Triangle (The X-Files)

"Triangle"
The X-Files episode
Mulder in 1939 with some familiar faces—1939 Scully and The Smoking Man as a Nazi. Regular X-Files cast members portrayed themselves in the present and in 1939.
Episode no.	Season 6 Episode 3
Directed by	Chris Carter
Written by	Chris Carter
Production code	6ABX03
Original air date	November 22, 1998
Guest stars
Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner/Nazi Officer William B. Davis as Cigarette Smoking Man/Nazi Officer Chris Owens as Jeffrey Spender/Nazi Officer Madison Mason as Captain Yip Harburg James Pickens, Jr. as Alvin Kersh/Jamaican Crewman Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike Dean Haglund as Richard Langly Bruce Harwood as John Fitzgerald Byers Robert Thomas Beck as First Mate Trevor Goodard as First British Crewman G.W. Stevens as Second British Crewman Greg Ellis as Third British Crewman Nick Meaney as Fourth British Crewman Robert Arce as Bald-Headed Man Wolfgang Gerhard as First Nazi Guido Foehrweisser as Second Nazi Kai Wulff as Third Nazi Isacc C. Singleton, Jr. as Roughneck Arlene Pileggi as Skinner's Assistant Laura Hughes as Kersh's Assistant/Girl Singer
Episode chronology
← Previous "Drive" Next → "Dreamland"
List of season 6 episodes List of The X-Files episodes

"Triangle" is the third episode of the sixth season of the television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on November 22, 1998. The episode was written and directed by series creator Chris Carter. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Triangle" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.8, being watched by 18.20 million people in its initial broadcast.

In the episode, FBI special agent Fox Mulder races to a luxury passenger liner on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle which has mysteriously appeared. Once there, he realizes he has traveled back in time to September 3, 1939—the outbreak of World War II. Nazi soldiers have boarded the ship in search of "Thor's Hammer", something that could ensure victory in the coming conflict.

"Triangle" is notable due to its unique filming style. Inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock film Rope, the episode was filmed in real time and edited to appear as one single take. In addition, "Triangle" featured the main and recurring cast members such as Gillian Anderson, William B. Davis, Chris Owens, James Pickens Jr. and Mitch Pileggi playing their contemporary characters as well as other characters from 1939 on board a luxury liner. Because of these factors, the episode was met with positive reviews, with many critics commenting on the episode's unique style.

Plot

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is found nearly drowned at sea, having been shipwrecked. He is discovered and bought aboard by crewmembers on a British passenger ship, the Queen Anne. When he is sent to meet the captain, he tries to explain that the Queen Anne vanished in the Bermuda Triangle in 1939, and claims that it has reappeared in 1998. The crew doesn't believe Mulder's claims and suspect he is a Nazi spy. At that moment, the Queen Anne is commandeered by SS troops commanded by a figure reminiscent of the Smoking Man (William B. Davis), who sets the ship's course for Nazi Germany. Upon listening to a radio broadcast, Mulder realizes that the Queen Anne didn't travel to 1998, but rather he traveled back to 1939.

Meanwhile, in the present, The Lone Gunmen inform Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) that they have lost contact with Mulder, who had set out in search of the Queen Anne. Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) provides Scully with information from the Pentagon and Scully leaves with the Gunmen to find Mulder. Back on the Queen Anne, a British sailor tells Mulder that the Germans are looking for what they believe is a weapon called "Thor's Hammer". Mulder tells him that "Thor's Hammer" is not a weapon, but a scientist that will build a weapon. The sailor turns out to be a German spy, and a man strongly resembling Alvin Kersh (James Pickens, Jr.) takes control of the ship, steering back towards Jamaica. Mulder tells them to turn around and go back to where they came from, but is taken down to the ballroom by Nazis.

Once there, Mulder is ordered to identify the scientist or they will begin shooting passengers. After they have killed two men, a woman on the ship, who looks strikingly like Scully, speaks up and says that they are killing innocent people for nothing, and that Mulder knows nothing. Mulder tells the Nazis that one of the men they shot was the scientist, but the real scientist steps forward. The Nazis prepare to execute Mulder and "Scully", but the engine is shut down before they can and British sailors descend upon the ballroom and begin fighting the Germans. In the midst of the chaos, Mulder and "Scully" escape. Meanwhile, Scully and the Lone Gunmen find the Queen Anne and board it, only to find that it is an empty ghost ship.

Back in 1939, while the British soldiers fight Nazis in the ballroom, Mulder tells "Scully" that she has to turn the ship around and go back into the Triangle in order to get the ship out of the rift in space. Mulder grabs "Scully" and kisses her, "in case they never meet again." She then punches him, and he jumps overboard. Mulder subsequently wakes up in a hospital, having been found in the present day floating among wreckage, surrounded by Scully, the Lone Gunmen and Skinner. He attempts to describe that he was in 1939 with Nazis, telling Scully that she was there with him, but they all think he is delirious. After Skinner and the Gunmen leave, Mulder calls Scully back and tells her that he loves her. She, thinking his confession is an effect of the drugs he has been given, rolls her eyes and leaves. As he is lying down, he winces as his cheek touches the pillow, the spot where "Scully" punched him in 1939 still sore.

Production

Conception, writing, and filming

The scenes filmed on board the Queen Anne were actually filmed on the RMS Queen Mary.

Series creator Chris Carter developed the idea for "Triangle" while working on the fifth season episode "The Red and the Black." During filming of "The Red and the Black," Carter used more film than any other director, excepting Kim Manners. The cast and crew made Carter a mock trophy, which inspired Carter to write an episode that featured continuous action as a way to minimize film usage. The episode was designed by Carter to be similar in style to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. Initially, the executives at Fox were hesitant about green-lighting production of "Triangle," because the episode was expected to exceed the $2.5 million episode budget. In order to persuade them otherwise, Carter told them that the episode would feature elements of Alfred Hitchcock's directing style, a move Carter later called "an easy hook."

The scenes on board the Queen Anne were actually filmed on the famous passenger liner and current hotel, the RMS Queen Mary. The X-Files staff spent a total of eleven days filming on the historic liner. The crew found it necessary to erect wrap-around scaffolding on the bridge in order to block out the lights of nearby Long Beach, California. When it came time to film inside the ship, Carter was unhappy with the remodeled style of the corridors and ballroom and so he had portions of the ship recarpeted and redecorated to give the finished episode a late-1930s style.

In an interview before the episode was finished, Gillian Anderson said she was most looking forward to the scene in which Scully works her way through FBI headquarters in her quest to locate Mulder. She later likened the episode to live theater. Because the episode was filmed in one continuous shot, when the actors entered into the stage elevator, the set that they would move onto had to be constructed behind the closed doors. Several times during filming, the doors would open with the set having not been completely erected yet, ruining the shot.

Because of the presence of Nazis, many lines of dialogue were spoken in German. In order to bring naturalness to the set, several authentic British and German actors were brought in to portray the British sailors and Nazi soldiers respectively. However, not all of the cast was authentic. Trevor Goodard, who portrayed the First British Crewman, was Australian and Madison Mason, who played Captain Yip Harburg, was an American affecting an English accent. The only cast member of The X-Files who already spoke German was Mitch Pileggi, who played the dual role of Walter Skinner and the turncoat Nazi. Pileggi, who had studied in Germany for a couple of years, re-wrote several of his lines himself because the realized that they made no sense in the context of the scenes. The tagline at the end of the opening credits of the episode was changed to "Die Wahrheit ist Irgendwo Da Draußen," which translates from German into English as "The Truth is Out There."

Directing style

"Triangle" was directed in real time by series creator Chris Carter.

This episode uses very specific and thought-out choices with regards to editing. The episode, shot in real time, is designed to look like it was filmed in four uninterrupted eleven-minute takes. To film the episode, camera operator Dave Luckenbach literally wore a steadicam. However, the steadicam used could only hold up to a max of four minutes of film, so discrete edits and cuts were necessary. These cuts were usually made during whip pans or during places when the screen would go dark. With the exception of Mulder jumping off the S.S. Queen Anne, the only noticeable editing occurs between scenes, when a side swipe shifts between the two different time periods. Many of the takes needed to be nearly perfect: on the eighth day of filming, only two out of ten takes were deemed satisfactory.

The final two acts of the episode also feature a sophisticated split-screen mise en scène. However, rather than displaying two different events, each side of the screen shows the same event from almost identical angles. When Scully runs around the corner, she does so at the same time as Mulder and the female bodyguard. This was filmed in such a way that as they passed each other in the hallway, they also passed into the opposite frame of the split screen. This effect was inspired by the music video for Semisonic's hit single "Closing Time."

Both the cast and crew admitted that filming an episode of The X-Files in real time was both physically and mentally exhausting. David Duchovny later joked that he, "could win an Emmy for most bruises." Gillian Anderson described the real time directing style as "challenging." She said, "I'm realizing how comfortable and connected I am to the rhythm we're used to." Editor Louise Innes, whose first episode for the series was "Triangle," bluntly described the post-production editing process as "not as easy as it sounds." Innes was tasked with connecting roughly forty shots and creating the illusion of one, uniform scene.

When the episode aired on television, it was originally shown letterboxed, making it the first episode of The X-Files to receive this treatment. Carter reasoned that this method would allow for more action to be viewable in each frame.

Music and culture

The X-Files composer, Mark Snow, listened to big band albums, such as records by Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Harry James, to get a feel for the era. The "bouncy instrumental" that plays during the fight scene in the ballroom was inspired by a similar swing tune that was composed by John Williams for the 1979 Steven Spielberg film 1941. Snow later joked that his composition was, "the third generation of the same inspiration." Chris Carter had significant musical input when it came to scene transitions, saying, "I got a chance to use some of my favorite 40s music here, too, or 30s and 40s music to transition scenes."

The episode contains many intentional references to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The ship's captain is named Yip Harburg. E.Y. Harburg, who also went by the name Yip Harburg, was the lyricist for The Wizard of Oz. The name of the ballroom singer is Almira Gulch, after The Wizard of Oz character who is also the Wicked Witch of the West. Mulder's wrecked ship is called the Lady Garland, after Judy Garland. When Mulder mentions that Skinner was there with him in 1939, Skinner replies, "with my dog Toto." The episode takes place in 1939, the year The Wizard of Oz was released.

The episode features several historical errors. Anderson’s 1939 character is said to work for the OSS – which was not established until 1942. In addition, the code name "Thor's Hammer" is an invention of the writers. Lee Smith, the official research for the show, was tasked with finding the name for the secret pre-WWII atomic research project. Unfortunately for the show, the actual code name, Development of Substitute Materials, was considered "uninspiring," so the name "Thor's Hammer" was created instead.

Broadcast and reception

"Triangle" first aired in the United States on November 22, 1998. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.8, with a 16 share, meaning that roughly 10.8 percent of all television-equipped households, and 16 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 18.20 million viewers. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on March 21, 1999 and received 0.74 million viewers, making it the fourth most watched episode that week. The episode received a 1999 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series.

The episode received extremely positive reviews, with many reviewers commenting on the unique directing style. Television Without Pity gave the episode an A-. Starpulse named "Triangle" as the fourth best X-Files episode, praising the acting and directing, saying, "Chris Carter rarely directed his creation, leaving that mostly to Kim Manners, but when he did he showed a brilliant eye not usually seen on broadcast TV. This is the best example—a breathlessly-paced episode in which each act appears as one continuous shot. [...] This episode is a lot of fun, particularly in the act that finds Scully blitzing through the FBI building in order to get some information on Mulder's whereabouts. The acting is superb and nothing can beat those no-cut acts." Kathleen Diehl from Culture Cartel called the episode "one of the show's best ever." DVD.net called "Triangle" a "classic" standalone episode. Kerry Fall from DVD Journal wrote positively of the episode in a review of the sixth season, noting that the episode was "famous" for the Mulder-Scully kiss. Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode five stars out of five and called it a "shining gem of an episode."

Not all reviews were as glowing. John Keenga from Critical Myth was slightly more critical and gave the episode 7/10. He argued that the filmography was an attempt at an Emmy-nomination and wrote, "Overall, this episode is an interesting if overdone attempt at another Emmy-chasing twist to the usual production values. Not everything works, and the plot requires a great deal of speculation and hand-waving to make sense in the end. Still, there are some interesting psychological aspects at work, which is the saving grace of this period in the series' existence."

Footnotes

References

• Hurwitz, Matt; Knowles, Chris (2008). The Complete X-Files. Insight Editions. ISBN 1933784806. 
• Meisler, Andy (2000). The End and the Beginning: The Official Guide to the X-Files Season 6. HarperCollins. ISBN 0061075957. 
• Shearman, Robert; Pearson, Lars (2009). Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen. Mad Norwegian Press. ISBN 097594469X. 

External links

• "Triangle" on The X-Files, an external wiki
• "Triangle" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Triangle" at TV.com