User Reviews

Just like the prior episode titled 'Oubliette', this one has a title that very few people recognize. It looks like it could be a Japanese surname, and once the action gets under way, that idea becomes more credible with the number of Japanese diplomats and medical personnel involved in the story. But the term 'nisei' actually refers to a person of Japanese descent who was born in the U.S. or Canada. So chalk up one more bit of trivia to the writers here and for making me look up the meaning of the word.

The most interesting aspect of the episode for me was how it had Mulder and Scully working on the same case, but taking them each in entirely different directions. Mulder is back on his extraterrestrial kick after sending away for an alien autopsy video, and it was at this point that the writers had Scully throw in a jab at the Fox Network for their questionable programs on the same subject. I thought that was a hoot. But for this viewer, the fascination was in the mystery of how an audience of unfamiliar women could be so inextricably linked to Scully's abduction experience. As the story gradually unfolds, circumstances force Scully to confront the unbelievable aspects of her own abduction, and prompts Mulder's inevitable question to her as posed in my summary line above.

Watching this show for the first time again after so many years, I had forgotten it was a TBC episode, and with no time to catch the next chapter immediately following, I'm chomping at the bit to get back to the story. I'll be back in a few...

Nisei is the first X-Files episode I watched and it's the episode that got me hooked on the series. This is the episode where you really delve into the alien part of the alien/human hybrid story. It also starts Scully's cancer arc. This episode has some great Mulder lines. It's great to see Scully's reaction as she encounters the MUFON group for the first time. Nisei has some good action in it, with Mulder chasing the Japanese diplomat, diving off the boat into the bay, and an exciting sequence at the end. It's the cliffhanger at the end that made me want to see that next episode. I had to wait an agonizing one week! Agent Pendrell makes his first appearance in this episode. However, he's not mentioned by name and his personality isn't shown at all. He just analyzes Scully's chip. Despite the good action sequences and Scully's revelation about her abduction, parts of this episode are slow enough for me to knock a couple of points off of it. But Nisei is still an excellent episode with a great cliffhanger.

Great episode continuing the mythology arc which is the main story in the show. I've been waiting for them to answer some of my questions on scullys neck chip and for them to reveal light on the alien human hybrid conspiracy.

In true x files fashion you are left with more answers than questions. In scullys case she has more answers than she can handle.

Mulder has seems to be unhinged this episode and really goes it alone to find the truth about these alien experiments. He uncovers man things but is faced with inevitable opposition .

Glad to see mr x contact scully which is a first. I wonder what his motives are this time though. As motives are seldom altruistic.

Nisei the Limerick:

Japanese doctors are maimed

For a medical autopsy unexplained

Mulder sees it on tape

And soon gets in a scrape

After he jumps onto a train

Nisei is a decent episode but it really doesn't have a whole lot to it without watching the conclusion 731. There is mainly a lot of suspense with the investigation and sneaking around rather than any real action. One problem I have with the episode is that about 30 minutes in the middle consist of about 5 cuts back and forth between Mulder and Scully. Mulder is sneaking around a shipyard just kind of looking at stuff, and Scully is sitting in Betsy Hagopian's house asking the same questions over and over again. They are really just like two scenes that get drawn out way too long because they keep cutting between them. Other than that, I like the episode fine. It is an important part of the mythology and despite some slowness has some good action as well. I give it a 7 out of 10.

This episode reminds me a lot of what Season 1's Mythology used to be. You know, when it was very slow and didn't really reveal much. But was good due the writing and characters.

the biggest revelation in this episode was the revealing of Scully's abduction. They hadn't really spoken about it in a while so it was nice that the writers hadn't forgotten about it. I liked the scene where all the women showed Scully their chip. Kinda creepy. The biggest reveal in all of this is that the women believe to be fatally ill.

Mulder's part in this episode is to once again reveal the existence of extra terrestrials. His part of the story was a little too slow and not interesting enough. But it was well-executed and ended with the cliffhanger of Mulder jumping on a dangerous train that might've been carrying an Alien.

Giving this episode THREE stars, an all right Myth but good episode overall.

Our episode starts with Mulder and Scully hunting down the seller of a genuine alien autopsy video, only to discover him freshly murdered, execution style. Mulder is able to run down the karate kicking assassin, only to later discover from Skinner that he's a high ranking Japanese diplomat! "Ohhhh you stepped in it this time Mulder!!!" yells Skinner in his annoyed voice. "He must be released immediately before it causes an international incident!"

Yeah, a diplomat gets caught executing a bound American citizen with a bullet to the back of the head, and he's free to go once the Emperor of Japan makes a phone call, that's how that works. That's how that really works.

That's how diplomatic immunity is used for Dr. Doom in Marvel Comics. Make no mistake, that's the level of reality we're at here, comic book for 10 year-olds. Oh, and of course the local news doesn't catch wind of it. Not something they would report on the news, a gangland style execution murder clearly done by a high ranking Japanese diplomat. Nope, we've got county fair pictures to run.

And then Mulder sneaks around a dock, Scully finds an alien abductee support group, Mulder sneaks around a train yard, Scully does nothing of value... and we end on a cliffhanger!

So let's start with the good stuff, I think adding Japanese people is kind of neat. It takes the story someplace new, an international angle to the conspiracy, maybe different groups at odds with each other. For that, I give this episode +2 bonus stars.

And now the bad, it's more poorly executed, going nowhere Chris Carter alien stuff. To explain a little more thoroughly, the problems with this from a writer's point of view are that our characters' motivation only makes sense superficially, the story is all journey in a tale that is all about the destination, and the world we're presented with does not allow for meaningful drama.

Now let's unpack each point: The characters lack good motivation. Midway through this episode Scully decides she doesn't believe in aliens again, and says she just isn't as sure as Mulder about all these aliens. Boy it's very hard to keep track of just where Scully's skeptometer is on any given day, because it bounces back and forth like a thermometer. Anyway, and Mulder is like, come on Scully, I know there are aliens out there and I'm not going to stop until I have definitive proof!

See that's a problem, because what does that really mean? What does Mulder intend to ACTUALLY do? You don't know. I don't know. Chris Carter doesn't know. Mulder really doesn't know. He's got superficial motivation for chasing after train cars and breaking into tramp steamers, but if your life depended on you saying Mulder will accomplish "A" to be able to "B" so he can finally "C", you wouldn't be able to fill in A, B, or C with proper nouns. What does success look like to Mulder? We in the audience don't have any idea. Superficially we do: "he wants the proof of the alien and the government conspiracy, so he can show people how there's all the aliens and governments, and then that'll fix things." Which is fine, but what actually does that mean?

Is he going to go on 60 Minutes? With photos of aliens? With tapes of aliens? With an alien? Is he going to show secret video of the Smoking Man discussing helping an alien invasion of Earth to David Letterman? What exactly constitutes success here? No one, and I mean literally no one, in the audience knows beyond the most vague terms.

Next, we're watching a story that is all journey, but only cares about the destination. I gotta watch Mulder steamily sneak around impromptu government black sites for 45 minutes, what's in it for me just looking at that 45 minutes? Forget the rest of the X-Files, I never get to watch another episode of the X-Files because gray alien rebels steal them all from the local library, all I have are these 45 minutes, what do I get out of this viewing experience? Well the answer is nothing. It's 45 minutes of very slow exposition. There's some element of threat with machine gun guys running around, there's a little drama in Mulder needing to catch a train, but there's no actual tension or stakes. There's no STORY in this episode. It gives us a couple largely unuseful clues about the BIG CONSPIRACY, but that's all it's about, dropping those clues. We don't actually have an episode of the X-Files along the way.

Everything that happens is just a "and then" plot point following the last. Mulder catches a murdering diplomat, and then he finds photos of a boat, and then he looks at the boat, and then at the boatyard he sees an alien space craft, and then he sees photos of a train car, and then he sees an alien go on the train car, and then he jumps on the train car.

I enjoy finding out about the alien conspiracy actually, I really do. But that's no excuse for making bad television.

Finally, the world we're presented with has no meaningful drama. This relates back to the first point, and what Mulder's motivation and plans are. Here in this episode we are once again presented with an enemy force that is omnipotent and omniscient, can do anything, can know anything. So... what exactly is Mulder hoping to accomplish?

He's going to get evidence of the conspiracy! He's done that already, what feels like dozens of times before. They've secured alien-human hybrid cultures, brought three or four aliens to FBI headquarters, Scully stole an alien fetus from a government science facility that had a security clearance higher than the President gets (same Scully who doesn't believe in aliens two seasons later by the way), they have a strange alien virus that violates all known laws of biology, chemistry, and physics isolated from autopsy samples, Scully got abducted by aliens and had a high tech tracking device pulled out of her, Mulder tracked an alien assassin to an atomic submarine that had had it's entire crew murdered, they found a train car full of grays, or human hybrids, or gray hybrids, Mulder even saved a body from it as a souvenir, Mulder got ahold of a copy of the bad guys' entire paper trail and plan as stored by the Department of Defense, they have a photograph of the heads of the conspiracy posing together at their secret government record keeping facility and examined the facility and all the documents there. Given all the evidence they've acquired, and the exponentially greater amount of evidence they could have collected on their escapades had they actually been trying to collect it (a video tape and some tissue samples from the fetus before you turned it over Scully? Some tissues samples from the aliens who wanted your protection or from the bounty hunter you tracked and captured, Mulder?), if the bad guys are so powerful that they can STILL FOIL THE HEROES' EFFORTS then what will any new evidence do? If the people around Mulder and Scully (and perhaps including Scully) REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF A CLEAR ALIEN CONSPIRACY then what good would literally any evidence be?

If any evidence can be stolen back, destroyed, or erased, then there simply is no point in acquiring said evidence in the first place. If the supposed target audience of this evidence will discount any evidence they see as fake, hoaxed, and silly then there simply is no point in showing said audience the evidence in the first place. You see the problem there?

Chris Carter has made a world where the Syndicate is more powerful than the rest of the government combined. And the only group more powerful than them, apparently, is the aliens. So what is the credible threat to the Syndicate? If Mulder uncovers evidence who can he show it to? Congress? Nope, sorry, Mr. X told us they're all compromised. The military? Nope, they take orders from the Syndicate. The US' intelligence agencies? Nope, sorry, they're completely infiltrated by the Syndicate.

Literally Mulder's only actual recourse would have been to shoot the Smoking Man in the face when he had the chance. Everything else is pointless. There are no stakes and so there can be no drama.

So again, I'd say this episode is 5/10 stars, but adding the Japanese doctors into it is kinda fresh, so bump it up to 7/10.

Nisei/731 is about an alien autopsy videotape, that leads Scully to information about her disappearance and Mulder trapped aboard a train rigged with explosives.

A myth-arc double episode that's okay, not great. I appreciate how they got to the significant advancement in the story, with Mulder buying an alien autopsy videotape, catching the Japanese diplomat in the act, with information on him. Nisei's decent, but 731's borderline television standard stuff. I do like Steven Williams again here though.