"Terma" is the ninth episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on . It was directed by Rob Bowman, and written by Frank Spotnitz and series creator Chris Carter. "Terma" featured guest appearances by John Neville, Nicholas Lea and Fritz Weaver. The episode helped explore the series' overarching mythology. "Terma" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.3, being watched by 17.34 million viewers during its original airing. FBI special agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and assistant director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) attend a United States Senate hearing, while Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) attempts to escape from a Russian gulag. "Terma" is the second part of a two-part episode, continuing the plot from the previous episode, "Tunguska". Several scenes in "Terma" were inspired by the novels of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, while its tagline—changed to "E pur si muove" from the usual "The truth is out there"—is a reference to Galileo Galilei's investigation by the Roman Inquisition. "Terma" features a climactic explosion at an oil refinery wellhead which required the physical effects staff to ignite a plume of flammable liquids. Plot While imprisoned in a gulag in Krasnoyarsk, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) learns that Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea) is a double agent working for the Russian taskmasters and that all prisoners have been subjected to a black oil vaccine. In his dungeon, Mulder is given a sharp object by another prisoner, who had made it to commit suicide. When all the prisoners are taken out and are arranged in a line, Mulder sees Krycek talking to one of the captors and runs toward them, tackling them. Mulder then steals a truck and flees with an unconscious Krycek in the back of it; a pursuit by his captors ensues. As Mulder drives the truck, Krycek awakes and jumps off the truck. Mulder, having been unable to stop the truck due to its faulty brakes, runs the truck off the road and it crashes. Mulder quickly makes his way out of the truck and hides under the dry leaves, while Krycek is found by a group of men whose left arms have all been amputated and has his arm forcibly severed to prevent his involvements in black oil vaccination tests. Meanwhile, Vasily Peskow (Jan Rubeš), a former KGB agent, has come out of retirement and traveled to America where he assassinates Bonita