In the first season of The X-Files, creator
Chris Carter was uncertain of the series' future, so each of the
episodes is a self-contained suspense story; they do not delve deep
into the ongoing X-Files mythology or turn to self-parody and humor
as do episodes in later seasons. Yet, these episodes display the
elements for which the show would become famous: the cinematic
production values and top-notch special effects, the stark lighting
of the Vancouver sets, the atmospheric halo of Mark Snow's score,
and the clever plots dealing with subjects ranging from the occult,
religion, and monsters to urban legends, conspiracy theories, and
science fiction. Most importantly, season 1 introduces FBI agents
Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox "Spooky" Mulder (David
Duchovny), two of the most attractive government officials around.
Scully is the serious-minded medical scientist assigned to join
Mulder on the X-Files, a division of the FBI dealing with the
paranormal. Mulder is the intuitive thinker with a dry wit, a
passionate believer in the existence of paranormal phenomena and one
of the few characters on television smart enough to figure out who
the bad guy is before the audience does. Their muddled relationship,
a deep friendship laced with sexual tension, provides the human
heart in a world where the bizarre and horrible lurk in everyday
society.
Those unfamiliar with The X-Files often
view all the fuss with the same skepticism with which Scully first
regards her new partner's ideas. But just as she comes to realize
the uncanny accuracy of Mulder's outlandish theories, newcomers to
The X-Files who sample a few episodes in this boxed set will
likely find themselves riveted to their television late into the
night. And undoubtedly, the shadows and creaking noises in the house
that evening will seem more menacing than usual. --Eugene Wei
Agent
Dana Scully is assigned to work with Agent
Fox Mulder on the X-Files in an attempt to debunk his
work on the paranormal. Their first case has them
investigating apparent alien abductions. A near comatose
man, Billy Miles, is taking his classmates, including
Theresa Nemman, into the woods, where they are killed in a
flash of bright light.
Mulder & Scully travel to
Idaho in order to investigate the disappearance of a
military test pilot. They observe unusual aircraft activity,
prompting Mulder to proclaim the existence of a government
conspiracy. Mulder sneaks onto the military base and is
spotlighted by one of the craft, but is captured by soldiers
and has his memory erased before he is released.
Mulder and Scully investigate a series of
murders where there appears to be no tangible method for
the murderer’s entrance and escape. Eugene Tooms, a
seemingly normal janitor, is suspected by Mulder to be a
mutant who kills his victims and extracts their
livers in order to prolong his existence.
As Section Chief Blevins expresses his
concern with the direction of the X-Files department, Mulder
becomes obsessed with solving a case that closely parallels
an ‘encounter’ he experienced as a child... the abduction of
his younger sister,
Samantha.
The murder of a homeless man which is very
similar in detail to a murder committed in
1947 leads
Mulder and
Scully to the legendary man-beast the
Jersey Devil roaming in the forests surrounding
Atlantic City. Mulder and Scully are summoned to
investigate, but Scully leaves early to go to her Godson's
birthday party.
When an unseen force commits several murders
where a young woman is present, Mulder suspects that it is
the spirit of the woman’s former boss who was believed to
have committed
suicide but was actually murdered and he is protecting
her from his business partner.
A
computer with highly advanced
artificial intelligence begins to kill in order to
preserve its existence when it is deemed inefficient to
continue controlling the workings of an office building.
When an
Arctic research team mysteriously kill each other and
themselves only days after drilling deeper into the ice than
ever before, Mulder and Scully accompany a team of doctors
and scientists to investigate. They discover an organism
which infects living creatures and amplifies the host’s
feeling of anger and
paranoia, and the new team starts to deteriorate as they
wonder who among them are killers.
A mysterious force is sabotaging a space
launch program which leads directly back to the commander of
the team, who once claimed to have seen an alien in space
while witnessing
Mars from Earth orbit.
Mulder puts the future of the X-Files in
jeopardy when he heads to a UFO crash site being rapidly
covered up by the military. He is arrested and while in jail
he meets Max Fenig, a UFO nut whose NICAP group has followed
Mulder’s work on the X-Files. When Mulder is released,
Scully urges him to return to Washington to face his
superiors and try and save his job but Mulder finds out that
Max is more than meets the eye and ignores Scully to try and
save him instead.
When two fathers on opposite sides of the
country are unexplainably murdered at the exact same time in
the exact same way, Mulder and Scully find that their
eight-year-old daughters are perfect twins and were created
in order to continue The Litchfield Experiment, a eugenics
project of the 1950’s which produced cloned boys named Adam
and girls named Eve who have heightened strength and
intelligence, but are prone to psychotic behavior.
Mulder investigates the deaths of British
dignitaries at the behest of an old
Oxford girlfriend. Bob/Cecil L’Ively is a pyrokinetic,
and he wants Sir Malcolm Marsden’s wife. Cecil attempts to
kill Marsden, with his ability to make fire come out of his
hands, but Mulder stops him.
A death row inmate named Luther Lee Boggs
claims that he is
psychic and can lead Mulder to a serial killer in
exchange for a lesser sentence of life in prison. The
agents’ roles are reversed in this episode, with Mulder
doubting Boggs’ claim and Scully believing him after she is
told that she can communicate through him with her recently
deceased father.
A series of identical sexual murders, where
the killer appears to be both male and female, draw Scully
and Mulder to an
Amish-type community of people who may be alien in
origin.
When FBI Agent Jack Willis and bank robber
Warren Dupre are both shot at the same time during a robbery
attempt, Dupre dies when Willis is brought back to life.
When Willis rushes out of the hospital and begins acting
strangely, Mulder concludes that Dupre has come
back to life in Willis’ body.
A psychotic criminal from one of Mulder’s
past cases - John Barnett - is back to get revenge on Mulder
for incarcerating him. Before Barnett’s release, a renegade
doctor had found a way to reverse the aging process - using
Barnett as his test subject. Mulder and Scully rush to catch
the now-unrecognisable youthful Barnett before he carries
out his threat to kill all of Mulder’s loved ones.
Mulder and Scully receive information from
Deep Throat about a UFO that was shot down over
Iraq and has been secretly transported to the US.
However, Deep Throat then intentionally misleads the agents
to prevent them from discovering the truth.
Mulder and Scully travel to
Tennessee to investigate the “Miracle Ministry” and its
star attraction - a young man with the ability to heal
people with his touch - when a person dies shortly after
being healed. As more people start dying, the agents must
unravel the earthly from the divine.
Mulder and Scully head to an Indian
reservation in northwestern
Montana to investigate a
manslaughter case which Mulder believes may relate to
the very first X-File ever created at the FBI, and its main
subject:
Lycanthropy.
Eugene Victor Tooms
(see “Squeeze”) is released from the psychiatric sanitarium
in which he was incarcerated for assaulting Scully - and he
needs to kill once more to get the final liver which will
allow him to hibernate for another thirty years. Mulder and
Scully race against time to find evidence of his involvement
in the past string of murders before Tooms disappears
again.
After a detective and his former partner die
in unexplained circumstances, the accidents are linked to a
little girl who witnessed both deaths and Mulder believes
that she may be the reincarnation of a policeman murdered by
his colleagues
Agents Mulder and Scully investigate series
of murder in Mahan Propulsion Laboratory as a team of
scientists die one by one and the only suspect is a mentally
handicapped cleaner named Roland.
A seemingly unrelated car chase leads
Mulder and
Scully to a scientific lab encompassing a secret which
could provide proof of a government conspiracy. However,
individuals involved with the scientific experiment are
being murdered, and Mulder is taken hostage by a group of
Men in Black operatives.
