Prior to about season 4, I came up with a theory that fit most facts that CSM was actually the good guy. Mulder was just his weapon.
After about season 4 the mytharc went to shit in a flaming dumpster fire and I stopped caring. But “Musings of A Cigarette Smoking man” was a good episode.
Wow, I’m late to this.
Loved X-Files but haven’t watched it in a decade or more. It started when I was in college and I lurv Gillian Anderson. Yes, she was a bit young for the part, but practically ancient by today’s TV shows standards. (I mean, now it’s a 23 year old who has their doctor’s degree or a 30 year old who has six doctorate’s while being in great shape.)
I agree that, generally speaking, the mythology episodes weren’t great. I think if they had been more consistent, they would have been rewatchable. I agree that they had too many alien types that made no sense and by the time they tried to tie it all together was a hot mess at best. For that reason, I didn’t like Space but I didn’t like Ghost in the Machine more.
I still remember Jose Chung’s From Outer Space, Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose by title, they were so good. The rest I will look up, in no particular order.
5x12 Bad Blood - The different perspectives and Luke Wilson made this great.
1x11, 1x12 Eve and Fire. So good! (Just saw the older Eve in Werewolf By Night)
Hmm, actually s1 had some decent ones.
2x14 Die Hand Die Verletzt - This was one I enjoyed and wanted a return of this person.
3x12 The War of the Coprophages - The run by on the screen! The puns!
Wow. There are too many to speak to the individual episodes. I still remember many, even not having watched them in so long. The only other individual episode I will mention is:
7x12 X-Cops. “Can I see your badge again?”
Gillian was out s2 first half due to pregnancy and they at least tried something to keep her involved as well as how they got them back together. It also introduced Rat Boy.
I do agree that they did well thru season four. The season finales were well done and made us wait for the resolution, which wasn’t always the best as they were usually mythology episodes. The changing of the opening text. It’s not that the rest of the seasons were bad but I think the “classics” will be from those first four seasons.
“Hey, I didn’t play Dungeons and Dragons all those years without learning a little something about courage.” Ha! Still playing it myself and that was in Dragon magazine as a quote. I thought it was great!
Now to talk about some off shoots.
Millennium - I started it and enjoyed it until I had to describe it someone. “Watching someone figure out gruesome deaths.” “Why?” Then it hit me that the myths of this one were lacking. Now, I haven’t watched this since it aired and never finished it. I know there was a cross over later in X-Files so not sure how well they did.
Dark Skies - I liked this. I think they had a better handle on the overall plot but spent too much time on it by not having MotW shows. They got to a point where they had to resolve it or move on really quickly and then lost it.
The Lone Gunmen - Really, a look into these guys was doomed to fail because the premise of them is that they never saw the full picture that Mulder and Scully did. Since they weren’t willing to clue the viewer in on it while keeping TLG in the dark, it didn’t have the same tone.
Wow. I could talk on this for a long time. How did they influence other shows beyond this? Lost. Supernatural. Fringe. Warehouse 13. Eureka. Evil. How good are first viewings versus second or third viewings? Some hold up decades later, some I don’t want to watch. I wonder how much it influenced Buffy/Angel/Firefly if at all. X-Files had some idea of a season arc that dealt with some things and the next season did something else. Is that enough to claim influence?
Finally, the reboot. If they had done the one six episode season, they would have gone out on a high note. It was awesome. The next season, not so much. The US would probably eat up a conspiracy type show like this these days.
Thanks for the discussion!
By the way, the show that inspired X-Files, Kolchak The Night Stalker still holds up IMHO. At least halfway which is where I am now.
Just saw the episode with the Spanish Moss Monster. I thought I would be bored by it and they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. But it turns out it was a manifestation of a guy being kept for dreaming experiments, so it was really fascinating… and that part featured
Who is always great playing supercilious scientist types.
Nowadays, at least when it comes to “prestige” television shows, the writers get to decide when the show ends. The X-Files comes from an earlier era, when the network decided when the show ended, and as long as a show was still getting good ratings they demanded more episodes. Which probably pretty much forced the writers to keep adding to the conspiracy arc, until it got more and more convoluted.
Chris Carter pretty much confirmed that at the time. During press for the first movie, which was filmed between Seasons 4 & 5 but released between seasons 5 &6, he indicated he wanted to wrap up everything and end after the 7th season. Later Duchovny said he was out after season 7. That’s why the series impetus mystery of what really happened to Mulder’s sister Samantha was finally resolved and the season finale episode circled back to the events of the very first episode.
Nevertheless, Fox looked at the ratings and renewed the show. Fox essentially told Carter “we own the show, not you. You can quit, but we’ll just bring in someone else to run the show”. So Carter stuck around, giving us the Doggett-Reyes seasons, the super soldier nonsense and much maligned clip-show finale. Ironically for Fox, the ninth season’s ratings were the worst in the show’s history, even lower than the first season when it was just some weird little cult show in a bad timeslot on Friday nights.
This thread was started before the revival seasons. My thoughts on those: Sometimes a creator loses touch with what made their creation special in the first place. The episodes Carter wrote and directed (the conspiracy eps) were all absolutely terrible, easily the worst of the revival*. The standalone monster of the week eps, especially in the 11th season, were for the most part pretty enjoyable. The 10th season Darin Morgan episode “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-monster” was so good it made the rest of the subpar 10th season worthwhile.
*Come on, your season premier resolved the previous season-ending cliffhanger with it was just a dream. Which, to be honest, was probably the least-bad way out of that clusterfuck
The mytharc was all building up to the alien invasion/takeover. These were all powerful aliens, and they weren’t going to take no for an answer. Our time was up. No one, Mulder, the Syndicate, CSM, no one could stop them. So the build up…and …poof. Nothing. The aliens just…what? changed their minds? Then the show suddenly shifted gears without a clutch and we were in the new conspiracy mytharc about supersoldiers. Which seem to have powers like aliens. And are controlled by the syndicate. maybe. Yawn.
Making it all a dream would have been a vast improvement.
Soft Light and Terms of Endearment were also good MotW, even if Soft Light had Mr X to semi-tie it to the mytharc. (Dr, Banton would have been an awesome weapon against the alien invasion. Put him on the front lines with a floodlight behind him.)
Field Trip was, if you look at it just right, the series (and M&S’s) finale.
Found a new series wide nitpick from S1E12 “Fire” thats gonna bother me everytime it happens now.
SHOOT!!! SHOOT HIM!! Dont give him time to monologue or set shit on fire! SHOOT HIM USE YOUR GUN!! Thats what its for.
Watched a Night Stalker ep that probably has the most in common with xfiles
The govt makes an android that escapes and Carl investigates. The most unrealistic thing about the show was there was a journalist doing “innnnnvestigatinnnng journaliiiism” and was ready to expose the govt rather then being a bootlicking propaganda arm of the govt.
But seriously because it was a govt is bad show….his boss Vincenzo was the more believing in Carls investigations then any other show.
One reaction to this, I think, was Buffy’s “Big Bad” approach - while there are “monster” episodes and “conspiracy” episodes, each season had its own discrete main arc, villain and conspiracy. That way, even if you’re cancelled, you can still give your viewers some degree of closure. The downside is that you have to actually write a good story, which is harder work then Chris Carter’s mystery boxes (the term may originate with J.J. Abrams, but it started with Carter).
I didn’t know it was originally on Friday nights. I remember watching it on Sunday nights in the late 90s.
I agree with everyone who thinks the alien conspiracy stuff got out of hand. By the end it seemed like everyone except the main characters were in on the conspiracy, almost like the Truman Show but with aliens.
When my wife and I last re-watched it, we only watched the Monsters-of-the-Week episodes, which still provided a ton of content, but avoided all the story stuff that went nowhere.
We were spoiled then, though. 22+ episodes of high quality television each year. Now, a season of 10 episodes can take more than a year to drop.
It used to be right after Brisco County, Jr, which FOX at the time thought would be their big hit. Then they saw that X-Files got more ratings and started airing repeats of it on Sundays so that people could catch up on the show. I think it was on pre Simpsons, which was before prime time. Eventually it moved to Sundays from Fridays full time.
Yes, it was on Friday for the first three seasons. By season 4, it was a big hit and moved to Sundays.
I think people are being unduly dismissive of the conspiracy episodes based on 20/20 hindsight. In the first seasons, the conspiracy episodes were what kept me coming back, while the MOTW episodes ranged from OK to occasionally good to downright laughably ludicrously bad. Not to mention repetitive. Over time, the MOTW episodes trended better and better, generally, while the conspiracy episodes got more and more convoluted.
But let us not forget that the conspiracy episodes introduced us to Cigarette Smoking Man and The Lone Gunmen, iconic characters and portrayals, all..
If anyone’s interested, Shaenon Garrity did a series of webcomic summaries of the X-Files, although she may not have done all of the seasons. It’s a good way to be reminded of episodes. The summaries include making fun of the ridiculous bits.
It starts here. The one with speculation about the cast of Lost is here.
The one about mycology is here. And the next one is a non-fiction continuation by the mycologist.
If it hasn’t been pointed out yet, Jose Chung made a reappearance in “Millennium” in an episode title “Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense.”
Wow those are great…just dissapointed s1e13 wasn’t called “The TV port of part of Exorcist 3”
I just started a rewatch of the X Files from the beginning. I was obsessed with it in the first few years. I lost track during the last few seasons. I have forgotten most of the plots, so it’s almost like watching for the first time. It’s on FreeVee, free with ads.
Tonight, I watched the Tooms episode. So good and so scary. It was like watching a mini horror movie. You could watch this with no knowledge of the X Files and still be entertained and frightened.
I cannot think of any show with two more beautiful leads. Mulder and Scully are both gorgeous and their chemistry is slow burning from the start.
I think that’s fair. I didn’t get tired of those conspiracy episodes until I figured out the writers had no idea where they hell they were going with it. And I’ll admit that this has soured me on going back and watching the series. I loved the show, but I haven’t revisted the show since it originally aired.
I think I’ve watched a grand total of 2 episodes of the X-Files, but I very much enjoyed reading those comic strips!