The Pine Bluff Variant [X-Files Episode]

“The Pine Bluff Variant” was an episode of the television series The X-Files in which a domestic terrorist group used a biological weapon that had been developed in the 1960s at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). It is one of two episodes of the series that had ties to Arkansas.

The episode initially aired on May 3, 1998, and was the eighteenth episode of the fifth season of The X-Files, a popular science fiction/mystery program that ran on the Fox network from 1993 to 2002. Rob Bowman directed the episode from a script written by John Shiban, who said he was inspired by contemporary concerns about biological weapons in Iraq, news reports about flesh-eating bacteria, “and the fact that the Pine Bluff Arsenal, thirty-five miles from Little Rock, Arkansas, was indeed a real Army base—and contains a major stockpile of U.S. chemical weapons.”

“The Pine Bluff Variant” begins with a botched sting operation in which FBI agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) suspects that agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) might be collaborating with Jacob Steven Haley (Daniel von Bargen), second-in-command of the New Spartans militia group. While Haley escapes, a man he was meeting with died, his flesh dissolving. After an attack on an Ohio movie theater in which fourteen customers and employees suffer similar grisly deaths, a CIA lab determines that the biological agent that killed them, which a scientist (John B. Lowe) describes as “ingenious in its own evil way,” is a streptococcus strain. While investigators originally suspect it was developed in the former Soviet Union, Scully announces that it was “developed by the army’s Pine Bluff facility in the 1960s,” the only reference to Arkansas in the entire program. The episode continues with Mulder forced to take part in a bank robbery with the terrorists and later facing execution before being rescued at the last minute by the head of the militia group (Michael McRae) amid more of the series’ trademark conspiracy motif. It ends with Haley’s car slowly rolling into a ditch and a close-up of his face, ravaged by the flesh-eating virus.

The Internet Movie Database gave “The Pine Bluff Variant” an 8 out of 10 rating. Writing at 7he M0vie Blog in 2015, critic Darren Mooney wrote that “The Pine Bluff Variant is probably John Shiban’s best solo script for The X-Files. It is the kind of story that the show does very well, a taut conspiracy thriller packed with sharp twists and turns. Not all of those twists and turns make a great deal of sense, but there is an incredible momentum to the episode that keeps it moving forward.” Shiban later said he received “considerable feedback” on the episode, writing “people told me it was very scary because it sounded real.”

Another X-Files episode, 1995’s “Our Town,” was set in a fictional Arkansas town and centered on cannibalistic activities at a poultry-processing plant.

For additional information:
Meisler, Andy. Resist or Serve: The Official Guide to the X-Files. New York: Harper Entertainment, 1999, p. 240–253.

Mooney, Darren. “The X-Files: The Pine Bluff Variant (Review).” 7he M0vie Blog. https://them0vieblog.com/2015/06/24/the-x-files-the-pine-bluff-variant-review/ (accessed November 10, 2024).

“The Pine Bluff Variant.” Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751231/  (accessed November 10, 2024).

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas