Fade up, per usual, on darkness. But this time, the darkness is letterboxed. Because this is A Very Important Episode. We're underwater, floating beneath the rubbish of a demolished boat. "Sargasso Sea," the time/date line taps out. "64 degrees West by Southwest." The Oboe of Floating Pieces of Crap in the Middle of the Ocean Is Bad for the Environment toots in the background. A life preserver floats by. An oar swings past, followed by a series of wood fragments, one of which reads, "Judy Garland." (It's the name of the now very piecemeal boat, apparently. I mean, it's all painted on the piece of wood. It's not just, like, a piece of wood that some bored sailor just scrawled "Judy Garland" on. And man, how gay is that image? Anyway.) An unconscious body floats past, face down. It's...well, of course it's Mulder. Who else would it be?

And we're into the credits! Shortest teaser ever! Ooh, and we've got a new tagline: "Die Wahrheit Ist Irgendwo Da Draußen." Whatever that means. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and go with, "The Truth Is Out There." Or maybe, "The One Where Mulder Learns That Nazis Are Bad."

Nighttime. It's raining. Some sailors fish Mulder out of the drink, yelling at each other in very thick, almost unintelligible -- and by "unintelligible," I mean "really, really laughably fake and bad" -- cockney accents. After a lot of bellowing, they manage to haul him on deck. He lies there semi-conscious for a moment, but finally comes to, coughing profusely. The sailors are heckling him, all "wot kind of uniform is that, mate?" and "sprechen sie deutsch?" and "yada yada yada, let's toss 'im overboard, lads!" Mulder just lies there, looking dazed and waterlogged. After poking him with their toes for a while, the sailors haul him by the seat of his pants into the hold. "Hey," Mulder offers weakly as they toss him against the walls. I think. It's dark. The sailors yell all sort of insults at him, calling him a "dirty jerry" and offering to "throw him back in." Mulder blinks, confused. "My name's not Jerry. My name's Mulder. Fox Mulder," he says. "I've got an ID in my pocket." The sailors fish out his wallet and take a look-see. "Fox Mulder, Federal Bureau of Investigations?" one of them reads. "Sorry, mate, never 'eard of it." They get back to the business of hauling him to the brig. "You've never heard of it?" Mulder sputters wetly. "You've never heard of the FBI?"

The sailors drag Mulder off into the darkness. It's very hard to understand them, since they're all talking over each other, but I pick up threats of tossing him into the brig, and accusations that he's a German and a and no one actually uses the word "Nazi," but duh. Someone crows something about Mulder's accent, and "the bureau of Secret Service" and someone else yelps about "seeing what color [Mulder] bleeds," (better hope it's not green and acidic, dude) and something about "Deutschland" and then half of them spit on the deck. Mulder yammers in confused half-sentences until finally one of the sailors tells him to "put a cork in it" and raps sharply on the door of one "Y Harburg," who turns out to the be ship's Super Stereotypical Irish Captain. The ship is lovely inside, by the way. They filmed this on the Queen Mary in Long Beach (I believe), which I visited when I was a little girl. (You can take tours and also you can rent it out if you're the Prince of a small fictional European country and you're sweet-talking Steve Sanders because you want to get in Clare Arnold's pants even though that really makes no sense because Steve is, like, her boyfriend, and now that I think about it, there was a hot FBI agent on that episode of 90210, too! See, isn't the circle of life beautiful?) It's really nifty. You can also get married there, and it's a hotel, too, and all kinds of shit. Anyway. One of the sailors informs Captain Irish that they hauled Mulder out of the drink and they're pretty sure he's a German. The Captain waves them inside...