| Nisei | Credits | Gallery | Transcript | 
|
"Nisei" is the ninth episode of the third season of The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on November 24, 1995. The episode was written by Chris Carter, Howard Gordon and Frank Spotnitz, and was directed by David Nutter.
Nisei is the first of a two-part mythology arc storyline, with events continuing in the next episode 731.
Synopsis
Investigating a video of an alien autopsy, Mulder and Scully find evidence that Japanese scientists brought to America after the Second World War may have been involved in Scully's abduction. (Part 1 of 2)
Summary
KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE
A train reaches a station and a man gets off the train. He disconnects the train's last carriage and signals for the vehicle to be restarted. After nightfall, cars pull up outside the train and passengers exit them. They greet a Japanese man who has just disembarked from the carriage. The man leaves in one of the cars but the other men enter the carriage, put on bio-protection suits and begin operating on a body, extracting a green liquid from it. Suddenly, military-looking men storm the train and kill all the doctors, putting the body in a bag before leaving. The body is actually an alien, and a small camera inside the carriage has been recording the entire event.
Act One
FBI HEADQUARTERS,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scully walks into the basement X-Files office, and finds Mulder watching a video of the earlier autopsy. She asks how much it cost him, and he replies $29.95, plus shipping. Scully is shocked by how much it cost, and complains that it seems more faked than the Alien Autopsy aired on Fox, because you can't even see the body. Mulder explains that what intrigues him about it is the striking lack of detail, but what he is really interested in is when the train carriage is stormed. (Neither agent currently knows that this took place in a train.) The video cuts off, just after the squad of men start firing. When Scully asks who is selling the tapes, Mulder replies, "Some guy in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Claims he pulled it off the satellite this morning."
ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
Mulder and Scully arrive outside the house of the man who is selling the tapes. The front door is boarded up but the back door has been broken open. By the side of the door is a mailbox, with "Rat Tail Productions" written at the top of it. Inside the house, Scully finds a man with his hands tied together with rope, and it appears that he was suffocated by a pillowcase on his head, which is bloody. His body is still warm, indicating that his murder was a recent event. Mulder spots a man running in a hallway downstairs and chases the man past several apartment blocks. The man is Japanese and is carrying a briefcase, which he does not seem reluctant to drop. The man attempts to climb a fence but Mulder pulls him down. The man turns to attack Mulder and seems to be skilled in martial arts. He kicks Mulder's gun out of his hand and then tries to run. Mulder pulls up his trouser leg, revealing an ankle-holster. He takes the gun out and fires several warning shots at the man, who turns in shock and looks at Mulder. "Got tired of losing my gun", Mulder explains. Mulder takes the man's bag and realizes he doesn't speak English, before arresting him.
Act Two
SUBSTATION C
ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
The Japanese Man is in custody but Scully has been unable to locate a Japanese-English interpreter. Towards the end of the hallway, Mulder spots Assistant Director Skinner walking towards them. Mulder mutters a joke to Scully, and says "Look at this, a beacon in the night." Skinner greets the agents and tells them that the situation, from his perspective, is actually somewhat of an international crisis. He tells Mulder that the man he arrested earlier was Kazuo Sakurai, a high-ranking Japanese diplomat, and that Mulder will have to let him go free. Skinner says that the murder victim and the paperwork all have to be handled by another agency. Before he leaves, Skinner tells Mulder to keep his nose clean in everything until he gets back to Washington.
Outside, Scully asks Mulder if he just wants to drop the case but he reminds her that he paid $29.95 for the tape and says he thinks he's entitled to a few more answers. Mulder opens the trunk of his car and gets out the briefcase that Kazou was carrying. Inside the bag are satellite photos of a ship at sea. Scully also finds a sheet of paper with a list of UFO club members, with the name Betsy Hagopian circled. Mulder tells Scully to get a motel room and find Betsy, while he returns to Washington, D.C., "like a good boy" as Skinner told him to do, and show the photo to some of his friends.
THE LONE GUNMEN'S OFFICE WASHINGTON, DC
Mulder visits The Lone Gunmen and shows them the satellite photos that he found in the briefcase. They tell him that the boat in the picture is called the Talapus and that the optics of the picture are German, the technology is probably from the USA and the satellite is Japanese, launched from South America. "Got to love that global economy, huh?" replies Mulder. They also tell him that the Talapus was a salvage ship out of San Diego, that it spent months looking for a Japanese submarine that sank in World War II and was rumored to be carrying a load of gold bullion. Mulder asks if they ever found the submarine and Langly tells him that they reportedly didn't but, judging from the photos, the ship never returned to San Diego, having instead taken the Panama Canal to a naval shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. Although none of the men can understand why the Talapus would have journeyed there, Mulder starts to consider that the reason may be that the ship found something other than a Japanese submarine.
JAPANESE EMBASSY
WASHINGTON, DC
Kazuo Sakurai walks out of the embassy, where a black car is waiting for him. A chauffeur opens the door for him, and he gets in. The chauffeur closes the door, and locks Sakurai in the car. A face comes out of the shadows behind the seats, and smiles a sadistic smile towards him. The driver adjusts his rear view mirror, and reflects the man in the back of the car, strangling Sakurai to death.
Act Three
BETSY HAGOPIAN'S HOUSE
ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA*
Scully goes to try and find Betsy Hagopian. She arrives at her house, and notices a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) sticker on the window. Scully knocks the door, and a woman with dark hair answers. Scully asks if she is Betsy, and the woman says that Besty is not there right now. When she asks for any way she could contact Betsy, the woman looks a Scully with awe on her face. Scully apologises and reaches for her badge, and the woman says "I know you". Scully tells her she must be mistaken, but the woman is sure that she has seen Scully before. She calls for her friend Penny, and when Penny gets there, she straight away says "Oh My God! She's one.". Scully asks "One what?", and the first woman answers "One of us." Scully tells them they must be mistaken, but Penny calls someone and says to bring the group to Betsy's place. Scully tells them about the man who was murdered by Kazo, and they say that he was one of their group. Scully tells them again that they must be wrong, bt they tell her this;
LOTTIE HOLLOWAY: Did you have an unexplained event in your life last year? Were you missing for a period of time that can't be accounted for?
(Scully stares at them in shock.)
SCULLY: Why did you ask me that?
PENNY NORTHERN: I think you better sit down, Miss Scully. I think there are some people you're going to want to meet.
When people starts to arrive, Scully assures them that she has never seen any of them in her life. They say she cannot remember because she has only been taken once. Scully asks what they meen by "Taken". They tell her "To the Bright White Place". Scully suddenly sees a flashback of herself lying on a table, bathed in a bright light. A woman asks "You remember, don't you? There were men there, performing tests" Scully asks which men they are talking about, and Lottie tells her that they do not reveal themselves, that they take her memory away, but somehow it keeps seeping back. That some may have come back to her but didn't make sense. Scully doesn't understand why she can't remember the MUFON members. They tell her that the first time, all you remember is the light, then sometimes the faces of the men who perform the tests. Scully stares at her until her memory returns briefly and she sees some kind of tube attached to her belly button during the tests, exactly like Mulder had imagined when Scully was abducted. Her stomach is inflated, being filled with air. It grows very large as two figures, presumably aliens, watch in the background. They ask if she has the mark, and one woman shows hers to Scully. She has a brown mark on the back of her neck, exactly like Scully has. Lottie says that that is where they put the implant. Scully tries to leave, but Penny convinces her to come and see Betsy.
Penny and Lottie take Scully to a hospital, where they stand outside Betsy’s room, looking in. Lottie explains that Betsy has an advanced cancer that is undiagnosed and is not responding to treatment. She and Penny believe that her illness is a result of her abductions, as she has been taken numerous times since she was a teenager. They believe that the same thing will eventually happen to all of the women who were abducted, including Scully.
COAST GUARD HEADQUARTERS
NEWPORT NEWS, VIRGINIA
Meanwhile, Mulder visits the Coast Guard Headquarters to try and get more information on the Talapus. He speaks with an officer who says that the Talapus is a salvage ship registered to San Diego. He says that when it last tried to port, it was searched by the DEA, as there was suspicion that it had picked up a drug shipment while passing through Panama. The crew was never arrested, however, and the ship was put out to sea the next morning. Mulder says this doesn’t make sense, insisting that a ship traveling on a journey that long would need to refuel before heading back out to sea. He asks the officer to retrieve any paperwork concerning the ship.
When the officer returns with the paperwork, Mulder is nowhere to be found, as he has gone out to the shipyard. Mulder finds the Talapus and sneaks on board, looking around, but not finding anything. He then sees a military tactical team about to board the ship, but he evades detection and jumps into the water.
After dark, still at the Coast Guard Headquarters, Mulder sees the same tactical team, presumably still looking for him. He sneaks around them and is able to look through the window of a nearby building. Inside, he sees a team of people in hazmat suits performing some kind of tests on a large, UFO-shaped object hidden behind a translucent plastic curtain.
Later that night, Mulder arrives home only to find that his apartment door is already open. He draws his gun and enters cautiously, finding his apartment in disarray. He then hears Skinner’s voice from the darkness, asking if he thinks whoever was there found what they were looking for. Mulder initially keeps his gun pointed at Skinner until Skinner explains that he came looking for Mulder, and that the door was already open when he got there. He tells Mulder that Kazuo Sakurai’s body was found in the C&O Canal that morning. He asks Mulder about Sakurai’s briefcase, as the Japanese government believes Sakurai to have been murdered for its contents. Mulder tells Skinner that Scully has the briefcase, but that he doesn’t know where she is. Frustrated, Skinner leaves, telling Mulder that he is no longer willing to come to his aid in this matter.
Act Four
OFFICE OF SENATOR RICHARD MATHESON
WASHINGTON, DC
Mulder visits Senator Matheson to ask for advice on how to proceed. Senator Matheson tells him to turn in the satellite photos. Mulder says that this will implicate him, but Senator Matheson responds by telling Mulder that “a good chess player knows which pieces to sacrifice, and when.” Mulder still resists, saying that he doesn’t want to become involved in a murder investigation that will only give “them” time to bury things out of his reach. Senator Matheson can tell that Mulder doesn’t fully trust him, so he tells Mulder about the murder of four Japanese doctors involved in a classified project in Knoxville, Tennessee. Mulder infers that these were the men from the alien autopsy video, although Senator Matheson refuses to confirm this. He does, however, give Mulder the names of the murdered doctors and suggests that he look into their history. When Mulder asks what he’s getting into, Senator Matheson replies, “Monsters begetting monsters.”
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, DC
Back at his office, Mulder receives a visit from Scully, now returned from Allentown. She tells him about the women she met, how they knew her and had the same implants, and how one of them is dying. She expresses fear that she may also be dying, but Mulder tells her not to worry until they know more. Scully then asks Mulder about a photograph containing a group of Japanese men from World War II, as she recognizes one of them. Mulder expresses doubt at her claim, explaining that the man died in 1965. The man, Dr. Takeo Ishimaru, headed a series of unethical experiments performed under a project titled 731. Mulder then tells Scully that four of the other men in the photograph were the ones murdered in the alien autopsy video. He also tells her about the Talapus, believing it to be a ship that pulled a UFO, containing the EBE from the video, up from the ocean floor, and how the US government is using a secret railway to transport EBEs. Scully is skeptical, and Mulder asks her how she still doesn’t believe after everything she’s seen and been through. Scully says that she needs more than Mulder—she needs proof.
Scully then takes the chip removed from her neck to Agent Pendrell for testing. Pendrell confirms that the chip is man-made and that it’s highly complex and state-of-the-art. When Scully asks what a chip like that could be used for, Pendrell says it could be anything. He brings up one instance of it being used to help people with severe disabilities use computers by interfacing with their cerebral cortex.
Act Five
QUINNIMONT, WEST VIRGINIA
At a train yard, Mulder observes a group of Japanese men escorting an individual in a hazmat suit into a train car with the number 82517 on the top. The individual in the hazmat suit appears to be alien. Mulder watches the men drive off just as the train departs. He tries to run after the train, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, Scully is back in Mulder’s office watching the alien autopsy video. She pauses the video on the face of a doctor who has taken his mask off in view of the camera. Suddenly, she flashes back to the “Bright White Place”, where she can see that man, along with four others, performing tests on her. She then gets a call from Mulder, who tells her what he saw in the train yard and that the train is stopping in Cincinnati, where he plans to get on. Scully tells him that she was right about Dr. Ishimaru, as she now remembers that he was one of the men who abducted her.
EDWARDS TERMINAL
QUEENSGATE, OHIO
One of the men from the train yard enters a bathroom in the terminal. He is followed in by another man, as yet unidentified. The unidentified man incapacitates the man from the train yard, locking him in a stall. Outside the bathroom, Dr. Ishimaru passes by, presumably to catch the same train Mulder is chasing. Later, Mulder arrives at the terminal, and asks about the express train to Vancouver. The attendant tells him that it just left the station, much to Mulder’s chagrin.
That evening, Scully is at her apartment door when she is approached by X. He tells her of Mulder’s whereabouts and insists that she tell him not to get on the train, as he would be putting himself in a very dangerous situation. She is initially distrusting, but eventually relents and calls Mulder. He picks up, standing on a bridge over a set of train tracks. Scully tries to convince him not to get on the train, but Mulder sees the train approaching and jumps on top of it anyway, losing his cell phone in the process.
To be continued…
References
Betsy Hagopian; Vancouver; Tennessee; Pennsylvania; Virginia; cancer; World War II; implant; Steven Zinnzser
Background Information
Production
- The episode title is a reference to the term for first-generation Japanese-Americans (American born children of Japanese immigrants).
- A Nisei is a son born outside Japan to emigrant parents. In its original and more restricted meaning, the term applies only to male children born in North or South America to parents who left Japan prior to World War II, but in more casual use refers to any child of emigre Japanese couples.The parent (emigre) generation is called Issei; the children of Nisei are called Sansei. In order to be properly considered Sansei, all four grandparents must have been born in Japan.The words correspond and are evolved from the Japanese for the numbers one, two and three: ich, ni, san.
- It seems very odd, given that X puts his life in danger every time he goes to see Mulder, that he would go to see Scully simply to get her to ring Mulder and warn him. The man seems to have access to the darkest of secrets, so presumably getting access to Mulder's cellphone number shouldn't have been too much of a problem for him and he could have phoned himself from a payphone! Unless of course he did not believe that Mulder would have listened to him, and perhaps thought that Scully would have more influence on his decision.
- The storyline of this episode was originally conceived as a stand-alone episode.
Trivia
- The phrase "she is one", here used referring to Scully, is the same as in episode 2x10; "Red Museum", used in reference to teenagers who were unwittingly part of an experiment with alien DNA.
- The number on the boxcar in which the alien autopsy takes place is 82594. This recalls the date, August 25, 1994, when Chris Carter made his directing debut, for the episode 'Duane Barry'.
- The box car is a modified Budd Rail Diesel Car. [1]
- Several locations in this episode are featured prominently in the X-Files video game for the PC and PlayStation, The train yard and the shipping docks to name a few. Also, the same train car Mulder becomes trapped in, as well as exactly the same boat Mulder investigates early on in the episode are places you can explore in the game.
- Scully's joke about the hokey Alien Autopsy special on FOX turned out to be ironic since Fox repeated the special the following night. They even even aired some promotional spots for the special during the original telecast.
- Pictures of the salvage ship are actually edited pictures of the World War Two German Battleship Bismarck and her consort the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen while stopped in Norway to refuel. The heavy cruiser is badly edited to look like the salvage vessel. The pics where actually taken by a RAF recon Spitfire of a Norway harbor, not the Panama Canal.
- This episode, along with 731 is akin to Paper Clip, whereby scientists during World War II conducting evil experiments are part of the plot.
- 82517: This number appears on the alien autopsy boxcar halfway through the episode. While it may be pushing things, 8/25/17 was the start of the Bolshevic Revolution, which could be an allusion to the revolution that Mulder is starting.Strangely enough, 5/17/82 is the publication date of a journal article by a doctor named Mulder regarding neonatal menegitis and testing on babies in the womb. Could this possibly be a reference to Scully?
Goofs
- In the starting scene, the railroad worker is seen among the alien autopsy boxcar. It will appear in the middle of the wagons on the next stage. Assuming Boxcar is a secret lab, all doors must be locked. This move can not be done when the train is moving.
- At 21:24 Mulder is standing in front of a mirror that captures the reflection of a production member.
- When escaping the S.W.A.T team raiding the ship Mulder botches diving into the water and belly flops.
- In act one, it is established that Kazuo Sakurai neither speaks nor understands English. However, in the scene where he is killed, the limo chauffeur speaks to him in English.
- In the teaser, the location is identified as Knoxville, Tennessee. However, there are distinctively Canadian railroad crossing signs shown as the train crosses in front of the group of children. During the closing scenes identified as West Virginia, more Canadian trains are shown in the railyard, such as the British Columbia Railway locomotives in the maintenance area.
- The alien autopsy boxcar number changes during the episode. At the beginning we see 82594. Halfway into the episode when Mulder is scoping out the railroad the number is 82517, which carries over into the following episode.
- The uniform of the Coast Guard officer that meets with Mulder is incorrect. The Coast Guard has not worn a khaki duty uniform since the 1960s. The current Coast Guard duty uniform is blue. Nor does the Coast Guard issue a black commando sweater. In actuality, the uniform used in this episode is probably a re-use of the US Navy uniforms seen previously in the show.
- The location ticker reads "Substation C, Allentown, Pennsylvania 10:02, but the letters on the building read "Los Angeles Police Department"
- When Mulder breaks into the ship, he leaves the door open. It is closed in a subsequent shot.
- When Senator Matheson tells Mulder about the four Japanese Nationals had been murdered, he says that the murders had occurred several weeks ago, but when Mulder brings Scully up to speed a scene or two later, he tells her that someone must have been able to identify the four doctors who were performing the autopsy even though they were only murdered yesterday.
- About 38 minutes into the episode, Scully is watching a videotape on what appears to be a wide-screen television (16:9 ratio). In 1995 this would be a very rare (and expensive) set in the USA. The video (allegedly obtained as an off-satellite video tape recording) would have been recorded in the NTSC 5:4 format on a standard VCR, so the playback should have either had black bars on either side to maintain the aspect ratio, or the image should have been obviously stretched and distorted to fill the screen. The scenes on the tape were probably filmed with the same 35mm cameras the rest of the episode was filmed with and made to look like a video tape (i.e. tracking lines during pause mode).
Cast and Characters
- The tactical team in the opening sequence were not actors but real trained Rangers.
- Gillian Barber (Penny Northern) previously played Agent Nancy Spiller in The X-Files episode "Ghost in the Machine" and Beth Kane in "Red Museum".
- Paul McLean (Coast Guard Officer) previously played Dr. Josephs in The X-Files episode "Shapes" and Agent Kautz in "Anasazi".
Cast
Starring
Also Starring
Guest Starring
- Stephen McHattie the Red-Haired Man
- Raymond J. Barry as Senator Richard Matheson
- Robert Ito as Dr. Takeo Ishimaru/Shiro Zama
- Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike
- Dean Haglund as Richard Langly
- Bruce Harwood as John Fitzgerald Byers
- Steven Williams as X
Featuring
- Gillian Barber as Penny Northern
- Corrine Koslo as Lottie Holloway
- Lori Triolo as Diane
- Paul McLean as Coast Guard Officer
- Brendan Beiser as Agent Pendrell
- Yasuo Sakurai as Kazuo Sakurai
External Links