This episode continues the ongoing mythology of The X-Files. I learned an interesting bit of trivia about the title of this ep, but I’ll leave it up to Sestra Pro to provide the background information. I will disclose an unrelated Google fun fact: This episode takes place in the Pacific Ocean at latitude 42 degrees north and longitude 171 degrees east. When you start typing 42 degrees north in Google, it accurately autocompletes your search. The programmer must have been an X-Phile. That location puts the action way, way east of Japan. 
On the French salvage ship Piper Maru, a deep sea diver named Gauthier is heading downward to salvage some wreckage. What kind of experience do you think he’ll have? The Abyss (benevolent aliens who want to help us)? Leviathan (genetic experiment gone wrong)? Deep Star Six? (I think it was about a prehistoric creature that wanted to be left alone. All I remember from that one was campy Miguel Ferrer returning to the surface without decompressing. You could fit have him into a carry-on bag after that.) So Gauthier reaches his target, a fuselage that has one male survivor. Of course, if the black oil over the pupils is any indicator, this survivor is possessed by something. Gauthier returns to the surface and the crew removes him from the deep sea gear. He seems fine, but now his eyes are black oily too. And what happened to the survivor?
This episode makes up for last week’s snafu which took forever to get to the Skinner scene. I thought the wardrobe unit stopped using ultra-reflective lenses in Walter's glasses. They’re very distracting, because I’m always trying to see the camera crew. Immediately after the opening credits, the assistant director calls Scully into his office to tell her the case involving her sister’s murder is being reclassified to inactive (see "Paper Clip": Season 3, Episode 2). Sounds like he’s going to bat for Dana, but her anger gets the better of her, and for good reason. Put Mulder on Melissa’s murder investigation and it’ll get solved fairly quickly. Meanwhile, Fox is giddy because the Piper Maru was diving in the same location as the Talapus (see "Nisei": Season 3, Episode 9). The crew members arrived in San Diego suffering from radiation burns. Scully seems alternately impressed and annoyed with Mulder’s tenacity and they head to the Golden State.
They meet with Dr. Seizer at the San Diego Naval Hospital, who doesn’t have answers but knows the men were exposed to man-made levels of radiation. Gauthier was the only one not showing symptoms, so he headed back home to Pacific Heights. Hope he’s not renting an apartment from Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine. Sculder learn the Hazmat team found nothing suspicious on the Piper Maru. They board the ship where Fox looks for the dive suit video camera. Dana correctly identifies the “fuselage” as a North American P-51 Mustang. Mulder looks at her with new appreciation.Back in Pacific Heights, Gauthier’s wife, Joan, is thrilled he came home, but he’s a little distant. The black oil moves from him to her. Guess she’ll be the distant one now. Fox goes to Gauthier’s home and finds him disoriented and covered in black goo. It’s nowhere near as entertaining as the pink goo Janosz was doused with in Ghostbusters II. Mulder tries to question him about the company hired to salvage the Mustang, but Gauthier plays dumb then pulls the consulate card and refuses to answer any questions.
At the Salvage Brokers office, employee Jeraldine acts suspiciously and points a concealed double-barreled shotgun at Fox. He’s lucky she didn’t pull the trigger when he assumed she was the secretary. Mulder leaves, but watches as French men storm in through the front while Jeraldine quietly leaves through the back. Fox tracks Jeraldine to San Francisco International Airport and prepares to follow her to Hong Kong. Gauthier's wife is at the same airport, probably taking the same flight.
Scully takes a trip down memory lane as she follows a lead with Commander Johansen at the Naval Air Station in Miramar. The commander’s memory isn’t what it used to be, so he can’t really help Dana. Scully’s leaving the naval base when Johansen catches up to her to admit he was sent to find the Mustang when he served as an officer on the submarine Zeus Faber. The commander tells Dana about his crew’s attempt to recover the Mustang, their subsequent exposure to radiation and mutiny. Only seven of the 144 men survived. Scully calls Mulder to tell him the Mustang was originally an escort for a B-29 carrying an atomic bomb. That would explain the radiation, but not the black oil. Back in D.C., Skinner has unwelcome visitors while in a restaurant. Turns out, they don’t like his decision to keep Melissa’s murder investigation active. I’ll bet a lot of X-Files fans don’t want it open either. Walter gets in a couple of verbal shots then leaves. Mulder joins Jeraldine for dinner in Hong Kong. Turns out she owns the salvage company. Mulder handcuffs himself to her to play Let’s Make a Deal.
They go to her office, where Krycek is waiting for them. Alex gets the upper hand since he has a gun and Mulder surrendered his when he entered Hong Kong. He’s probably thinking it doesn’t pay to play by the good-guy rules. Someone else kills Jeraldine and Krycek gets away. Fox escapes before Jeraldine’s murderers catch up to him. Joan arrives and glows white which causes the men to suffer radiation burns. Back in the assistant director's favorite restaurant, an irate customer is giving Skinner’s waitress a hard time. He steps in to help her but the guy shoots Walter in the gut. That just reeked of setup. Scully quickly gets the call about Skinner’s shooting. Does he have her listed as his emergency contact or something?
Back in Hong Kong, Krycek is ready to go home to D.C. Mulder intercepts him at the airport and tries to get back the encrypted tape Alex took, so now it’s their turn to play Let’s Make a Deal. It didn’t really work out so well for Jeraldine. Nice guy Fox stupidly allows Alex to go into the bathroom alone. Of course, Joan shows up while Krycek’s at the urinal and now he’s possessed by the black oil. Not sure if Sestra Pro is going to be happy or sad about that one. Sestra Professional:
Color me happy. Always happy to have Alex back in the fray. And not just because Nicholas Lea eventually turned out to be the complete opposite of his character when I had the good fortune to meet him in person -- twice, 18 years apart. It's because Krycek puts a unique spin on the canvas. We're never really sure what he's going to do, and that's particularly true when the mysterious black oil coats his beautiful eyes -- and insides.
I wouldn't have minded if Sestra Am let the proverbial cat out of the bag on the naming of the episode since it's common knowledge among X-Philes. Chris Carter, who co-wrote the ep with Frank Spotnitz, named the ship -- and the episode -- after Gillian Anderson's daughter (and the executive producer's goddaughter), Piper Maru. (As we remember, it was Anderson's pregnancy that literally got the show's mythology off the ground.) By the way, Maru is a spirit in Japanese mythology that taught humans how to make ships, so the name is often used in naming them. (I can Google as well as Sestra Am.)One of the things my Swiss cheese memory has retained is that Gillian picked "Piper Maru" as one of her favorite episodes, ostensibly for that reason in an Entertainment Weekly article. I particularly love the moment they give Scully to react after Mulder tells her the name of the ship.
But Gillian has a lot of reasons to like this particular one on principle. Dana gets a chance to display some righteous anger. Her speech early in the episode on the closing of her sister's case is delivered pitch perfectly: "You know, it's strange -- men can blow up buildings, and they can be nowhere near the crime scene. But we can piece together the evidence and convict them beyond a doubt. Our labs here can recreate out of the most microscopic details their motivation and circumstance to almost any murder. Right down to a killer's attitude towards his mother and that he was a bed wetter. But in the case of a woman ... my sister ... who was gunned down in cold blood in a well-lit apartment building by a shooter who left the weapon at the crime scene, we can't even put together enough to keep anybody interested."And this also could be the strongest episode to date for Mitch Pileggi's Skinner, who finally gets to do more than shuffle papers and look irritated by his renegade agent(s). There's actually a human being behind those ultra-reflective lenses.
They know that they could drop you in the middle of the desert and tell you the truth is out there, and you'd ask them for a shovel: But before we get to Walter (and the glorious return of Krycek), there's a recap for viewers who might have been late to the bandwagon -- the original run was really hitting its stride at this time -- via the Sculder scene in their basement office. Then Dana gets to show off her medical skills again and we're out to sea on the mythology two-parter.Our heroes are split up for much of the episode after the delivery of the exposition, just communicating by their trademark cell phones. But it never feels like a bad thing in "Piper Maru." Would we really need to see Dana talking to the non-secretary or watch Fox look bored as the commander admits what happened to son? It empowers them both to be working their angles at the same time.
That has the added benefit of giving weight to the Skinner scenes. Anderson, Pileggi and Duchovny all do real nice work by their lonesomes in this show. In the third-season episode guide, Gillian said she found it challenging to deal with the closing of her sister's murder investigation as well as her own past as a Navy brat. In The Complete X-Files, late great director Kim Manners added that she rose to the challenge. "You look at Season 1 and look at Season 3 and that girl exploded as an actress in terms of talent and capability."
To top it off, the unexpected return of Krycek -- Lea's name was held for the closing credits as to not give away the surprise, and that won't be the last time that's done. Alex's strength in the series is we never really know what he's up to or why. So we'll never know when he'll show up or why. And who he'll side with when he does so. Not to mention the fact that he gives Mulder -- and the fan base vicariously -- a chance to take out some of his frustration as a punching bag.And nothing else metas: We've already had the ultimate inside information in the title, but a few more tidbits. This week's naming convention is brought to you courtesy of the show's master of special effects ... David Gauthier. ... According to the episode guide, the World War II pilot played by Robert F. Maier remained underwater in the shell of the cockpit for two hours, breathing through a regulator, of course. (Was his character really there or was he a mirage? That's probably a good litmus test for whether one is a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty person.)
Guest star of the week: I find Jeraldine to be a real shot in the arm in Fox's portion of the story. Not only does Jo Adams deftly explain why Mulder doesn't have a gun -- and why Krycek ultimately will -- but she really holds her own against Fox in the sass department. Up until the part her character becomes literal dead weight anyway.
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