Jose Chung's From Outer Space

"Jose Chung's From Outer Space"
The X-Files episode
Agent Dana Scully reading the titular book. The cover is a parody of Whitley Strieber's Communion.
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 20
Directed by	Rob Bowman
Written by	Darin Morgan
Production code	3X20
Original air date	April 12, 1996 (1996-04-12)
Running time	44 minutes
Guest appearances
Charles Nelson Reilly as Jose Chung William Lucking as Roky Crikenson Daniel Quinn as Jack Schaefer Sarah Sawatsky as Chrissy Giorgio Jason Gaffney as Harold Lamb Alex Diakun as Dr. Fingers Larry Musser as Detective Manners Jaap Broeker as The Stupendous Yappi Allan Zinyk as Blaine Faulkner Michael Dobson as Sergeant Hynek Mina E Mina as Dr. Hand Jesse Ventura as Man in Black 1 Alex Trebek as Man in Black 2
Episode chronology
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The X-Files season 3
List of episodes

"Jose Chung's From Outer Space" is the 20th episode of the third season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States on April 12, 1996, on Fox. It was written by Darin Morgan and directed by Rob Bowman. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.5, being watched by 16.08 million people in its initial broadcast, and also received praise from critics.

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. In this episode, Mulder and Scully hear, and promptly investigate, a story about an alien abduction of two teenagers. Each witness provides a different version of the same facts. Within the episode, a thriller novelist, Jose Chung, writes a book about the incident.

The episode is a stand-alone episode of The X-Files (rather than an entry in the "mytharc"). While it follows the normal villain of the week pattern of those episodes, it features more humor than typical via manipulation of point of view, leading to multiple re-tellings of certain events with varying degrees of unreliable narrators.^[1] It is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the series.^[2]