The X-Files - The Complete Third Season (Slim Set)
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Movie Reviews of The X-Files - The Complete Third Season (Slim Set)
Movie Review: The Mythology Continues to Evolve Amidst Humor
Summary: 4 Stars
A decent continuation of the series, as the mythology continues to form. While there is plenty of stock fare involving "little greenish-gray men with oversized heads and eyes", the real stand-outs in this series are those involving quirky humor, both black and side-splitting. Some of these are:
Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose - A psychic serial killer stalks other psychics and fortune tellers, with reluctant psychic Clyde Bruckman, played to bizarre perfection by Peter Boyle, enlisted by Mulder to assist. Bruckman predicts Mulders means of death many years hence, involving a length of rope, some hand cream and an erotic video. One of the best of all nine seasons.
D.P.O. - Giovanni Ribisi and his "best bud" Jack Black are Beavis and Butt-Head types who while away their miserable lives by throwing lightning bolts at folks they don't like.
2Shy - A mysterious scholar feeds vampire like on women he meets through internet chat sites, siphoning off their body fat in order to survive. A (blackly) humorous study of online dating.
Revelations - Mulder and Scully reverse roles, as Scully funds herself drawn into a contest between a young stigmatic and the human personification of the Devil.
War of the Coprophages - Everyone hates cockroaches, and the producers of the show engage in a humorous free for all that will have your skin crawling. And what was that that just crawled across the TV screen? Genuinely funny episode.
Syzygy - Marcie and Terrie have a birthday on the worst of all possible days, from a cosmic perspective. A nod to the classic film, "Carrie". A very funny episode, and one of my favorites.
Movie Review: A very different kind of FBI. Great Buy for Bargain Price
Summary: 5 Stars
`X-Files, Season 1' DVDs from the show which premiered in September, 1993, created by Chris Carter and starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson gives us a complete, but not especially `rich' look at a show which seemed to fill the void left by the fall of `The Evil Empire', and not yet filled by Arab terrorists. The filler was stories about `paranormal' phenomena, extraterrestials, and unexplained events in general.
I was not a fan of the show when it first aired, and I have virtually no memory of even seeing any of the episodes, so I'm looking at it with fresh eyes. The worst thing to have happened to the `X-Files' may have been the advent of several new shows based on FBI operations, especially `Numb3rs' and `Criminal Minds'. Both shows demonstrate agents operating within an agency which has returned to hero status it enjoyed back in the days of `The FBI' and, indirectly `The Untouchables'. In the new shows, the agency is never pictured as something between a sluggishly conservative drag on investigation and a positively evil bureaucracy with an agenda which is not entirely behind `Truth, Justice, and The American Way', not to mention logic and just plain good sense.
In contrast to the modern fictional FBI operatives, the show's agents, Fox Muldur and Dana Scully seem to operate almost entirely on their own, more tolerated than supported by their superiors. It's appropriate that most action seems to take place in a Stanley Kubrick cum Ridley Scott darkness and dimly lit environment. I'm hard pressed to picture a single scene done in the bright light of day under bright blue sky. The bureaucratic muddle is blurred even further by the occasional appearance of a mysterious character identified as `Deep Throat' who provides little clues and encouragement to Muldur when his interest or enthusiasm flags or he runs into a dead end. The similarity with the famous Watergate `Deep Throat' figure is obvious and I suspect the character is added not as a `deux Ex machina' to move the plot on when it gets stuck, but as a device to further picture higher levels of government as a cross between malevolent and stupid. It would have been an interesting take on the whole fictional backstory if the show had played the higher levels of the Federal government as they really were in these matters, indifferent and self-servingly protective of their own turf. This could have been a comedy precursor to `The Office', but I digress.
All in all, the show tries to entertain two opposing points of view, and work off the tension between them. One point of view is that the subject of Muldur's cases are not detectable by normal means, therefore, `official' government assigns a minimal staff to the `X-Files' to mollify those dimwits who actually believe in this stuff. The opposing point of view is that while these phenomena are not amenable to `normal' methods, they are real, meaning they are amenable to SOME method, as yet not soundly based in scientific procedure. A fine example of this is the discovery of the planet Neptune by its gravitational effect on Uranus. Astronomers couldn't see it, but they had evidence it was there, leading to newer telescopes and a knowledge of where to look, so they eventually did see it. So, if the `real' but unseen premise is true, one can be sure that `official' organizations would be pursuing it as vigorously and as rigorously as they pursue e coli contamination of spinach and terrorist sleeper cells.
To be sure, there are stories such as `Ice' where the danger is not `paranormal', but simply `new' and heightened by isolation from assistance. One problem with several episodes like `Ice' is that their plot is all too obviously `borrowed' from a well-known previous movie. In this case, it's `The Thing'. In other cases, the danger is simply a small extension from normal phenomena, so that to the normal mind, there is nothing special going on, except that our hero Muldur know things are not quite as they seem.
While there is much about the `X-Files' which may seem dated or improbable, it was successful because it is still entertaining in a melodramatic fashion. In fact, unlike all our modern cop and investigative shows, the two principle characters seem to find themselves in life-threatening jeopardy in practically every episode. In `CSI' and `Law and Order' and `NCIS' and `Numb3rs' and `Criminal Minds' and `Cold Case Files' and so on and so on, we don't get a major character in life threatening situations more than once or twice a season, and then only in sweeps weeks. The show also gains heat from the interaction between the two principal characters. In the commentary on DVD 7, the show's creator says they wanted to avoid any romantic entanglements between Muldur and Scully. In it's place, they have a strong regard and caring relationship between the two, not unlike the connection between Benson and Stabler on `Law and Order, SVU', except that the `X-Files' relationship has fewer internal stresses, and must simply deal with threats and strains introduced by the perps.
The extras on this DVD set are modest. On each disc with four shows apiece, the only extras are a few scenes for one of the shows in a foreign language, and it isn't always the same language. It ranges from Italian to Japanese and several points in between. The extras on the seventh `bonus' disc are nice, but not earthshaking. We learn, for example, that the name `Scully' comes from the Los Angeles Dodgers radio commentator, Vin Scully and that Gillian Anderson was pregnant near the end of the first season.
I've just recently developed a taste for these 14-year-old shows, and I suspect that the value of the DVDs is inversely proportional to how much you saw them when they first aired. If you are seeing them for the first time, you will like them.
Movie Review: Technical Notes On The Slim Sets
Summary: 5 Stars
I wanted to point out something technical about the slim set discs that I bought. If you're looking for insight into the episodes or characters - please look elsewhere.
When I put the first disc of Season One into my DVD player, it started the "loading" process and gave me a disc error after about one minute. Instead of cursing Fox (well, I did it later anyway) I turned the player off, leaving the disc inside. After a couple of minutes, I turned my DVD player on and Viola! I heard the X-Files theme and saw the menus (after the obligatory FBI copyright infringement warnings).
For those wondering, the DVD player in question above is a Philips Progressive Scan. The same problem occurred on a newer Panasonic player. No glitches materialized when I tried the discs on the Sony or AKAI players. In all cases, I was eventually able to get to the episodes. With the first two the screen sometimes showed up scrambled and the menus inaccessible. On other occasions I was able to access a root menu similar to one you would see if you "explore" the DVD contents on a PC (Video_TS files, etc.), though the players would not load any content from these menus. Speaking of PC viewing, I experienced no problems with any of the discs on my PC and all four programs my PC has to play DVDs functioned perfectly.
PLEASE DON'T READ INTO THIS TOO MUCH. I don't work for Fox - I'm not trying to encourage sales of the more expensive sets. This was just a personal experience I had, and it seemed to occur less frequently with Seasons 4 - 9. My uneducated opinion: the equipment I have isn't top of the line, and maybe wasn't equipped to handle the way the content was compressed. I was impressed that 4, sometimes 5 episodes were squeezed on one disc. That's three - almost four hours of content. I know - dual layer DVDs and blah, blah, blah. But c'mon - even Lord of the Rings - Return of the King was issued on 2 discs! (By the way, the content looked and sounded great.)
Another side note: Seasons 1 - 4 that I got were full frame, and 5 - 9 are widescreen. At first I thought I had missed the option when purchasing these discs, but these are the only way I've found them at retail stores and online. Nothing major; I just thought I was losing my mind at first. (Which is still a possibility.) I can't remember if they aired this way on television - I just noticed that the cinematography got revved up a bit starting with Season 5. If this observation is incorrect, someone please feel free to correct me.
Okay. If you have read this entire review give yourself a pat on the back, a cookie, I dunno - watch some old Doctor Who episodes or something. A better price, better packaging, and better for you. (They were giving out a carton of Morley's with the bigger sets, right?) By the way - the 5 stars is based on my overall X-Files enjoyment. Sure, there are episodes I can skip through. But for me, it's good bang for the buck. Enjoy!
Movie Review: Technical Notes On The Slim Sets
Summary: 5 Stars
I wanted to point out something technical about the slim set discs that I bought. If you're looking for insight into the episodes or characters - please look elsewhere.
When I put the first disc of Season One into my DVD player, it started the "loading" process and gave me a disc error after about one minute. Instead of cursing Fox (well, I did it later anyway) I turned the player off, leaving the disc inside. After a couple of minutes, I turned my DVD player on and Viola! I heard the X-Files theme and saw the menus (after the obligatory FBI copyright infringement warnings).
For those wondering, the DVD player in question above is a Philips Progressive Scan. The same problem occurred on a newer Panasonic player. No glitches materialized when I tried the discs on the Sony or AKAI players. In all cases, I was eventually able to get to the episodes. With the first two the screen sometimes showed up scrambled and the menus inaccessible. On other occasions I was able to access a root menu similar to one you would see if you "explore" the DVD contents on a PC (Video_TS files, etc.), though the players would not load any content from these menus. Speaking of PC viewing, I experienced no problems with any of the discs on my PC and all four programs my PC has to play DVDs functioned perfectly.
PLEASE DON'T READ INTO THIS TOO MUCH. I don't work for Fox - I'm not trying to encourage sales of the more expensive sets. This was just a personal experience I had, and it seemed to occur less frequently with Seasons 4 - 9. My uneducated opinion: the equipment I have isn't top of the line, and maybe wasn't equipped to handle the way the content was compressed. I was impressed that 4, sometimes 5 episodes were squeezed on one disc. That's three - almost four hours of content. I know - dual layer DVDs and blah, blah, blah. But c'mon - even Lord of the Rings - Return of the King was issued on 2 discs! (By the way, the content looked and sounded great.)
Another side note: Seasons 1 - 4 that I got were full frame, and 5 - 9 are widescreen. At first I thought I had missed the option when purchasing these discs, but these are the only way I've found them at retail stores and online. Nothing major; I just thought I was losing my mind at first. (Which is still a possibility.) I can't remember if they aired this way on television - I just noticed that the cinematography got revved up a bit starting with Season 5. If this observation is incorrect, someone please feel free to correct me.
Okay. If you have read this entire review give yourself a pat on the back, a cookie, I dunno - watch some old Doctor Who episodes or something. A better price, better packaging, and better for you. (They were giving out a carton of Morley's with the bigger sets, right?) By the way - the 5 stars is based on my overall X-Files enjoyment. Sure, there are episodes I can skip through. But for me, it's good bang for the buck. Enjoy!
Movie Review: This could be the start of something big
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow, what a mix. Take one part of "Kolchak, the Night Stalker", "The FBI", and "The Outer Limits" and stir carefully. The X-Files was fun watching, especially at the start. It is a hoot to watch the development of both characters and plot thread that will eventually be woven into a tapestry of myth. Scares, they are in there. Look for a lot of humor also. This is not just a monster hunt.
This set is in the slim set format that I really like. It is space saving with no lost of content.