“Beyond the Sea” is episode thirteen of season one of The X-Files.
It’s near Christmas, and Scully has been having dinner with her parents at her home. On the way out, Scully’s mother makes a gesture to her father (played by Don S. Davis; perhaps best known for playing General Hammond in Stargate SG-1) and he asks about Scully’s job. Her mother probably wanted more of a conversation. Later, Scully is asleep in front of the television when she wakes and sees her father sitting in a chair, speaking but with no sound. He doesn’t respond either. The phone rings and Scully looks away, and then back, and her father has gone. The phone is her mother – her father died of a massive coronary.
At Jackson University, Raleigh, North Carolina, a young couple are in a car making out when there’s a knock on the window and a torch is shone in. The boy opens the window and is told to get out. He does then, glancing down out of the torch’s beam, notices the individual is dressed in jeans. So, not a cop or security. He asks for ID, but is struck across the face.
At the FBI, Mulder is reading a criminal profile when Scully arrives. He asks how she is – using her first name – as he didn’t think she would be in. Two days ago, James Summers and Elizabeth Hawley, both 19, were kidnapped. Last year, to the day, another couple were kidnapped from Duke University. One week later they were found dead; they had been kept alive and tortured. The police thought it was a one-time offender; now it’s a serial. They have five days to find the kids.
In one week, Luther Lee Boggs will be executed in North Carolina. Boggs claims he has information on the kidnapping, knowing information that only the girl’s family would know. Or the kidnapper. Boggs will use his talents in exchange for life imprisonment. He says he is getting psychic transmissions. Mulder sounds rather sceptical for him. Boggs has been in the gas chamber before, and it is Mulder’s profile that sent him there. Boggs got a last-minute temporary reprieve, and he claimed this activated his ability to channel. Mulder believes in psychic abilities, but not in this case. Mulder believes Boggs has orchestrated the whole thing from the inside. There are many reasons why people kill. Boggs kills because he likes it. He has requested Mulder come speak to him, as Boggs has read Mulder’s profile of him and says Mulder is the only one who understands him. Scully wants to come with, as she needs to work. She also briefly glances at an X-File on Visionary Encounters with the Dead first.
In prison, Boggs is saying that his soul is theirs now. From where they are, they can see the past, present and future. Boggs’ life for that of the kids. Mulder wants Boggs to prove he is telling the truth, and gives him a piece of cloth from an evidence bag. Boggs puts on quite a show, saying what he can see, but afterwards Mulder says that the cloth was from one of his t-shirts. He leaves, and Scully starts to follow. Before she goes, Boggs starts singing the titular song, which was playing at her father’s funeral and was played at her parents’ wedding. He also asks Scully if she got his message, calling her Starbuck – which is what her father called her. On the way back to the motel – Mulder is staying – Scully sees a few things that resemble what Boggs said. She enters a condemned warehouse and finds a piece of jewellery.
When Mulder returns to the motel, he says that Liz’s family have positively identified the jewellery as hers. Boggs hasn’t confessed; he spent five hours channelling and, after three, Mulder requested some Jimi Hendrix. Scully admits she lied about how she found the warehouse. It was where Boggs said it would be. Mulder is annoyed – and worried, because Boggs could have been setting her up. Scully could be dead now. Scully didn’t want to go on record saying she believed in Boggs. Mulder is fine about Scully opening herself up to extreme possibilities, but not in this case. Mulder things Boggs has an accomplice working with him on the outside.
So, Mulder sets a trap. He has a copy of the paper printed up saying the kids have been found. The paper will be given to Boggs, who has phone privileges later. He should phone his accomplice on the outside. This doesn’t work; when Boggs makes the call, he calls Mulder’s phone. Scully tells Mulder they have to follow Boggs’ lead, even if it is a set-up, because the kids will soon be dead.
For once, Scully is the one who spends most of the episode believing in the unusual explanation, whilst Mulder is the sceptical one who believes there is a perfectly ordinary explanation for things.