In the BBC serial, it is made clear that there are domed bases like this all over the world. In both versions, the Prof. infiltrates the English base, and through the introduction of an unanticipated element -- oxygen -- he disrupts their delicate plans, though he first has to survive (in the movie version) an attack by enraged giant aliens, whose gestation process has been interrupted. At the end, he is far from certain the invaders have been defeated.

There are no bees in Quatermass 2, and neither are there any cornfields surrounding the base. However, it should be mentioned that the cover story for the alien base in Q2 is that it is actually an experimental factory making "synthetic food". There is a scene at the end of Fight the Future showing virus-toting tanker trucks labeled with the words "Nature's Best Corn Oil." Which is certainly a form of synthetic food, as anyone who has ever had "buttered" popcorn at the multiplex can testify.

As for the bees -- each person infected with the black slime in Q2 can be identified by an ugly blister or "mark" -- which resembles nothing so much as a nasty bee sting. And there is a line in the movie, where a hapless reporter is trying to explain the situation to his editor over the phone:

"Contact with these things produces a violent infection -- a sort of sting."

I didn't notice that until I'd seen the film several times -- but it could explain an awful lot, couldn't it?

You might wonder which of these plot points first aroused my suspicions. None of them, actually. The first time I watched Q2, I was blown away by the scene where Quatermass and his assistant Mr. Marsh discover the alien base. It is virtually identical to the sequence where Mulder and Scully discover the domed "bee-base" in FTF. In both films, you have two people driving back roads, then going offroad, hitting a road block, then driving up onto a hillside, where they look down, you see their startled expressions -- and then we see the domes!

Marsh is infected by one of the meteorites, and collapses. Suddenly, menacing soldiers appear, driving a truck with cylindrical tanks on top, meant to hold the aliens (in their viscous form) if they don't find a host immediately, and convey them to the domed base -- where the "black slime" gets pumped through pipes, much as we see the Consortium forces pumping out the alien "black oil" in Fight the Future.

Quatermass thinks the soldiers are taking the afflicted Marsh to a hospital, then looks closely at one of them, and realizes something is wrong. Then he gets hit by a rifle butt (poor Mulder gets shot), rendering him senseless while they cart his luckless associate away. Since Marsh is not played by Gillian Anderson, we can forgive Quatermass for not devoting all of his energies to Marsh' rescue. He shows an acceptable amount of concern. For Quatermass.

As interesting as the shared plot elements between the X-Files feature and Q2 are, even more interesting are the shared visual elements, the way key scenes are structured in the same way. Almost as if somebody might have been a little insecure about his first movie, and was looking for a structure to follow. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. A paranoid X-phile. Who ever heard of that?

Be that as it may, before I ever came across Quatermass 2 in that video rental store, I thought the most exciting scenes in Fight the Future were the ones leading up to Mulder and Scully finding the base in Texas. I still do.

I wanted to see more evidence before I made up my mind, and Brian Boerner had said that all the Quatermass stories had been incorporated into the XF mytharc. Though it is not currently in print, I obtained a copy of Quatermass Conclusion, the shorter U.S. release of the last Quatermass serial, originally called simply Quatermass.