Simon Thompson presents his picks for the best episodes of The X-Files…
My relationship with The X-Files is similar to my love of a band that was once incredible but doesn’t know when to pack it in. No matter how god awful that I Want To Believe movie was, or how much of a mixed bag the reboot seasons were, or how insanely sceptical I am about the new reboot that won’t feature Mulder and Scully at all, the first six seasons (seven does have its moments to be fair) or so of The X-Files are some of the most ambitious, intelligent, terrifying, funny, and poignant television that has ever been crafted.
The dynamic between agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson), the former an out of the box thinker and a believer in the paranormal and extraterrestrial contrasted with the hardened, rational, cynicism of the latter resulted in a tv duo with chemistry that many have tried to recreate but have never fully replicated.
Whittling down my ten personal favourites is a tough task so before getting into the Top 10 itself here are some honourable mentions: X-Cops, Redux I and Redux II, Anazai, Blessing Man, Paper Clip , Nisei- 731, War of the Carphorges, The Pine Bluff Variant, How The Ghosts Stole Christmas, D.P.O, Beyond the Sea, Paper Hearts.
10. Ice/Pusher
I’ve grouped these two episodes together because they’re both so good I can’t bring myself to rank one above the other. These are both very different episodes in terms of tone and what they’re trying to achieve as one is a close quarters bottle episode (a story which takes place in a single location), and the other is an expansive game of cat and mouse.
“Ice” brings Mulder and Scully to Alaska, to investigate the mysterious deaths of several scientific researchers. In a homage to John Carpenter’s The Thing, Mulder and Scully discover an alien parasitic organism that once it makes contact with a host body turns them insane with rage. Trapped in the facility because of a snowstorm, the group, overcome with paranoia and suspicion over who might be infected, begin to turn on one another.
“Ice” is a great episode because it takes a simple concept and a single location and squeezes every drop of tension out of it as is possible. It’s a visual testament to the fact that building up a story slowly and using intelligent characterisation is always superior to a story obsessed with getting to an unearned explosive pay off.
Written by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan, “Pusher” is one of darkest episodes in the entirety of The X-Files. Mulder and Scully are tasked with investigating a sociopath going by the alias Pusher, who seemingly possesses psychic abilities, which he uses to manipulate his victims into harming themselves or other people. Seeing himself as a criminal mastermind, he devises a plan to manipulate Mulder into meeting him face to face.
A monster of the week episode is only as good as the monster in question, and “Pusher” has a villain so compelling that they brought him back for another appearance two seasons later. As someone who loves procedural thrillers such as Manhunter, Heat, Memories of Murder and Naoki Urasawa’s Monster this episode made me as happy as a dog with an open peanut butter jar.
The true joy in this episode comes from watching Mulder and Scully use their combined intellects to profile the antagonist, and even though they get a pretty strong handle on him and his lust for recognition and respect from the start, they’re still always that half step behind, culminating in an ending so intense and disturbing that they had to fight the Fox censors tooth and nail to keep it.
9. Monday
A good time based narrative is hard to pull off, simply because if you’re limited to a specific time frame, event, and cast of characters and they’re not particularly interesting then you don’t have a narrative leg to stand on. “Monday” on the other hand is one of the best examples I’ve seen of how you create an interesting story based on a time loop.
The narrative begins in media res with Scully tending to a collapsed, bleeding Mulder on the floor. The camera pans out and we find that our protagonist duo are being held as hostages during a bank robbery. While Scully attempts to plead with the armed robber, the police start to storm the building, and said armed robber detonates the bomb strapped to his chest killing everyone inside.
In a quick tonal 180, the story cuts back to Mulder, waking up in his apartment and finding that his water bed has leaked. As a result of having to pay his landlord for the water damage, Mulder is forced to go to the bank and drop off a cheque – setting off the events previously described again.
What is astonishing about “Monday” is that much like the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Cause and Effect” before it, you never become bored of seeing the same event happen over and over again. This is because each time the bank blows up the characters become that bit more aware of the situation that they’re in, and watching two hyper competent characters like Mulder and Scully forming the same conclusions that you are is never not enjoyable.
For an episode so rooted in high concept science fiction, its conclusion is unbearably sad and human and as a hater of stories which pull the it was all a dream cop out, I have to say is a brilliant example of narrative integrity.
8. Drive
A common thread throughout the best episodes of this show, is that the simpler the plot the greater the dramatic payoff – a thematic philosophy best exemplified by “Drive”. Patrick Crump (played by guest star Bryan Cranston), is tormented by a piercing sound in his inner ear, a sound so deadly that if he doesn’t cut it off it will cause his head to explode. The only way for him to alleviate it is to get as far west as humanly possible.
Ostensibly investigating a domestic terrorism case in Idaho, Mulder and Scully take a detour into Nevada after hearing about a strange car chase, involving Crump. Mulder quickly realises Crump’s condition but before he knows it he finds himself kidnapped by Crump and forced at gunpoint to keep driving him further and further west. While this is going on Scully quickly races to get to the bottom of Crump’s illness.
What is great about “Drive” is that the episode is effectively a two hander between David Duchovny and Bryan Cranston. Watching Crump’s sheer desperation threaten Mulder’s ability to control a given situation makes for spellbinding viewing. Crump is a brilliant antagonist because he isn’t an evil or horrible man, he’s an ordinary guy in a desperate situation. This is why Mulder goes out of his way to try and help Crump and reach a compromise with him despite all the damage he’s caused.
A brilliant blend between a Speed-esque action thriller and intelligent science fiction, featuring a dramatic performance by Bryan Cranston so good that it won him the role of Walter White a decade later, “Drive” is one of the show’s finest moments.
7. Duane Barry/Ascension
While I tend to prefer monster of the week format episodes to the mythology ones which tend to get insanely convoluted, the two part arc of “Duane Barry” and “Ascension” is my second favourite mythology episode because of the simplicity of its narrative. “Duane Barry” sees Mulder becoming involved with the two parter’s titular antagonist, an escaped psych ward patient (who claims to have been abducted by aliens and is afraid of it happening again) who has taken hostages in a standoff with the FBI.
After Barry’s plan is foiled, he kidnaps Scully and sees Mulder in a race against time to save his partner from being a sacrificial abductee to his alien masters.
What makes this two parter work is just how much mythology it helps to set up for the show down the line. Although the Smoking Man (the closest thing show has to a primary antagonist) had made appearances in season one this is when he and the rest of syndicate really start to make their presence felt. This arc also introduced Machiavellian agent Alex Krycek who, although not in this episode, became a fan favourite villain over the course of the show’s run. The final scene of “Ascension” with Mulder looking up into the stars wondering where Scully might be is one of the most quietly devastating in the show’s history.
6. Jose Chung’s From Outer Space
The X-Files has its fair share of squarely comedic episodes and as much as I was thinking of putting “How The Ghosts Stole Christmas” here, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” is the quintessential comedy episode of the show, both in its narrative ambition and its wit. Mulder and Scully find out about an alien abduction of two teenagers and set out to investigate. As both of the abductees in question provide wildly different accounts of what happened, Mulder and Scully find themselves on a wild goose chase, which she later recounts to an in universe science fiction writer Jose Chung (guest star Charles Nelson Reilly).
The narrative takes on a Rashomon effect as the claims of alien abduction that Mulder and Scully encounter become more and more bizarre, and start involving elements such as a power company lineman claiming to be visited by men in black ( the men in black in question being Alex Trebek and Jesse Ventura).
Given the task of breaking down what works about “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”, I would say what makes it a masterpiece is having an impartial observer view Mulder and Scully’s dynamic, but also in how the episode uses humour to demonstrate the contrasting approaches of the two agents.
If someone is under the gravely mistaken impression that The X-Files is a solemn, humourless, and po-faced conspiracy thriller, then “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” is the forty minute corrective they are in dire need of, as its send ups of everything from the pseudo-documentary Alien Autopsy: (Fact or Fiction?) to the film adaptation of Whitley Strieber’s Communion are hysterically well observed.
5. Home
Glen Morgan and James Wong’s “Home” is the show at its most disturbing. A rural horror in the vein of classic 70s-80s movies such as Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Southern Comfort, and The Crazies.
In the small and isolated town of Home, Pennsylvania, a woman gives birth to a severely deformed baby. In one of the show’s most shocking scenes a trio of similarly deformed men bury the infant alive near their decaying home during a severe rainstorm. When a group of kids playing baseball near the house in question discover the corpse by accident Mulder and Scully are sent to the rural community to investigate who could possibly have perpetrated such a horrific crime.
After some digging around they trace the corpse back to the reclusive Peacock family, who haven’t left their crumbling house in some time. At first Mulder suspects that the Peacock brothers kidnapped and raped a woman so that they could have the child, but after he and Scully investigate further the duo discover the repugnant and shocking truth of how the baby came to be.
What makes “Home” more disturbing compared to other horror episodes of The X-Files is that it actually shows many of the disturbing acts that were only hinted at in previous episodes – fully earning itself a mature rating by the FCC in the process. “Home” isn’t a superb episode just because of how shocking its content is, but because it’s one of the most thematically rich episodes of The X-Files, with various critics interpreting it as being everything from a twisted satire on the nuclear family and the American dream, to a clash of urban modernity and rural antiquity, or even a critique of nostalgia itself.
4. The Post-Modern Prometheus/Triangle
These are another two episodes that I grouped together, because the strength of their respective scripts and the way that they play with different filmmaking techniques and styles are why The X-Files was such a landmark show during its creative height.
“The Post-Modern Prometheus” sees Mulder and Scully travelling to Albion, Indiana, after receiving a letter from Shaineh Berkowitz, a single mother who claims to have been impregnated by some kind of strange creature while unconscious, resulting in the birth of her now teenaged son Izzy. When the agents arrive in Albion they discover that the creature which attacked Shaineh bears a striking resemblance to a comic book character that Izzy’s created called The Great Mutato. Through investigating a series of strange goings on, Mulder and Scully begin to connect The Great Mutato to a local scientist in the town.
Filmed in black and white in the style of James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and other classic Universal horror movies from the 1930s, “The Post-Modern Prometheus” is the show’s take on Mary Shelley’s original story, with its ending featuring my favourite moment of Mulder and Scully’s involving them dancing together at a concert. This moment is completely earned given the time the audience has spent getting to know them by this point in the show and never once slips into mawkish sentimentality. Intelligent, funny, and poignant all at the same time “The Post-Modern Prometheus” is an episode which runs the full gamut of emotion.
“Triangle” on the other hand is a zippy film-noir, time travel, adventure that impressively never trips over itself despite the various narrative plates it’s juggling. Mulder races off to find a luxury liner located out in the Bermuda Triangle. After crashing his raft at sea he finds himself aboard the ship the SS Queen Anne and quickly realises that he has somehow travelled back in time all the way to September 1939 at the start of World War II. In the present day Scully, is told by the Lone Gunmen (a Scooby-Doo style band of conspiracy theorists who apart from Scully are his only other friends) that Mulder has mysteriously ended up missing, as she frantically tries to find and rescue him.
A kind of Wizard of Oz meets Indiana Jones and Casablanca, half the fun of this episode is seeing Mulder encounter the 1930s doppelgangers of Scully, The Smoking Man, and FBI deputy director Skinner all given characteristically befitting roles. Shot in the continuous style of Hitchcock’s Rope, the episode ambitiously plays with the audience’s perception of time through intelligent cutting and split screen, inspired by a music video by the band Semisonic.
Overall, “Triangle” offers you a cerebral exploration of time travel, fun alternate universe versions of iconic characters, and inventive filmmaking techniques that it somehow seamlessly balances all at the same time.
3. Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
If the “Duane Barry”/”Ascension” two parter is my second favourite mythology episode, then my hands down number one is the Glen Morgan penned “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man”. Part of what makes the chillingly sadistic Smoking Man so compelling is that he’s shrouded in mystery. Working behind the shadows to make Mulder and Scully’s lives hell and cover up any loose ends, by this point in the show’s run he had been long established as a fan favourite antagonist.
So to give him an origin story, which, if a subpar effort, could rob him of the mystery which makes him so interesting and downright intimidating, was a huge risk. Luckily Morgan’s script is an absolute triumph combining an involving conspiracy thriller narrative with the show’s trademark dry humour.
When one of the Lone Gunmen finds a magazine that details the personal history of The Smoking Man, we discover his family history, how he came to be involved in secret government work and how, from the shadows, he’s been involved in some of the darkest and consensus changing events in American and world history, from the Bay of Pigs, to the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba, Rafael Trujillo, JFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. Furthermore he’s also pulled off machinations on a much smaller scale, such as fixing it for the Buffalo Bills to infamously lose Super Bowl 25 due to a field goal going wide right, and drugging the Soviet goaltender so that the United States would be victorious in the historic 1980 Miracle On Ice hockey match.
What makes this episode fascinating is the revelation not just of The Smoking Man’s past, but also the guilt that he feels for the dirty work he’s done on behalf of the American government. Seeing him go from being an optimistic young soldier to a hardened apparatchik operating from the shadows is mesmerising to watch. The ending, a fatalistic parody of Forrest Gump, is a wonderful example of the show’s black sense of humour.
The best part overall though is that because it’s told by such an unreliable narrator, there is still enough ambiguity to keep you wondering if many of the events being relayed are even true at all.
2. Bad Blood
“Bad Blood” is The X-Files playing around with the Rashomon effect and having a whale of a time doing so. The premise for this episode is simple yet effective – Mulder and Scully are in a position where they have to report the events of their previous case in a small Texas town to Deputy Director Skinner, after Mulder stabbed a stake through the heart of a teenage boy whom he thought was a vampire, but turned out to be wearing fake fangs.
What follows is both Mulder and Scully’s recollection of the events which led them to visiting the town in the first place. In just half an hour “Bad Blood” combines horror, comedy, and southern gothic all into one neat package. The staggering gaps in tone and recollection that Mulder and Scully have of the same event are hilarious, and showcase their different approaches to the job beautifully. You even get a Luke Wilson guest spot for your trouble as the town Sheriff, who in Scully’s memories is an attractive and charming southern gentleman and in Mulder’s is a stereotypical redneck with teeth that look like a graveyard.
Because I don’t want to spoil many of the fantastic comedic pay offs that this episode has in abundance, the best thing that I can say about it is that it’s the neatest encapsulation of Mulder and Scully’s Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn style double act that I can think of. If the “Duane Barry” two parter establishes why the two are so important to one another through drama, this episode does it through comedy.
1. Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose
“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” gets the top spot on this list because it’s a synthesis of what made The X-Files so special. Touching, funny, strange, and intellectually ambitious this is an episode so perfect that I can’t quite think of one that would top it.
Clyde Bruckman (guest star Peter Boyle) is a lonely, miserable old man living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Bruckman at first appears to be a run of the mill pensioner, but it turns out that he in fact has psychic powers, which are so strong that he knows the exactly how everybody that he meets is going to die, including himself.
When Mulder and Scully are investigating a serial killer targeting psychics, and are getting nowhere, they come into contact with Bruckman by chance, with Mulder quickly realising the extent of Bruckman’s gift.
“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” is both a thriller murder mystery but also one of the best meditations I’ve seen exploring the subject of death. This is an episode which dares to ask the question if you knew with absolute certainty exactly how you were going to die, what would you do, with rare humour and sincerity. The ending, which I will not dare reveal because of its sheer emotional power, is one that sticks with you long after you’ve seen it.
When you have a combination of Darin Morgan’s writing ability and a character actor the calibre of Peter Boyle at your disposal as a guest star the end result is always going to be pretty special.
SEE ALSO: Before They Were Famous… They Were in The X-Files
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Simon Thompson
