Conduit is one of the essential episodes of the first season of The X-Files, perhaps even of the entire series, as it marks the debut of the mythology storyline's most important and affecting subplot: Mulder's search for his sister.
The case begins with the disappearance of a young girl whose mother claims to have been abducted by aliens in the past. While Mulder and Scully set out to find the girl, it is revealed that Mulder's sister Samantha was abducted when he was twelve, and that incident is what eventually led to his belief in the paranormal and his work on the X-Files. Scully fears her partner might be taking the whole thing too personal, but has to admit they're probably onto something when the US government takes an interest in the missing girl's younger brother, who receives compromising information through a television set.
Apart from Mulder's usual spot-on remarks ("How can an eight-year old boy who can barely multiply be a threat to national security? And they call me paranoid!") and the postmodern use of the TV medium within the show (something that will occur several more times), the heart of Conduit is its digging into the hidden core of the show's male protagonist: childhood trauma is often used - or rather misused - as a dramatic device to explain a character's choices, but the careful writing and Duchovny's heartfelt performance give the back-story more substance than it would have in another program. This episode really establishes Mulder as a flesh-and-blood individual instead of a caricature of a conspiracy theorist, and it's very easy to share his hope when he utters a line that, much like "The truth is out there", came to define the series: "I want to believe...".
