Friday, November 07, 2008

X-Files fans:

I have Season 6 on DVD. What season should I get next? Season 5 has "Bad Blood", "Post-Modern Prometheus", and "Unusual Suspects", but Season 4 has "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man", and Season 3 has "Jose Chung's From Outer Space".

For that matter, what's your favorite episode? (Mine's "The Unnatural".)

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

(If this posts twice, my apologies)

None of the above. IMO X-Files hurled itself over a cliff qualitywise around the end of the third season. Its first season, however, had as high a percentage of hits as any SF series I've ever watched. The pilot, "E.B.E.," "Eve," and the season finale "The Erlenmeyer Flask" are all good. "Beyond the Sea" is superbly creepy, easily one of the series' top three episodes. "Ice" is as fine a job as I've ever seen a TV series do at adapting a classic SF story. "Darkness Falls" is fun for several reasons. And the magnificent doubleheader "Squeeze/Tooms" is beyond description -- it has to be seen to be properly appreciated.

Roberta X said...

I'm votin' 3. JCFOS is a classic.

(Captcha: "ticted." As in, "You 'ticted t'that-there X-Files, Tam?")

Quigley said...

It may not have been the best episode but I really liked the humor and irony in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' (1996).

I mean, the MIB were none other than Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek. "Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception. Yet you somehow brazenly declare that seeing is believing."

WV: spatedi (a teddy you wear to the spa?)

Anonymous said...

Jose Chung's is where its at.

Best.
Episode.
Evar. !!11!eleventeen!

Tam said...

Wolfwalker,

I'll agree that it got a lot more hit-or-miss after Season 3, but some of the hits in the later seasons were among the best things I've seen on TeeWee. I mean, "The Ghosts That Stole Christmas"?

Anonymous said...

YOU'RE WATCHING THEM OUT OF ORDER!???

(::grin::)

I guess it's my OCD showing, but I'd go season 1, 2, 3, etc.

But that's just me.

M

Les Jones said...

Standard advice for a series - watch it in order starting from the beginning. Easy.

Unknown said...

"Jose Chung's From Outer Space", no question!


goliess A female goalie?

red said...

It's a toss up between "Jose Chung's", "Tooms/Squeeze" and "The field where I died". Too many good ones to pick from.

Have you watched Fringe yet?

Tam said...

"YOU'RE WATCHING THEM OUT OF ORDER!???"

Oh, I've seen them all back when they were on TeeWee (except Seasons 8 and 9, which I flat refuse to accept as canon); I just decided to get some more on DVD...

Anonymous said...

Tam,

some of the hits in the later seasons

I wouldn't know about those -- I got really disgusted with the series sometime during early season 5, and stopped watching completely not long after. I don't even recognize the episode title "The Ghosts That Stole Christmas".

KK said...

I love Episode 3 from season 1 entitled "squeeze" where the mutant guy eats livers like Dr. Lector.

Actually, I love all of season 1 the best.

Brandon said...

I loved "The Unnatural." Great episode.

I'd go with Season 5, just for "Bad Blood." Luke Wilson's bucktoothed scene in Mulder's version just slays me.

Anonymous said...

Season 3. JCFOS is magnificent!

All those years of playing D&D taught me something about courage

My other favorite is "Home." *shudder*

Ken said...

For the full Jose Chung effect, watch JCFOS and then try to lay holt of a Millennium DVD and watch "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense."

"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" is awfully good, too.

Also, permit me to recommend "Jump the Shark" from the final season.

Lucas Darr said...

"Home"

Because every five minutes, something WRONG so very very WRONG happens.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, "Home" is one of the best hours of horror EVER aired on TV. I'd go for season 4 first just for it... though given that every episode that Darrin Morgan was involved in was pure gold (he wrote Jose Chung, for starters), I'd be tempted to just go for the season that had the most of his work. He also wrote my favorite episode- or at least, the one that's my favorite when "Home" isn't- "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". Just because it had the best single line ever uttered on the show.

I stopped watching consistently somewhere in season 5, but I caught "The Ghosts That Stole Christmas" in a rerun during a bored moment and it indeed was one of the best of the show.

All things being equal, I'd say go for pre-season 4 because that was when the writers were still assuming we liked Scully because she was strong and level-headed and that we wouldn't like her better as a chew toy.

Anonymous said...

I had a real problem with Darkness Falls - something about the suspense of one little bulb, the generator sputtering, all while knowing the little green critters would come out in darkness...
.
.
.
All in a cabin with a fireplace and 8 zillion cords of wood at hand. Didn't anybody have a match?

rremington said...

Season 3 "War of the Coprophages"

I hate roaches. AND it has Bobbi Phillips!!

R

wv: powedges- the edge of pow???

Anonymous said...

anon- I decided at the last minute to be nice and not mention that. As soon as Stingray pointed it out to me, what had been a deliciously creepy episode turned into forty-five minutes of me going "Okay, so they're out in the woods with a radical survivalist environmentalist and a FOREST RANGER, and NOBODY thinks to light a fucking fire?!"

Lucas Darr said...

Mmmmmm Bobbi Phillips mmmmmm. Dr. Bambi!

That episode both was sexy and gross at the same time.

I think it was even proceeded/preceded by Detective White in all of her glory.

Hunsdon said...

labrat: I get that reaction when I read Louis L'amour's book* and the pioneers are trapped at a water hole, but the Apaches have killed the horses and there's nothing to eat . . . .

And horse meat ain't that bad, either.


* he really only wrote one, but dang it was good.

Don said...

I'm not a huge X-Files guy, but I did like the episode where they explained the Smoking Man's history. Turns out he gave the Soviet goalie a friendly slap on the back with a poisoned needle right before the 1980 gold medal Olympic hockey game.

Home on the Range said...

Tough choice - but maybe "Santa" will bring you the other one for Christmas (if she can borrow it later).

Bob Hawkins said...

Lots of great episodes have been mentioned.

Let me point out "Closure" as proof that X-Files still hit an occasional home run as late as season 7.