Nisei (The X-Files)

In Knoxville, Tennessee, a mysterious train car is left in a rail yard. After dark, a group of Japanese scientists enter the car and conduct an autopsy on an alien body. The scene is recorded and transmitted via satellite. Suddenly, a strike team storms the car and kills the scientists, taking the alien corpse away in a body bag. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) purchases an edited video of the autopsy. He believes the tape is authentic, but Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is skeptical.

When the agents go to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to track down the distributor of the tape, they find him murdered. At the scene, they pursue and capture a Japanese man, Kazuo Sakurai, who is identified as a high-ranking diplomat. Walter Skinner appears and orders Sakurai released. Before doing so, Mulder searches his briefcase (which he did not turn in to the authorities) and finds both a list of Mutual UFO Network members and satellite images of a ship. The Lone Gunmen identify the ship as the Talapus, a salvage vessel docked in Newport News, Virginia. Meanwhile, Sakurai is killed by an assassin called the Red-Haired Man.

Scully investigates the MUFON group, discovering several women who claim to recognize her from her abduction experience. They have similar implants to Scully's, and inform her that they are all dying of cancer. Meanwhile, Mulder goes to the Newport News shipyard and searches the Talapus. Armed men arrive and scour the ship, but Mulder manages to escape. That night, he discovers a warehouse where a craft is being fumigated by a hazmat team. Mulder believes the craft to be of alien origin, recovered by the Talapus.

Skinner later confronts Mulder over the briefcase (which is now in Scully's possession), the absence of which has caused an international incident with Japan. He refuses to assist Mulder any further with his case. Mulder meets with Senator Richard Matheson, who gives him the details on the autopsy and links it with the larger conspiracy of the alien-human hybrids. Mulder investigates further, discovering that the Japanese scientists were members of the notorious Unit 731 during World War II; like Victor Klemper, they were recruited by the U.S. government to develop the hybrids. Mulder believes that the scientists killed on the videotape were working on a secret railway, transporting test subjects.

After sharing her MUFON findings with Mulder, Scully runs her implant through the FBI labs to gather technological information about it. She analyzes the autopsy video, realizing that one of the scientists seen, Dr. Ishimaru, experimented on her during her abduction. Meanwhile, Mulder goes to West Virginia and tracks down the secret train car, watching a group of Japanese men place what seems to be an alien-human subject on board. Meanwhile, another Japanese scientist, Dr. Shiro Zama, waits for the train at a station in Ohio; he is forced to board after his bodyguard is killed by the Red-Haired Man in the restroom. The Red-Haired Man follows Zama aboard the train, which is headed for Vancouver, Canada.

Mulder tracks the train to the Ohio station, but learns it has just left when he arrives. Meanwhile, Scully goes to her apartment and is met by X, who warns her to keep Mulder from getting on the train, as the scientists are aware of his presence. Scully calls Mulder, who has managed to drive ahead of the train and is just about to jump onto it from a bridge. Despite Scully's pleas, Mulder jumps onto the top of the train as it speeds past below.[1]

Jan Delasara, in the book PopLit, PopCult and The X-Files argues that episodes like "Nisei" and "731," or the earlier episode "Paper Clip," show the public's trust in science "eroding." Delasara proposes that "arrogated" scientists who are "rework[ing] the fabric of life," are causing the public's faith in science to fade drastically, "a concern", she notes, "that is directly addressed by X-Files episodes". Moreover, she notes that almost all of the scientists portrayed in The X-Files are depicted with a "connection to ancient evil", with the lone exception being Agent Scully. In "Nisei," and later in "731", the scientists are former Japanese scientists who worked during WWII for the infamous 731 unit. In their attempts to create a successful human-alien hybrid, they become the archetypical scientists who "[go] too far," a serious factor that Delasara argues "'alienates' [the public] further from science and its practitioners."[7]

"Nisei" premiered on the Fox network on November 24, 1995, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on October 23, 1996.[8] The episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.8 with a 17 share, meaning that roughly 9.8 percent of all television-equipped households, and 17 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode.[9] A total of 16.36 million viewers watched this episode during its original airing.[9] "Nisei" later won two Emmy Awards: one for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Editing for a Series" and one for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Drama Series."[10]

"Nisei" received largely positive reviews. In a retrospective of the third season in Entertainment Weekly, "Nisei" was rated an A. The review noted that the episode contained "lots of excitement for Scully", though it also described Mulder's plot thread as "equally gripping".[11] Writing for The A.V. Club, Emily VanDerWerff rated the episode an A−, calling it "a hell of a lot of fun". VanDerWerff described the cliffhanger ending as "just phenomenal", and felt that the episode had "the drive of a big-budget action film". However, she noted that it was becoming evident by this stage that the series' mythology was becoming "too big to ever resolve wholly satisfactorily".[12] Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a largely positive review and awarded it three-and-a-half stars out of four.[13] Vitaris noted that, despite the teaser and first act being "promising enough", the episode "slides downhill rapidly with a storyline that crosses the border into ludicrous."[2] Vitaris called the scene where soldiers kill prisoners "a scene more disturbing than anything else previously seen on The X-Files."[13] Furthermore, she wrote that the final scene between Mulder and Scully was "beautifully written and acted."[13]

Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, were slightly more critical and rated the episode three-and-a-half stars out of five. The two criticized the plot—despite calling the action sequences "quite breathless"—noting that "it seems rather funny: an entire team of black ops are sent to a small boat, but Mulder is still able to evade them without their noticing."[14] They also called the episode "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles reinvented as an action movie."[14]

• Delasara, Jan (2000). PopLit, PopCult and The X-Files: A Critical Exploration. Mcfarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-0789-1.
• Edwards, Ted (1996). X-Files Confidential. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-21808-1.
• Hurwitz, Matt; Knowles, Chris (2008). The Complete X-Files. Insight Editions. ISBN 978-1-933784-80-9.
• Lovece, Frank (1996). The X-Files Declassified. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-1745-X.
• Lowry, Brian (1996). Trust No One: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. ISBN 0-06-105353-8.
• Shearman, Robert; Pearson, Lars (2009). Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen. Mad Norwegian Press. ISBN 978-0-9759446-9-1.

Wikiquote has quotations related to TXF Season 3.

• "Nisei" on The X-Files official website
• "Nisei" at IMDb