THE X FILES: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox/Ten Thirteen Productions 1993-2002) Fox Home Video
In 1947, a
United States Air Force surveillance balloon crash landed on a farm house near
Roswell, New Mexico, almost immediately prompting conspiracy theorists of their
day to suggest the earth had been visited by an extraterrestrial spaceship. We
are still living in the aftermath and shadow of these ‘speculations’; mankind’s
fervent need to believe in the existence of life – other than our own –
inhabiting the outer limits of our solar system, spawning myths, legends and an
entire cottage industry devoted to the chase/race to unearth definitive proof
that ‘they’ are already here. Are
they? Personally, I remain contented in not knowing. But in 1993,
director/writer, Chris Carter introduced television audiences to an utterly
addictive, often terrifying and very paranoiac drug of choice for conspiracy
theorists and alien abduction aficionados alike. With its bizarre blend of
horror, sci-fi and comedy, borrowing elemental tidbits from urban mythology and
ancient folklore – occasionally, not above pilfering from the classics of John
Carpenter for ‘inspiration’, The X-Files (1993-2002) would go on to captivate,
enthrall and seismically shift the focus of mainstream television programming
to its increasing predilection for supernatural oddities. The X-Files has spun off innumerable imitators since; virtually
none achieving its’ level of intellectual depth and creativity. In hindsight, Chris
Carter’s aspirations for this series remain more intriguingly high-minded. On a
relatively miniscule budget, and with little to zero faith invested in him by
the networks for a passable first season, much less the mega-hit The X-Files would instantaneously
become, the show’s trump card was its singularly compelling, if sparsely
populated central cast, front-lined by virtual unknowns, David Duchovny and
Gillian Anderson. The X-Files would
make both actors a household name and add formidable cache to their future
career choices.
In one of those
Hollywood ironies, Chris Carter did not think much of David Duchovny’s audition,
later suggesting to his casting director, Melanie Greene, Duchovny lacked any ‘particular intelligence’ to satisfy the
requirements of the part. Even after being goaded into accepting him by Green,
Carter openly chided Duchovny with ‘please…try
and imagine yourself as an FBI agent for future episodes’. Oh, how wrong one artist can be about another.
Duchovny’s laid-back congenial nature was exactly what the part required; in hindsight,
a perfect counterpoint to the more direct, no-nonsense, and, ever so slightly
more rigid, Dana Scully. Intermittently, each star would take turns becoming
implacable martyrs in their disparate devotions to myth and science. Interchangeably,
both fictional characters would have their faiths tested and shaken; always
building their resolve and expanding their mindset. From the outset, Gillian
Anderson won Carter’s approval. But Mitch Pileggi, eventually cast in the
reoccurring role of Walter Skinner, first endured numerous rejections while
auditioning for other parts. Pileggi would later muse his initial inability to
‘impress’ Carter for any of these cameos was kismet; the parts exclusive to
single episodes, while the role of Walter Skinner would not only endure the run
of the show, but infrequently become the focus of various episodes.
It has been
thirteen years since The X-Files
went off the air – a lifetime in TV history. And yet, its impact on pop culture
has remained unabated and as insidiously ‘with
us’ as the black ooze first infecting the franchise during its third
season, and thereafter becoming a pivotal plot point in many episodes to follow.
Concurrently, Chris Carter toggled the show’s narrative threads between those
devoted to a series of FBI investigations into the unexplainable – usually
bordering on the horrific (parasitic amoebas, human mutants with murderous
predispositions, unearthed biological contagions, and, deviant forms of
artificial intelligence) and episodes aimed to expose an on-going government
conspiracy to conceal the truth about extra-terrestrial life, already come to
colonize the earth. The cohesiveness in the franchise was therefore centralized
on the growing chemistry between Special Agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana
Scully (Anderson); the latter, an agnostic medical professional who
increasingly comes to suspect Mulder’s theories on otherworldly lifeforms is
not so much science fiction as it is science fact.
Brilliantly
scripted, intensely researched, and moodily photographed to illicit maximum shock,
while revealing relatively little, The
X-Files formula for success relied heavily on nearly every sci-fi and
horror cliché from antiquity, tweaked, reshaped and finally reconstituted into
an eclectic tapestry of mishaps, chiefly hampered by Mulder’s driven and
obsessive need to uncover whatever became of his sister, Samantha (Megan
Leitch) presumably taken from their family home via an alien abduction when
Mulder was just a boy. Early on, the network sincerely hoped Carter would stir
in a romantic entanglement to whip up the obvious spark of chemistry between
Mulder and Scully. However, wisely deducing such an entanglement would do more
to undo, rather than heighten, the more subliminal frictions, Carter kept his
agents on a taut platonic understanding; an almost brotherly/sisterly regard steadily
blossoming, though never to be consummated.
I suspect, at some point the level of mutual respect Mulder and Scully
shared as intellectual equals became far more tantalizing and integral to the
franchise than the ‘will they or won’t
they?’ circumstances of their ‘relationship’.
The first
seven seasons of The X-Files were
shot in British Columbia, taking full advantage of its perpetually damp and
rainy rural exoticism; its small towns and urban city centers convincingly substituting
for a myriad of locations throughout the U.S. and even, around the world. But
then, the decision was made to move the venue to Los Angeles; decidedly the
first death knell for the series, as it changed the visual style completely;
the other misfire, the departure of Duchovny, who, after seven years, had tired
of his reoccurring role, leaving Gillian Anderson to carry the load as ‘the
believer’; acquiring a new partner, John Doggett (Robert Patrick). Alas, the symbiosis
between Scully and Doggett never gelled, and neither did the increasingly tepid
storylines, chronically devoted to discovering what had become of Mulder.
Interestingly, the series had not suffered from the somewhat prolonged ‘loss’ of Scully at the beginning of
Season Two; taken hostage by alien abductee, Duane Barry (Steve Railsback) and
‘traded’ in a subsequent exchange; just one way Carter and his team of
brilliant writers managed to maneuver around, conceal and accommodate Gillian
Anderson’s real life pregnancy.
Suspending
Scully in a coma for a few more episodes, then re-introducing her behind
billowy lab coats, large desks, decidedly healthy potted plants, etc., and,
only photographing her from the chest up near the tail end of her nine months,
proved mostly successful at masking the obvious, although Anderson’s facial
features are visibly bloated throughout a good deal of Season Two. To offset
Anderson’s disappearance, Carter beefed up the involvement of Mitch Pileggi’s FBI
Assistant Deputy Director, Walter Skinner, and the reoccurring threat to
Mulder’s investigations, a rogue element in the government fronted by the very
guarded ‘Smoking Man’ (William B. Davis). Carter would also introduce audiences
to a new and reoccurring arch nemesis; Nicholas Lea’s Alex Kryceck; at first,
built into a sort of naïve field agent reassigned to Mulder, but steadily
proved to be working for the Smoking Man, and later, becoming a double agent
for the Russians, only to suffer the fate of the black ooze. Season Two also became noteworthy for
establishing the two-part mid-season cliffhanger; episodes ‘Colony’ and ‘End Game’ piggy-backing off of each other to advance the ‘alien
abduction/government conspiracy’ milieu.
During the
first few years, The X Files was
equally noted for its’ superb cameos; Doug Hutchison’s mutant serial killer,
Victor Eugene Tooms – who extracts victims’ livers with his bare hands to
survive a period of prolonged hibernation – one of the early standouts. Season
One’s, ‘Squeeze’ first introduced the
character of Tooms, cited as the episode that ‘sold’ audiences on The X Files. It had a troubled
incubation, thanks to creative differences on the set – its director, Harry
Longstreet, eventually replaced by Michael Katleman, who would go on to direct
only one more episode; the bone-chilling, ‘Shadows’
– featuring a never seen psychokinetic spirit, avenging the murder of CEO
Howard Graves, while keeping vigilant watch over his secretary, Lauren Kyte as
her guardian angel. Other notable cameos were filled by character actors, David
Sanderson (as a delusional paranoiac), Tony Shaloub (a defrocked medical
practitioner), Timothy Carhart (a bizarre flesh-stripping sexual sadist), and,
Luke Wilson (a town sheriff investigating a bizarre series of vampire murders).
By Season Six, The X Files had developed a reputation as one of the most
consistently produced and compelling ‘must see’ anthology franchises ever made
for television, thanks mostly to Chris Carter’s enduring vision, and persistent
high standards: multi-episode directors, Rob Bowman and Kim Manners maintaining
a visual continuity (along with others) to leave audiences gasping and tuning
in for more.
Now, some
thirteen years after its last episode aired, one can acknowledge The X Files as a bona fide achievement
in TV history. If, as is often the case, the finale to the franchise left much
to be desired; the journey to this penultimate letdown was well worth our
time. Make no mistake – ‘the truth is (still) out there’.
However, in 1993, The X-Files bore
no earthly resemblance to virtually every other series it rivaled then. In
truth, it had very few predecessors as worthy. Over the decades, others tried
to do anthology-styled science fiction; the most enduring counterpoint,
undeniably, Rod Serling’s The Twilight
Zone (1959-64). Yet, mainstream networks were quite unwilling to take a
gamble on primetime sci-fi, ever since Shadow
Chasers; a fairly expensive hour long fictional ‘ghost hunter’ series,
produced for ABC in 1985 that, regrettably, sank like a stone in the Nielsen
Ratings and was quietly taken off the air after only one season. With its focus
on alien life forms and autopsies, unexplained phenomena of every shape and
size, and, a cavalcade of human and subhuman freaks, The X Files promised to be yet another very expensive series.
Indeed, in later years it would evolve into just that, boasting an impressive
array of special effects. Curiously, the more technologically sophisticated
these became, the less popular the series proved with audiences.
Chris Carter’s
initial pitch to Fox executives was almost immediately shot down. Undaunted,
Carter reworked the concept and pitched it again only a few weeks later – a
ballsy move to say the least. This time, he was met with open skepticism, although
the powers that be nevertheless green-lit a pilot. Determined to add a kernel of
verisimilitude to this debut, Carter consulted NYPD
Blue producer, Daniel Sackheim; the pair drawing stylistic inventiveness from
The Thin Blue Line (1988) and the
British TV series, Prime Suspect.
Carter also retained tidbits of comedy to counterbalance the series’ unsettling
momentum; a holdover from his days as a director/writer for Disney Inc. Sometime after The X-Files became a hit, Carter would confess his real muse for
the series had been Kolchak: The Night
Stalker (1974-75), a one season wonder about the unexplained that, today,
has developed a cult following. Carter also appreciated the ominous and
pervading darkness David Lynch had achieved in his all too brief series, Twin Peaks (1990-91). As The X-Files would outlast virtually all
of these predecessors by eight years and transcend its own cult status to
become one of the most widely watched and acclaimed series on TV, it was
inevitable Carter and his cohorts would begin to draw more heavily on other
source materials to concoct each episode. In retrospect, the more transparent insights
derive from political thrillers like Three
Days of the Condor (1975) and All
the President's Men (1976), suspense and horror classics (everything from
Hitchcock’s Rope - 1948, to Tobe
Hooper’s Poltergeist -1982, and
Carpenter’s ‘82 remake of The Thing).
At the end of
Season Five, The X-Files did the
unthinkable; making the successful leap from TV to full-fledged Hollywood
blockbuster with The X-Files: Fight The
Future (1998); also, directed by series’ regular, Rob Bowman. The peculiarity
of this classy big-screen sci-fi adventure was it appealed to both enthusiasts
and neophytes alike; Bowman and Carter somehow managing to weave into their narrative,
threads to linked up to plot points developed at the end of Season Five and
eventually carry them over into Season Six. Even so, these could ostensibly be
considered inconsequential or, at the very least, undisruptive to the overall
viewing enjoyment of someone who had never seen a single X-Files episode. It was all very good, right until the end of
Season Seven, when David Duchovny suddenly elected to sue 2oth Century- Fox,
claiming they had undersold the rights to the series to their own affiliates,
thereby costing him huge sums of money.
The old adage ‘never biting the hand that feeds you’
seems to succinctly apply here; Fox’s attorneys eventually settling out of
court for a reported $20 million. Fox held firm to the prospect they would not
renew either Chris Carter or Duchovny’s contracts should The X-Files return for an eighth season – a ludicrous notion. Thus,
as time wore on, somewhat cooler heads prevailed, with Fox renegotiating the
terms of each player’s contracts. Duchovny only half complied, electing to
appear in just twelve of the planned twenty-four episodes; Carter quickly
figuring out a way to ease Mulder from the series while introducing a new set
of characters to buttress Gillian Anderson’s scientific inquisitor. A series is
usually in trouble when one of its perceived ‘stars’ bows out; The X-Files being no exception to this
rule. Despite auditioning some heavy hitters to fill Mulder’s shoes, the
introduction of Special Agent John Doggett (a part briefly considered for
either Lou Diamond Phillips or Bruce Campbell – but eventually going to Robert
Patrick) did not go over well with the diehard viewership. Carter did his best
to shore up the damage, elevating Mitch Pileggi’s involvement to co-star status
and also casting Annabeth Gish as Agent Monica Reyes – a possible ‘replacement’
for Gillian Anderson, whose Dana Scully was left in imminent peril at the end
of Season Eight. By Season Nine, The
X-Files had fallen out of the Top 25 in the Nielsen’s. If anyone was still
watching, Carter’s commitment to the franchise remained impressively high; the
narratives tautly scripted and the storylines as compelling as ever. Alas, The X-Files had incurred too many
changes along the way. These had severely altered the show’s DNA; the last two
seasons possessing a radically different flavor that seemed to betray
everything gone before it.
As of the
writing of this review, The X-Files
is set to return to the small screen for a mini-series event; this, after the
disastrous second feature film: The
X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008) failed to wrap up dangling plot points
left unresolved when the series went off the air in 1998. Initially, Chris
Carter had planned the second film to immediately follow the TV show’s swan
song. Alas, six years of delays forced Carter to abandon his original plan to
conclude the arc of mythology about alien colonization, as it was thought no
one would remember what had occurred at the end of Season Nine, ten years
earlier. So, instead, the movie became a standalone horror story, more attuned
to the ‘monster-themed’ episodes for which the series was equally and justly as
famous. Alas, audience response to this
‘departure’ did not warrant any subsequent installments to be commissioned –
either theatrically, or on TV. Time, however, does strange things. It also
heals old wounds and very often – at least, in Hollywood – makes for some very
strange bedfellows a second time around. As it stands, Fox has commissioned a
six part miniseries to debut in 2016 with virtually all of the principles
returning to reprise their roles. Will it be a hit? Well, ‘the truth’ remains to be seen. Despite a decade’s time lapse,
changing cultural mores and tastes, as well as the natural aging process taking
its toll on all the alumni, the resurrection of The X-Files may indeed prove a winner. Trust no one who says
otherwise. Carter and Ten Thirteen
Productions undoubtedly have a few handsome tricks and more than a few good
scares up their sleeves.
The X-Files was one of the first TV shows to make the leap to DVD
back in 1997; Fox Home Video falling all over itself to hurry up three past seasons
to disc format, even as Season Four was airing then ‘new’ episodes. The
original 1.33:1 aspect ratio of the first three seasons was preserved on DVD;
with subsequent seasons adopting the more contemporarily friendly 1.75:1 aspect
ratio, anticipating the flat screen/widescreen home-viewing revolution. We are
now some years beyond that evolution; Fox Home Video going back to ‘reinvent’
the wheel – just a bit, and with Chris Carter’s complicity, retro-fitting the
first three seasons to conform to the 1.75:1 aspect ratio. To their credit, no
one who did not watch The X-Files on
its first time around, either airing on the Fox Network, or having owned the
tired old DVD releases, would ever know these episodes were not shot with that
‘now’ standard ratio in mind. The
studio has taken the utmost care in re-formatting the image to conform. There
are no undue ‘chopped off’ heads or
instances where the new aspect ratio looks forced. So, good news here!
Better still,
Fox has gone back to the drawing board to create some fairly stellar hi-def
transfers. With minor caveats, the transfer quality across the board is
uniformly excellent. I will discuss the caveats in a moment. First off, the
pluses: beginning with superb color reproduction, pitch-perfect flesh tones and
very solid contrast levels. The X-Files
is an exceptionally dark series, and the richness and depth of the night
sequences (of which there are many) is reproduced with a remarkable amount of
fine detail evident with razor-sharp clarity to boot. Very impressive! The old
DVDs were pathetically weak in all regards, particularly marred by severe edge
enhancement and shimmering of fine details. For the most part, these digital
anomalies have been eradicated. Remember…I said ‘mostly’. Now, for the caveats.
I am perplexed
and, frankly, troubled, by the momentary lapses in this otherwise pristine
image quality that inexplicably surface, not from episode to episode, but from
shot to shot. Many establishing shots,
as well as a goodly number of SFX shots, presumably photographed by a second unit,
look as though they were lensed using a digital source rather than film-based
elements; suffering from a lot of edge effects, a residual softness, loss of
color density and general image distortion, with intense chroma bleeding. I
could almost overlook these oversights, especially since the series is not
known for extensive ‘establishing shots’.
But it’s the queer ‘on again/off again’
sporadic cropping up of all of the aforementioned shortcomings – from shot to
shot within the body of single episodes – that really has me stumped. Take
Season Two’s Duane Barry episode as a
prime example. When Mulder is called in to negotiate a hostage crisis he meets
Agent Lucy Kazdin (CCH Pounder) to discuss the terms. Nearly every reverse shot
of Kazdin is sourced from something ‘other’ than film-based materials. We
toggle from razor-sharp close-ups of Mulder, to extremely soft and muddied
cutaways of Pounder with a barrage of edge effects and chroma-bleeding factored
in. It’s odd to say the least, and inexcusable to say the most…unless, of
course, no other source materials exist from which to cull and piece together
this episode. The aforementioned anomaly is by no means exclusive to this one
episode and/or season, but a chronic condition that intermittently plagues all
episodes in this set.
The audio on
all episodes has been remastered to 5.1 DTS with a noticeable improvement in
virtually all regards: clean, crisp-sounding dialogue, married to aggressive
bass tonality; Mark Snow’s memorable theme sounding more eerily unsettling than
ever before. Extras are jam-packed throughout; many episodes including an
in-depth audio commentary from Carter and occasionally other collaborators. We
also get Carter discussing each season in brief, a litany of deleted scenes,
lots of press and promotional junkets, promos, etc. to whet the appetite. It
should be pointed out NONE of these are new to collectors of the old DVDs but
directly ported over. The quality of these extras remains in 720i, so don’t
look for perfection and you won’t be disappointed. Bottom line: The X-Files is X-ceptional entertainment. X does indeed mark the spot for a ‘spooky’ good time. Recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
Season One 4
Season Two 4.5
Season Three
4.5
Season Four
4.5
Season Five
3.5
Season Six 3
Season Seven
2.5
Season Eight 2
Season Nine 1
VIDEO/AUDIO
Overall quality – 3.5
EXTRAS
5+
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