Review of X Files, The: Season 5 Boxset

Introduction

As I write this, nine years of television that was groundbreaking, entertaining and occasionally thought provoking draws to a close with more of a whimper than a bang, as BBC2 airs the final feature length episode of the X Files. That`s not to say that The Truth isn`t a corking episode, far from it. Perhaps my point can be best illustrated by reflecting on the BBC`s treatment of the show. The first season was pretty much an unknown, but was given a good slot on weeknights on BBC2. It rapidly became a phenomenon and it became a flagship show for the BBC, so fittingly the show moved to BBC1, as well as getting a repeat showing at the weekends on BBC2. However audiences are fickle, and with the final few seasons have seen the X Files relegated once more to BBC2, this time given the ignominious late night Sunday slot, at the mercy of schedulers who show the episodes out of order and with lengthy gaps for sporting events when necessary.

It`s fair to say that the X Files has outstayed its welcome. By Season 7 the rot had begun to set in. The writers were beginning to go over familiar ground with stories that had been done before in one way or another. The conspiracy that was the backbone of the mythology was becoming ever more convoluted and ridiculously contrived. Season 8 saw the departure of David Duchovny, and there was an attempt to enliven a tired format with some fresh blood. But the ratio of diamonds to duffers continued to shrink, and when Gillian Anderson stated that Season 9 would be her last, and a futile attempt to find two new leads failed, the X Files finally drew to a close. So while I watched Season 9 on TV, with the occasional enjoyable episode, but often hanging by head in despair at how hackneyed and clichéd my once favourite show had become, I also revelled in the shining light that was Season 5 of the X Files courtesy of the shiny discs we all love and stroke so tenderly… (Ahem, just me then?)

Season 5 sees The X Files at the peak of its fame and consistently outperforming rival shows. This is undoubtedly the best year of the show, concluding with an explosive cinema debut with the X Files movie. The cast were at the top of their game and the writing was top notch, with episodes penned by the likes of Stephen King and William Gibson.

At the end of Season 4, Scully had announced to an FBI inquiry that Fox Mulder had died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Season 5`s episodes…

Redux: That cliffhanger is quickly resolved in the opening act of Redux. Scully and Mulder set out to smoke out an infiltrator in the FBI that has kept Mulder under surveillance. While Scully searches for the mole, Mulder breaks into the Department of Defense to find the truth, and hopefully a cure for Scully`s cancer.

Redux II: With Mulder`s search of the DOD apparently fruitless and Scully`s cancer taking its toll, things have never looked so bleak. However assistance comes from an unexpected ally, who has previously been a thorn in the X Files. This ally has a hidden agenda though, and while he offers Mulder everything he ever wanted, he demands an unacceptable price.

Unusual Suspects: It`s 1989 and as Mulder lies naked screaming, "They`re here!" in a warehouse; a SWAT team is arresting three familiar characters. As the police interview John Fitzgerald Byers, he relates a fantastic tale, the Birth Of The Lone Gunmen.

Detour: While Mulder and Scully are stuck in team development hell in Florida, the forest is coming alive and taking people. A fortuitous encounter at a roadblock gives Mulder the chance to escape.

The Post Modern Prometheus: In this wonderful homage to those old black and white horror movies of the fifties, a small town woman becomes pregnant by strange means. Mulder and Scully decide to investigate reports of a mutated monster stalking the town. When they meet the town`s resident genetic scientist, it`s almost inevitable that the town folk will be hefting farming implements and lighting those flaming torches.

Christmas Carol: The first of a two-part story sees Scully is celebrating Christmas with her family when a strange phone call sends her to the scene of a suicide. There she finds a strangely familiar child among the surviving family. As she investigates further it becomes more and more likely that Emily is in fact her sister`s child, something that is very important to her given that her abduction rendered her infertile. But the truth is astounding.

Emily: As Scully goes to court to fight for custody of Emily, it becomes apparent more sinister groups are interested in the child. As Emily sickens, Mulder tries to find the secret of the child`s origin as well as obtaining treatment. Scully maintains a tormented vigil at the hospital.

Kitsunegari: In the Season 3 episode Pusher, Mulder and Scully encountered Robert Modell, a killer whose illness (a terminal brain tumour) gave him tremendous powers of mental compulsion. When he escapes from custody, Mulder and Scully lead the manhunt. Last time Mulder was at the top of Modell`s hit list, but this time he has another agenda.

Schizogeny: When a man dies drowning in mud, suspicion falls on the stereotypical sullen teenager. A rather unconventional child therapist raises a few suspicions as well as the appearance of a sinister axe man. But one thing`s certain, stay away from the trees.

Chinga: Scully is taking a hard earned vacation when a supermarket full of people violently attack themselves and the butcher ends up dead. Scully is passing through and gets drawn into the investigation. She sees on the CCTV that a mother and daughter escape the mayhem unaffected and the local townspeople are quick to ascribe witchcraft. But while the daughter is prone to the occasional tantrum, it`s her doll that must be related to Chucky. Oh yeah, and Mulder is bored.

Kill Switch: A series of tip-offs lead to a gang bloodbath in a diner that also claims an innocent bystander working on his laptop, a bystander who turns out to be a missing Silicon Valley pioneer. Mulder and Scully track an e-mail on the laptop to a freight container that is promptly destroyed by a bolt from the heavens. The survivor of the blast states that a malevolent Artificial Intelligence is loose on the Internet.

Bad Blood: An X-File goes horribly wrong when Mulder gets a little too enthusiastic while chasing a suspected vampire. Having to explain themselves and the reason why the FBI now faces a multi-million dollar lawsuit, Mulder and Scully go over their respective stories.

Patient X: This is the first of a two-part mythology story so bear with me as the storylines become increasingly convoluted and murky. A UFO encounter in Kazakhstan leads to a horrific massacre. UN troops and Russian soldiers have a frosty encounter at the site where Alex Krycek finds a surviving witness. Meanwhile, Mulder`s lack of faith in UFOs comes to a head at a UFO conference where he proceeds to debunk his own work. The hypno-therapist who recovered Mulder`s memories of his sister`s abduction is there at the conference and is worried about his patient`s change of heart. He introduces Mulder to Patient X, Cassandra Spender who relates her tale of abduction to convince him to help her, but Mulder remains sceptical. Scully on the other hand is becoming increasingly convinced from the evidence of her own abduction, and when she encounters FBI agent Jeffrey Spender, who is worried about his mother talking to Mulder, she decides to meet Cassandra for herself. The shadow conspiracy, learning of the massacre at Kazakhstan and another in the Unites States, begin to be concerned about their plans as Krycek is on his way to the States with information that will change everything. Finally Scully and Cassandra Spender are on their way to a UFO encounter.

The Red and The Black: A bridge full of charred corpses is an ominous beginning to this episode, but Scully is a fortunate if amnesiac survivor. Cassandra Spender is nowhere to be found, much to the consternation of her son. Scully recovers some of her memories under hypnosis, but Mulder has begun to doubt the technique. Krycek who spins a fantastic tale visits an increasingly sceptical Mulder and convinces him to keep looking for the truth. For a UFO has crashed near a military base and the occupant is being held captive. As the shadow conspiracy sacrifices the future for their ends, Mulder has only a short time to find the truth. Finally we get to meet the final member of the Spender family.

Travellers: In 1990, the dying words of a murder suspect lead a young FBI profiler called Fox Mulder to the door of Arthur Dales, a retired FBI agent. Dales knew Mulder`s father and worked on something obscure called the X Files.

Mind`s Eye: A drug dealer is found murdered and the police arrest the blood-soaked woman found in the same room. Marty is an angry young woman with a criminal record and a history with drugs, so naturally she becomes Delaware PD`s prime suspect. She has also been blind since birth. If Mulder and Scully can`t find unequivocal proof implicating her, Marty walks free.

All Souls: When a severely disabled child is baptised and not long after seems to walk to her death in a lightning storm, her distraught parents cannot find solace in their faith. Scully is asked by the priest of her church to help. What Scully finds is miraculous and jars her to the very basis of her faith.

The Pine Bluff Variant: A joint CIA FBI operation to capture a dangerous terrorist goes wrong and Scully suspects Mulder of helping him escape. Mulder is being evasive which isn`t good when a genetically engineered bio-weapon is on the loose. As Scully grows more suspicious of her partner, Mulder`s actions are anything but trustworthy.

Folie A Deux: A crank caller who claims that the office is being stalked by a monster targets a telemarketing company. He also urges that it should be killed and naturally this is of concern to the FBI. Mulder is reluctant at first feeling that he has been singled out for a hoax case. However he changes his opinion when he finds himself in the middle of a hostage crisis.

The End: A classic mythology episode rounds off the season. The assassination of a Russian chess player naturally fall in the purview of the FBI, but it takes Agent Mulder to spot that the intended target was his opponent, a young chess prodigy called Gibson Praise. The child is far more than that though, and his unique abilities give certain groups cause for concern. Jeffrey Spender resents Mulder taking his case, the Cigarette Smoking Man is rehabilitated by the shadow conspiracy and Mulder`s old flame Diana shows up. Gibson Praise may be the key to the X Files, but to turn that key Mulder must risk his career and those very same X Files.

Video

Widescreen, Yay!! Up to and including Season 4, the X Files was shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio, but Season 5 sees the introduction of a 1.78:1 anamorphic ratio and the show is all the better for the change. The X Files has always had high production values, with each episode treated like a 45-minute movie. The widescreen image is perfect for the cinematography and style of the show and this is apparent all the way through the season. It`s impossible to pick just one example, but an obvious episode to cite is the award winning Post Modern Prometheus. It`s a wonderful use of monochrome to evoke drama and a singular style harking back to the James Whale horror movies. The transfer itself is an improvement on previous seasons. The image is as sharp and clear as American television programmes get, but the big problem that earlier seasons had had was the prevalence of grain in darker scenes. This is largely absent in this release and is a welcome improvement.

Audio

We get the usual soundtracks once more, DD 2.0 Surround tracks in English, French and Italian. The individual series releases have been graced with DD 5.1 sound and I had hoped that with the move to the widescreen aspect ratio, we would have also seen the debut of 5.1 sound for the series boxsets. If any series warrants the full use of surround sound then surely it is the atmospheric X Files. Nevertheless, the sound as it is conveys the atmosphere of the X Files well enough and the dialogue is always clear. Mark Snow`s music is integral to the show and it has settled in to an expected and comfortable style. There are moments of invigorating flair though in episodes like Post Modern Prometheus and Travellers.

Features

I always look forward to the X Files boxsets for the generous helping of extras that come with them, and Season 5 is no exception. Presented on 6 discs in the by now familiar digipack, discs 1-5 contain the episodes while disc 6 is devoted to the extras. Subtitles come in English, Dutch, Greek, French and Italian, and apply to the extras and the commentaries as well.

Discs 1-5 also see a few extras.

There are international clips for a few episodes, which I feel are quite gimmicky. It`s occasionally fun to see Mulder proselytising in Japanese, but some clips are redundant being in French or Italian.

More important are the deleted scenes. These are scenes cut for time that usually expand on the characters in a certain story, and can be restored into the show. This was never really seamless in the first boxsets, but here they are very jarring, as they are presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio as opposed to the widescreen ratio of the episodes. There are deleted scenes for, Post Modern Prometheus, Christmas Carol, The Red and The Black, and finally All Souls.

There are also two audio commentaries to supplement selected episodes. Chris Carter talks about Post Modern Prometheus and writer John Shiban discusses The Pine Bluff Variant.

The bulk of the extras are on disc 6 and are all presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The Truth About Season 5 is a 19-minute documentary that takes an overall look at the season as well as focussing on some choice episodes.

The Season 5 featurette is a measly 2 minutes and barely deserves a mention, but this makes room for the Inside The X Files documentary that is 45 minutes long. It`s an opportunity to take a breath and reflect on what has come before. Made as a way of introducing audiences to the X Files as a preview for the then upcoming feature film, this documentary takes a look at the characters and how they have evolved over five years. It also goes into the story so far and is laden with interviews with the cast and crew. There is also the rare opportunity to see some X Files bloopers.

FX Behind the truth are 11 little featurettes lasting 11 minutes in total that look at certain characters, episodes and cast members.

The Special Effects section takes a look at 8 sequences with commentary from Paul Rabwin and lasts 16 minutes in total.

The deleted scenes from the episodes are once again shown here, but you can see them with or without commentary from Chris Carter, detailing why they were removed. (10 mins)

Finally there is my least favourite part of any X Files boxset, the promos. There are promos here for all the episodes and total running time is 10 minutes.

Conclusion

It`s surprising just how good Season 5 of the X Files is, especially since the producers set themselves and the cast the monumental task of filming a television series back to back with a feature movie. It can`t easily be done, and indeed something did eventually have to give. This is the shortest season of the X Files lasting a mere 20 episodes, and with so much effort going into the movie, many episodes concentrate on one character with only a passing reference to the other. Unusual Suspects and Travellers has Mulder but no Scully while Christmas Carol is all Scully and no Mulder. Indeed Unusual Suspects and Travellers have very little of Mulder in them at all, focusing on other characters. With so much effort and man-hours devoted to the feature film, it is perhaps surprising that the Season 5 episodes are some of the best-written and carefully crafted pieces of episodic television in the whole 9 years of the X Files.

By now the style and mythology of the X Files were as firmly established as the characters themselves. The writers then could take chances with the characters, send them down unpredictable paths and subvert our perceptions of them. From the moment this season kicks off, we can see the intention to invert the Scully Mulder dynamic. Mulder has a crisis of faith in Season 5 that goes against all that we have learnt of him previously. From fervent UFO aficionado he becomes highly sceptical, while the previously scientific and meticulous Scully has to reconcile the fact of her abduction with he scepticism, and finds herself cast in the role of believer, yet still at odds with her partner. The episodes reflect this change, and show their relationship in an occasionally uneasy light. So when Scully suspects Mulder of betrayal in The Pine Bluff Variant, it doesn`t jar with what the audience knows about the characters.

As Chris Carter states in the extras, Season 5 unlike those previous was carefully planned and scripted to coincide with the movie, and the episodes reflect that. There is a continuous and cogent thread running through the season, which follows a mythology storyline that neatly sets up the movie. But these are leavened with great standalone episodes that are unfailingly entertaining and filled with character moments. This of all the seasons is as close to perfection that the X Files gets. I can`t name a single episode that is a duffer and the high standard is maintained throughout. Naturally I can`t name a single favourite episode, but if I mention just a few…

Unusual Suspects takes us back in time to introduce us to Frohike, Langly and Byers, the Lone Gunmen. This episode is the story of their genesis and is a first in that Scully isn`t in it, and Mulder barely makes his presence felt. It was a joke that you could date an X Files episode by the size of the mobile phones. This retrospective episode has a great moment where Mulder pulls out a brick of a phone that typified the yuppies back in the eighties. It`s a bit of a nostalgia trip that is very entertaining.

Detour is the X Files take on the Mothman/Predator that sees Mulder and Scully hunting a monster in the Florida everglades. The typical set up for an X Files episode on the surface, but what makes this episode stand out are the great character moments between Mulder and Scully. We get to see just how far their relationship has come in the last five years. The same is true of the Stephen King penned Chinga. On the surface, it`s a classic horror in the style of Chucky, but again the Mulder Scully dynamic is explored an expanded, with Scully showing that she is capable of working without a safety net, while Mulder shows that outside of the X Files he just doesn`t have a life.

Kill Switch totally appeals to the cyberpunk in me. Written by the maestro, William Gibson this episode boasts all the hallmarks of his work. Invisigoth is a classic Gibson character and it`s as if Mulder and Scully have been injected into one of his novels. Yet it works brilliantly as an X File.

Bad Blood once again plays with the Mulder Scully relationship and we get to see how they perceive each other. It`s also hilarious from beginning to end.

I must admit that the first inkling of problems yet to come became apparent here. Patient X is where a new layer was added to the conspiracy with a new faction of aliens making their debut. This trend of layering conspiracies and making the storyline more convoluted would in later seasons be taken to extremes and in my opinion contribute somewhat to the shows decline in the final seasons. But that is a complaint for another boxset. The move in Patient X doesn`t at all detract from the Season 5 boxset.

You can tell by how I`ve been raving about this where my marks are going. This simply is X Files at its best. The episodes are all classics and the explosive movie caps off a brilliant season. The discs get their usual presentation, with copious extras, the star being the Inside the X Files documentary. But this time the episodes are widescreen. What more could an X Phile ask for?