Piper Maru

Internal dating: Another typical X-Files timeline mess. There is a lot in this episode about the events of "Paper Clip" being five months ago. While "Paper Clip" aired about five months befire "Piper Maru" it was actually set in April 1995, but which these episodes took place in September or October 1995. It is possible, I suppose, to place "Nisei" and "731" in the summer of 1995 and this two-parter in September 1995, which would mean that Scully was referring to these episodes when she talks about "what we've just been though" in "DPO" and not the "Anasazi" trilogy, which was nearly five months ago anyway. By this, we can just assume that for sweeps weeks purposes the big arc episodes are taken out of their internal order. More likely, though, that we are to assume that "Piper Maru" and "Apocrypha" took place in around February 1996, when they were aired, and that someone at 1013 made a mistake. Wouldn't be the first time.

Scully is called in by Skinner, who tells her the investigation into her sister's death is to be made inactive due to lack of leads and manpower. He assures her there's nothing sinister to be read into this and that he plans to appeal, but she is not at all convinced. They can solve impossible crimes, she says, but in this case of a woman killed in a well-lit building by a man who left the weapon at the crime scene, they can't even come up with enough to keep people interested. He tells her it has nothing to do with interest, but she says "it has everything to do with interest, but just not yours, and not mine." She walks out, and he looks thoughtful.

Scully stamps into the X-File office (she even knocks at the door). "Anything up?" Mulder asks, but she says there's nothing wrong. He then tells her about a French salvage ship, the "Piper Maru", which has just returned from the same place the "Talapus" pulled up what she thought was a Russian submarine and he thought was a UFO ("Nisei") There's still something out there, he says. "So what?" she asks, running her hand across her eyes. "Why don't you just ask them?" He says the whole crew are being treated for radiation burns, though the French authorities won't reveal why. Scully starts laughing. "I'm constantly amazed by you," she says. "You're working down here in the basement, sifting through files and transmissions that any other agents would just throw away in the garbage." "That's why I'm in the basement," he says. She tells him he's in the basement because they're afraid of him - "of your relentlessness, and because they know that they can drop you in the middle of the desert and tell you that the truth is out there, and you'd ask them for a shovel." "Is that what you think of me?" he asks, saying there's some garbage in San Diego he wants her to help him dig through. She takes her plane ticket, looking rather fed up.

Mulder and Scully visit the French sailors with the radiation burns. The doctor says their treatment is hampered by not knowing the cause of the problem, although they know the levels of radiation were extreme. Only was man, Gauthier, was completely unaffected, he says, and he's discharged himself.

Mulder and Scully visit the "Piper Maru", but there's no trace of any radiation there. Mulder finds an oily residue on the diver's costume, and they also find that the place has been turned upside down, as if someone was looking for something. "Feels like home," Mulder mutters. He plays the video of what Gauthier saw when diving, and Scully identifies the wreckage as belonging to a North American B-51 Mustang. "I just got very turned on," Mulder says, and Scully gives him a look. She explains that her father and brothers used to put together World War 2 model planes, and says she might know someone she can ask about the case.

Gauthier, acting oddly, rifles though papers at home. His wife rushes in, overjoyed the see him, but he just stares at her and she starts to get afraid. She tries to run but he catches her, his eyes turning black. By the time she leaves the house, her eyes are black as well.

Scully goes to Miramar Naval Air Station, asking to see Commander Johansen, a friend of her father's. "I know my way," she says, refusing directions. As she drives slowly through the base she watches children playing, and flashes back to playing with her sister. Her eyes fill with tears, but she smiles fondly.

Mulder arrives at Gauthier's house, finding it trashed, papers everywhere. The first scrumpled up paper he picks up reveals the details of the wrecked plane, and also the name of "J Kallenchuck Salvage Brokers." A noise leads him to Gauthier, unconscious and covered with oil. Gauthier wakes up, worried about his wife, and claiming no memory of anything that has happened since he was about to dive.

Scully introduces herself to Commander Johansen, who lives in a little red brick house that is presumably the same sort as the house Scully was brought up in, since she reminds him that she used to live three doors down and that she went to school with his son, Richard. He says he can't remember her, but asks her in anyway. She asks about the plane that was discovered, but he apologises, saying he can't remember anything. He also says he can't think of anyone else who can help either. "Say hello to your father for me," he says, as she prepares to leave. She tells him her father's dead, then tells him how coming here has brought back so many memories for her.

Mulder goes to J Kallenchuck Salvage brokers in San Francisco, talking to a woman, Geraldine, whom he assumes is a secretary. She tells him Mr Kallenchuck isn't in, and, without his knowledge, aims a gun at him under the table. She says she'll pass on the massage that he came round. Mulder leaves, but doesn't drive away. Instead he watches in his car, and soon lots of cars rush up, with a scream of tyres. Lots of French men in suits rush into the Kallenchuck office, but Geraldine drives away without them noticing. Mulder follows her.

Leaving the base, Scully is stopped rather dramatically and told she id to be detained. Commander Johansen pulls up and gets into her car. Looking emotional, he tells her that his son was killed in the Gulf War. "We bury our dead alive, don't we?" he says. "We hear them every day. They talk to us, they haunt us, they beg us for meaning. Conscience is just the voices of the dead, trying to save us from out own damnation." He tells her he knows about the plane, as he was sent there to find it himself, in a submarine called the Zeus Faber.

Scully calls Mulder, telling him the Mustang was part of an escort for another plane carrying an atomic bomb, which never reached its target. He thinks they are trying to salvage an old nuclear weapon to save having to make a new one, but Mulder wonders why they would leave it 50 years, and why Gauthier was unaffected. These are questions he wants her to find out, he tells her. "I'm got to go to Hong Kong," he says, hanging up. As he goes to the plane, Gauthier's wife, Joan, watches menacingly.

In a cafe, Skinner is approached by several men who cryptically warn him against reopening the case of Melissa Scully. "You take your orders like those below you," he's told, saying that those above him clearly have done the work on Melissa's case already and he shouldn't question it. "It helps to remember these things if a man looks forward to his career, to his plans for the future," one of the men says.

Johansen tells Scully about the mission of the Zeus Faber. (The story is shown in black and white flashback as he talks in voice-over.) The crew started suffering from burns, he says, but the captain, against all reason, refused to leave the area. Some of the crew mutinied and there was a struggle. Seeing that the captain was set to kill them all, Johansen sealed the captain in with the wounded. The camera then shows the captain's eyes all black, as the wounded stare in horror. Only 7 out of the 144 survived, he tells her, but "we never got an explanation why."

In Hong Kong, Mulder approaches Geraldine in a restaurant, having worked out that she's Geraldine Kallenchuck - the boss of the salvage firm. She's been selling secrets, he accuses her, such as selling the location of the crashed plane to the French, but says he's more interested in who's been selling her the secrets in the first place. "I'm a middleman, Mr Mulder, pardon my gendertype," she tells him, saying she came to Hong Kong to meet her source. "It's none of your damned business," she says, when he asks more questions, so he threatens to arrest her. She says he can't, as his gun would have been taken away at customs, but he claps handcuffs on her wrist and drags her from the restaurant. "You can't do that!" she protests. "I just did it," he tells her.

Mulder drags Kallenchuck to her hotel room and breaks down the door ("pardon my gendertype, but after you"), only to be confronted with Krycek, who's pointing a gun at his head. "Great, High Noon in Hong Kong," Kallenchuck mutters, when Mulder accuses him of killing his father, but Krycek pushes her from the room. The door slams on the handcuff chain and Mulder, the cuffs attached to his wrist, is trapped. A gunshot sounds in the corridor as some Frenchmen shoot Kallenchuck, and prepare to burst into the room. Krycek climbs out of the window, and Mulder struggles desperately to reach the key for the cuffs. He evidently manages to do so, for when the French men break in the room is empty. Seeing Mulder running in the street below, they prepare to give chase, but come face to face with Joan Gauthier. As he stares stonily straight ahead, a bright light shines from her body and the men fall to the ground, horribly burnt.

Skinner returns to the same cafe as before, sitting in the same table. A Hispanic man (same man as shot Melissa) starts threatening the waitress. "Is there a problem here?" Skinner asks, and the man turns round and shoots him in the stomach, spitting on him before running away.

Scully arrives him and gets a call telling her Skinner has been shot.

At Hong Kong airport, Mulder apprehends Krycek, punching him hard as the passers-by seem not to notice. Krycek again protests that he didn't kill Mulder's father. Mulder demands that he give him the digital tape, saying it's obvious that was where he was getting the secrets to sell. Krycek says it's in a locker, and offers to take Mulder to it.

Krycek goes to the bathroom to clean up. Mulder, after checking it for exits, stands guard. Jean Gauthier walks past, but he takes no notice, assuming she's no threat. Unbeknown to him, she walks into the men's toilets.

Krycek emerges. "Feeling better?" Mulder asks. "Like a new man," says Krycek, as his eyes cloud over black.

Continued in Apocrypha.

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