"Patience" is the third episode of the eighth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files.

The series centers on FBI special agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and her new partner John Doggett (Robert Patrick)—following the alien abduction of her former partner, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)—who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files.

In this episode, John Doggett, after having been assigned to the X-Files, joins Scully to investigate a series of gruesome murders that appear to be the work of a bat-like creature.

Carter was inspired to write "Patience" to emulate the "back-to-basics stand alones […] of the earlier seasons".

Later, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and John Doggett (Robert Patrick), who has been assigned to the X-Files, begin talking about the case.

Scully and Doggett arrive at the crime scene in Idaho and meet Detective Yale Abbott [Bradford English].

He says they are less sure that the bites were made by a human and draws their attention to the strange footprint, believing that wild animals fed on the bodies after the fact.

Scully suggests a connection between the burned body of Ariel McKesson who disappeared in 1956 and her mother, the latest victim.

Doggett and Scully find Myron and ask him about Ernie Stefaniuk, one of the hunters from 1956, who he reveals disappeared a long time ago.

The two eventually track down Ernie Stefaniuk, who tells them that he hid on an island in the middle of the town's lake with his wife, Ariel, for 44 years.

[4] After settling his contract dispute with Fox, Duchovny quit full-time participation in the show after the seventh season.

[6] (In order to explain Mulder's absence, Duchovny's character was abducted by aliens in the seventh season finale, "Requiem".

"[13] Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode two-and-a-half stars out of five.

Shearman and Pearson later wrote that if the episode had been "a Mulder and Scully adventure, this would have been bottom of the barrel stuff.

[15] VanDerWerff did note that the episode was better "than its reputation" suggested, but that it still was "undone by some very strange story choices and a dumb monster".

[16] "Patience" earned a nomination for an ASC Award by the American Society of Cinematographers for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography - Regular Series.