“They said that they know me. That they’ve seen me before. It was freaky. They know things about me, about my disappearance.” – Dana Scully.
NISEI [Mythology] Aired November 24, 1995
Episode: 3×09 / 58 Overall
Director: David Nutter • Writer: Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz & Howard Gordon
An “alien autopsy” videotape and a murder spark Mulder’s search for a strange creature. Scully looks for information about her disappearance.
Originally conceived as a single mythology episode and then extended to a two-parter due to an overly ambitious script which put a strain on the production schedule, this mythology entry furthers the plot arc involving alien/human hybrids. Whenever The X-Files produced two-part mythology episodes they generally followed a similar pattern. The first episode would open a proverbial ‘can of worms’ and spend a significant portion of its running time setting up events and posing questions, all of which will be left unresolved until the following episode. As such the overall success of a two-parter myth-arc story line can’t be fully judged without seeing the conclusion. 二世 (Nisei) is a second generation person born of Japanese immigrants. At first I couldn’t form a connection between the episode and its title, however I now believe it may refer to the alien/human hybrid creature which Japanese scientists in America are working to create. This hybrid creature being the Nisei, the child of these Japanese born men. This is only one of the story’s being told this week, the other more compelling plot-line involves Scully and a revelation about her abduction.
There hasn’t been a great deal of advancement regarding Scully’s abduction sub-plot. At the beginning of the Season we learned that the agent has some type of chip implanted in her neck and her personal and biological information is being stored in some type of secret government cataloguing system. Now, while investigating a member of the group MUFON, Mutual UFO Network, group she discovers that she is not alone. This episode will kick off an important arc for Scully involving her developing Cancer that is somehow linked to this chip that is implanted in abductees. Though this is only the ‘B’ story line in this episode and less time is devoted to exploring Scully’s predicament, I found myself more eager to continue with part two in order to see the follow up to her story, as opposed to Mulder’s. Perhaps this is because out of the two narratives, Scully’s is the more personal one. While Mulder is investigating a far reaching global conspiracy, Scully is about to face her mortality and experience a crisis of faith. A more intimate and emotional story that I simply find more engaging.
X makes an appearance, yet as is sometimes the case his inclusion is somewhat illogical. He insists that Scully contact Mulder to warn him not to board the train, intimating that there will be dire consequences if he does. However, if he truly felt this way one would think that a man with access to the deepest of government secrets could fairly easily find himself in possession of Mulder’s cell phone number and simply make the call himself. Though instead he chooses to risk being seen speaking to Scully in public. The agents finding themselves at the house of the video tape distributor at the same time as the Japanese diplomat is remarkably fortuitous when you consider that there is no reason why they should both be there at that precise time. It’s just a little bit too convenient and I would have appreciated even a small justification for them running in to each other. The pacing drags in spots throughout the episode and takes quite a long time to establish very little. I feel like the decision to extend this story across two episodes may have been unnecessary as there were certainly scenes in Nisei that could have been trimmed significantly. It’s exciting to see some development with Scully’s abduction but apart from that this is a fairly pedestrian effort on its own, despite setting up what is surely to be a superior episode to follow.
★★☆☆☆
The X-Files Retrospective Project 