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Lockdown Viewing Guide: The X-Files Season 1

Nemesis

Hey everyone, time to give you a little TV binge watching recommendation.  I was worn out from the virtual-con we all had and decided to rest and binge a little bit of Scully and Mulder. So with that, here is my next installment of Lockdown Viewing Guide – The X-Files Season One.

The X-Files Season One

The X-Files is a staple when it comes to paranormal science fiction and stood atop this genre in the nineties.  The brain-child of series creator Chris Carter, Carter used his love of genre predecessors like The Twilight Zone and The Night Stalker to craft a unique and compelling show that has found its way into the cultural zeitgeist.  In point of fact, it is a commentary about how pervasive this show was/is, that many of the conspiracy elements presented in the show are regarded as fact by a portion of the population, many of which who have never seen the show.

The show is centered around the investigative exploits of two FBI agents.  First is Dr Fox Mulder, played by David Duchovny (Californication, Zoolander) who is the lead investigator on the X-Files for most of the show.  Mulder, a clinical psychologist and profilers, is a Don Quixote type character, tilting at windmills as he seeks truth among the wild and unexplained cases that populate the X-Files.  For those who have not seen the show, the X-Files are the collective name given to cases that can not be explained or have gone unsolved because of circumstances or facts that can not be explained.  Back to Mulder; Mulder’s “I want to believe” moniker sums up who he is for much of the show and most definitely sums up the character throughout the first season.  Paired with and intellectually pitted against Mulder’s frantic search for truth is the healthy, if not somewhat dogged, skepticism of Dr Dana Scully played by Gillian Anderson (The Last King of Scotland, The Fall).  Scully, a medical doctor who chooses to become an FBI agent rather than practice medicine, has a healthy skepticism which can lapse into the ideological at times when she attempts to rationalize away incredible moments that have occurred in her life.  Never the less, her character is essential to balance out the paring with Mulder who is willing to believe almost anything given the smallest particle of evidence.  The two, paired together, are an effective team and the chemistry between Anderson and Duchovny is evident from the very first episode, the pilot for the series.

The pilot episode of this series is based on the true accounts of a group of reported UFO abductees and centers around the strange deaths of a number of young adults in rural Oregon.  When I first watched this show it struck me as the group of young adults were all graduates of the high school class of 1989, an honor I also share.  Mulder latches onto this case after noticing a number of incongruous details missed in the lackadaisical investigation done by the local field office.  Without going into too much detail, I hope you can get that by watching yourself, this episode and the one that follows set the groundwork for much of the show to follow.  You have the intransigence and passive aggressive hostility of the FBI brass. You have the curious and sinister lurking of the “Cigarette Smoking Man” played throughout the series by William B Davis (Dead Zone, Stargate SG-1), and “Deepthroat” played by Jerry Hardin (Cujo, The Firm).  Those two antagonists and the constant air of mystery and conspiracy that are pervasive throughout the series are infectious and set the table for the 10 X-Files seasons and two feature films that followed.

I don’t want to give you and exhaustive synopsis of the season’s episodes but I thought I’d highlight a few of my favorites with a brief sentence to describe it so you get a flavor of what you can look forward to.  I’ll close out my commentary by saying that this is an incredible series and the first season reaches out and grabs you so be prepared to become addicted to the exploits of Mulder and Scully.  Enjoy!

Episode 3 – Squeeze:  Mulder notices a pattern in a series of murders that seem to occur every 30 years and go back over 100 years.

 

 

Episode 5 – The Jersey Devil:  A series of strange encounters on the outskirts of Atlantic City, New Jersey draws Mulder and Scully into an investigation that challenges anthropologists and law enforcement alike.

 

Episode 8 – Ice:  When a ice-core scientific team in the artic goes off line, Mulder arranges for he and Scully to be part of the team that goes there to investigate.  What they find is a stark warning about the dangers of exploring the unknown and what may lurk, waiting to be uncovered.

Episode 11 – Eve:  Truly terrifying and that is all I can say without giving the plot away.

 

 

Lockdown Rating – 5 of 5 Stars

Showrunner – Chris Carter
Cast – David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, William B Davis, Jerry Hardin, Mark Sheppard, Ed Lauter, Brad Dourif, Doug Hutchison

Author Profile

Nemesis
Nemesis is a poet, writer and author of the upcoming novel The Long Game. He is a writer of science fiction and supernatural thrillers. Besides novels and short stories he writes for UK based ASAP Comics developing new stories for Level 8 and OPSEC. Nem is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and tries to bring those experiences into his writing.

He lives and works out of his home in Riverside, California with his wife and three children. When not writing he enjoys reviewing comic books and graphic novels for ComicCrusaders.com and living the Southern California life with his family.
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