X-Files Rerun "Beyond the Sea"

"From here we can return to the past. We can see the present. We can know the future."
Originally Aired 1/7/94

There's nothing anyone could dislike about "Beyond the Sea." Several Season One episodes dealt with Mulder's search for his sister; here we get a glimpse of Scully's life. After her parents visit for dinner, tragedy strikes the Scully family. She doesn't take time off to grieve; instead she joins Mulder on a chase for a murderer, which brings up things left unsaid with her father. Gillian Anderson gets plenty of time to shine here as the spotlight moves onto her character and her confrontations with Luther Lee Boggs.

Boggs is played excellently, no; he's played superbly, no; I don't think any adjectives even exist that can describe Brad Dourif's performance in this episode. At times its comical and also downright frightening. I say comical because he has a slight Southern drawl the way he says "Dana" and at other times he made me laugh, like saying "...BARRELS." But those comical moments are just a small fraction of his performance. From the moment we see Boggs, he has a few tears in his eyes, as if the psychic ability he has is so strong that its painful for him. Mulder asks if he's a spiritual conduit, so the many souls of the dead would be a powerful thing to have flowing through you. It reminds me of episodes I've seen on other shows (The 4400 and Buffy) where a character can read minds but is hearing so many voices at once and cannot turn it off. The frightening side of Boggs comes out when Scully confronts him and he utters "NO", when he demands a deal which will keep him from the death penalty. That also leads into a black and white sequence showing Boggs' march to the chair with his eerie narration.

When I was reading about later episodes, like "One Breath", David Duchovny had told writers that he wanted an episode for Mulder which would be his own "Beyond the Sea." It feels to me like Dana/Gillian deserved to be at the center this time because most of these episodes are showcases for Mulder. Mulder's search for his sister and the way he relates to similar victims dominated episodes like "Conduit", "Oubliette", and "Paper Hearts." His family history has dominated the mythology as well.

"Beyond the Sea" is a definite home run for the series and showed that The X-Files could definitely find success in more than just tales about government conspiracies.