S1E13 · Beyond the Sea

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) entertains her parents, William (Don Davis) and Margaret (Sheila Larken), shortly after Christmas. After they leave, she falls asleep on her sofa. Several hours later, she wakes up to see her father sitting across from her, speaking silently. The telephone rings, she looks again at the chair and sees that it is empty. She takes the call — from her mother, who tells her that her father died of a heart attack an hour earlier.

In North Carolina, a young couple are kidnapped by a man impersonating a police officer. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) tells Scully that Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif), a serial killer he 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. Mulder is unusually skeptical about Boggs' claims.

Visiting Boggs in prison, the agents give him a piece of "evidence" from which he has a vision, only to be told it is really a piece of Mulder's T-shirt. Satisfied that he is lying, the pair prepare to leave. However, Scully looks back at Boggs and sees another vision of her father, then back to Boggs, who begins to sing the song that had been played at the funeral for Scully's father: " Beyond the Sea ". 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.

Mulder and Scully have a fake newspaper produced which declares the couple have been found, hoping to trick Boggs into contacting his accomplice. He does not fall for the trick but gives the agents vague clues about the case. Scully, acting on these, first finds a warehouse where the couple had been held, and later leads Mulder and several other agents to a boathouse where the kidnapper is holding the couple. The girl is rescued, but the kidnapper shoots Mulder and escapes with the boyfriend. Following this, Mulder and the girl are sent to the hospital.

Scully attempts to have Boggs' sentence commuted but is rejected by the judge. Boggs is then visited by Scully, who tells him he has his "deal". Boggs then gives information about the kidnapper's new location, warning her to avoid "the devil". He tells her he knows she was lying about the deal, but also knows she tried her best. Scully then leads several agents to the location Boggs gave her — a brewery — where they rescue the kidnapped boyfriend. Scully chases the kidnapper as he flees but stops in her tracks when he runs along a gantry beneath the brewery's logo — a leering blue devil. The gantry gives way, and the kidnapper falls to his death.

Scully speaks to Boggs again, suggesting that if he had orchestrated the kidnapping, the kidnapper would have been aware of the danger he warned her about. Boggs claims to be able to contact her father and offers to relay one last message from him if she will attend his execution. As he is about to be executed, Boggs sees that Scully has not attended.

Scully visits Mulder in the hospital, explaining that she changed her mind and now believes Mulder's theory that Boggs arranged everything. She cites as evidence that if Boggs knew she was Mulder's partner, Boggs could have looked up the information about her father's death and used that information to manipulate her. Mulder asks her why she was afraid of believing, even if it meant losing the chance to hear from her father again through Boggs. She tells him that she did not need to hear anything, because she already knew what her father would have said.