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The X-Files - The Complete First Season Customer Reviews (10 - 12 of 30 Reviews)

The beginning of a classic.
Long before The X-Files sold out to be a Sunday night drama, it was an atmospheric, creepy, often chilling science fiction show.

The first season is the essence of everything that made X-Files such a great show...dark lighting, creepy sets, scary stories, and the chemistry between agents Mulder and Scully.

This was before the famous mythology involving an alien conspiracy opened up a new era of the show, each episode was like a mini-horror movie. From storylines such as genetic mutants, deadly twins, pyromaniacs, and flesh-eating bugs, this was essential Friday night viewing.

The graceful pace of the episodes and downbeat endings were intriguing rather than boring as in later seasons, and there are many standout episodes such as the Pilot, Squeeze, Ice, Beyond the Sea, Eve, Darkness Falls, and The Erlenmeyer Flask, perhaps the true beginning of the mythology.

So buy this set and see how a Friday night cult show grew into a worldwide phenomenon. It was The X-Files the way it was meant to be.

Turn out the lights and prepare to be thrilled.

Groundbreaking first season of this classic TV series
I caught up with the first season of THE X-FILES via these DVDs recently, and as ever I am struck by the freshness of the chemistry between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully. Even in some of the lesser filler episodes you rarely get a sense of the two phoning in their performances like they were sometimes wont to do in later seasons. Already in the "Pilot," you sense these two clicking along wonderfully, and it continued on for quite a few more episodes afterwards. It's quite refreshing.

Overall, this first season was quite good. Inconsistent, maybe, but that can be forgiven as creator Chris Carter was still trying to find the show's distinctive voice. It may not be quite a match for the second or third seasons, which have many great moments and episodes among them, but there are still some very entertaining and creative episodes to be found here, most of which admirably emphasize intelligent horror over hollow shock value. As for the so-called "mythology" episodes of the season, they are quite refreshing to watch too: episodes during a time when the mythology wasn't so convoluted and overblown, when it was all simply a matter of touching upon our embedded paranoias about extraterrestrials or our government instead of degenerating into the bloated sci-fi soap opera it was to become in later seasons. Back then, the paranoia was fun, as you can probably sense in wonderful early episodes like "Deep Throat" and "E.B.E."

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Thus, some highlights and other random comments on this first season:

The first four episodes of the show really set the wheels in motion for THE X-FILES. The "Pilot" skillfully introduced us to our two main characters, and "Deep Throat" went further with themes touched upon in the previous episode (as well as introducing Mulder's first secret source in Deep Throat). "Squeeze" was the first "standalone" X-FILES mystery, and it set an early standard for creepy effectiveness and sheer creativity of concept (admit it, the idea of a genetic mutant who can squeeze through almost anything is kinda scary). And "Conduit" was an emotional mystery that showed us just how much Mulder's experience as a witness to his sister's abduction had truly affected him. All four were near-great episodes that set the show up quite nicely.

I am going to respectfully dissent with those who bash "Ghost in the Machine" as one of this season's lowlights (although I won't extend the same empathy for the truly lame "Space"). It is by no means great (it has its unintentionally funny aspects, like the computer program itself, a poor man's HAL 9000), but it's hardly as bad as others might lead you to believe. It has a good, creepy premise---in which a computer program suddenly gains human consciousness and starts trying to preserve itself---and at least it shows an attempt by the writers to craft good, intelligent horror instead of yet another sci-fi retread. I think it works, in parts.

Writers Glen Morgan and James Wong really distinguished themselves in this season as the best writers on the show. Their first collaboration was the chilling "Squeeze," and if their subsequent "Shadows" was not on the same plane (a little too soapy for my taste), they came back brilliantly with the classic "Ice," which truly put Mulder and Scully's relationship to the test as a parasite threatens to destroy them both. In later episodes such as the powerful "Beyond the Sea" and "E.B.E." they showed an attention to character detail that really made their scripts stand out among the pack (although "Tooms" was not quite successful at matching "Squeeze" for creepily effective scares). With one or two exceptions, Morgan and Wong crafted episodes that were not to be missed.

And of course the season finale, "The Erlenmeyer Flask," which insinuated that the government might have a bigger role in things than previously believed, and set things up nicely for a new season.

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Thus the first season of the X-FILES, not the show's greatest (the next two seasons qualify strongly for that honor), but a wonderful reminder of how new this show must have felt to many who first tuned in, if more in execution than in concept. Of course other sci-fi TV shows had shown us aliens and government conspiracies before, but never with this degree of intelligence and attention to scientific detail. This first season truly set the tone for the show that Chris Carter sustained remarkably in most of the later seasons, and for that reason alone this is the place to start if you want to get into this wonderful series. Recommended.

A great start, but much better still to come
This is the series that started it all, its great for its time, but unlike the many series to follow now looks a little dated. Granted this series had the modest budget of an unproven commodity where as the series that followed had a considerable inflation of resources. This series still had soem amazing episodes but had quite a few clunkers aswell like Space and Ghost in the Machine. Over all you must buy this as it is history in the making.

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