Review for The X Files: The Complete Ninth Season

Introduction

There comes a point where watching a show stops being fun, and starts being a chore, and that’s when you should find something else to watch. Unfortunately, I decided with Season 6 that I would see the X Files through, and give it the belated reviewer going over that I ought to have done way back when I watched the first five seasons. Season 9 really was the last chance for the X Files, but they had everything in place to make it work, new main characters, and new conspiracies, and a back to basics vibe that toned down on the comedy. Could the X Files work without Mulder and Scully and the original mythology? The combination of the three really did falter in season 7, while season 8, ostensibly David Duchovny’s final season as Mulder, had enough without him to give some idea of how good the show could be again. Quite frankly, when it came to season 8, I preferred the stand-alone episodes with Doggett and Scully, and when Mulder returned the show’s quality began to dip again. Season 9 would be Gillian Anderson’s final season if the new central pair of Doggett and Reyes had bedded in, and the networks decided to take the X Files into Season 10 and beyond. That was not to be, and after all this time, it’ll be interesting to see just why.

Mulder didn’t stick around long to play happy families. When little baby William is potentially the focus of the alien conspiracy, then keeping him safe is paramount, which is why at the start of season 9, Mulder has dropped out of sight. This leaves Doggett without a key witness in his investigation into corruption in the FBI. Add to that Scully has transferred to Quantico as an instructor to spend more time with William. That leaves Doggett all alone in the X Files, the last man you’d ever expect to head up a department investigating the unexplained and unexplainable. That doesn’t last for long, as he gets a new partner full time in the form of Agent Monica Reyes. But the conspiracies are still out there, as is the truth, and uncovering them will be harder than ever. But events will spiral to an ultimate conclusion where the truth really will out. 20 episodes of the X Files Season 9 are presented across five discs, along with two bonus discs replete with extra features.


Nothing Important Happened Today
Nothing Important Happened Today II
At the end of the previous season, Agent Doggett seemed poised to root out the corruption in the FBI following the events surrounding the birth of Scully’s baby, but now in the cold light of day, cooler heads are beginning to prevail. Protection is more important than revelation, which is why his key witness, Mulder, has vanished again, this time to protect little William. Everyone is telling him to drop the case, to let Deputy Director Kersh off the hook, but a new lead opens up when an EPA official, ostensibly about to blow the whistle on an additive in drinking water, is found killed in a car wreck. The evidence points to the return of the super soldiers, and an old friend of Doggett’s in particular. But the only support he has now is his new partner, Monica Reyes. The problem is that her ex is Assistant Director Brad Follmer, and he has it in for the X-Files.

Daemonicus
Satanic crimes are Agent Monica Reyes’ thing, even though in all her years of investigating, she’s never found a genuine incident. But the aftermath of a cruel killing, staged to look like a murder suicide actually gives her a chilling feeling. The suspects are an escaped mental patient and his guard, but it’s the escaped patient’s neighbouring inmate who might hold the key to this mystery, as Joseph Kobold claims to have a psychic connection to the killers.

4-D
A.D. Brad Follmer, Agents Doggett and Reyes are on a stakeout after a serial killer named Irwin Lukesh, but it all goes wrong. Reyes is slashed across the throat, and when Doggett pursues the suspect, Lukesh vanishes in front of him, only to reappear behind him to shoot him... And across town, Reyes and Doggett are holding an informal hotdog house-warming for Reyes’ new place, when Doggett vanishes, leaving Reyes suddenly prime suspect in his attempted murder when he reappears, grievously wounded.


Lord of the Flies
Teenagers go through unsettling changes, but for one teen, they’re more unsettling than most. Doggett and Reyes are called in when one of those Jackass style stunts goes wrong, and a stunt-idiot dies... of a deflated skull! Flies have literally eaten his brain and skull from the inside out. Insects don’t normally behave that way. It points to someone able to direct insects according to their will, it points to the school freak.

Trust No 1
Scully is feeling Mulder’s absence, but given the danger he is in, is making the best of the situation. But when Doggett comes to her with information about a contact who wants to talk to Mulder, who might be able to give them the names of all of the Super Soldiers, she initially balks at the idea. But as Doggett says, she’s got to start trusting someone sometime. But should she trust the NSA, especially when they appear to have her whole life under surveillance?

John Doe
The FBI is pursuing a manhunt for one of its agents, gone missing himself on a mysterious missing persons case. Meanwhile in Mexico, an American wakes up with no memory of who he is. His only clues to his identity are a Marines tattoo on his arm, and a recurring dream of being woken up by his son. But the man he meets in a local prison, and who hires him, informs him that he’s a fugitive wanted for murder!


Hellbound
An anger management group for ex-cons ought to be a good thing, but not everyone believes in its noble aims. It’s when Victor Potts winds up dead, skinned alive just four hours after sharing his nightmares of that with the group, that the FBI is called in. Or rather Monica Reyes insists on taking the macabre case. She’s strangely motivated to investigate what looks on the surface like just a gruesome murder, but it’s only the first such killing. And then Scully learns of an identical series of murders that took place in 1960.

Provenance
Providence
An illegal border crossing, in Canada? Sure enough someone tries to sneak across the border into North Dakota on a motorbike, and is apparently killed in the attempt. But what he was smuggling across the border catches the interest of the FBI, mysterious rubbing, the same kind of mysterious rubbing that Scully took from the crashed UFO two year previously in Africa. But the FBI directorate aren’t answering any of Scully’s questions, instead interrogating her, while Doggett and Reyes are being kept out of the loop. And when a rogue FBI agent may be trying to kill Scully’s baby, you have to wonder just why? The answer might lie in another alien ship, recently uncovered in Canada by a dangerous UFO cult.

Audrey Pauley
Another week, another FBI agent in a coma; this time it’s Monica Reyes following a car accident. But she’s caught in a limbo between life and death, trapped in an unworldly recreation of the hospital in which she is being treated, where an odd figure seems to come and go. But she isn’t the only one there. Meanwhile, Doggett has to solve the unexplained coma before the apparently brain-dead Monica’s life support is turned off, and her organs harvested.


Underneath
13 years previously, a serial killer was caught on the scene of his most recent slaying, the brutal murder of a family. The arresting officer was John Doggett, the killer, a devout and penitent Catholic named Robert Fassl. Now, DNA evidence has exonerated Fassl and he’s been released. Doggett desperately wants to find the proof that will put him back in prison, but it looks as if he really did arrest the wrong man.

Improbable
An unfathomable serial killer is at work, responsible for the deaths of seemingly unconnected women. That’s until Monica Reyes spots the connection... numerology! That doesn’t impress the local FBI chief, the thought of a killer driven by the idea that our lives are governed by numbers. But there’s someone else taking an interest in the killer’s activities...

Scary Monsters
Leyla Harrison is back with a new X File for the agents to investigate, although this time she’s staying put in accounting. A father has taken his son to an isolated mountain following the strange death of his mother, and his pet cat. Grandmother is concerned, but Scully is sceptical. But in the end, this might just be a case that only a sceptic can solve.

Jump the Shark
When former Man-in-Black Morris Fletcher shows up again floating in the Caribbean, he’s eager to see Doggett and Reyes, dangling the possibility of an X File and a potential Super Soldier named Yves Adele Harlow. And when a university professor ends up dead, his innards glowing in the dark, it certainly looks that way. But it’s not an X File, it’s a job for the Lone Gunmen, who’ve had dealings with Harlow before, but this time it will be their toughest challenge yet.


William
A horribly disfigured man is caught breaking into the X Files office. He claims to know Mulder, that his injuries are a result of the government conspiracy, and he’s looking for proof in the X Files as directed by Mulder. But he knows too much, and when the truth of his identity becomes apparent, it’s a truth that Scully cannot accept.

Release
An anonymous tip leads Doggett to a freshly plastered wall and freshly murdered victim, which all seems pretty normal and non-X Files related. But the weirdness begins when one of Scully’s students at Quantico gives an uncanny analysis of the murder victim, and presents a viable profile for the killer. Cadet Rudolph Hayes might just be an X File himself, especially when he demonstrates similar insight into the murder of Doggett’s son.

Sunshine Days
A couple of slackers are partaking of the Brady Bunch house in California one evening, even indulging in a little breaking and entering, before one of them winds up dead, ejected through the roof. Which is odd as the Brady Bunch house only ever existed as a sound stage in Hollywood. But this home’s mild-mannered owner might just be Scully’s final chance for vindication after 9 years of work in the X Files.


The Truth
In this two-part episode, the FBI learns that Mulder has been apprehended while breaking into a top-secret military facility. He`s been charged with murder and awaits trial by military tribunal. His treasonous acts warrant the death penalty, but the military wishing to remain above board allow the trial to be conducted by FBI personnel. Assistant Director Skinner defends Mulder as his colleagues rally round, but the trial seems to be a foregone conclusion when the only thing that will vindicate Mulder is to expose the alien conspiracy once and for all.

Picture

The show is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with the usual softness that comes from transposing an NTSC source to the PAL medium. It does enough to tell its stories, and while detail might be lacking, it’s typical of television of the era. In terms of clarity and overall detail, this is as good as the X Files ever got on TV, on a par with Season 8, and on occasion actually edging it in terms of effects and production values, especially the series finale.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 2.0 Surround English and Italian, with subtitles in those languages 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, with a seventh bonus disc in a card sleeve. 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, 20 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. In this collection, each episode is preceded by a copyright screen as well, which is a pain. 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.

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

Disc 1 has deleted scenes for Nothing Important Happened Today Parts 1 and 2, International Clips for Nothing Important Happened Today Part 2 in German, Italian and Japanese, and two deleted scenes for 4D.

Disc 2 has a deleted scene for Lord of the Flies, and International Clips for Trust No 1.

Disc 3 has both a deleted scene and International Clips for Provenance.

Disc 4 is comparatively loaded with extras, with Chris Carter providing another typically dry commentary for Improbable, the one with Burt Reynolds. Jump the Shark also gets a commentary, this time from John Shiban, Vince Gilligan and Frank Spotnitz (I managed to stay awake for this one), as well as a deleted scene.


Disc 5’s extras are all loaded onto The Truth, including International Clips in German, Italian and Japanese, 3 deleted scenes (one of which you will thank God is deleted), and the audio commentary from Kim Manners. The commentary is dry, gappy, repetitive, and not all that easy to listen to. It also concentrates more on the mechanics of filming and a final bit of back-slapping for the cast and crew, and it has very little to say about the actual story.

While there are only five discs worth of episodes for Season 9, we get two whole discs worth of bonus features, although really, a single dual layer disc would have sufficed, and fit in the case without the need for a card sleeve.

Disc 6

Here you’ll find the usual for an X Files Collection, beginning with The Truth About Season 9 documentary, which lasts 21 minutes, has the cast and crew speak about the season, the new direction, the key episodes, and it completely glosses over the reasons for the show’s cancellation.


You get two X Files Profiles, for Monica Reyes (7 minutes), and Brad Follmer (8 mins), taken from the telemovie home video releases of Nothing Important Happened Today and Provenance.

There are 36 20-second and 10-second promo spots for the episodes, with a convenient Play All option.

Special Effects by Mat Beck, with Narration by Paul Rabwin looks at 8 scenes from this season of the X Files, running to 11½ minutes in total.


Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary from Frank Spotnitz (and an un-credited Chris Carter) repeats the 10 deleted scenes from the episode discs, offering a reason for their deletion. The subtitler on the commentary got his Spotnitz and Carter mixed up.

Disc 7

We get one final bonus to round off the series, a whole extra disc full of extras, but it’s nothing to get excited about.

Secrets of the X Files lasts 42 minutes and is presented in 4:3. It’s not a behind the scenes exposé as I had hoped, instead it’s a glorified trailer, a highlights package of the first one and a bit seasons, introducing the characters and the set-up of the show, a quick guide to ease the new mainstream fans into what at the time was a cult show breaking its bounds. It’s narrated by voiceover man, but has no new footage or information.


More Secrets of the X Files lasts 44 minutes and is more of the same, this time taking us to the end of Season 2 in its summing up of the story so far, and serving as a preview of season 3. The difference is that it has a couple of sound-bite interviews with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, and a slightly longer interview with Chris Carter, and it’s narrated by Mitch Pileggi. The one thing that strikes me watching these featurettes after watching season 9, is just how much better the X Files show was when it started compared to when it ended. It’s like watching two completely different shows. And watching these will make you want to stick those Season 1 discs in and start over again.

Finally on this disc you get Reflections on the X-Files, a 17 minute featurette made to mark the end of the series with famous fans and notable guest stars from the show interviewed about it, interspersed with copious clips.

Conclusion

I finally make it to the end of the series, and my mind goes blank. Other than a ‘blah’ of mediocrity, I find that I have little to say about the X Files’ swansong. Cliches and metaphors abound, whether it’s ‘flogging a dead horse’, or ‘putting it out of its misery’, ‘going once too often to the well’, ‘past its sell by date’. The fact of the matter is that the X Files should never have gone on this long. They did have one final throw of the dice though, one final chance of getting the show to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, with a new cast, and ostensibly a fresh start. They blew it totally.


That’s because the start wasn’t fresh, and the new cast were given poorly conceived characters, and burdened by the legacy of Mulder and Scully. They tried to have their cake and eat it; holding on to Mulder and Scully while moving on from them as well, and that had the show twisted in on itself before it was ever cancelled. They tried to keep to the sceptic believer dynamic in the new main characters Doggett and Reyes, but they turned the dials up to eleven, with Doggett’s scepticism a lot more bull-headed than Scully’s ever was, and without the scientific grounding that would allow his rationalisation to make sense. At the same time, Monica Reyes was such a New Age Kook of a character, especially initially that she made Mulder look like a sceptic, while also failing to convey any authority as an FBI agent. That improved towards the end as the character gained dimension, but by then it was too late. Then we have Deputy Director Kersh, who was given the ally/enemy ambiguity that Skinner had in season 2, but with a degree of malice that meant that the audience wouldn’t give him the same benefit of the doubt. And Scully was ever present in Quantico, a get out of jail free card for our protagonists to rely on during the stand alone episodes, and a nervous bucket of new mother angst during the conspiracy episodes, a wholly disappointing arc about the new would-be Messiah and saviour from the oncoming alien storm, William.


They also refused to let go of the conspiracy arc, which had long since written and rewritten itself into incoherence. As soon as Mulder left in the first episode, every subsequent conspiracy arc episode had some gnashing of teeth and wailing at his mysterious disappearance, the aforementioned angst about William H. Christ, and the Super Soldiers, where every week the creators would toss a coin to decide if they were alien infiltrators, or genetically engineered shadow government enforcers.


But by far the worst aspect of this ninth season is the writing, which is notably inferior to that which has come before. It’s as if they knew the end was nigh for the series, and their hearts just weren’t in it any more. The earlier seasons, even some episodes in seasons seven and eight were complex, intellectually challenging, and layered affairs. The debate between rationality and belief always underpinned the stories, but they were rarely open and shut cases, and the wit, dialogue, humour and energy gave you multiple reasons to tune in each week. But here originality is scarce, and stories are rehashed, simplified and turned out by rote. For most of the stories in season 9, there’s no longer any draw to them, hardly any reason to pay attention, and certainly not the character interactions.


The plague of the two-parters continues in this season, with stories that would show promise in Part 1, only to flush things down the toilet in Part 2. And as these are usually the conspiracy episodes, the last thing they need is an inferior climax, punctuated by a continuously hysterical Dana “STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM MY BABY!!!!” Scully. The opening two-parter, Nothing Important Happened Here Today has a fairly strong start, and part 2 isn’t that bad, other than the childish script, but the fall off from Providence to Provenance is even more pronounced, with a little too much hysterical Scully. The show’s finale, The Truth, I actually liked the first time I saw it, appreciated it as a conclusion to 9 years of television. Not now, as it comes across a little too strongly as a Cliff Notes recap of the conspiracy, a conspiracy I had long since stopped caring about, followed by a brief bit of action to tie up loose ends, before a bit of audience fulfilment, Mulder and Scully having a cuddle in the hope of having a movie for 2012.


The standalone conspiracy episodes aren’t much better, with Trust No 1 an episode of unfulfilling Mulder angst, and William an episode of baby angst, which wholly knocks down the Messiah aspect of the conspiracy. The show abounds with poor episodes, with Daemonicus crossing The Exorcist with Luther Boggs, Lord of the Flies playing more like a poor episode of Smallville, while Scary Monsters is a prime example of the failure of writing in this season, with a simplistic story about a boy’s imagination coming to life. In one episode, Provenance, Doggett is in a car accident and falls into a coma. The next week, Audrey Pauley, Reyes is in a car accident that sends her into a coma.


It’s far easier, and quicker to mention the episodes I did like. 4-D was an interesting adaptation of the parallel universe concept, and it made good use of Doggett and Reyes. John Doe was another strong episode which only really let me down with an absence of rationalisation for it deus ex machina, the memory vampire. The only good thing about Improbable was Burt Reynolds as God. Fortunately Burt Reynolds is good enough to carry that wholly ridiculous story. The less said about the exit of the Lone Gunmen, the better. Release was another good episode which like John Doe, failed to develop its X File element, the prescient FBI cadet. My favourite episode of this season has to Sunshine Days, the penultimate episode. It makes great use of the characters, it almost reaches the heights of the earlier seasons, and its combination of wistful self-reference, and final analysis of what the X Files actually mean to Scully, and by extension to the audience, make it a far more appropriate and fitting finale to the series than The Truth.


No! I am not going to place an order for the Lone Gunmen! All that’s left in my journey once more through the X Files is the final film, but I am done and dusted with the television series. I dreaded watching the final four seasons again. I was under the impression that everything up to season five was good, and all that came after it was terrible. That’s true up to a point. Nothing would match the brilliance, originality and freshness of the first five years of the X Files, but it turns out that Season 6 came close, Season 7 had its moments, and Season 8 almost turned it around again. It’s just that Season 9 was so poor, that its taint reached back through time and contaminated my opinion of what had gone before. Next up, more taint with The X Files: I Want To Believe, probably...