"Excelsis Dei" is the eleventh episode of the second season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered in the United States on the Fox network on December 16, 1994. It was written by Paul Brown and directed by Stephen Surjik. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Excelsis Dei" earned a Nielsen household rating of 8.9, being watched by 8.5 million households in its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed reviews from television critics; although some complimented the episode's effects, others were critical of the way the show handled rape.
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 the episode Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate a claim of rape made by a nurse at a nursing home; the case falls into the purview of the X-Files because the assailant appears to have been a disembodied spirit.
Surjik personally asked if he could direct the episode because he was a fan of the series; this was his only credit for the series. Filming the episode was difficult for the cast and crew due largely to the fact that the script arrived for the cast and crew to film only two days in advance. Other issues arose because of technical reasons; one scene required flooding a hallway with 3,300 gallons of water. Many of the scenes were filmed at Riverview Hospital, a mental health facility located in Coquitlam, British Columbia.
Plot
Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are called to the Excelsis Dei private nursing home in Worcester, Massachusetts in order to investigate a nurse's claim that she was raped by an invisible entity. Severely bruised, Michelle Charters (Teryl Rothery) claims that she knows who was responsible and names the attacker as Hal Arden, an elderly resident of Excelsis Dei who suffers from Alzheimer's Disease. When questioned, Arden admits that he made sexual overtures to Michelle, but claims that it was harmless and that he is too elderly to have done anything. In turn, the hospital's administrator believes that Michelle has manufactured the rape allegation in order to extort money from the nursing home.
As Mulder and Scully investigate, they discover that many of the facility's Alzheimer's patients have shown significant improvement over their condition, a development that is not medically possible. Their doctor, Grago, attributes the patients' improvement to regimen he has applied using Deprenyl, an experimental drug that has so far shown negligible affect in patient studies. Before Mulder and Scully can make much headway, Hal Arden dies unexpectedly while his roommate, Stan Phillips, stands by, complicating the investigation further.
Worried about her father, Stan Phillips' daughter arrives to move him back into her home and Stan angrily declares he doesn't want to leave. An orderly arrives to help Stan pack and escort him out but Stan flees the room and leads the orderly on a chase to the roof. The orderly climbs out of a window in a half-hearted attempt to coax Stan back inside but falls or is pushed to his death before Mulder can save him.
With two suspicious deaths in a twenty-four hour period and following Charters' rape, Mulder and Scully continue investigating, eventually discovering that a Malaysian orderly, Gung Bittuen, is dosing the patients with an herbal drug made of mushrooms he cultivates in the building's basement. He explains that in his culture, the elderly are revered and it is considered a great honor to care for them; coming to America, he was appalled to see how Westerners treat the elderly, even their own parents, like garbage, sending them away to places like Excelsis Dei, whereas Gung has seen firsthandthey are treated little better than animals. Gung attempted to ease their suffering with the herbal dose, but admits something has gone badly wrong. While the mushrooms are used in his country to "speak with the dead," the spirits lingering around Excelsis Dei are restless and angry, and the living residents' use of the mushrooms has given them the power to act on that anger. The drug reverse the patients' Alzheimer's, but also allows them to channel the spirits into existence and the spirits have been assaulting and murdering the orderlies that treated them poorly while they were patients.