Review of X Files, The: Season 4 Boxset

Introduction

As I sat down to watch 1017 minutes of the X Files in the Season 4 boxset, I was reminded of the circumstances of how this particular obsession of mine began. I recall the initial advertising on the BBC of a new show from America, chronicling the FBI`s investigations into the paranormal and unexplained, and for the life of me was certain that it was a documentary. Boy, was I wrong, and here I am, some nine years on nursing an obsession and lamenting the lightness of my wallet. For the Season 3 review, I bemoaned the fact that the series had gone on too long, and had lost its way. But at this time, the BBC has shown a good portion of Season 8 and I must admit to being hooked once again. The Season 4 boxset shows the X Files at their best, with some classic episodes and a deepening of the mythology. If you have been watching from the beginning, your loyalty is rewarded as some previous episodes and themes are expanded on and seeds are sown for further revelations in the shows to come.

A quick outline of the episodes in this boxset…

Herrenvolk: Concluding the story started in Talitha Cumi at the end of season 3, Mulder seeking a cure for his mother finally catches up to the healer, who proceeds to reveal a new aspect of the conspiracy to him, alien colonisation. An ally is lost, but help comes from a most unexpected source. Has Mulder finally found his sister?

Home: This is definitely one episode to avoid if you`re eating your lunch. Notoriously banned in the US, Home sees Mulder and Scully investigating an infanticide in an idyllic town and running into a close-knit family. A little too close knit if you get what I mean.

Teliko: African Americans are being found dead with no apparent cause, their bodies drained of pigmentation. Soon Mulder and Scully are chasing a spirit found only in folk tales.

Unruhe: When women are abducted and subsequently found, crudely lobotomised, the only clues to the abductor`s identity are the Psychic photographs he leaves in his wake.

The Field Where I Died: Trying to prevent another cult suicide in the vein of Waco, Mulder and Scully encounter a cult member with multiple personalities, who has an unexpected connection to Mulder.

Sanguinarium: When a series of grisly deaths occur on the operating table during cosmetic surgery procedures, evidence points to Black Magic rituals conducted by one of the nurses.

Musings of A Cigarette-Smoking Man: Without a doubt my favourite X Files episode sees the Cigarette Smoking Man ready to assassinate Frohike of the Lone Gunmen. As he awaits his quarry, his mind goes back to his career and how it started. This show delves deeply into the myth of the character and even succeeds in painting him in a sympathetic light. This also has a brilliant pastiche of the "Box of Chocolates" speech from Forrest Gump.

Tunguska: The first episode in a 2-parter. When Alex Krycek is apprehended in a counter terrorist operation, he makes a deal with Mulder for his freedom. Promising to help Mulder tear down the shadow conspiracy, he leads him to Tunguska, Siberia where a mysterious cosmic event occurred in 1908. Now strange experiments are taking place on unwilling subjects.

Terma: With Mulder being experimented upon in Siberia, Scully must buy time for her partner as the X Files face Congressional scrutiny. The search for the truth becomes a race against time as evidence for an extra-terrestrial contagion is systematically destroyed.

Paper Hearts: When a dream leads Mulder to a shallow grave containing the remains of a little girl, an old case he had considered solved has to be reopened. New evidence and the serial killer responsible lead Mulder to conclude that his sister may have been a victim.

El Mundo Gira: An illegal immigrant community has a grisly murder that Mulder and Scully try to solve. Their explanation is El Chupacabra, the goatsucker, but Mulder postulates that an extra-terrestrial enzyme produced by the survivor of the attack catalyses rapid fungal growth in the victims.

Leonard Betts: A man who survives major trauma including decapitation, through rapid cellular regeneration. In essence a form of living cancer, Leonard Betts must ingest cancerous tissue to survive. He has an ominous surprise in store for Scully

Never Again: Newly divorced Ed Jerse gets a tattoo in the depths of drunken despair, but comes to regret his rash act when the tattoo starts dictating his actions. Meanwhile Scully, unable to come to terms with her illness starts behaving recklessly and runs into Ed.

Memento Mori: Scully finally gets her cancer diagnosed as terminal and informs Mulder and her family. Following a lead from Season 3, they pursue a possible treatment and Scully enters hospital. Meanwhile, Mulder pursues a more prosaic possibility and Assistant Director Skinner considers dealing with the devil.

Kaddish: Isaac Luria is brutally murdered in a racist attack. The FBI is called when the suspects in his murder are found strangled, with Isaac Luria`s fingerprints at the crime scene.

Unrequited: An invisible assassin stalks the nations military elite to avenge the forgotten Prisoners of War left languishing after the Vietnam war.

Tempus Fugit: The first of a two parter. Max Fennig, a repeat alien abductee introduced in Season 1 is on a flight that crashes in mysterious circumstances. His sister asks Mulder and Scully to investigate and they unravel a military conspiracy to cover up the circumstances behind the crash. While Scully tries to protect a military informant, Mulder searches for a crashed UFO.

Max: With so much evidence implicating the military, they accept responsibility for downing the airliner, only as a means to cover yet a deeper conspiracy. Mulder and Scully unwilling to accept this explanation continue to pursue the truth.

Synchrony: A couple of university researchers are interrupted by an old lunatic, claiming to know the time and place of one of their deaths. He is arrested and ignored, but the researcher dies as predicted. Soon frozen corpses are turning up and evidence mounts for something remarkable.

Small Potatoes: Eddie van Blundht (Silent `h`) is an extraordinary individual. Born with a vestigial tail, he also has the astounding ability to alter his physical appearance to mimic others. The result of this ability is a mini baby boom of `monkey babies`. Worse is to come when he takes on the form of Mulder.

Zero Sum: Assistant Director Skinner learns what it means to deal with the Devil as he tries to bargain for Scully`s life. He finds himself pitted against Mulder at the behest of the Cigarette Smoking Man.

Elegy: An autistic man has visions of murdered women, and when these women turn up dead, he is suspected of their murders. Mulder believes that those who are dying have these visions. Then Scully sees an apparition herself.

Demons: Mulder wakes up in a strange motel covered in blood, missing two days of memories and his weapon discharged. He finds himself implicated in a double murder that he cannot recall and while Scully fights to clear his name, Mulder finally begins to remember the events surrounding his sister`s abduction.

Gethsemane: The final episode of Season 4 starts with Scully apparently identifying Mulder`s corpse in his apartment. She then goes on to testify as to the illegitimacy of the X Files and debunk Mulder`s work. Her account details Mulder`s final search for proof in the Yukon, as he attempts to retrieve and identify an alien corpse. Meanwhile Scully faces up to a revelation that sheds the cold light of truth on the X Files and the real cause of her own illness.

Video

The picture is in the original 4:3 ratio that the series was originally filmed in. I think the drawbacks of the American television system have been reiterated endlessly and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that the image quality is just what you would expect from an American television series. That said though, I did notice that some of the darker scenes were occasionally problematic when it came to graininess. This isn`t ideal for a programme like the X Files, where darkness and suspense are the order of the day, but it only really became significantly noticeable and distracting in the episode Home, when the sheriff was attacked. Again the usual high standard of photography was maintained for this season of the X Files. I love the use of natural and atmospheric lighting for this series.

Audio

The sound is listed as DD 2.0 English and is perfectly acceptable. It should be noted that the fact that all the episodes have soundtracks in French and Italian is unadvertised. This was also true for Season 3, but I may have forgotten to mention it. The sound itself is good, and the feel of the series comes across well. The dialogue is always clear and Mark Snow`s music is put to good effect once again.

Features

A plethora of extras grace this release of the X Files, but the soundbite format that so irritated me in Season 3 has been retained. On the episode discs themselves, you get the cast credits for each episode, with the occasional international clip, usually in German or Japanese. Of more interest are the deleted scenes, for seven of the episodes. These come to a total of about 15 minutes worth, and can be integrated back into the episodes. These aren`t seamless integrations however, as the scenes are occasionally replacements rather than excisions, and the overall quality is less than that of the programme proper. These scenes can be seen separately on the extras disc but with a commentary from Chris Carter. This season sees audio commentaries for two episodes. Memento Mori gets the treatment from Frank Spotnitz and Small Potatoes gets a commentary from Vince Gilligan. The episode Home also has an alternate soundtrack, which was ruled as unacceptable by the US censors, but here you get the opening of the episode in all its chilling glory. On the seventh disc, as well as the deleted scenes as mentioned, you get the 25-minute documentary, The Truth About Season 4, 11 minutes of interview clips, 13 minutes of FX Behind the Truth Spots, 12 minutes of Television Spots, and 11 minutes of Special Effects with commentary. As I said, the soundbite format rears its ugly head, but it feels as if the soundbites are longer, or I have become accepting and they didn`t seem so bad this time. I still see no point in the television spots though and I refuse to watch them. There is of course the usual booklet delineating the chapter breaks and the episode lists.

Conclusion

Nothing`s perfect, but this come pretty close. The standard of writing and performances are uniformly high with nearly all the episodes deserving of classic status. This was the second time I had seen this particular season since it was originally transmitted by the beeb and I was impressed by how well it stood up to my recollection. The budgets of the episodes are high, and the cast ready to appear is ever more impressive. Jodie Foster makes an audible contribution to Never Again, but there is also a chilling performance from Tom Noonan in Paper Hearts. The guest cast is constantly top notch. While the X Files seems to be Chris Carter`s magnum opus, his other ventures rarely seem to get off the ground, with Millennium a notable short-lived example. At the time of Season 4, one of the stable mates of the show was Space: Above and Beyond, created by some X Files alumni. David Duchovny had a guest role in the show as an android pool hustler, but the reverse also occurred, and it is and interesting pursuit to see actors from Space making guest appearances in Season 4. I`ve spotted four so far in, Home, The Field Where I Died, Musings of A Cigarette Smoking Man and Never Again. As per usual, Space: Above and Beyond lasted one season before the plug was pulled. It`s easy to pick favourites from this season; there are about 20 of them. If I am pushed though, the standout episodes for me are, Musings of A Cigarette-Smoking Man, which is simply in a class of its own, Zero Sum, which is a brilliant piece of drama based around Skinner and Small Potatoes which is just hilarious. Ask me again tomorrow and I`ll choose a few different episodes, they are that good.

But every silver lining has a cloud, and I must admit there are two episodes that I am not so fond of. Teliko, which suffers from being average and The Field Where I Died, the stinker. Being average isn`t much of a qualification, but when you consider the quality of the episodes in Season 4, being average is nowhere near good enough. The Field Where I Died however is dire. How one of the best seasons of the X Files produced one of the worst shows in the entire series is beyond me. What seems like a promising `religious cult` episode just descends into farce. There is a wealth of material to work with, Waco and Heaven`s gate springs to mind, but this show focuses on Past Life regression and multiple personality disorder. The actress starring in this episode, winces and grimaces and changes her voice to qualify these past lives that she is channelling, but rather than portray this condition believably, she just reduced me to laughter. It gets worse though as Mulder gets hypnotised to explore his past lives. David Duchovny spends most of this scene with a constipated look that is supposed to signify his pain, and qualifies his past life personalities by describing who is what, when and where as if reading it directly from the script. If you think all this is bad, the deleted scene from this episode is even worse. I hesitate to use the term amateur dramatics, but I cannot conceive of how else to describe this. If it weren`t for this one episode, I wouldn`t hesitate to give this boxset a 10 for content.

This is definitely one of the best seasons of the X Files, and again it`s remarkably cheap. The extras feel better this time round, with some interesting commentaries and documentaries. If you are a fan, then it`s probably redundant me recommending this boxset, but this is an essential purchase with some unsurpassed television on it. Buy it already!