He does not fall for the trick, but gives the agents vague clues about the case. The agents have a fake newspaper made which declares the couple have been found, hoping to trick Boggs into contacting his accomplice. Scully does not tell Mulder about this, and the pair discuss the possibility that Boggs has orchestrated the kidnapping with a partner to avoid execution. However, Scully looks back at Boggs and sees another vision of her father, speaking to her and singing the song that had been played at his funeral: " Beyond the Sea". Satisfied that he is lying, the pair prepare to leave. Visiting Boggs in prison, the agents give Boggs a piece of "evidence" from which he has a vision, only to be told it is really a shred of Mulder's T-shirt. Mulder is unusually skeptical about Boggs's claims.
Fox Mulder ( David Duchovny) tells Scully that Luther Lee Boggs ( Brad Dourif), a serial killer he had helped catch years before, has claimed to have had psychic revelations about the kidnapping and has offered to help police in exchange for his death sentence being commuted. In Raleigh, North Carolina, a young couple are kidnapped by a man dressed as a police officer. Confused, she looks again at the chair and sees that it is empty. The telephone rings, and she answers the call-from her mother, who tells her that her father died of a heart attack an hour earlier. Several hours later, she wakes up to see her father sitting across from her, speaking silently. After they leave, she falls asleep on her sofa. Critical commentary has noted parallels between the character of Dana Scully and that of Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs.ĭana Scully ( Gillian Anderson) entertains her parents, William ( Don Davis) and Margaret Scully ( Sheila Larken), shortly after Christmas. The episode showed the protagonists reversing their usual roles of "believer" and "skeptic" for the first time, and introduced the theme of father-figures that would continue throughout the series. The plot of the episode sees Scully's father die and her skepticism put to the test by Luther Lee Boggs, a prisoner on death row who claims to have psychic powers. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder ( David Duchovny) and Dana Scully ( Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Despite a mediocre Nielsen rating compared to other episodes of the first season, "Beyond the Sea" received a largely positive reception amongst critics.
The episode first aired in the United States on January 7, 1994, on the Fox Network.
The episode is a "Monster of Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. It was written by co-executive producers Glen Morgan and James Wong, and directed by David Nutter.
" Beyond the Sea" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files.