Beyond The Sea [1X12]

Overall Rating: 9.5/10
Fright Factor: 7/10
Acting: 9/10
Mytharc Relevance: 4/10
Re-watchability: High
Connections: Silence of The Lambs, William Peter Blatty's Exorcist III

Summary: Scully's parents are visiting with her in Georgetown; after they leave, she falls asleep in front of the television. Scully wakes up and sees her father sitting in her living room chair, speaking to her - but there is no sound. She doesn't immediately comprehend what she sees - didn't her parents leave hours ago? Then the phone rings, and she realizes she must not have been completely awake - or was she? It is Scully's mother, very distraught. She tells Dana that her father has just died of a heart attack.

That night, two teens are abducted from their car by a man posing as a police officer - a serial killer who tortures his victims and kills them five days later. Meanwhile, convicted serial killer Mulder helped put away, Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif), is scheduled to die in the gas chamber - but he tries to cop a deal with Mulder and Scully, claiming he has "psychically transmitted" information on the kidnapped pair that could save their lives.

At the funeral for Scully's father, at his request his ashes are scattered from a boat although as Dana mentions, he qualified for a full military burial at Arlington. "It's exactly the way he wanted," Scully's mother replies. The music emanating from a tinny player is Bobby Darin's "Beyond The Sea" - the song that played when the senior Scully's ship returned from a naval mission, and he proposed marriage.

Scully's skepticism of the unknown is shaken by her strange vision, and she is momentarily inclined to believe Boggs may have clairvoyance and the power to channel the voices of the dead - incuding her father. Mulder insists Boggs is a fake, somehow in league with the serial killer on the outside. Time is running out for the kidnapped teens - and for Boggs.

Report: It's been about two years since I've last seen Beyond The Sea, and it's lost none of its power over several viewings. Both creator Chris Carter and many of the actors involved with the show call this episode one of the series' finest. The acting performances are easily some of Season One's best, the story is creepy and suspenseful, and the action is extremely 'dense': you come away with the feeling you've somehow watched a feature-length film, not an hour-long TV show.

The episode is deftly peppered with religious imagery - angels (a statue outside an abandoned building where on of the victims is held), a cross, and a "blue devil." This show packs an emotional punch as well, with the death of Scully's father (Don Davis) and her mysterious vision of him - paralleling Luther Lee Bogg's similar visions of his victims, as he was being walked to the death chamber - before a last-minute stay of execution. At one point, Boggs (in "medium" mode) warns Mulder to "keep away from the white cross...your blood will spill there." When the agents track down the kidnapper - a disheveled drifter named Lucas Henry - to a boat dock, Lucas fires a shot at Mulder, striking him in the torso. Scully shouts for aid, and when she looks up she sees the "white cross" - two dock poles lashed together.

Dourif's performance as Boggs showcases his skill in rapid-fire morphing from one character to another seamlessly, as Boggs "channels" the spirits of both the living and the dead. More recently, we've seen him as the toxically unctuous Grima Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. He's been stereotyped as the "dangerous lunatic" since his earliest acting career (1975's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), and few can match his sweaty, red-faced portrayal of criminality or madness - as in his portrayal of James Venamun, the "Gemini Killer" in William Peter Blatty's Exorcist III - which is almost spot-on with his X-Files role as Luther Lee Boggs.