By Owen Quinn author
Photos copyright Fox
Beyond The Sea is an episode from the first season of The X-Files and one that scared me at the time. Even watching it today, it unnerves me.
It is one of the best Scully episodes and sets the scene for future seasons for the Scully family template. Her dad is played by the late, great Don S Davis, better known to fans as General Hammond from Stargate SG1. It opens at Christmas time where Scully has had her mother and father over for dinner. before they elave, her father asks her if work is good and Scully says yes. She calls him Ahab and he calls her Starbuck. From this brief moment, we see that Scully is close to her parents and has a good relationship with them.
Scully dozes off on the couch and wakes up to see her father sitting in an armchair. His mouth is moving but there is no sound coming out. Her phone rings and it is her mother to tell her that her father died from a massive heart attack an hour before. When Scully looks back at the chair, it is empty.
This is one powerful opening as it places super sceptic Scully right in the middle of her own paranormal event. It is also incredib,y spooky to me especially since the same thing has happened to me.
Scully is back to work much earlier than Mulder would have liked as the funeral won’t take place until noon that day. There’s a nice touch here when he calls her Dana rather than Scully. Scully picks up on it but they are plunged into a double kidnapping case which they only have days to solve. A criminal on Death Row, Luther Lee Boggs, has told the FBI that since he was almost put to death in the gas chamber, it has awakened psychic powers in him. He wants to deal if he can help save the two kidnapped people then his sentence is reduced to life. This time, Mulder is sceptic because it was him who put Boggs in to death row and this sudden claim of being able to see things doesn’t wash with him. It isn’t the power that is in question for Mulder; it is the person delivering it.
The song played at Scully’s Dad’s funeral is restricted to family. Beyond The Sea is played in French. Scully wonders if her father was proud of her since she took a career with the FBI rather than fully pursue medicine. All her mother says when asked was he proud of his daughter is, he was your father.
All of this is vital to setting up the character of Boggs. The first shot we get of him is in an orange jumpsuit, handcuffed with tattooed knuckles. He is in a room talking to Mulder and Scully, slumped in a chair and sweating. He appears to be channelling some entity that spouts things at them and how Boggs must atone for his sins. He wants to deal but Mulder insists he save the victims first.
When handed a piece of cloth from one of the victims, he cries about terrible pain and how the boy Jim is tied with twine. He convulses as if someone is hitting him with a wire coat hanger demonstrating real theatrics. The location is a condemned warehouse cellar and there is a stone angel with a waterfall that is not water. But Mulder reveals that the cloth is from a T shirt of his and not connected to the case. As they leave, Boggs begins to sing Beyond The Sea which catches Scully’s attention. She looks back and her father is there sitting in Bogg’s place. He switches back to Boggs who then asks “Did you get my message, Starbuck?”
In this scene alone, the audience is not sure if Boggs is telling the truth or not. He has already planted the seed in Scully’s head and this is compounded when she drives home and sees a stone angel and a waterfall that is not water. It is a street sign nd she stops at the abandoned warehouse where she finds a charm owned by the kidnap victim.
It’s a nice switch in perspectives as Scully is now leading towards believing to which Mulder reacts badly. Her is afraid her judgement is clouded and she is putting herself in danger. Is Boggs playing them, orchestrating the kidnap with a accomplice from outside? They have three days left.
When Boggs gives them a location and warns Mulder not to go near the white cross because Boggs sees his blood on it, we, as an audience, are torn. We see what he sees when he describes the kidnapper, his emotions and more attacks with the coat hanger.
The greatest trick that fake mediums pull is they feed on that slight hope fo grieving people that they will hear a whisper of something from the other side that will give them comfort their loved ones are still here. People will pay thousands just for that. And while I know there are genuine mediums out there, there a hundred charlatans on top of that again. But is Boggs real or is he getting his information about Scully from outside somehow? He isn’t getting it from his weekly phone calls because he uses that to taunt Mulder that Scully believes him so why doesn’t he? He has no visitors so could it be Boggs really is getting these visions from beyond?
His credibility is further cemented when they find one of the victims exactly where Boggs said. Mulder is shot and to Scully’s horror, his blood is on a white cross just as Bogg’s said. When the kidnapper is identified as Lucas Henry who was but never proven to be Bogg’s partner.
Furious, she storms into Bogg’s cell and screams at him that she will gas him out of this world if Mulder dies. All of this has been a revenge plot to get Mulder for convicting him. But Boggs plays mind games and she asks him to let her speak to her father.
This is the most pivotal scene in the show as Boggs seemingly forces the spirit of her father back until he gets the deal he wants. Boggs’ hell is going to the death chamber over and over for all eternity. He reveals his family were there when he went to die; the family he murdered. He claims he left his body and souls flooded his body giving him his powers.
There is almost a childlike delivery to Boggs as he manipulates and plays mind games with Scully. Scully fights against it saying for Mulder and her father, where they are is not cold. Up against the clock and the wall, Scully lies that she has gotten his deal. Tearfully, Boggs tries to locate the last victim. He tells her where to find him but admits he knows she is lying but that she tried. He warns her not to follow the blue devil. Scully stops Henry and is finally forced to admit that Boggs is in fact telling the truth. If he had been in cahoots then he would have warned him of the same danger’ a rotten strut on a briidge before a picture of a blue devil.
He promises her the final mesage when he is put in the chair. We see all the people he murdered lining the corridor as he is led to the chair. But Scully is not there to get her message.
We finish off with Scully visiting Mulder in hospital and she is trying to logically explain how Boggs knew those things about her. She admits she is afraid of believing and she always knew what her father left unsaid because as he mother said, he was her father.
Grief can do things to us that we don’t expect and that includes seeing things that may or may not be there. It also makes us victim to other parties preying on our grief. Luthor Boggs turned out to be genuine in the end. Turning the Mulder and Scully dynamic on its head this early was brilliant and really deepened the connection between the two. Dourif’s performance is flawless and the tears on his face when Scully tells him she got him a deal are misleading. They are not tears of joy but of sorrow because he knows that she tried but failed. He is afraid of the cold place he is going to and has seen the light too late for redemption. Yet he still saves two people even though he is going to die. Perhaps this was to help him make peace with himself in the hope that where he is going may not be so cold after all.
In the hands of a lesser actor, this episode would not be as powerful and as enduring since it debuted in 1994. Beyond The Sea is simply a masterclass in how to do it right on every level.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 