Things Are Getting Strange

Season 2 of The X-Files begins a whole new era for the series.

Little Green Men is perhaps the series's third pilot - a great jumping on point and a great episode all round. Just why do the aliens dance during abductions and how much of this episode really happened? Just how bad at their jobs are the Blue Beret Crash Retrieval Team?

It is perhaps a bit of a shame the episode prevented us from seeing Mulder vainly trying to get a dead body through customs...

The Host is a wonderfully gross monster of the week episode. Was getting your own name tattooed on your arm the done thing back in the 90s (in Russia anyway?). Also the Flukeman is absolutely a ninja given his ability to attack from stealth. 

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Episodes 24 of The X-Files season 1 asks a lot of questions - and while Fox might once have worried audiences would conclude the series was  over - for season 2 to pick up.

The Erlenmeyer Flask finally, finally has Scully seeing something with no wriggle room and very little other interpretation. And she'll be hard pressed to argue the object she decides to pickle doesn't have some supernatural implications. 

Mulder on the other hand possibly is not remotely paranoid or cautious enough and things don't go so well for him.

We sum up the season as a whole and get into favourite episodes as voted via social media alongside our own. Also least favourite episode and favourite villain.

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Episodes 22 & 23 of The X-Files season 1 really do show the variances of the series.

Born Again's major revelation is that Scully gets a front-row seat to some supernatural happenings. Which... she probably writes off as something mundane. Oddly, we don't get to hear her version of events in what feels like a re-do of Shadows.

Roland features perhaps the most cold and vicious of the villainous characters to date, but is a very touching and affecting episode with a possibly dark sting come the end. We agree this one is very good, if oddly the series could nail down fake-beard technology.

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Episodes 20 & 21 of The X-Files season 1 are both excellent!

Darkness Falls is a wholesale tribute to Ice (or possibly Chris Carter deciding he could also do a bottle episode with paranoia and in-fighting) just set out in the wilderness with bugs for enemies and an apparent inadvertent environmental theme.

Tooms is the unexpected sequel to near universal favourite episode Squeeze. Eugene Victor Tooms is back, but damn, is his doctor in love with him or not? Highly unprofessional. We debate whether the episode should really be centred more on Scully than Mulder. Also returning is Cigarette Smoking Man who has taken up residence in new on-going character Walter Skinner's office.

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Episodes 18 & 19 of The X-Files season 1 seem to continue the series's struggle to find its own identity.

Miracle Man has been described elsewhere as something you'd expect in Murder She Wrote - which is not wholly unfair. Scully continues her proud tradition of inadequate or non-existent first aid skills, while Mulder unexpectedly gets some weirdness regarding Samantha.

Shapes is an absolutely by the numbers werewolf story. But at least it has Hawk from Twin Peaks in a guest star role. Scully has to be wilfully misremembering events in this one. And does this episode have foreshadowing for a season 9 episode (no).

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Episodes 16 & 17 of The X-Files season 1 continue an uneven run.

Young At Heart should be a good monster of the week episode with a man with a salamander hand! But somehow that never really factors into anything, least of all the villain's new career as a piano tuner. We're pretty sure Scully's losing another one of her friends after the events of this episode.

E.B.E. is a gloriously good episode and filled with conspiratorial goodness. We get a little hung up on our own separate ideas of what was where in the truck (and why you would ship an alien body to Washington state for killing when surely that can also be done in Turkey?) and when, but can agree we like The Lone Gunmen and the increasing murky levels that Deep Throat is operating in.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner finds us wondering about potentially another type of alien who don't quite match any from previous encounters.

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Episodes 14 & 15 of The X-Files season 1 could not be more different!

Gender Bender has us discussing how aliens don't appear to have previously had any anthropological interest in humanity. What the Kindred actually are up to is open to serious debate as is how often does Brother Martin - Marty to friends and lovers - actually shower if they still have white clay under their fingernails by the time the fifth dead body is left in their wake.

Lazarus on the other hand prompts some questions about Scully's previous personal life and her exes. Also what kind of staff Maryland University keeps on their payroll. We note once again the strangely long shadow that Exorcist III seemingly casts over the series.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner notes that this may be the first time we've seen corporeal aliens in the series - even if that red string is only connected in the final seconds of the episode.

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Episodes 12 & 13 of The X-Files season 1 offer quite the contrast of tones for the series.

Fire was for some reason once seen as particularly frightening, but we both had a grand time re-watching this episode. Not sure it was supposed to be quite as funny as we found it. Among the weird revelations on this rewatch was the easily overlooked detail that the villain is literally using cans of rocket fuel while repainting a house.

Also so much Sculder content for those so inclined. You might not have made it to series regular, Phoebe, but you certainly spurred things on.

Beyond the Sea by contrast is a much more sombre affair and our first Scully-focused episode. The heady mix of Silence of the Lambs, Exorcist III and Zodiac is pretty effective all things considered. And of course, this would not work without Brad Dourif as guest star.

Also our first Twin Peaks cast member in Don S Davis as William Scully.

...wait, do Mulder and Scully both have fathers with the same first name?

And for the first time, no Kim's Conspiracy Corner. No aliens, no hint of government involvement. Unless Nick's bizarre theory about Cecil L'Ively being the origins of the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender somehow pans out.

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We both enjoyed episodes 10 & 11 of The X-Files season 1. Not that we don't have a few observations. Questions. Criticisms...

Fallen Angel offers some sort of Predator-like thrills (just be glad you can't see what it actually looks like... Not in a Bird Box sense, more in a 'You might die laughing' sense), hints at much vaster conspiracies but also has us asking awkward questions about what the presumed unseen alien at the centre of all this is up to - while Deep Throat's allegiance is now somewhat questionable.

Eve has Mulder's least logical jump to conclusion ever and on top of that he's incredibly wrong! What initially looked like maybe vampires, but Mulder insists is cattle mutilation turns out to instead be eugenics. Scully remains terrible at talking to kids though.

(but seriously, where did the 8 litres of blood go?)

Kim's Conspiracy Corner surprisingly starts connecting the red thread between episodes as we find that the ghost alien from Space and the seemingly stranded creature in Fallen Angel aren't all that different.

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Episodes 8 & 9 of Season 1; Ice and Space.

For Ice we take a trip to Alaska for the X-Files' version of The Thing complete with paranoia and probable alien life. As Kim notes this is the first time we've seen alien life on-screen in the series.

Then of course, we get ghost aliens, some confusing special effects and the apparent reveal that the FBI are essential help in space crisis' in Space.

Kim's Conspiracy Corner attempts to fit ancient aliens and space ghosts into the overall whole.

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