Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Død Kalm

This week’s episode is Død Kalm, which means Dead Calm in Norwegian. The episode uses the same ship as previous episodes Colony and End Game, and was one of the more difficult episodes to film. The temperature dropped suddenly making it uncomfortable for cast and crew and the makeup applied to Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny took hours and caused significant delays. The cramped quarters aboard the ship did not help matters either. I personally believe that these problems contributed to the claustrophobic feel of the episode and that added stress elevated the episode because you can see how it played out on screen.

Mulder and Scully investigate the disappearance and death of a ship’s crew. When their bodies were found, they seemed to have been the victim of rapid aging. The agents travel to Norway and hire a fisherman to take them to the ship. Once aboard, the ship they arrived on leaves and they are stranded. They begin to age as Scully uses her medical and scientific background to figure out what is causing them to age so quickly. Mulder discovers that a sewage pipe is the only one not corroded with age and they discover that something from the ocean contaminated the ship’s water supply and caused the rapid aging.

The man on the ship with them hoards what little drinkable water they have left while they await rescue and Scully races against time to save Mulder who is rapidly deteriorating.

Once rescued, it is Scully’s field notes that she kept on the ship that allowed the doctors who rescued them to reverse the effects of the aging from the water on the ship. Scully wants to return to the ship to study it more, but is informed that it sunk due to flooding shortly after they were rescued.

The episode works almost in spite of itself. Its cramped and the makeup effects aren’t always perfect, but there are so many tender moments between Mulder and Scully that the two characters bring you into the horror they are experiencing easily. It’s really a testament to how great Anderson and Duchovny were in their roles.

When this aired, it threw me back to the ’80s. To when I was obsessed with MacGyver. There was an episode during season three of that series where a satellite carrying a genetic experiment crashes to earth and causes wildlife to age rapidly. MacGyver is tasked with helping figure out a solution, but that doesn’t keep the lead scientist on the project from aging at an accelerated rate herself. The themes are the same in both The X-Files episode and the one from MacGyver. The race against time feels more punctuated when your entire life slips away in a matter of hours. Perhaps MacGyver was a precursor to The X-Files. Some if the show’s episodes often required a little of Scully’s scientific knowledge and some of Mulder’s willingness to look at all sides of the case to find the correct answer.

Every time I watch this episode it reminds me of the film Ghost Ship which follows a crew of salvagers who are made aware of an old ocean liner that disappeared decades before. Once aboard, their own ship is destroyed and the paranormal beings on the liner want nothing more than to have the souls of the new occupants. I personally love the film, mostly for its opening which is one of the best openings in horror cinema. With a cast that includes Julianna Margulies, Gabriel Byrne, Karl Urban, and Isaiah Washington, Ghost Ship leads up to a reveal at the end that isn’t the best and the characters do a lot of dumb stuff leading up to it, but the cast is great.

I’m also reminded of a more recent horror film, Sea Fever, which follows a scientist who boards a fishing vessel so she can study microbes in the ocean. The ship heads into waters that are protected by the government, and it turns out that the closed off the area because a huge squid like creature was in the area and whatever it carries is passable to humans.

M. Knight Shyamalan utilized rapid aging in his film Old about a family who goes to a wellness resort only to be stranded on a beach where they begin to age quickly. Two children age into middle age over night and manage to figure out that the resort knows about the beach and uses it to test the side effects of their experimental medications on their guests.

The characters from these movies deal with some of the same mental health issues as Scully and Mulder – loneliness, fear of not being rescued, certain death, life dwindling away too quickly. Død Kalm may not be the best episode in the final run of episodes of season two, but it does offer up a bit of a different sort of X-file. I like it more with each viewing.

Until next week, the truth is out there, and stay out of the ocean.