Does anyone remember when X-Files had a series of episodes written by famous authors?
There was one by Stephen King, one by William Gibson, and a few others. What season were those episodes in, and who were the other writers?
Please don’t spoil the plots for me - I’m hoping to watch them sometime. 
The quickest way I know to find your answer is to look here. You can CTRL+F for the specific names you want or just scroll down the page looking at the “writers” column.
King co-wrote an episode was in season 5. Gibson co-wrote 2: one in season 5 and one in season 7.
EDIT: The linked page gives plots, but generally not spoilers.
Great link.
I had forgotten that David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and William B. Davis had all written episodes. “The Unnatural” is one of my all-time favorites.
Excellent. Thank you!
I thought I remembered a promo saying James Cameron was directing an episode during season five, but I’m not finding it.
Anyway, you can find Stephen King’s and William Gibson’s episodes in season five, they were “Cinga” and “Killswitch” respectively. Gillian Anderson wrote season seven’s “All Things” and David Duchovny wrote season six’s “The Unnatural”, season seven’s “Hollywood AD,” and season nine’s “William.” AFAIK the other couple episodes listed for him on IMDB were just “contributing writer” credits.
Absolutely. It would be in the 5 episodes I showed someone to introduce them to the show. The others would be “Beyond the Sea,” “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” “Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space,”” and “How The Ghosts Stole Christmas.”
I recall someone posting a query to one of the X-Files Usenet groups the morning after Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space” initially aired:
I think the answer to that question, literally, is “no”…
That certainly would have been my answer.
anyone happen to have a way to locate the various comedy episodes? I would love to track down a list.
I miss X-Files, its one definite sign of a great drama when they do humor better than any sitcom on the air at the time.
I don’t know of one offhand, Critical1, but I’ll certain take a stab at it. Be aware that it’s been a few years since I’ve seen some of these and YSoHMV*:
“The Host”
“Humbug”
“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”
“Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space””
“Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man”
“Small Potatoes”
“Unusual Suspects”
“Detour”
“The Post-Modern Prometheus”
“Bad Blood” (which, in retrospect, I would put on my list above, replacing “Beyond the Sea”)
“Dreamland” & “Dreamland II”
“How The Ghosts Stole Christmas”
“The Rain King”
“Arcadia”
“The Unnatural”
“The Goldberg Variation”
“The Amazing Maleeni”
“X-Cops”
“Hollywood A.D.”
“Fight Club”
“Improbable”
thanks, thats more than a start, I will have to keep an eye out for a nice box set. but knowing which ones to look for is a huge help. (not that the show isnt generally great)
I would add “War of the Coprophages” to the list of comedy episodes.
Yes! I had to look up this exchange between Mulder and Scully on the phone, it always cracks me up.
SCULLY: Mulder, I think the only thing more fortuitous than the emergence of life on this planet is that, through purely random laws of biological evolution, an intelligence as complex as ours ever emanated from it. Uh, the, the very idea…of intelligent alien life is not only…astronomically improbable but at it’s most basic level, downright anti-Darwinian.
MULDER: Scully… what are you wearing?
“Are you sure it wasn’t a girly scream?”
“Yep, that’s a bleeping dead alien body if I ever bleeping saw one.”
I love Jose Chung.
“Her name is Bambi?”
Judith Prietht
:smack: I thought you were referring to Mulder’s girly scream in Jose Chung. Sorry. Time for coffee.
“Oh my god! he’s hung like a clubtail dragonfly.” 
I loves me some X-Files. Might have to get some of the shows from the library, after reading this thread.
What was the episode where an old partner of Scully’s turns up, except that he’s possessed by a bad guy, and doesn’t even recognize that it isn’t his birthday when Mulder, to expose him, gives him a birthday card? IIRC, the bad guy kidnaps Scully and they track him, in part, by analyzing the background noise on a phone call he makes.
That’s Lazarus.
David Duchnovy even wrote his wife into one of his episodes, playing herself.