"Dod Kalm"
Written by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa
Directed by Rob Bowman


In which Mulder and Scully fall prey to an unknown contaminant aboard a lost naval vessel, which makes them artificially age at a vastly accelerated rate...

Synopsis - Analysis - Memorable Quotes - Observations


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Synopsis

As the episode begins, Lt. Harper of the USS Ardent leads a number of men from the crew onto a lifeboat, against the orders of Capt. Barclay. It’s clear that Harper and the others are worried about something that’s spreading among the crew, and that the Ardent is somehow disabled. Eighteen hours later, a Canadian fishing vessel in the Norwegian sea comes across the lifeboat. But when they shine a light on Harper and the others, they no longer look like the young men that left the Ardent. Instead, they look like old men.

Shortly, Scully meets Mulder at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Mulder informs Scully that the USS Ardent has been missing for 42 hours, but some of the crew had been rescued. Only one of the survivors is still alive: Harper. Mulder asks Scully to take a look at Harper and learn what she can, since he can’t gain access. Scully manages to see that Harper appears to be incredibly old, even though his records show an age of 28, before she is tossed out.

Meeting Mulder at the office, Scully learns that the Ardent’s disappearance actually correlates to nine similar disappearances noted in the X-Files, all centering on a specific spot just past the 65th parallel. Based on the condition of the Ardent “survivors”, Mulder believes that there is a “wrinkle in time” in that location. He also believes that the phenomenon is the result of military experiments dating back to the infamous “Philadelphia Experiment”, which he believes created wormholes.

Mulder and Scully travel to Norway, where they try to find passage to that location. None of the locals want to have anything to do with them, but an American named Henry Trondheim is willing to make the run. Trondheim dismisses the other sailors, explaining that they grew up on legends about an evil god crashing into the ice in that part of the sea.

Trondheim and his mate Halverson take the agents into the sea. Mulder gets extremely sick, but Scully remains healthy. The night is incredibly foggy, and even though something appears on the radar that looks like the Ardent, it keeps changing locations. Without warning, the Ardent appears in the fog, directly in front of Trondheim’s ship.

After a collision, the agents, Trondheim, and Halverson board the Ardent. The ship appears badly corroded, enough for 20 or 30 years of neglect. However, the ship is only four years old. They check the crew quarters, and find bodies covered with a white residue. When Scully touches a hand, it crumbles off. Just then, they hear the sound of an engine running, and by the time they get above decks, Trondheim’s ship is leaving without them.

They try to find a working radio and repair the engines, but everything is too corroded to work. Trondheim demands answers, so Mulder tells him the wormhole experiment theory. Trondheim, of course, doesn’t buy it. They hear Halverson cry out, and when they investigate, they find the man dead, his skull crushed. They hear someone moving around, and eventually find another survivor: Captain Barclay. The captain looks much older, and he has been drinking heavily.

The agents question Barclay, giving him a glass of water to quench his thirst. Barclay explains that the Ardent lost essential functions, and then a strange light came out of the water. Soon after, all power was lost, and the ship “began to bleed”. Then the crew began to show symptoms. Even though Trondheim thinks Barclay killed Halverson, it’s clear to the agents that the man is too weak to have done it.

Indeed, when Trondheim commits Halverson’s body to the sea, someone else attacks him. Mulder arrives on the scene just in time to stop the fight. Trondheim recognizes the man as a pirate whaler named Olafsson. But more importantly, Olafsson shows none of the symptoms of whatever is happening on the Ardent. The ship’s log mentions that four men were recovered from a sinking vessel.

When they find Scully, Barclay is already dead. His body seems to have converted almost completely into the odd white crystalline residue. Mulder suggests that they sleep, volunteering for first watch. But when he wakes Scully, he finds that both of them have begun to show symptoms. Trondheim is less than pleased to find that everyone but Olafsson is affected.

Scully theorizes that they are suffering from a massive release of free radicals within their bodies, triggered by the polarizing effect of a massively metallic meteor under the sea. Scully thinks that it would also explain the oxidation effect taking place all over the ship. When one of the pipes begins to “bleed” rust, Mulder notices that one piping system has remained intact.

While the agents track the intact piping to the source, Olafsson bargains with Trondheim, promising to reveal the secret to his survival for his freedom. Mulder and Scully find the source to be the sewage processing hold. Mulder changes his theory, believing that something must have contaminated the desalination tanks, leaving only the sewage reclamation system unaffected. Sure enough, at the same time, Trondheim drinks from one of the toilets, having killed Olafsson after learning the secret.

By the time the agents check on Olafsson, Trondheim claims that the man got away. Mulder and Trondheim argue over it, but Scully gets them to focus on the problem instead. She asks for blood and urine samples, hoping that she can find what was in the water. But 18 hours later, Scully has only found that enormous amounts of salt are building in their systems, catalyzing major damage. Mulder’s symptoms are progressing faster, because he became dehydrated during his vomiting.

Trondheim suggests letting Mulder die, so that the remaining water in the sewage processing system can keep them alive longer. Scully, however, refuses to stop trying. Trondheim responds by flushing all of the untainted water into the sewage hold, and locking the agents out. Scully frantically searches the ship for any remaining source of untainted moisture, and is only able to find some sardine juice, lemons, and water from a snow globe. She tries to get Mulder to drink it, but the incredibly aged man refuses, so that Scully can live longer.

The point becomes moot as the jar smashes to the floor as the outer hull of the Ardent ruptures. Trondheim, locked in the sewage hold, finds himself trapped when the hold fills with seawater. Soon, as Mulder slips closer and closer to death, Scully does her best to comfort him and get him to sleep, so he can die comfortably. She assures him that there’s nothing to fear. Soon enough, Scully falls unconscious as well.

Sometime later, Scully awakens at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, after a timely rescue. Based on Scully’s journal during the ordeal, a treatment was developed. That treatment has led to a swift recovery by both agents. Scully expresses a desire to study the Ardent to determine what really happened, but the doctor informs her that the Ardent sank less than an hour after the rescue.


Analysis

Howard Gordon was one of the original writers on the series, usually paired with Alex Gansa. That writing team was often hit or miss, and that trend continues with this episode. While there is definitely a distinct feel to the episode, and the final character moments are all well rendered, the overall concept suffers from a familiarity and lack of resolution. Never mind the obvious drawback of those makeup effects!

The early seasons are filled with bottle episodes, and every time the device is used, it loses a bit of power. In this case, there are additional issues that speak to a lack of original thinking. Diseases and bizarre phenomena that cause premature aging are common plot devices, and this episode makes liberal use of it. Almost as a concession to that reality, Gordon throws out several possible causes for the aging condition, finally settling on something that doesn’t quite make sense. Ironically, the episode is resolved with the revelation that Scully’s journal led to a treatment, which is hard to swallow, when it’s clear that Scully can’t figure out what’s really happening.

Clearly there must be something definitively different about that part of the ocean. The references to a meteor certainly make sense. What seems odd about the phenomena, regardless of the meteor’s impact point, is its static nature. If there was something in the water within that region of ocean, then wouldn’t the ocean currents have dispersed the effect throughout the shipping lanes? The locality of the effect gives credence to Mulder’s theories or Scully’s free radical theory, rather than some unknown water contaminant.

There is one possible explanation that captures all of the different symptoms and theories. Once again, this theory relates to the time-travel theory of the series mythology. It’s clear from the discovery of the rebel UFOs in Africa and Canada in the later seasons that there were ancient crashes. It has also been shown that the engines of those vessels are based on technologies that manipulate spacetime in ways that can be unpredictable when damaged or incorrectly tuned.

If one of the rebellion vessels crashed into the ocean, due to some malfunction of the engine, then it fits into the theory that something similar to the post-Roswell experimentation (the “Philadelphia Experiment”) might have occurred. After all, the recovered Roswell craft was a rebellion vessel, so the engine specifications would be the same. The altered state of spacetime in the vicinity of the ancient crashed UFO could easily account for the radar effects and the electromagnetic gradients necessary to chemically alter the water chemistry in a localized region.

The localized change to the water chemistry could be directly related to the interaction between the Ardent and the submerged UFO, which would account for why water nearby is normal. This would suggest some kind of “field effect” rather than a direct chemical reaction, which would also explain why everything within a certain region is affected, regardless of the chemical properties.

The effect doesn’t appear to be time acceleration per se; rather, it’s a matter of the rate of reaction. The presence of the UFO accelerates the rate at which natural reactions take place. Salts are a natural by-product of normal acid/base chemistry. It’s likely that Scully’s conclusions about an odd “heavy salt” material are in fact incorrect, and that the presence of the unusual salts is due to the accelerated blood chemistry. However, at the same time, this would explain why Scully’s analysis would give the doctors at Bethesda the necessary information to develop a treatment.

The rapid recovery, however, doesn’t make sense. One could easily see how the overall increase in rate of reaction would have allowed the symptoms to continue, even after the intake of the altered water, based on the field effects. However, the symptoms were physical degradations of tissue and body systems as a result of those catalyzed reactions. Any treatment would have to reverse the damage to the tissues and overall health, and there’s nothing that would be able to do that within less time than it takes to recover from normal dehydration!

The fact is, even when the events of the episode are placed into a relatively reasonable context, there are elements that are simply introduced for the sake of convenient drama. It is completely unreasonable to think that the Ardent would somehow remain afloat once the hull was breeched, considering that the oxidation of the hull plating was essentially consistent throughout the entire ship. One would have also expected heavy machinery to fall through decks and other such deterioration.

It’s also hard to believe that Trondheim would literally smack right into the Ardent, but even that’s more likely than the arrival of a rescue team at the last possible moment. It’s obvious that Mulder and Scully wouldn’t be allowed to die, but it’s never made clear how the rescue team was supposed to have known about their whereabouts. The implication is that Skinner would have tracked them down after finding out that they left without authorization, but even so, it’s far too convenient.

The episode excels in terms of character development. Appropriately, as the situation begins to degrade, character is tested. Scully is given more than enough opportunity to turn her back on Mulder and give herself more of a chance at survival, but she refuses to betray him. Equally, Mulder worries more about Scully’s survival than his own, displaying an uncharacteristic level of concern for her welfare. This is perfectly in keeping with Mulder’s attitudes at the end of “Endgame”, and the reference to “One Breath” is clearly meant to remind the audience that Mulder was supposed to have been intensely concerned with Scully’s safety since her return.

By including some small measure of continuity within the episode, it gives the character moments a stronger meaning. Mulder was willing to do anything to ensure Scully’s recovery in “One Breath”, but recently, that has been matched by Scully’s willingness to sacrifice for Mulder’s sake. In “Endgame”, Scully was willing to sacrifice her career; in this episode, she is willing to sacrifice her life.

In the end, however, the character moments can’t outweigh the overall lack in the other critical areas. Too many plot contrivances are necessary to bring the characters to the brink and then save them at the last possible moment, and ultimately, the point of the character development (consistency and growth over time) is lost when the overall continuity breaks down entirely in future seasons.


Memorable Quotes

MULDER: “You’re lucky you inherited your father’s legs.”
SCULLY: “What?”
MULDER: “His sea legs…”

SCULLY: “Time acceleration is an equation, Mulder…a theory.”
MULDER: “Then theoretically, it’s possible…”

MULDER: “I always thought when I got older I’d maybe take a cruise somewhere. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind. The service on this ship is horrible, Scully…”


Observations

- Once again, the teaser music sets the tone of the entire episode!

- Love that Canadian captain’s accent...

- Wouldn’t the lifeboat also be affected by the mysterious aging effect, making it unlikely that the crewmen would survive long enough to be rescued?

- If I were Scully, I think I’d be just a little more upset that Mulder lied about that access code!

- Trondheim comes across as such a ham from the moment he shows up on screen...

- If the Ardent was already corroded by the time the agents arrived, why didn’t the collision smash a huge hole into the hull?

- Interesting how the commissioning plate corrodes so damn fast...

- If dehydration was accelerating the effect, wouldn’t Captain Barclay’s liberal drinking have actually made his condition worse?

- Well, at least Mulder and Scully can say they got to grow old together before they started going out!

- Is it just me, or did Olafsson steal the bounty hunter’s voice?

- Why didn’t the “sewage processing hold” sign corrode like the commissioning plate?

- Another reason to get those nig honkin’ flashlights...even rapid corrosion doesn’t touch those things!

- I can’t stop wondering if the day/night cycles shown in this episode are accurate for mid-March at that latitude...

- I just adore that sequence where Scully rifles through everything she can find to get water, with the arc of the flashlight beams and the arrhythmic beat of the music...absolutely perfect!

- I’m pretty sure that concoction of Scully’s wouldn’t do Mulder’s kidneys much good...

- So only pipes in the sewage processing hold burst? Why not other pipes, rather than the one place where water has been preventing corrosion?

- Great voiceover work by Scully at the end...

- And that music during the rescue...incredible!

- Why would Mulder have recovered faster than Scully?

Overall, this episode was one of those very nicely executed yet fatally flawed creations. The concept is borrowed, the logic inconsistent, and the whole thing would fail without the perfect direction and score. The final act is a perfect example.

I give it a 5/10.


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