DøD KALM

   

 

                            A Navy destroyer has been missing in the North Atlantic for the past 42 hours with no                                 radio contact or distress signal....it looked like the ship and its entire crew had                                    vanished - until last night...

 

The episode begins in the Norweigan sea - 65 degrees latitude and 8 degrees east longitude, and one Captain Barclay attempting to stop his crew deserting the US Navy destroyer he commands. His crew are jumping into boats and fleeing - but from what we do not know. 18 hours later a Canadian trawler sees the destroyer on radar and attempts to make contact - however whilst they receive no radio transmission they see a boat with some survivors....yet they seem to be suffering from a physical disease.

We then move to the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, where we learn that a Navy Destroyer has been missing for 42 hours with no radio contact of distress signal sent. It seemed as though a ship and its entire crew had simply vanished....until last night. The Canadian trawler described above picked up 18 survivors, yet only one of the crew is still alive - Lt Richard Harper. Due to her medical background Scully is able to bluff her way in to see Harper - and whilst his ID states that he is 28 years old, he looks about 90 years old. Mulder likens this event to previous cases of the X Files - the disappearance of a Royal Navy ship in 1949 and a fleet of Soviet minesweepers in 1963. Mulder states that in all there have been nine such cases - and each have passed through the 65th parallel, a wrinkle in time of which Harper is an indication. Mulder continues by referring to the Philadelphia experiment, a programme during world war 2 which attempted to make battleships invisible to radar, but then the Manhattan project appeared and most of the scientists involved were relocated to Los Alamos. However Mulder explains that the scientists didn't make it - they were sent to Roswell, and the Philadelphia experiment used alien technology. Mulder continues by stating that less than nine months after the alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell, the USS Eldridge did more than hide from radar screens, it disappeared altogether from Philadelphia naval yard only to re-appear minutes later 100s of miles away in Virginia.

Scully struggles to take in Mulders claims, but Mulder believes that those physicists may have been trying to manipulate wormholes on earth, portals where matter interfaces with time at relatively decelerated or accelerated rate. On that premise Mulder and Scully take an 8.30 flight to Norway.

In Norway Mulder and Scully hire a boat - with only one captain daring to take them - Henry Trondheim. He tells the Agents that the trip to the area of sea they wish to go is approx 10 hours, and that everyone is afraid of going there due to a legend that a huge stone came out of the sky and crashed into the pack ice - releasing an evil god. Trondheim wants to know what they are looking for, and when the boat later gets something on radar Mulder finds that it is the USS Ardent, a destroyer escort. They board the apparently deserted ship and find decomposed bodies, and when they hear noises above deck the mortified agents and crew see that the trawler is reversing on its own - leaving them all stranded on the Ardent. Back in the bows of the ship they find that the engine is corroded, and effectively they are dead in the water. Mulder explains that what they may be seeing is the result of a military experiment, an artificial time band where matter moves through time at an accelerated rate.

As they move through the ship they come across Captain Barclay.....and he is still alive. Prior to finding him one of the trawler crew, Halveson, is killed by a fracture to the skull. Scully reads the log and it describes how several crew members saw a glowing light in the sea, and Barclay adds that at that time everything seemed to stop - the sea, the wind, and time seemed to get lost. Scully realises that Barclay could not have killed Halveson - someone else is on board with the agents and Trondheim. The latter is later attacked by a male who does not appear to have aged - he is identified as one Olafsson, a criminal and pirate - but how did he get there. It seems that he was one of four Norweigan sailors picked up when their vessel sank - and pretty soon Barclay dies, with tests on him revealing a high concentration of salt.

Scully soon realises that she, Mulder and Trondheim are aging rapidly, whilst Olafsson stays the same. Mulder and Scully attempt to come up with various theories - yet on a ship that is rusting there appears to be one yellow pipe that remains uncorroded - and they follow it to the sewerage processing hold. Mulder theorises that it is the water - something must have got into the desalination tanks yet the water within the sewerage is recycled, it isn't taken from the sea. Meanwhile Olafsson persuades Trondheim to release him for the secret of not ageing, and he runs. Blood tests of each of the three survivors reveals high concentrates of sodium chloride, and so by drinking untreated water they can slow the ageing process down. Trondheim however feels that the water is wasted on Mulder, who seems to be ageing much quicker than the other two. As the water runs low Trondheim grows more agitated and locks himself in the sewerage hold, keeping all of the water for himself. Unfortunately the compartment is flooded and he dies - and 14 hours later it looks as if Mulder and Scully may follow. However it seems that a distress signal sent earlier saves their lives when a rescue team finds them - and both Mulder and Scully survive. The ship sank 1 hour after they were rescued....

 

 

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Episode no. Season 2
Episode 2X19
Directed by Rob Bowman
Written by Howard Gordon
Alex Gansa
Guest Stars John Savage
Vladimir Kulich Vladimir Kulich  Stephen Dimopoulos David Cubitt
Original Airdate March 10, 1995
Theme(s) Wormholes.