The Bermuda Triangle has long been a source of inspiration for books, movies, and television. The enduring appeal of such a place, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, stems from constant rumors and suggestions about disappearances in the area. While the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t mentioned in such a way until an article written about it printed in the Associated Press in the 1950s, the nearby Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean was already known for its weedy bottom and windless air, making sailing across it difficult which is where the rumors of loss vessels stems from. It is the only sea without a land border as it is surrounded by four of the main currents in the Atlantic. The four currents create a clockwise motion the center of which is known as the North Atlantic Gyre, or the Sargasso Sea. Bermuda, one of the corners of the Bermuda Triangle, is on the western fringe of the area. What makes the Triangle a triangle are the non-existent boundaries created by linking Bermuda with the southern tip of Florida and Puerto Rico.
It isn’t just shipping vessels that are rumored to go missing in this area. Aircraft, ships, and people have all gone missing. At least that is what the urban legends say. The U.S. Government and scientific organizations have done investigations into the area and found no unusual anomalies. Sure, whatever you say, Government. You smell a salty coverup? Because I smell a salty coverup. Which brings me to my topic of X-Files discussion today.
The X-Files was notorious for exploring urban legends mainly due to Agent Mulder’s obsession with believing in anything paranormal and series creator Chris Carter’s distrust of our own government. The fact that it took six seasons for us to finally get an episode about the Bermuda Triangle is a bit surprising. My favorite thing about this episode isn’t the Bermuda Triangle, though. It was filmed like Alfred Hitchcock filmed Rope and edited to look like scenes were shot in a single take. Meant to look like it unfolded in real time, the editing made it look like there were four uninterrupted eleven-minute takes. The episode also utilizes actors who appear in recurring roles throughout the series and puts them into different roles much like The Wizard of Oz did. The difference here is that Mulder recognizes these people as people he knows, but they don’t recognize him because when Mulder is rescued after wrecking his raft in the Bermuda Triangle, he is seemingly transported 1939.
It is the Lone Gunmen in 1998 who inform Scully that Mulder has gone missing, and she must find someone within the FBI to help find him. The sequence of her walking around the FBI building, from elevator to elevator, is one of the best shot sequences of the series. I always love watching it play out. After Assistant Director Skinner turns her away and she finds A.D. Kersh talking with the Cigarette Smoking Man, she finally turns to Agent Spender for help before Skinner has a change of heart and gives her Mulder’s location. What she and the Lone Gunmen eventually discover is the the ship that rescued him, the Queen Anne, is really a time warp of some kind or that it sailed through some rift in the space time continuum. Meanwhile in 1939, Mulder is dealing with Nazis who want to use a weapon called “Thor’s Hammer”.
Throughout the episode Mulder constantly butts heads with Nazis and a woman resembling Scully becomes his ally. As they try to escape their captors, they are aided by a man who looks like Skinner who turns out to be an Allied forces sympathizer working with the Nazis. At the end of his ordeal, Mulder kisses 1939 Scully and says, “In case we never meet again,” and he jumps overboard and wakes up in 1998 having gone back through the rift that caused the time warp. After he is rescued by Scully, Skinner, and the Lone Gunmen, Mulder tells them of his 1939 brush with Nazis, but they all think he is delirious. He also tells Scully he loves her, but she believes he has had too many drugs in the hospital. The episode ends with Mulder giving a knowing smile when he realizes the spot where 1939 Scully punched him after he kissed her is still bruised so he didn’t imagine it.
The parallels between what Mulder experienced in 1939 and what he and Scully go through in 1998 can’t be ignored. Forces in his own government actively work against him much in the same way the Nazis do on that ship even if the whole vibe on the ship seems like some kind of awkward parody. It also shows Scully as his ally trying to keep that boundary between work and love in place whilst Skinner is the double agent playing both sides. What is really interesting though is that it parallels more with what is currently going on in our government in 2026 where a lot of current policy is often compared to what many refer to as the Nazi playbook.
Anyhoo, for authenticity purposes, the production of this episode used both British and German actors to portray the British sailors and Nazi solders which was cool since most of the Nazi dialogue is in actual German. William B. Davis (Cigarette Smoking Man) who portrayed a Nazi in this episode had to speak a lot of German dialogue. It required him to learn a bit of German in the process by listening to the German dialogue on a tape recorder.
Remember when I mentioned The Wizard of Oz? There are multiple references to the 1939 film including naming characters after lyricist Yip Harburd and another after Almira Gulch (the black and white version of the Wicked Witch). The Almira Gulch character in this episode is the lead singer of a band named The Lollipop Guild. The ship that Mulder wrecks in the Bermuda Triangle is named the Lady Garland after singer Judy Garland. The final scene during which Mulder wakes in the hospital is strikingly similar to the end of The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy states, “You were there. And you were there.” The obvious resemblance makes the Mulder’s foray into 1939 feel like a dream instead of a reality he experienced. Even the Nazis in this episode feel more like a parody of Nazi soldiers, like they were part of a comic book or something. If this tear in the space time continuum were real, Mulder likely spent that time in another dimension. One that felt slightly off from our own reality.
As I stated earlier, The X-Files wasn’t the only Hollywood IP to use the Bermuda Triangle. Scooby Doo featured the Triangle as did Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. In the 1991 adaptation of The Addams Family, the plot involved Fester Addams using the Bermuda Triangle as the cause for his amnesia whilst his adoptive mother tried to steal Gomez and Morticia’s money. The third film in the surprisingly fun Hotel Transylvania franchise went to the Bermuda Triangle as did horror films Satan’s Triangle and Monster Island. But the real winner of Caribbean related horror films goes to the film simply titled Triangle. It starred Melissa George and a before-he-was-famous Liam Hemsworth. Five friends sailing on a yacht end up shipwrecked and are seemingly saved by a mysterious ship that happens to be empty. What transpires is a nightmare for the main character as she realizes that she’s been there before. Many, many times. Check it out if you haven’t seen it.
Millennium alum Lance Henrikson even starred in a film about a ship that reappears 25 years after it disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. Lost Voyage was a made for TV film that treated time as more of a temporal displacement, allowing the ship to exist in multiple timelines. The film aired three years after this episode of The X-Files and I wonder if this was where it got some of its inspiration. It’s available for free with ads on Prime and Tubi at the time I wrote this.
Until next week, the truth is out there.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
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Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
The Bermuda Triangle has long been a source of inspiration for books, movies, and television. The enduring appeal of such a place, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, stems from constant rumors and suggestions about disappearances in the area. While the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t mentioned in such a way until an article written about it printed in the Associated Press in the 1950s, the nearby Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean was already known for its weedy bottom and windless air, making sailing across it difficult which is where the rumors of loss vessels stems from. It is the only sea without a land border as it is surrounded by four of the main currents in the Atlantic. The four currents create a clockwise motion the center of which is known as the North Atlantic Gyre, or the Sargasso Sea. Bermuda, one of the corners of the Bermuda Triangle, is on the western fringe of the area. What makes the Triangle a triangle are the non-existent boundaries created by linking Bermuda with the southern tip of Florida and Puerto Rico.
It isn’t just shipping vessels that are rumored to go missing in this area. Aircraft, ships, and people have all gone missing. At least that is what the urban legends say. The U.S. Government and scientific organizations have done investigations into the area and found no unusual anomalies. Sure, whatever you say, Government. You smell a salty coverup? Because I smell a salty coverup. Which brings me to my topic of X-Files discussion today.
The X-Files was notorious for exploring urban legends mainly due to Agent Mulder’s obsession with believing in anything paranormal and series creator Chris Carter’s distrust of our own government. The fact that it took six seasons for us to finally get an episode about the Bermuda Triangle is a bit surprising. My favorite thing about this episode isn’t the Bermuda Triangle, though. It was filmed like Alfred Hitchcock filmed Rope and edited to look like scenes were shot in a single take. Meant to look like it unfolded in real time, the editing made it look like there were four uninterrupted eleven-minute takes. The episode also utilizes actors who appear in recurring roles throughout the series and puts them into different roles much like The Wizard of Oz did. The difference here is that Mulder recognizes these people as people he knows, but they don’t recognize him because when Mulder is rescued after wrecking his raft in the Bermuda Triangle, he is seemingly transported 1939.
It is the Lone Gunmen in 1998 who inform Scully that Mulder has gone missing, and she must find someone within the FBI to help find him. The sequence of her walking around the FBI building, from elevator to elevator, is one of the best shot sequences of the series. I always love watching it play out. After Assistant Director Skinner turns her away and she finds A.D. Kersh talking with the Cigarette Smoking Man, she finally turns to Agent Spender for help before Skinner has a change of heart and gives her Mulder’s location. What she and the Lone Gunmen eventually discover is the the ship that rescued him, the Queen Anne, is really a time warp of some kind or that it sailed through some rift in the space time continuum. Meanwhile in 1939, Mulder is dealing with Nazis who want to use a weapon called “Thor’s Hammer”.
Throughout the episode Mulder constantly butts heads with Nazis and a woman resembling Scully becomes his ally. As they try to escape their captors, they are aided by a man who looks like Skinner who turns out to be an Allied forces sympathizer working with the Nazis. At the end of his ordeal, Mulder kisses 1939 Scully and says, “In case we never meet again,” and he jumps overboard and wakes up in 1998 having gone back through the rift that caused the time warp. After he is rescued by Scully, Skinner, and the Lone Gunmen, Mulder tells them of his 1939 brush with Nazis, but they all think he is delirious. He also tells Scully he loves her, but she believes he has had too many drugs in the hospital. The episode ends with Mulder giving a knowing smile when he realizes the spot where 1939 Scully punched him after he kissed her is still bruised so he didn’t imagine it.
The parallels between what Mulder experienced in 1939 and what he and Scully go through in 1998 can’t be ignored. Forces in his own government actively work against him much in the same way the Nazis do on that ship even if the whole vibe on the ship seems like some kind of awkward parody. It also shows Scully as his ally trying to keep that boundary between work and love in place whilst Skinner is the double agent playing both sides. What is really interesting though is that it parallels more with what is currently going on in our government in 2026 where a lot of current policy is often compared to what many refer to as the Nazi playbook.
Anyhoo, for authenticity purposes, the production of this episode used both British and German actors to portray the British sailors and Nazi solders which was cool since most of the Nazi dialogue is in actual German. William B. Davis (Cigarette Smoking Man) who portrayed a Nazi in this episode had to speak a lot of German dialogue. It required him to learn a bit of German in the process by listening to the German dialogue on a tape recorder.
Remember when I mentioned The Wizard of Oz? There are multiple references to the 1939 film including naming characters after lyricist Yip Harburd and another after Almira Gulch (the black and white version of the Wicked Witch). The Almira Gulch character in this episode is the lead singer of a band named The Lollipop Guild. The ship that Mulder wrecks in the Bermuda Triangle is named the Lady Garland after singer Judy Garland. The final scene during which Mulder wakes in the hospital is strikingly similar to the end of The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy states, “You were there. And you were there.” The obvious resemblance makes the Mulder’s foray into 1939 feel like a dream instead of a reality he experienced. Even the Nazis in this episode feel more like a parody of Nazi soldiers, like they were part of a comic book or something. If this tear in the space time continuum were real, Mulder likely spent that time in another dimension. One that felt slightly off from our own reality.
As I stated earlier, The X-Files wasn’t the only Hollywood IP to use the Bermuda Triangle. Scooby Doo featured the Triangle as did Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. In the 1991 adaptation of The Addams Family, the plot involved Fester Addams using the Bermuda Triangle as the cause for his amnesia whilst his adoptive mother tried to steal Gomez and Morticia’s money. The third film in the surprisingly fun Hotel Transylvania franchise went to the Bermuda Triangle as did horror films Satan’s Triangle and Monster Island. But the real winner of Caribbean related horror films goes to the film simply titled Triangle. It starred Melissa George and a before-he-was-famous Liam Hemsworth. Five friends sailing on a yacht end up shipwrecked and are seemingly saved by a mysterious ship that happens to be empty. What transpires is a nightmare for the main character as she realizes that she’s been there before. Many, many times. Check it out if you haven’t seen it.
Millennium alum Lance Henrikson even starred in a film about a ship that reappears 25 years after it disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. Lost Voyage was a made for TV film that treated time as more of a temporal displacement, allowing the ship to exist in multiple timelines. The film aired three years after this episode of The X-Files and I wonder if this was where it got some of its inspiration. It’s available for free with ads on Prime and Tubi at the time I wrote this.
Until next week, the truth is out there.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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