The dehydrated rationale behind what occurs during this episode makes no sense. The characters age. Well, not really. Scully somehow explains it. The cause for what's happening is contaminated drinking water on a military ship. Time seems to be wasted on folklore, an absurd line of thought on "free radicals", a meteorite, the ship being metal, and a "glowing light" rising from the water that resulted in the ship stopping. (a UFO?). There's talk of "time getting lost", the Philadelphia experiment and scientists experimenting with folding time.
Forget all that. It goes nowhere. Back to the drinking water. This is the reason... and it doesn't explain the current characters being impacted, as they're only on the ship for a few hours and we don't see them drinking water - and, if they did, it wouldn't be much. The crew had been on the ship for quite some time. Perhaps the water was contaminated when the "glowing" incident occurred, which might explain the timing, but that line of thought was dropped and doesn't explain the state of everything beyond the humans drinking contaminated water. It definitely doesn't explain the ship and selective items on it disintegrating and others looking new - something used to forward the plot (the yellow sewage pipe - oi vey).
The agents are saved by being rescued (by the Coast Guard or Navy?) an hour before the ship allegedly sinks and given dialysis and put on IVs. Mulder was also given hormones, possibly estrogen - It's not mentioned, but would make sense, given an earlier scene of dramatic self-sacrifice from Mulder. How on Earth this or drinking toilet water quickly reverses the "aging" issue, I've no idea. It doesn't matter.
Typing of Mulder, I don't know if Duchovny was given this direction or it was his choice, but I almost lost it at his selective "old timer" head bobbing and shaking. Given what Scully said earlier in the episode, this shouldn't have happened. Scully and others don't exhibit this behavior. It's rough. Definitely dialed to 11.
I wouldn't be surprised if this episode wasn't finished when production began and was rewritten on the fly and stitched together at an editing bay. If that's the case, I suppose it's impressive we got what we did. At least the episode wasn't filled with cringe beyond the Clooneyfication of Mulder. That typed, this may be the most scattershot episode to date.
I may change the rating for this one from a high 4 to low 5. Not sure.
The X-Files did Old long before M Night did!
If it was in the water then how did they get old? I don’t recall them drinking any water
Mulder & Scully (M&S) investigate a ship that had it's crew die of old age. M&S board the ship and they age as well. This episode is really slow. It's got a decent opening teaser but it doesn't go anywhere after that.
Secondary characters in this episode: None
Shout by SarahBlockedParent2016-04-30T00:57:42Z
Man this episode really highlights the improvement in sfx make up over the last 20 years.