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The X Files

America's TV Guide called it 'the most genuinely unsettling television since the heyday of The Twilight Zone'. They were right.

A series about two FBI agents who investigate the paranormal and unexplained phenomena, The X Files is intelligent, thought-provoking and wonderfully creepy. It takes newspaper or magazine stories, even documented accounts of such incidents and extrapolates then into taut mysteries, blending elements of crime drama and thriller to produce a tug of war between intuition and logic, seen and unseen forces.

The FBI team assigned to crack these bizarre cases are special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, a chalk-and-cheese combo, professionally devoted to each other, with just a hint of something more.

Mulder is the 'believer', a wry-witted maverick, haunted by an incident in his own childhood when his sister was apparently a victim of alien abduction. Frankly, Mulder's an embarrassment to the bureau. Condescendingly nicknamed 'Spooky' by his colleagues, he calls himself 'the FBI's Most Unwanted' and sees working on the X Files as a quest for truth. When plausible explanations for a crime don't fit, Mulder explores his theories, such as UFO visitations, mind over matter and genetic mutation. Government cover-ups is another favourite theme. He's single minded to the point of obsession.

And that's where Scully comes in. Dressing and acting like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Scully is a by-the-book medical expert who is so determined to find rational explanations that she won't accept the irrational. Her loyalty to Mulder, however, is as unyielding as her scepticism. She's fiercely protective in the face of bureau bosses who'd love to close down the X Files and ship Mulder out to the funny farm.

The X Files was created by Chris Carter, a writer for an American surfing magazine before Hollywood beckoned. He saw the show as a kind of Kolchak for the Nineties, a scary, yet sophisticated drama telling tales that lie within the realm of extreme scientific possibility.

In America, fans -or X-philes- made the show a real cult hit, with a growing following on the Internet. In the UK the BBC aired seasons one and half of season two on BBC2, before moving it to BBC1 for the second half of season two and the following four seasons.

The episode Fire in season one was shown out of order in the initial BBC2 run, being transmitted after Beyond The Sea and in a late night time-slot as part of BBC2's 'Weird Night'.

The episode Fearful Symmetry in season two was shown out of order. This was the first episode to be shown on BBC1, when they decided to transfer the series from BBC2. The repeat showing of the episode Anasazi was made three days before the start of season three, to enable newcomers to understand the first episode of this new season.

The order of BBC1 transmissions for season three were not in the original American running order, thus messing up the 'tiff' arc and bringing Scully's dog back from the dead. This was allegedly because of the BBC's new guidelines on violence.

The season three final episode Talitha Cumi was held over to the start of season four because of the content of the episode, and it's scheduled showing falling on the anniversary of the Dunblane incident. This episode was also cut, the cuts being made to the opening scene.

Season four was shown in the correct running order and without any pauses in the transmission dates.

Season five also had a fairly consistent run with all the episodes being shown in the correct running order, and with only a five week break during December 1998.

Season six was delayed by four months starting in January 2000 rather than September 1999, but was shown twice with a repeat showing late on Saturday nights. The episode Dreamland was shown has a feature-length episode. The BBC stopped showing this season after just nine episodes and it later returned in July 2000 in a new time-slot and on a new day. The BBC failed to give a satisfactory explanation of why it stopped showing this current season midway through. The episodes Two Fathers and One Son were shown has one feature-length episode. The episode Agua Mala was replaced by the episode Milagro at the last minute because of the deaths due to the extreme bad weather Canada, and it's similarity with this episodes storyline. The episode was shown a few weeks later.

Season seven was moved back to BBC2 from BBC1. Prior to screening this seventh series BBC2 showed a repeat of the Pilot episode. They again repeated the Pilot episode after screening all of the seventh season episodes.

Ref: The X Files

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