“Død Kalm” is episode nineteen of season two of The X-Files.
The episode opens in the Norwegian sea. It’s foggy, and a grey lifeboat with the number 925 hits the water. This has come from a navy ship, and a lieutenant is saying to get everyone out. His captain accuses him of mutiny; he replies that it’s survival. The captain, Barclay, says that they will come for them. The lieutenant, Harper, says that by the time they get here it will be too late. It may already be too late. Barclay pulls a gun on Harper, and threatens to shoot. He doesn’t, though, and the lifeboat leaves.
18 hours later, a fishing vessel spots something on radar. The boat doesn’t respond to hails and appears to be drifting. The boat stops and they spot the lifeboat. A line is thrown to the boat and it is pulled in. In the boat are old men, one of the clearly Harper.
Scully arrives at Bethesda Naval Hospital to be greeted by Mulder. He tells her that a U.S. Navy destroyer, the Ardent, had disappeared without a trace, until last night when a Canadian trawler rescued 18 survivors. Only one of them is still alive, and he’s in ICU under heavy security. Mulder can’t get in, but Scully is a medical doctor and he has got her clearance. Scully is looking at the chart of Lt. Harper, and at him, and is sure there is a mistake. Because Harper is in his twenties and the patient clearly isn’t. However, the attending physician says her clearance code is invalid and tells her to leave, or be thrown out.
Scully returns to the FBI and tells Mulder that there is something very strange, because Harper looked about 90. Mulder has X-Files relating to nine ships that passed through the same area as the Ardent and disappeared. Not the Bermuda Triangle; more like a wrinkle in time. Mulder asks if Scully knows of the Philadelphia Experiment. Yes, it was a programme to hide ships from radar, but discontinued and the scientists were transferred to Los Alamos.
Only, according to Mulder, they were sent to Roswell, New Mexico, instead. Nine months after the incident, the USS Eldridge didn’t just disappear from radar, it disappeared completely from the Philadelphia Navy Yard, reappearing minutes later in Norfolk, Virginia. Mulder believes this was an attempt to manipulate wormholes on Earth and they never stopped work. He’s going to Norway and Scully decides to come with.
Trying to get a captain to take them to the area where the Ardent disappeared proves difficult. The locals are not interested. A Henry Trondheim, originally from Florida, agrees to do it, though. He says the others are afraid, legends of a huge stone that fell from the sky and crashed into the pack ice. Not a meteorite; an evil god.
Mulder proves to be susceptible to seasickness, which Scully finds a bit amusing. Trondheim says there is something appearing then disappearing from the radar, then his first mate sees a ship ahead and they hit it, but not badly. The ship is the Ardent. Trondheim, his mate, Halverson, Mulder and Scully all board. Trondheim says it’s clear no-one has been on the ship for 20-30 years. Mulder indicates to Scully an inscription with the year 1991 on it. An inscription that visibly deteriorates when they leave it.
The crew are dead, mummified, with a strange residue on them. Then, an engine is heard as someone steals Trondheim’s ship, leaving them on the Ardent. The radio is beyond repair, as are the engines. Trondheim wants to know what they are not telling him. Mulder tells him that this may be the result of a military experiment. Time may be speeding up. Trondheim does not consider this to be believable. Mulder tells him the ship was launched in 1991. Then, they hear a cry from below. Halverson has been killed.
Mulder pursues, and finds an old man in the galley. Captain Barclay, clutching a bottle of whisky. Very old, but not dead like the rest of the crew. He says they saw a glowing light in the sea, and there was a power loss. Everything stopped. Some men started to age, then all of them and the ship. Time got lost. Barclay doesn’t have the strength to kill Halverson, so there must be someone else on board. And there is. He attacks Trondheim, but Mulder stops him. Oddly, this man hasn’t aged. Trondheim knows him; Olafsson, a pirate whaler.
They are stuck on a rapidly aging ship, one where all the crew died of old age. A strange substance covers everything. It’s no surprise when the aging starts affecting them as well. Only, why is Olafsson unaffected? Both Mulder and Scully try to come up with theories as to why this is happening, and how to stop it. Time is literally running out for them, though.
The episode does highlight just how truly bad makeup skills were at realistically aging people.