X-Files S3E9: Trains, boats and alien autopsies

Sestra Amateur: 

This is a mythology ep, and we all know how few and far between these are, so I’ll try refresh your recollection the way I pretty much needed to myself. Also, the title – "Nisei" – is never addressed in this episode, but it basically means second generation. That will make a little more sense as the episode unfolds.

In Knoxville, Tennessee, train car No. 82594 is intentionally detached and left in the rail yard. Japanese men enter the car, which looks like an operating room. It appears they are performing a surgical procedure on what looks like an alien with green blood. Armed guards invade the starch-white lab and shoot all of the men, so now there’s red blood everywhere. It looks like the Christmas from hell with the world’s creepiest looking elf. Or a New Jersey Devils game circa 1987. The armed men pack up the alien and leave. By the way, if you were wondering if 8-25-94 has any special significance, it might be meaningful to Chris Carter, Howard Gordon or Frank Spotnitz. But according to the Internet, nothing special happened on that exact date in history.

Scully catches Mulder watching video footage of an alien autopsy in their FBI office. After a nice dig against Fox (the network, not her partner), Dana tries to convince him it’s not real. Mulder is sure it is real because they’re not showing a lot. Got that? The footage is actually of the opening scene and cuts off when the gunmen storm the lab. 

Sculder visit Steven Zinnzser, the video producer in Allentown – that’s a decent song to have stuck in your head – Pennsylvania, but someone broke into his boarded-up house. The poor guy is found dead in his own bed. Guess you shouldn’t be selling footage you pull off satellite feeds, Steve, especially for $29.95 a pop. Fox chases a Japanese man out of Zinnzser's house and through the neighborhood. He disarms Mulder, but Fox eventually subdues him. Unfortunately, there’s a communication breakdown because of the language barrier. Too bad Google Translate wouldn’t be available for another nine years. 

There's no translator available at the Allentown Police Department either. Luckily(?), Skinner shows up and tells them their murder suspect, Kazuo Sakari, has diplomatic immunity and will be released. This must be as frustrating for Fox as it was for Riggs in Lethal Weapon 2. Mulder minimizes their reason for being in Allentown -- video piracy. I guess technically it’s true, but their lead pirate is dead so that ends that. Or does it? 

Fox searches the briefcase he took from Sakari during the arrest and finds satellite footage and a list of names. The Lone Gunmen identify the boat in the image as the Talapus, which was tracked to a Virginia naval shipyard through the Panama Canal. Sakari makes it to the Japanese embassy but doesn’t live long after that, because The Red-Haired Man – IMDB.com’s description, not mine – takes him out. 

Scully goes to meet Betsy Hagopian, a Mutual UFO Network supporter, but other women in the house recognize Dana as one of them – an abductee. Scully learns Steven was also a member of MUFON and the women know Dana had an unexplained event happen to her (See "Ascension": Season 2, Episode 6 and "One Breath": Season 2, Episode 8). 

At the shipyard, Fox meets with Captain Peters, who claims the Talapus was sent back out to sea. Mulder isn’t buying it and asks for records. Scully meets a roomful of women who all claim they’ve been taken to the “bright white place” and operated on by men who made them forget. The women suggest Dana undergo regression hypnosis. I’ll bet Fox would love to watch that. Too bad he’s too busy running around the harbor trying to get his own answers. He’s on the Talapus when armed guards storm the boat, but they completely miss Mulder diving overboard. 

Scully remembers bits and pieces from her abduction and learns all of the women carry their implants in tiny containers in their purses. Dana learns Betsy is dying of cancer and that she too has a death sentence because of the experiments. 

Mulder is still trying to get evidence so he’s creeping around the shipyard again. He finds scientists working on an unidentified sitting object – yes, a USO. Shouldn’t someone have been watching his car or something? Would have made him a lot easier to find. Somehow he makes it back home and, of course, his door is unlocked. Skinner is waiting inside and Fox points his gun at him. So, if you’re keeping track, we’re nine episodes into the third season and both Scully and Mulder have held Walter at gunpoint. But Fox puts his gun down a lot faster than Dana did. 

Skinner tells Mulder that Sakari is dead and the Japanese are looking for the briefcase. Fox admits Scully has it. Walter leaves and Mulder reaches out to Senator Richard Matheson for the first time since way back in the first episode of Season 2. (We know Sestra Pro will impatiently be waiting to see the episode with his final appearance: "S.R. 819, way down in Season 6. But not because of the senator, because of Jesus Krycek). Matheson tells him about the four murdered Japanese nationals in Knoxville, but doesn’t admit it was an alien autopsy. He also gives Fox the names of the dead doctors so Mulder can get some answers on his own. 

Dana finally catches up to Fox in their office and tells him about the other implanted women. She sees Mulder’s photograph of the Japanese scientists and claims she knows Takeo Ishimaru, who has been dead since 1965 but was known for his horrific experiments on humans during the war. Four of the men were the doctors murdered in Tennessee. Scully is still in full denial mode even though Mulder reminds her of the proof she’s seen, like in Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2. 

Dana learns her chip is man-made and it's hard to tell if she’s impressed or disturbed by the possible uses of that tiny piece of technology. Meanwhile, Fox skulks around a train yard in West Virginia – yet another exotic locale you can visit when you join the FBI – and finds a white van with someone (something?) being escorted into a train car by Japanese men. One of the guys looks like he shops at Mulder’s suit store. At least Fox’s dressed more appropriately this time in slacks, a sweater and a leather coat. Swimming in his suit and overcoat last time had to be awkward. 

The train leaves and Mulder runs after it but can’t catch up. Quitter. I thought he was supposed to be in shape. Scully’s watching the autopsy videotape and recognizes Ishimaru as one of her abductors. He was the only one nice enough to leave his mask off as he stared down at her on the table. Fox calls Dana and they update each other. Meanwhile, Japanese Mulder is at the train station in Ohio and the Red-Haired Man kills him in the bathroom. Fox arrives but learns he just missed the train. Mr. X contacts Scully and warns her Mulder is in danger. Is it really that difficult for him to call Fox from an untraceable phone and say, “Hey, don’t get on that train”? Dana warns Fox as his stunt double prepares to jump from a bridge onto the train. (Sorry, but that guy looks nothing like David Duchovny.) Of course, Mulder jumps and loses his phone. Will he be able to get a replacement phone without having to sign a new two-year contract with Nextel? We’ll find out next week. 

Sestra Professional:

Now that the two-part conspiracy episode has become something of a trademark, The X-Files has license to take things at a more leisurely pace. Not everything has to be crammed into 40 minutes, and the Carter-Gordon-Spotnitz script gives Mulder the opportunity to scout around shipyards before mindless gun-toting baboons sent by whomever try to keep him from learning anything that would clear up the ongoing mysteries.

Even more compellingly, Scully gets time and space to learn about other women like her who were taken and experimented on ... and that later they'll be diagnosed with cancer. I suppose since Clyde Bruckman told Dana she doesn't die a couple episodes ago, we don't have to be too overly concerned, though.

The teaser's a high-tension moment, and all I can think about is how marvelously Darin Morgan's going to spoof the alien autopsy later this season. And in that vein -- get, it vein? -- that alien's bodily fluid is green, but it's a little too green.

What do you want for $29.95? There's lots of humor to be gleaned in the fact that Mulder paid to see abbreviated footage of the episode's teaser. Scully gets off the previously mentioned quip about the alleged alien autopsy being even hokier than the one they aired on the Fox network, in the wake of the show's pop culture success, of course.
  
As I said last week, this season, the agents are on the money. Mulder halts a suspect apparently schooled in the martial arts by having a backup weapon. It's not his fault that the dude got off on diplomatic immunity, although we know Sakari's grace period doesn't last too long. This conspiracy is big on getting rid of people involved in it when the chips are down. 

We do find out the plot has gone global, it's not just Americans trying to keep their own countrymen from the truth, but there are Nazi and Japanese war criminals involved -- because who wouldn't want to go into business with those upright citizens? I am a loss over why the scientists are conducting alien-human hybrid experiments on U.S. soil, but maybe they just thought they had a green light to do so and are overplaying their hand.

I get tired of losing my gun: There are a ton of quips in this one, in fact, I'll go so far as to say maybe a few too much (particularly in the Mulder-Skinner confrontation). I think the writers' room had been saving them up due to to the rash of recent serious stand-alone episodes.

I've never really understood Senator Matheson's ongoing role in the series. As Sestra mentioned, we saw him at the beginning of the second season in "Little Green Men." If he's not a source in the mold of Deep Throat and X, I guess he's there to fill in Fox on details he won't be able to get through those guys. But it's too nebulous of a connection, he's used so sparsely that he doesn't seem to fit in the greater picture without a shoehorn.

Something's being tracked in my office and I don't like the smell of it: Skinner's not entirely come into his own either, but that's OK, because there's time and space for that. And it's not as far-fetched to think the assistant director hasn't seen and done enough yet to take up arms or even put himself on the line for his charges.

Scully's reeling too much from the information she's learning to be completely on board either. She states "I don't think I'm ready to discuss this," and we can believe that she's afraid to remember. Her line about needing more proof is a little misguided, because she did see the documentation -- which included medical information on herself -- but overall, we can get her general gist.

The idea of a manmade chip would take her even farther away from Mulder's premise and more into the realm of government conspiracy. At least until Fox reminds her she had the sensation of "beings rushing past her" the day they discovered the vault containing documentation of all the abductees' information.

"Nisei," directed by the sure hand of David Nutter, would be a bit dry with Fox doing a lot of running around transportation facilities if not for the shift in Dana's story. And I'm not sure why Scully buys X's theory so quickly and tries to call Mulder off the train when it very well could have been one of the informant's attempts at misdirection.

Now Duchovny's double jumped off the overpass, but like in "Ascension," when the actor was atop the cable car, David indeed did do the landing on the train. According to the official third-season guide, the show worked six weeks to bring that to fruition, and that movie-level scope more than anything led to the episode becoming a two-parter. "I'm not a guy that says I have to do all my own stunts, I'm just the guy that says 'Is it going to look better if you see my face?' If it doesn't matter, then I'll let some other guy hurt himself, for sure," Duchovny said in The Complete X-Files.

There's always room for meta: So Aug. 25, 1994? That date marked the first time Carter ever stepped behind the camera to direct Season 2's Emmy- nominated "Duane Barry," which started the Scully abduction saga. ... The "mindless gun-toting baboons" were actual trained Rangers, although they might want to go back to camp since -- as Sestra Am pointed out -- they completely missed the guy diving off the ship. ... Mulder's line about being too busy getting his ass kicked to determine his prisoner's diplomatic immunity led an uproarious moment between Duchovny and Mitch Pileggi on the Season 3 gag reel.