"The X Files" Piper Maru (1996)

Director:

Rob Bowman

Writers:

Chris Carter (creator)
Frank Spotnitz (written by) ...

TV Series:

"The X Files" (1993)

Original Air Date:

9 February 1996 (Season 3, Episode 15)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

A French ship on a salvage mission docks in the States, and its crew all suffer strangely severe radiation burns - all but one man...

Plot Keywords:

Title Spoken By Character | FBI | FBI Agent | Alien | X Files

Cast

  (Episode Cast overview, first billed only)

David Duchovny	...	Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson	...	Dana Scully
Mitch Pileggi	...	Walter Skinner
Robert Clothier	...	Commander Johansen
Jo Bates	...	Jeraldine Kallenchuk
Nicholas Lea	...	Alex Krycek
Morris Panych	...	The Gray-Haired Man
Stephen E. Miller	...	Wayne Morgan
Ari Solomon	...	Gauthier
Paul Batten	...	Dr. Seizer
Russell Ferrier	...	The Medic
Lenno Britos	...	Luis Cardinal
Kimberly Unger	...	Joan Gauthier
Rochelle Greenwood	...	The Waitress
Joel Silverstone	...	Engineer #1

Runtime:

Argentina:60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Argentina:13

Company:

20th Century Fox Television

Trivia:

Piper Maru is also the name of the ice-breaker ship used by Weyland Corporation's retrieval team in AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: While the Piper Maru is supposed to be a French ship and the French secret services are involved, only background voices have a French accent and no accurate accent is actually seen spoken on-screen ; all on-screen "French" characters have at best Canadian accents.

Quotes:

Scully: You know, it's strange - men can blow up buildings, and they can be nowhere near the crime scene. But we can piece together the evidence and convict them beyond a doubt. Our labs here can recreate out of the most microscopic details their motivation and circumstance to almost any murder. Right down to a killer's attitude towards his mother and that he was a bed wetter. But in the case of a woman...
[...]

Black Gold Or Texas Tea?

Piper Maru introduces us to the Black Oil, the alien substance that will play a major part throughout the rest of the mythology episodes. Scully's speech about interest in the opening teaser sets the tone for the rest of the episode. Great dramatic acting by Gillian Anderson. The black oil in the eyes of an infected person is such an iconic shot of the x-files. I think why I like this episode so much is the new direction that the series takes with the introduction of the Black Oil. It adds a new and sometimes confusing dimension to the already established conspiracy involving alien colonization and alien/human hybrids. When Mulder first meets Krycek toward the end of the episode, Krycek appears sweaty and very nervous, and I'm not exactly sure why. It's not explained at all. The model sub used to begin the flashback is probably one of the worst special effects I've ever seen on the show. It looks like something out of Godzilla. It's just a very minor flaw in an otherwise spectacular episode. And Piper Maru's final shot works very well for a cliffhanger; a very cool shot.