Toby Watches The X-Files

[Toby Frost]

This is going to be completely random and piecemeal. I was always intrigued by this show when it first came out, but I didn't see that many episodes and not enough to get the main storyline. I'm going to watch various episodes and see what I think.

Home - Season 4, Episode 2

I watched this because it's notorious. Basically, it's The X-Files reconfigured as a Tobe Hooper/Rob Zombie horror film, with a family of incredibly inbred yokels as villains. It is both disgusting and blackly comic, but never especially scary. I'm sure there are some pretty backward yokels in the depths of rural America, but the sight of these zombie-cavemen grunting at each other while a bunch of gee-whizz kids play baseball 20 yards away is pretty ridiculous. Overall, it succeeds, but it feels more like an unusually nasty episode than a particularly good one.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I have the complete box set of the original nine series, that also has the two movies that connected bits and pieces together. Many happy hours going through them years ago!

Loads of good episodes spring to mind. The few that immediately stand out for me are:

War of the Coprophages - Season 3, Episode 12
Syzygy - Season 3, Episode 13
Jose Chung's From Outer Space - Season 3, Episode 20
Bad Blood - Season 5, Episode 12
Dreamland I & II - Season 6, Episodes 4 & 5

I think they did the really weird 'monster of the week' ones much better. in general, than the ongoing government UFO conspiracy ones, (hence the list above!)

But there's a lot of other gems in there that I haven't connected with their titles. Except for the ones written by Willian Gibson, which, even for the time seemed pretty dated.

 

[Toby Frost]

The Unnatural - Season 6, Episode 19

An old man tells Mulder a story about an alien who disguised himself as a black baseball player in the late 1940s, in order to stay on Earth and play in a team.

This was good but odd: it's largely a flashback, and the two leads don't do much. I wouldn't call it comedy - it's amusing rather than funny - but it seems gentler than usual, especially in its treatment of the alien (I wonder if the makers of Paul saw this). There's a plot point that only makes sense as divine intervention or the old man's memory being wrong. I suppose it works as a fable, especially if you buy into the magic of baseball.

 

[BAYLOR]

The XFiles Millennium season 7 episode 4 The episode had Fox Mulder team up with Frank Black the lead character in Millennium.

 

[HareBrain]

the magic of baseball.

Area-effect sleep spell.

 

[Toby Frost]

Very good!

 

[Toby Frost]

War of the Coprophages - Season 3, Episode 12

Metal-bodied cockroaches appear in a town, and seem to be robots from space. This was about two-thirds outright comedy and one-third body horror (albeit fairly mild). I'd always remembered Anderson and Duchovny as a bit stiff and dull, but they do the comedic dialogue pretty well and there were some amusing lines. It's interesting to see what's entered the public consciousness since these episodes came out: terms like "anaphylactic shock" get used as if they're very obscure. A good episode, and somewhat lighter than I remember the show being.

 

[BAYLOR]

At one point Chris Carter want to have Nigel Kneale write an episode for XFiles. Kneele wasn't interested.

 

[HareBrain]

It's interesting to see what's entered the public consciousness since these episodes came out: terms like "anaphylactic shock" get used as if they're very obscure.

I'm wondering if they thought people what know what "coprophage" means.

 

[Toby Frost]

Syzygy - Season 3, Episode 13

A series of murders in a small town raises the prospect of Satan on the loose, but the truth seems to lie with two teenage girls and an unusual planetary alignment. This one falls flat for me. It involves some very American concepts - jocks and cheerleaders, satanic cults and ouija boards - that perhaps don't travel very convincingly. I was surprised that nobody was playing D&D, the Devil's own game. A couple of events aren't properly explained, and the ending is much too vague. If it was played outright for laughs, or played completely straight, it would be a lot better. All the other episodes have been convincing in their own way, but this one isn't.

 

[Toby Frost]

Grotesque - Season 3, Episode 14

A serial killer claims that a gargoyle continues to commit murders, even when he has been incarcerated. A horror story played straight, probably influenced by The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, and apparently filmed with a blue filter over the lens. I'm not sure it makes perfect sense, but it works. Some of Mulder's weirdness is excessive, and his soliloquies are pompous and unnecessary (is he the narrator of the show?). Overall, it's eerie and good, and contains some clever misdirection. Kurtwood Smith, the villain of Robocop, is decent as a rival FBI agent. Definitely one of the better ones.

A weakness with The X-Files is that Mulder and Scully don't seem very consistent as characters: they and their relationship seem to change depending on what the episode requires.

 

[KGeo777]

I remember seeing "Home" when it aired. Definitely sticks with you. The fact that they shot it on a highway which I used to pass all the time on the bus made it more familiar.

I don't think I ever rewatched any episodes (other than the first feature film).
It would be weird to watch the early shows now--considering how young they were (I don't even have to see it-I know I would be saying: whoa! are they ever young here).

The humor ones I think I remember better than the horror episodes. The Fletcher episodes.

The episode of Millennium with Charles Nelson Riley is quite memorable too.
I was shocked when Darren McGavin turned up on the X-Files because I never checked the previews and had heard they asked him and he declined.
I saw the X Files when it premiered but lost interest after the pilot and then went back to it when I heard it was compared to the Night Stalker.

I don't think I would rewatch it. That early 90s Vancouver murkiness and green gloom is off-putting--since I live in the area, I don't like being reminded of it in entertainment. I was happy when the X-Files went to LA because that gave them real deserts and more familiar locales for Area 51 stuff. I suppose Vancouver was better for Middle America anonymity.
If the show had been shot in LA from the get go William Davis wouldn't have been in it.
The episode where they spoof Forrest Gump with him as the history-maker is also a funny one.

The show had some good laughs.

I watched Millennium but got bored with it --I did watch the Lone Gunmen as well.

 

[Toby Frost]

"Home" has stuck with me - partly because it's now linked to the song "Wonderful" in my mind.

Random thoughts: one of the reasons I'm watching this show is that it was huge when I was a kid, and sounded cool, but I missed most of it then. I remember seeing one episode which involved (I think) aliens in a prison camp, and which really unnerved me back then. But there was so little SF on UK TV then (and very few channels) so anything was welcome. One weird thing is the absence of swearing, despite gore and occasionally disturbing subject matter. That feels quite dated and unlikely.

"Green gloom" is a good description of how some of the early episodes look. Even taking into account the subject matter, the early episodes aren't attractive to watch. Re the blue filter thing: this is something that downbeat cop dramas do a lot in the UK to make the atmosphere more ominous. I don't remember shows from the US being so blatant about it.

Stephen King had some interesting things to say about The Night Stalker in Danse Macabre but basically really liked it.

For some reason Millenium and The Lone Gunmen never really appealed. Maybe Millenium felt too much like the 1990s serial killer obsession.

I could see The X-Files having a couple of baked-in problems: for one thing, the supernatural explanation is almost always true, so you run the risk of one character being forever right and the other forever wrong. I'd be interested to see how they deal with this. Because of the way that M&S become involved, the stories could be quite samey in structure.

It's also quite odd how much Gillian Anderson looks like Elizabeth Siddal, or at least Dante Gabriel Rosetti's paintings of her. If this doesn't come up in an episode, the writers really missed a trick.

 

[Toby Frost]

Quagmire - Season 3, Episode 22

Mulder and Scully investigate deaths around a lake, in which a monster is said to live. Perhaps it was inevitable that The X-Files would have a Nessie episode, but this is a good story that includes Jaws-type killings and some surprisingly philosophical dialogue. Definitely one of the better-written episodes, and one that seems to get the tone just right.

Incidentally, I'm surprised that The X-Files doesn't really discuss any issues of the day. The Twilight Zone had a lot of satirical episodes and ones with a "point to make". So far, the monsters in The X-Files are just that. There was a moment in "Syzygy" when it looked as if it was about to make a point about lynch mobs, a bit like "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street", but it never quite grasped the nettle.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Incidentally, I'm surprised that The X-Files doesn't really discuss any issues of the day. The Twilight Zone had a lot of satirical episodes and ones with a "point to make". So far, the monsters in The X-Files are just that. There was a moment in "Syzygy" when it looked as if it was about to make a point about lynch mobs, a bit like "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street", but it never quite grasped the nettle.

I think the whole idea of the X-files series sprung from doing monsters of the week rather than making any strong social point. And then the whole alien-government conspiracy lurched into life, like a Frankenstein monster, sucking up loads of episodes and making a long-standing arc over many series.

Re some of your other thoughts, X-files was designed for nationwide broadcast TV, it was the early 90s, thus I suspect absence of swearing and other features of the program that make it appear dated might come from this.

In terms of my own enjoyment, I personally find the alien conspiracy episodes a bit clunky, po-faced, and although sometimes quite good, usually slow and not very satisfying. Having standalone episodes inbetween are like a breath of fresh air. And then there's the later series when David Duchovny disappears for a large time, leaving Gillian Anderson to shoulder the show. (Then she has to drop off for a bit and we get Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish as the replacement agents.)

Some of the weirder episodes that come from the alien lore I do like. I forget when the Lone Gunmen appear for the first time, and they then get an dedicated episode a series for a while. I remember them being quite fun - and a different tone, although they don't seem to float your boat! Then there's the one-off going into the back story of the cigarette smoking man. I did binge watch all 10 series, so perhaps I needed these moments of relief amongst some of the serial killer and politics episodes.

 

[KGeo777]

It's also quite odd how much Gillian Anderson looks like Elizabeth Siddal, or at least Dante Gabriel Rosetti's paintings of her. If this doesn't come up in an episode, the writers really missed a trick.

Yeah she often made me think of Pre-Raphaelite and Gustave Dore' angel illustrations.
Hard to believe she was a punk rocker and had a mohawk in high school.

I saw them filming an episode one time--I was downtown and could see Mulder and Scully standing about 100 feet away-- weird to have watched them on tv a couple of days before and then see them outside together as if it was a regular mundane thing.

Vancouver rains 10 months a year, that's the grey green gloom effect.

The problem with the alien episodes is that they never had a detailed plan of where they were going so it was all a big ballyhoo for nothing.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Host Season 2 episodes 2, The encounter a creature a Giant Humanoid Fluke that lives in the sewers and it reproduces by biting its fictions and inject its larva into the victims, , they travel into to liver incubate , when read a certain size the victim vomits them them up along blood tissue from their liver which as been destroyed in the process.

 

[Toby Frost]

I was downtown and could see Mulder and Scully standing about 100 feet away

You did not see this. Any records confirming this no longer exist and never did.

* takes long drag on cigarette, WW1-style *

 

[Toby Frost]

Nisei and 731 - Season 3, Episodes 9 and 10

Mulder and Scully acquire a tape that seems to show some elderly Japanese doctors dissecting an alien. The trail leads them to a leper colony and to a train carriage where the autopsy seems to have taken place.

These are the episodes that I remember from the first time The X-Files was on TV. It's every bit as disturbing as I remember, both visually and story-wise: the Japanese men are sadistic war criminals from a (real) medical unit, and there are Nazi-style murders of failed experiments. There is no banter between the heroes and one moment of levity in two episodes. It's exceedingly bleak and sinister, even compared to the horror-movie gore of "Home".

While the alien story ultimately goes nowhere very much (too much space and too little plot, I suspect), and some of the individual aspects of the story don't really add up, it is very good at building up an atmosphere of complex menace, where it's very hard to work out the motives of anyone. Actually, the whole thing is quite like watching a nightmare: something very bad is happening, but nobody (possibly including the writers) knows what it is, exactly.

 

[Toby Frost]

Deep Throat - Season 1, Episode 2

Mulder and Scully investigate the fate of a test pilot who may have been involved with alien technology.

I thought this was a decent episode, especially given how early in the story it is: it approaches a flying saucer coverup story from an interesting angle. The production feels surprisingly lavish: a lot of outdoor shots and sunshine help make it feel "big". It sets out the show's game quite well: a sort of police/espionage drama with sci-fi elements. Already we're seeing secret bases, shifty "government" agents, and an informer. It also establishes a slightly frustrating structure: strange happenings suggest an SF explanation, the audience knows that the SF explanation is the correct one, but the proof is never available. I'd be interested to see how the writers get around this.

Seth Green plays a stoner (there seem to be quite a lot of stoners in this show!). A man who lends Scully a telephone looks very familiar, although I can't place him. I wonder if the same actor appears in a later episode, in a bigger role. I'm sure some of the background noises that Mulder hears while doped were sampled by The Prodigy in Music For The Jilted Generation.

(Edit - it does! It's in "Skylined" towards the end of the album. I've listened to the Prodigy far too much.)