Nisei

Internal dating: No dates given for any episode between late September (Clyde Bruckman) and early January (Syzygy). If the order of the episodes roughly tracks the order of the events in Mulder and Scully's lives, this two-parter should be set around late November 1995 / early December 1995. Internally, all we know for certain is that this is set after Paper Clip but before Piper Maru. (But see the notes on Piper Maru for the problems with this dating.)

Mulder is in his office as Scully arrives. He's watching a video of a purported alien autopsy he received by mail order. Scully, of course, is extremely skeptical. He shows her the very end of the tape, in which masked soldiers rush in. The tape cuts off abruptly at that point. The source of the tape was a man in Allentown, Pa. who claimed to have pulled it off a satellite dish at two in the morning.

The two go to Allentown, to the home of Steven Zinnzser and Rat Tail Productions. They find him dead on his bed with his bloodied head covered by a pillowcase, his body still warm. They hear a noise in the basement, and Mulder gives chase. He loses the gun when the suspect, an Asian man carrying a briefcase, karate-kicks him. As the suspect is about to flee, he pulls a Beretta from an ankle holster and fires a warning shot. The Asian man freezes. "I got tired of losing my gun," Mulder says grimly.

They bring the man into the Allentown police station for questioning, but he refuses to speak. Suddenly Skinner shows up. It turns out the man they arrested is a high-ranking Japanese diplomat, and another agency will now be following the case. He demands they return to Washington.

On the way to the car, Mulder tells Scully about the briefcase which he "forgot" to turn in as evidence. In it, they find satellite surveillance photos of a ship, and a list of Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) members in the Allentown area, bearing the name of Steve Zinnzser and with the name Betsy Hagopian circled. Mulder will return to Washington to show his "friends" the pictures, and he wants Scully to stay in Allentown to check out the MUFON people.

Mulder takes the surveillance photos to the Lone Gunmen. They identify the ship as the Talapus, a salvage ship out of San Diego which was supposedly trying to recover a WWII Japanese sub from the bottom of the Pacific. But rather than return to its home port, the Talapus went through the Panama Canal to Newport News, Virginia.

The Japanese diplomat has been released from jail and has returned to Washington. As he enters the back seat of his limo, he is garotted by a red-haired white man, as his driver looks on.

Scully arrives at the home of Betsy Hagopian. A dark-haired woman named Lottie opens the door, saying that Betsy isn't there, and a flash of recognition sweeps across her face. Scully introduces herself and shows her ID, and is amazed when Lottie claims to know her. She calls over to her friend Penny Northern, who instantly recognizes Scully, saying, "She's one." "One of what?" asks Scully, bewildered. "One of us," Lottie replies. She tries to explain that she's FBI, here investigating the murder of Steve Zinnzser, whom the women know. Lottie asks her if she had an unexplained event in her life the previous year, a period of time she can't account for. Scully looks startled and frightened. Penny tells her to sit down - that there are some other women she'll want to meet.

Mulder goes to the Assistant Harbormaster in Newport News, asking about the Talapus. He is told that the DEA prevented it from landing, but suddenly decided not to search it for contraband after all, and it left. Mulder asks how that is possible, without the Talapus refuelling in port. The officer goes to check the paperwork regarding the details.

In a roomful of women at Betsy's house, Scully declares that she never met any of them before. Lottie informs her that she may not remember, because she's only had one experience. Most of the women in the room have been taken several times, adds Penny. Scully looks around at the apparently normal women of all ages and races. "Taken where?" she persists. "The bright white place?" hints Lottie. Instantly, Scully gets a brief flashback of her abduction experience. A red-haired woman asks, "You remember, don't you? There were men there, performing tests." Again, a flashback of a spinning hollow needle comes to her. Scully is clearly rattled. When the women press, and suggest regression hypnosis, Scully backs off, saying "I'm sorry, I don't think I'm ready to discuss this."

By the time the Assistant Harbormaster returns, Mulder is loose in the port, on the trail of the Talapus. On an obscure pier, he finds a boat from which all the identifying markers have been removed. He boards it and breaks into the wheelhouse. There, he uncovers a jacket, bearing the name "Talapus". As he is searching, several carloads of heavily armed, black-clad soldiers arrive, surrounding and boarding the ship. Mulder eludes them and escapes by jumping off the side of the ship.

Scully is fighting having to accept that she and all these other women shared similar experiences. She asks why she doesn't remember the women or anything else substantive about the experience. Penny explains, "At first all you remember is the light, and sometimes the faces of the men that performed the tests." Scully gets another flashback, this time of her abdomen filling with air or gas during one of the tests. Shaken, still not wanting to believe, she asks desperately, "How do you know you're not mistaking me for someone else?" The red-haired woman offers the most damning proof yet. She asks Scully if she has the mark - the scar over the area where the implant was removed from the back of her neck. Without a word, all the women hold up small plastic vials containing the devices they have had removed from the backs of their necks. Panicked now, Scully stands and says she has to go, that she was only there to see Betsy. Lottie and Penny take her to the hospital to see Betsy, who is in the latter stages of a mysterious form of cancer. They tell her that Betsy's is the same fate as for all of them... that all of them will end up dying of cancer "because of what they do to us."

Under the cover of darkness, Mulder crawls from the harbor waters and runs to a large warehouse just as a car pulls up and black-garbed soldiers get out. He gets closer, peering in a window. He sees figures in cleansuits, working on a mysterious shape behind an opaque wall of plastic film - a shape very much like a UFO.

He arrives back at his apartment to find his door unlocked. His lights won't turn on, but it is clear that his apartment has been trashed during some sort of search. Skinner is sitting in the dark, waiting for him. He tells Mulder that the Japanese diplomat he arrested has turned up murdered, an ugly international incident is brewing, and that he knows about the briefcase, which is presumably what the men responsible for trashing his apartment were looking for. Mulder says that the briefcase is in the trunk of Scully's rental car in Allentown. Skinner makes it clear that he wants no further personal involvement with this case.

Mulder goes to see his "friend on the Hill", Senator Matheson, seeking advice on what he should do. The Senator relates the story of the four Japanese doctors who were murdered in a train car in Knoxville, and says that they were working on a secret project. "What am I on to here?" asks Mulder. The Senator's reply - "Monsters begetting monsters".

Mulder has locked himself in his office. At a tap on the door, he admits Scully, who is obviously shaken. She tells him about Betsy Hagopian, dying of cancer, and about the other women who claim to have had implants removed from their necks who believe they will suffer the same fate as Betsy.

Mulder: "But you're all right, aren't you, Scully?"

Scully: "Am I? I don't know, Mulder! They said they know me, that they've seen me before...." during the time she was missing.

Mulder admits that it's disturbing, but offers some vague comfort, in a distracted kind of way.

Scully reaches for the photos Mulder has been studying. The first is an old photo of a group of WWII Japanese medical officers, part of 731, an elite medical corps. The other pictures are of their victims, prisoners and civilians used in horrible medical experiments. Scully claims to recognize one of the doctors, sounding very sure of herself. Mulder says she couldn't possibly know him, that his name was Dr. Takeo Ishimaru, and he died in 1965. He adds that like their Nazi counterparts, none of these doctors was ever brought to justice for war crimes. He also says that four of the doctors in the photo were murdered on a train car in Knoxville. Mulder claims they may have been murdered for their work - creating an alien-human hybrid. Scully refutes this. Mulder can't understand why she can't accept it.

Mulder: "After all you've seen - a tunnel full of medical files, the beings moving past you, the - the implant in your neck. Why do you refuse to believe?"

Scully: "Believing's the easy part, Mulder. I need more than you. I need proof."

Mulder: "You think believing is easy?"

He then tells her that they have proof - the ship the satellite photos were tracking pulled a UFO off the bottom of the Pacific, the same UFO he saw in the windows of the warehouse, and the same one that was probably carrying the EBE in the alien autopsy video. He receives a fax of a photo of a train car. Mulder tells her that it is part of the government's "Underground Railroad" carrying test subjects like the EBE. Scully asks who sent it. He replies that he got it from someone who, like her, wants proof - but who is also willing to believe. His disappointment and frustration in his partner is written in his expression.

Scully takes the implant and brings it to Pendrell, who analyses it. He says it's an extremely sophisticated, state of the art microprocessor, and that it could even be used for interfacing directly with the human brain.

In Quinnimont, West Virginia, Mulder spots the train car from the faxed photo. As he watches, a car and a van pull up to it, and some Japanese men get out, leading a shrouded figure that looks very much like an alien. They put it in the train car, which is then hooked up to a train and speeds off

Scully is scrutinizing Mulder's alien autopsy video. In an early portion of the video, there is a solitary white-haired Japanese man, whom she recognizes as Dr. Takeo Ishimaru. Instantly she has a flashback, directly tying Ishimaru to her abduction experience. She receives a phone call from Mulder, who tells her about the EBE on the train, which is headed fro Cincinnati. In turn, she tells him about Ishimaru being alive and on his videotape of the alien autopsy. He assumes that is why the man seemed familiar to her. She contradicts him, saying that's not where she knows him from at all. Mulder's eyes grow wide as he listens to his partner on the phone.

In the meantime, one of the Japanese who delivered the EBE goes into the train station and is murdered in the restroom by the red-haired man who killed the Japanese diplomat.

After racing to Ohio, Mulder just misses the train with the EBE, and starts after it. Meanwhile, X arrives at Scully's apartment, telling her in no uncertain terms that Mulder must NOT get on that train. She is suspicious of his motives. Finally, something he says makes a difference, because she calls Mulder on his cellphone. He is on a bridge, watching the train he has been chasing approach. Frantically, his partner warns him not to get on the train. He jumps from the bridge to the top of the moving train, losing his cellphone in the process.

To Be Continued in "731"

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