The X-Files

[Revan]

I think I muight actually get some on DVD... Just to see what they are like... Do you think I should... and if so... what season?

[aTOMiC]

I think getting grounded in the mythology is important to enjoy the series. Season one is a good start. I think 3 through 6 are the best but you have to already be a fan to really get it all.

[Revan]

I'll get the first three series...

[I'm Murrin]

Bump from the distant past, as this seems to be the only thread.

I'm watching all the way through The X-Files for the first time. I've only seen odd episodes before.

Right now I'm in early season two. The first season was not great, to be honest - it was almost entirely monster of the week episodes with little continuity, and they weren't all that original. There was something of a bump up in quality in the last few episodes of the season, starting with Tooms (an episode that brought back an earlier villain).

Season two, so far, is a marked improvement. While the things they're facing are getting increasingly ridiculous (a giant human flatworm! A man who, because he hasn't slept in 24 years, has gained the ability to project hallucinations into your mind that are so convincing they actually kill you!), the stories themselves are improving, and they've got strong threads of continuity with the closure of the X-Files and the emerging conspiracy.

[Cameraman Jenn]

Wait til you see the episode called "Home"

[I'm Murrin]

The show took a quick dive on the next episode I watched. "3", the vampire episode and the only one totally without Scully, was just terrible. The one after, with Scully's coma, was a little better.

[Cail]

When The X-Files was good, it was generally very good. When it wasn't good, it was generally eye-rollingly bad.

[I'm Murrin]

"3" wasn't just bad like most of season 1 was bad (corny, predictable, dated, but enjoyable enough). "3" tried way too hard to be moody and dark, the soundtrack was overbearing, the acting was god-awful, and it just felt nothing at all like an X-Files episode. It's weird just how bad it was. I wonder if it was the director.

Edit: Nope. The same director's done loads of X-Files episodes.

[I'm Murrin]

Second season was pretty good overall. The ideas got wackier (invisible elephant, murderous detachable conjoined twin) but the quality was much higher than season 1. There were some painfully dumb episodes, like the "dark matter" one near the end that fails to even try to understand physics.

The bounty hunter episodes, and Die Hand Die Verletzt (about the devil worshippers), were pretty good.

There's something different about the style and feel of the big multi-part storyline episodes compared to the one-shots. Like they're filmed with a different approach.

[ItisWritten]

Second season was pretty good overall. The ideas got wackier (invisible elephant, murderous detachable conjoined twin) but the quality was much higher than season 1. There were some painfully dumb episodes, like the "dark matter" one near the end that fails to even try to understand physics.

The bounty hunter episodes, and Die Hand Die Verletzt (about the devil worshippers), were pretty good.

There's something different about the style and feel of the big multi-part storyline episodes compared to the one-shots. Like they're filmed with a different approach.

Humbug is one of our favorites. How many horror movies end with the monster getting eaten?

A little trivia for you. In the scene in which Scully supposedly palmed the cricket instead of eating it, Gillian Anderson actually ate the cricket. Apparently, she didn't know how to do the simplest of magic tricks.

[I'm Murrin]

One of the best episodes so far in season 3 is War of the Coprophages, which is surprising because it's a silly episode that doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's actually the second funny episode this season, both by the same writer (who also wrote Humbug). I wasn't as keen on the first one, about psychics, although it wasn't bad.

[ItisWritten]

One of the best episodes so far in season 3 is War of the Coprophages, which is surprising because it's a silly episode that doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's actually the second funny episode this season, both by the same writer (who also wrote Humbug). I wasn't as keen on the first one, about psychics, although it wasn't bad.

What did you think of Jose Chung's, 'From Outer Space'?

[I'm Murrin]

I think it was one of the worst episodes in the series so far. I know it was deliberately bad and confusing, but I didn't see anything worthwhile in it.


I'm on to season 4 now. The big episodes at the end and beginning of 3/4 were good, but some of the lapses in established lore annoyed me. They act like they've never encountered a group of identical clones living all over the country before, like they've never met an alien that can change its face, and somehow when Mulder stabs the bounty hunter in the wrong spot neither he nor Scully come down with that deadly blood-clotting alien virus when they get near him.

[deer of the dawn]

I've seen the entire series, and I have to say that my favorite episode (outside the whole mytharc thing) is Never Again. Scully, sick of Mulder and the whole thing, goes solo in Philly and meets Mr Wrong, who has a talking tattoo who tells him to kill her and throw her in the incinerator. Jody Foster does the tattoo's voice. The look on Scully's face when she walks back into the basement office is priceless.

[I'm Murrin]

Wow. The creators of the X-Files had balls of steel to end season 4 the way they did.

[I'm Murrin]

Reached the end of season 5 and watched the X-Files movie. I think they had a few too many silly episodes this season, and not many good ones. The film was okay.

I'm not sure at what point Mulder started believing in the aliens again. I think they kinda glossed over his skepticism at the end.

Exciting moment for those who play "spot the black people" with this show near the end of the season - there actually was one! And he was a speaking character!

[deer of the dawn]

I liked the black X and was sorry they killed him; he was one of the better actors. Although I think he does reappear a couple seasons later.... kinda like Terry O'Quinn showing up as various people...

[I'm Murrin]

At the end of "The Beginning", the season 6 opener, Mulder and Scully are told they'll report to a new director, who is a black man. He gets no lines in the episode, just sits there looking angry for one shot.

I'm pretty sure the show has by now featured more aliens than black people.

[MsMary]

So, who's watching The X-Files mini series that started up last Sunday night?

The first episode was fairly incoherent, second one was better.

[Cail]

I could do without all the nodding and winking, but otherwise it's like the show never went off the air. The ridiculous dialog, the bad effects, the fake-looking stunts....It's all here.