No, I remember this being an ongoing debate on the alt.tv.x-files newsgroup, way back when the show was still good and I still watched it. There was the “freak of the week” camp, and then the “canon” camp, and frequent threads arguing about which was better.
I always preferred the self-contained stories, for the reasons that have already been mentioned – the conspiracy storyline just got too convoluted and nonsensical. With the single stories, you could get a writer who had something to say and give them an hour to say it; treat “The X-Files” as an anthology series and say to hell with continuity. (I’m still a little angry that they ended the episode called “Dod Kalm” with Mulder & Scully rapidly “de-aging” in the last minute or so – the episode had been beautiful up to that point, and it would’ve been just fine if they’d just gone on next episode with no mention of why everything was back to normal.)
Anyway, my point was suposed to be: I still prefer the one-shot episodes, but there was one episode that was absolutely incredible. It was just a freak-of-the-week episode, some random case having absolutely nothing to do with alien abductions or government conspiracies. And it was pretty interesting and engrossing, and then part-way through, BAM! it turned into a conspiracy episode. (IIRC, it was the one about the cattle-ranching town with a local vegan cult). It just worked so well because it made the story suddenly seem to have more impact, and it showed how the series was always willing to break its own formula.
Ah well, it was good for a few years there, anyway.
I’m in the freak of the week camp. I well remember about a decade ago (when the first episodes were aired on UK terrestrial TV) looking forward to the show.
There was nothing like it on TV then. The self contained episodes were tautly written, well shot, well acted and beautifully self contained.
In that no-one really seems satisfied with the way the x-files canon bloated, flopped weakly around and died without wrapping up the multitudinous loose ends, surely its better to remember those early episodes?
O’course the early episodes were screened when I was a student, and were marked by the ceremony of the “x-files joint”, so perhaps my memory is unreliable, due to chemical enhancement. But I gave up the x-files before I gave up the mary jane.
As I may have mentioned before on the boards I’m of the opinion that the conspiracy arc *kind of * works if you disregard the last two seasons. So the Samantha Mulder thing is sorted out (albeit bathetically), all the stuff about Scully and religion (which always interested me most) ends with her spawning the new Messiah, the CSM dies in a pleasantly crappy way (chucked downstairs), and the rest… well, I can’t remember the rest. It all kind of peters out.
I never liked the conspiracy eps when they were first on (except for the shipper aspects) but I’m starting to appreciate them more, now. They certainly made no sense but they were cool and exciting.