registration, it makes it easy to identify as a New Zealand aircraft. However, if the aircraft operated domestically in New Zealand only, the ZK prefix would not be required on the aircraft as part of the registration.

spoilers

• This episode marks the first time in the series that Mulder and Scully point their weapons on each other.

Goofs

• During the fight scene with Mulder and Bear, there is a running pinball machine in the background. When the machine is visible for the third time, it has been powered off. Throughout the rest of the episode, the machine remains on.
• After the dog recovers, Dr Hodge says the two dead worms were passed in his stool. The worms live in the brain of the host, and they introduced the second worm into the dog's ear. There is no connection from the brain to the digestive system, so the two worms that died in the dog's brain could never be passed in this way.
• The video transmission recorded by Richter is clearly not the footage watched by Mulder and Scully later on. There are obvious differences in Richter's way of speaking that reveal that the two versions were two different takes.
• A close-up of the mysterious worms obviously consists of real life meal worms. The CGI worms seen in several shots look very different, lacking the clearly segmented exoskeleton, limbs and abdomen/thorax/head transitions.
• (at around 2 mins) The agents arrive at what is called "Doolittle Airfield Nome, Alaska". There is a Nome airport, and the smaller "Nome City Field", but no Doolittle Field in real life.
• FBI Agent Scully makes two critical gun safety mistakes: When she dramatically removes the magazines from her Sig and Mulder's Glock automatic pistols and throws them out in the snow, she fails to remove the chambered rounds, meaning the guns are still loaded. Scully also fails to unload the pistol she sealed in an FBI evidence bag, and the deranged Nancy later fires a round from it.