Review for The X Files: The Complete Sixth Season

Introduction

Don’t say that I don’t finish what I start! Okay, so it’s been a while since I last reviewed a season of the X Files, ten years or so. Back then I was eagerly collecting the DVD season sets as they were being released, but I also had the benefit that they were lagging behind the TV broadcasts by a fair margin. This was at the time when VHS was only just starting to give way to DVD, and fans would impatiently wait for years before studios finally gave their TV show or movie of choice an upgrade. The Limited Edition releases back then weren’t cheap either, hefty digipacks, with added DVD-ROM content that set me back over £100 each time. That time lag meant that I knew what was coming ahead of time with the DVDs, and I knew that the X Files from Season 6 onwards would progress on a consistent downwards spiral before being put out of the fans’ misery at the end of season 9. Those weren’t boxsets that I was willing to shell out £400 quid on. Since then of course, the day of the budget boxset has come, and only anime fans would be daft enough to spend three figures on 20 hours of television at a time.

Last year, when a certain South American river of an e-tailer put the repackaged boxsets on sale for £10 each, my inner miser warred with my inner collector, and finally lost. I completed my X Files collection, upgrading the movies to Blu-ray along the way, and took possession of 4 Amaray bricks containing the discs, the collector’s booklets, but doing away with the DVD-ROM content (usually the PC games that no one in their right mind would buy), the chunky digipack packaging, and the exclusive number printed on the side. That’s a small price to pay. Except now it seems that The X Files will actually get a native HD Blu-ray release for the whole series. Time to start collecting again... or is it?

It may have been 20 years, but I doubt that the basic premise of the X Files has slipped many minds, that of two FBI Agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, assigned to investigate the cases that wind up in the unsolved, or unexplainable section of the bureau, the weird and the paranormal, with a specific emphasis on aliens, UFOs and secret government conspiracies to hide the fact. A whole mythology developed around the show and the characters, and grew ever deeper and convoluted as the show progressed. In my opinion the show hit its peak in Season 5 and the first feature film.

At the end of season 5, Mulder and Scully were on the verge of discovering definitive proof of the conspiracy, with the help of one Cassandra Spender, who just happened to be mother of FBI agent Jeffrey Spender, whose father is also the cigarette smoking man (I told you it was convoluted), and a chess prodigy named Gibson Praise, whose telepathic abilities is a direct threat to the conspirators rendering their secrets pointless, but the advent of something of a civil war between the alien factions threw that all into limbo, and Gibson Praise was kidnapped by the CSM. On top of that, Mulder’s first partner Diana Fowley was critically injured. The X Files were shut down, Mulder’s office torched, and Mulder and Scully reassigned. The feature film drew them back into the conspiracy again, adding yet another layer regarding a virus that actually gestates in its victims and creates alien life forms, an insidious form of direct colonisation, one which led Scully and Mulder all the way to Antarctica. Season 6 continues on from that point...


The Beginning
They’re so far behind Square One that it almost looks pointless. Scully just happened to be unconscious at the wrong moment in Antarctica, and can’t corroborate Mulder’s testimony. What she does present as evidence about the virus is disregarded. They still have a chance though, as an incident in Arizona looks like the virus has struck again. For the conspirators, there’s damage control to take care of, and for that they need the talents of Gibson Praise. But disobeying orders is the last thing that Scully and Mulder need to do, as once again evidence is tantalisingly pulled out of their grasp at the last. The X Files are still open, but they are now being run by Agents Diana Fowley and Jeffrey Spender, while Mulder and Scully are reassigned to Assistant Director Kersh and ordered to stay away from the X Files.

Drive
Mulder and Scully should be on fertiliser detail, making sure no enterprising farmer is using it to blow up Federal buildings. Only Mulder gets distracted by a news report, which is how he winds up carjacked, speeding west at dangerous speeds, and held hostage by paranoid anti-Semite Patrick Crump. The thing is that if he slows down, Crump’s head will explode!

Triangle
Scully has to save Mulder again, as this time he’s gone chasing ghost ships in the Bermuda Triangle, only to wind up aboard the SS Queen Anne, in 1939, the day after the declaration of war, just as the ship gets boarded by some very belligerent, and familiar looking Nazis. Fortunately there’s a familiar looking OSS agent there to help him keep history on track.

Dreamland Parts 1 & 2
Mulder’s going off message again, and taking Scully with him, this time to Area 51, where he’s made contact with an insider who’s willing to blow a whistle or two. Only this time, a malfunctioning UFO flies overhead, and Mulder winds up swapping bodies with Man in Black, Morris Fletcher. And for some reason Morris prefers being an FBI agent, who happens to be single, with an attractive partner instead of a married with two kids, government stooge. As Morris sets about ruining Mulder’s life, or quite possibly improving it, Mulder’s got a free pass into the US government’s UFO central, and all he has to do is put up with being a father and a husband to a family that despises him.


How the Ghosts Stole Christmas
T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except two FBI agents looking for ghosts, and finding a lot more than they bargained for...

Terms of Endearment
Agent Jeffrey Spender is now in charge of the X Files, and he gives it his full, undivided attention. He’s right on the case when a Virginia policeman shows up with a story of his pregnant sister waking up in the middle of the night to find that the devil has come to take her unborn child. That’s the kind of case that goes into the circular file, after it’s been through a shredder. It’s a good thing that Agent Mulder is good at jigsaws and rifling through other people’s trash. But the truth behind the demonic abortion in Virginia is far more insidious.

The Rain King
Kroner, Kansas is a small, non-descript town with one distinction. It’s a meteorological hotspot, where all kinds of weird weather occur. Currently in the middle of a drought, Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate the uncanny abilities of a man who through the power of beer fuelled dance, can make it rain. But when a cow comes crashing through Mulder’s motel roof, it seems like it might be the rain-maker’s ex-fiancée who might be the magnet for the storms. Or could it be the local television weatherman?

S. R. 819
A. D. Skinner is dying. In traditional Cold War spy movie style, he’s been poisoned, a glancing encounter in a corridor the most likely cause. As Mulder tries to track down the assassin, and Scully tries to identify the poison, the case becomes ever more complicated. This is advanced technology masquerading as biology, foreign powers are involved, a man that Mulder trusted is implicated, and an electronic voice keeps calling Skinner’s phone, counting down the minutes to his death.


Tithonus
Mulder may be a lost cause, but A.D. Kersh thinks that Scully’s career can still be salvaged, which is why she’s assigned to a case in New York with a local agent with just a hint of oddness. After all, when a crime scene photographer manages to be at the scene before a murder even happens, the conclusion is obvious. But when it turns out that Alfred Fellig isn’t the killer, and what’s more, hasn’t aged a day in the last 40 years, this simple case becomes a full-blown X File.

Two Fathers
One Son
For 50 years, ever since the Roswell crash, a shadowy syndicate has maintained and advanced a secret conspiracy, the mere hints of which have spurred Mulder on his quest. The return of Cassandra Spender heralds the rise of a rebel alien faction. Long held secrets will be brought to light, and the conspiracy revealed. All because of the choices of one Agent Jeffrey Spender, the nature of the X Files will be changed forever.

Agua Mala
A call from Arthur Dales has Mulder and Scully flying down to Florida and straight into a hurricane. Apparently a sea monster has been coming up the plumbing and snatching unwitting residents. If Scully had her way, they’d be on their way back to Washington, but Hurricane Leroy has other ideas, leaving them trapped in a storm battered apartment block with a looter, a conspiracy nut (not Mulder), a heavily pregnant woman and her husband, and a sea monster.

Monday
It’s an atypical Monday morning, with Mulder and Scully absent from the routine meeting they should be attending. Instead, Mulder’s bleeding to death on the floor of a bank in Scully’s arms, she’s trying to talk a bank robber down, and when the police rush in, he detonates the bomb vest that he’s wearing... And then Mulder wakes up on Monday morning, his waterbed has sprung a leak...

Arcadia
At home with the Mulders? In a perfect, pristine gated community in California, a new couple move into their dream house, Rob and Laura Petrie (as in the dish). They are in fact Mulder and Scully, there to learn that idyllic domesticity doesn’t suit them, and to find out what happened to the previous residents, who vanished without a trace. Maybe they didn’t follow all the rules and regulations as laid out by community leader, Gene Gogolak.


Alpha
So a creepy cryptozoologist has imported a rare breed of wild dog, previously thought extinct from China. Only the dog kills two sailors on the freighter it’s on, locks them in its cage, and goes on a killing spree in the city! That sounds like an X-File, and soon Mulder is asking the advice of a creepy canine behaviourist, who has something of a crush on him.

Trevor
Scully and Mulder have been called to a Mississippi prison camp to deal with an unexplained death (and an explainable one). The prison warden was found following a tornado literally cut in half, with both edges of the wounds turned to ash. Scully thinks it’s spontaneous human combustion. Mulder thinks it’s something as simple as murder. The world hasn’t turned upside down, as Mulder also thinks the prisoner who supposedly perished when the ‘box’ he was confined in was destroyed by the twister, isn’t as dead as everyone believes.

Milagro
Scully is a muse! An aspiring writer has become enamoured of her, and has been inspired to write his opus. He’s even taken the apartment next to Mulder, which explains why his crime novel is based on the serial killer case the two are investigating. But is art inspired by life, or vice versa?

The Unnatural
A photo from an archive newspaper reveals an old mystery to Agent Mulder. Josh Exley could have been the first negro player to play in the major leagues back in 1947, but despite sharing the national passion for baseball, that isn’t what attracts Mulder. It’s the photo of the alien bounty hunter, and a young Arthur Dales alongside Exley that does. Just who was Josh Exley?


Three of a Kind
10 years previously (or in season 5), Byers, Frohike and Langley first met Mulder when they encountered the enigmatic Suzanne Modeski who was on the run from a secret government defence contractor. Now, during a defence convention in Las Vegas, Byers spots her again, and she’s still in need of help, with her employers close to perfecting their mind control weaponry. This time, the three stooges call on Scully for assistance.

Field Trip
Two unexplained deaths in North Carolina have Mulder and Scully on the case, but this case is more than it appears to be. It might just hold the truths that Mulder has been seeking all his life, but it might mean Scully facing her worst fears. Regardless, one thing is for sure. AD Skinner sure is a fun guy!

Biogenesis
It seems as if all the questions have been answered, and even if proof remains elusive, the conspiracy, or at least most of the conspirators have gone up in smoke. But there’s one answer that remains obscure for Agent Mulder, and when a mysterious tablet of extra-terrestrial origin is found in Africa, a find that leads to murder and more mystery, it seems that a whole new conspiracy is about to evolve. For while the tablet may be alien, it turns out that the writing on it is far more down to Earth in origin, in fact it’s shockingly familiar. But just looking at a rubbing of the tablet threatens to drive Mulder insane!

Picture

I used to watch The X Files on a CRT television set. It looked pretty ropy on that, converting from an NSTC sourced, video edited US series from the nineties to PAL standards, and even when it switched to widescreen at the start of season 5, soft and fuzzy was the order of the day. That was true for the TV broadcast and it’s also true for these DVDs. Only this time, I’m watching The X Files up-scaled to an HD flat panel display. Maybe I should have waited for the inevitable Blu-ray release after all. The 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer on these discs is watchable, but rarely more than that. Darker scenes tend to blur into indistinctness, but the consistency of quality allows you to switch your mindset to SD mode and just enjoy the show as originally broadcast.


That said, there are the odd issues for certain episodes, and most certainly Triangle’s video quality sucks. It’s softer and of lower resolution than the rest of the series, and with random aspect ratio changes throughout. I remember being warned of this by Mr BBC announcer before it aired, as this episode’s filming style and execution was unique for the X Files, but that still doesn’t prepare you for the messiness of quality on DVD. I’d hate to think how it will fare in HD when its time comes. Arcadia has an extra degree of softness to it, while The Unnatural too has issues with aspect ratio, although not as obvious as that in Triangle. This baseball episode suffers a little from vertical squishing.

Season 6 was when The X Files moved kit and caboodle from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and that sudden brightness of sunnier climes is immediately apparent, extras are more likely to be tanned, and even when it’s raining, the sun now shines brightly on the main cast. It does change things up when it comes to the ambience for most of the episodes, as having rain drenched pine forests filling in for every US state had long grown old by this point.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 2.0 Surround English, French and Italian, with subtitles in those languages, Dutch and Greek. Subtitles are also available for the extra features and the commentaries. There are no issues with the audio, with the stereo offering a little spookiness for the show, Mark Snow’s inimitable score offering a whole lot more, and the dialogue remaining clear throughout.

Extras

Six discs are presented in an Amaray brick style case. There are two hinged panels inside which hold two discs on either side, and there’s one disc at the front of the case, one at the rear. You’ll also find the series booklet, 16 pages in length, with a listing and a breakdown of the episodes by chapter, a listing of the extra features and a bit of blurb for the season.


The discs boot up to an animated menu following the usual copyright screens. You’ll find the extras listed on each disc in a separate section, as well as from the episode page to which they pertain. Each episode will also have a couple of pages of cast listing which usually expands on the show credits.

Incidentally, the booklet is little changed from the limited edition release and mentions the inclusion of International clips on some episodes. Those international clips aren’t on these discs, but they are kind of pointless when the release now contains French and Italian audio options in addition to English anyway.

Disc by disc the other extras are listed as follows...

Disc 1

You get an audio commentary on the episode Triangle, from writer/director Chris Carter. He states from the beginning that it was an overly ambitious episode, but other than talking about the difficulty of having a story told in so few long shots, told from a camera as character’s point of view, he fails to mention whether the show achieved its ambitions or not in his eyes.

Disc 3

You can find three deleted scenes on Tithonus, two on Two Fathers and two on One Son. Incidentally, as with all the deleted scenes in the collection if you select them from the episode menu, you can watch the episode with them reintegrated (a little awkward as the sound mix usually isn’t finished, neither are the effects at times, and the jump can be obvious), if you go to the Special Features option from the main menu screen, you can watch them separately, and on disc 6, you will find them again, this time with optional audio commentary.


Disc 4

Unlike the rest of the set, the International Clips for Arcadia are still present and correct, and you can see some scenes in Spanish, German, Japanese, and for this set, redundant Italian. Arcadia also gets a deleted scene. Meanwhile, Alpha has an alternate ending to enjoy.

Disc 5

Milagro gets a deleted scene, and it also gets an audio commentary with director Kim Manners. It’s a nice little commentary, a little dry, a little technical, a little informative and very gappy. The Unnatural gets three deleted scenes, including two with actor Darren McGavin in the role of the older Arthur Dales, before the role had to be recast with M. Emmet Walsh playing the younger brother Arthur Dales. This set can’t make up its mind on International Clips as Three of a Kind has them as well in the same four languages.

Disc 6

This has a deleted scene for the final episode Biogenesis accessible from its menu, and you can watch it inserted into the show, or separately.

Speaking of deleted scenes, also on Disc 6 are the Season Extras, and in there you’ll find all of the deleted scenes over again, this time with optional commentary from Frank Spotnitz explaining why they were deleted.

The Documentary: The Truth About Season 6 lasts 21 minutes, and the cast and crew chat about the season as a whole, and with emphasis on the episodes, Triangle, Dreamland I & II, How The Ghosts Stole Christmas, Monday, Two Fathers, One Son, and Biogenesis.

Featurette on Season 6 is merely a 2-minute trailer for the season from the Fox Network.

You get all the promo spots for the episodes in 10 and 20 second form. There is a Play All Option if you can’t be asked to push buttons on your remote.

Special Effects with Narration by Paul Rabwin offers 13 clips showing how certain sequences were accomplished, and there’s a Play All option here too.

Conclusion

I remember watching Season 6 of the X Files when first broadcast, and getting an odd feeling that all was not quite right with my favourite sci-fi procedural, although it took a while to dawn on me just why. That’s something I had clean forgotten nearly a decade on, so this time I had déjà vu to contend with, along with the feeling that all was not quite right with Season 6. I think the reasons took fewer episodes into the run to click this time though. All really is not quite right with Season 6, but you can’t single out an episode as an example. In fact, most of the episodes in this run are solid, well-written and engaging X-Files episodes, and would have fit in anywhere in its run. It’s just that there’s a creeping sense of tiredness setting in, and taking the season as a whole, the balance is all off.

Watch the first five seasons, and you’ll see an even and engaging balance of paranormal stand-alone episodes, a few conspiracy arc episodes, and the occasional bit of dark comedy. Season six really pushes the comedy angle to the show, with there being several comic or light episodes, and especially bunched up together at the head of the season. You get to about ten episodes in, and other than the opener, and Drive, it seems as if every episode is playing for laughs, and you start wondering when you’re going to get creeped out again. Mulder and Scully do have a lot of dry humour to them, even in the darkest of episodes, but in this season they almost become a double act, with their dry asides veering dangerously towards wisecrack territory.

There’s also a sense of repetition setting in, not only with some of the episodes, but the overall arc for the season too. We begin with Scully and Mulder removed from the X Files, and mostly separated, and with the conspirator’s agenda once more taking charge at the FBI. Which is how we began Season 2 of the X Files. There the X Files had been shut down, and AD Skinner’s status ambiguous, and with a new partner for Mulder in the form of Alex Krycek. And we all know who he turned out to be. At the start of Season 6, The X Files are directly in the hands of the bad guys, Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley, Mulder and Scully tied behind desks, reassigned to another ambiguous AD, trying to sneak the creepy cases when no one is looking, instead of following up on fertiliser bombs and the like. It’s only a matter of time before they get the X Files back, and it all feels so much like Season 2 again, that you start watching the clock, waiting for the status quo to resume.

The conspiracy arc that began in Season 1 comes to something of a conclusion here, although it continues with a promising build up in The Beginning, which develops themes introduced in the first movie. There’s an interesting development in Skinner’s character, in SR 819, which restores some ambiguity to a character that had at this point almost become a third member of the X Files team, when he finds himself serving two masters again. It’s the episodes Two Fathers, and One Son which bring the conspiracy as we know it to a head. In the extras, Chris Carter explains that at this point the conspiracy had become too convoluted and in his opinion awkward to follow, and he decided to wipe the slate clean and start again. This two part episode is pretty fantastic, with a whole lot of questions getting the answers that have been needed since season 1, and delivering more than a few gut punch plot developments too. But this conspiracy was interesting, it was well developed, and it was populated by great characters.


Wiping the slate clean meant trying to find something to replace it with, and that was a problem that dogged The X Files all the way to the end of its run, as in my opinion, nothing quite lived up to it, either in concept or execution. The end of season 6 has a first shot at a new conspiracy, with the surviving players from that two-parter in the mix, and with Mulder’s life in danger. To be honest the new conspiracy has a great idea behind it, the tantalising mix of mythology and sci-fi, when an alien artefact is found suggesting that the important passages in the bible and other religious texts are extra-terrestrial in origin, also implying that humanity too is of alien origin. I don’t remember how we got from here to super-soldiers, but my guess is that it doesn’t get the same development the original conspiracy did.

Mulder and Scully too are beginning to feel like a married couple at this point, and the writers try everything to keep their relationship fresh, the comedy angle being one, actually playing up the rote bickering at the head of each mystery, with the believer and the sceptic themselves getting tired of the same old argument, several episodes keep the two separate, while others reverse the roles, with Scully playing the believer to Mulder’s sceptic.

Then there are the guest stars, which in a show as popular as The X Files was at this point, and with the production moving to Los Angeles, meant that recognisable faces appeared more often. And that sort of detracts from the drama. Michael McKean as an MIB, Bruce Campbell as a devil, Andrew J Robinson as a werewolf, and Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as ghosts may all offer great novelty value, but it reduces the verisimilitude of the episodes. Of course Darren McGavin showing up as Arthur Dales again is to be appreciated. I also could have done without the X Files take on Groundhog Day in Monday, as by this point the idea had been done to death.

Still, for Season 6, and including the comedy episodes, the noteworthy ones outweigh the stinkers by far, and I appreciate Drive, the Dreamland two-parter, S.R. 819, Tithonus, the fantastic Milagro, The Unnatural, Three of a Kind and the Two Fathers, One Son two part episode which concludes the original conspiracy on such an intense note. On the other hand How The Ghosts Stole Christmas is too much of a gimmick episode, Alpha was done a lot better in an earlier season, and the magic mushroom episode Field Trip failed to add much of value to the show.


Season 6 is like taking a great album and putting it on shuffle in your CD player. There’s art to composing a playlist, and there’s a similar art to structuring a season run, and that’s missing here. The extra features also seem on the thin side now.