With its combination of mythology foundation and character beats, this two-parter is an essential piece of "The X-Files" history. While the episodes are heavy on mythology building, they also serve as a chance for Scully to learn some difficult news regarding her sister's murder, and Anderson's performance in these are terrific being able to balance the detective side of the mystery with the emotion of Scully's personal trauma. With ties to the series' popular mythology, the black oil is easily one of the creepiest elements of the show.Īside from introducing the villainous oil into the mythology, this two-parter is also a standout for Gillian Anderson's Scully.
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Written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz (who would both shepherd the series all the way through the finale) and directed by Rob Bowman (who would also go on to helm "The X-Files: Fight the Future" film), this two-parter introduces one of the series' most terrifying villains: the dreaded black oil. It's a marvelous season opener that shows Carter's series as both thought provoking and moving. encounters (Mulder's sister was after all abducted), the episode beautifully explores Mulder's own personal demons with alien life and how far he'll go looking for the truth - personal or non-personal. One of the great aspects of this episode is how it effectively deals with Mulder's beliefs and how it toys with whether or not he actually witnessed what he's been searching for his whole life. One of those was, of course, the existence of extraterrestrials which was a primary theme of the series that tied directly into Fox Mulder's (Duchovny) obsessions.Īfter the events of the explosive finale of Season 1, the episode is notable for featuring its first full-fledged extraterrestrial - a watershed moment for the series. "The X-Files" was never shy about the fact that at its core, it was a show about conspiracy theories and how the government uses its power to hide secrets. 14 LITTLE GREEN MEN (Season 2, Episode 1)
With an incredible guest performance by Cranston (who humanizes what is essentially the monster of the week) and a taut self-contained mystery involving frequency waves, "Drive" is an utterly efficient and relentlessly paced mystery that never lets up until its emotionally powerful conclusion. Intense, action packed and morally engaging, this episode showcases how Gilligan would always bring a deft humanism to his X-Files stories. Cranston's performance in the episode was so great that Gilligan knew he only had one person in mind for the role of Walter White after that.Ĭranston plays a man that is suffering from an illness but is also on the run and being pursued by the police (later by Mulder whom he believes the man to be part of an X-File) in a high-speed car chase across the Nevada desert.
Gilligan, a driving force and co-executive producer of "The X-Files," actually wrote the episode. No, not the Nicolas Winding Refn art-house action classic, but this glorious standalone episode was actually the first collaboration between "Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston. Granted for a series that ran as long as "The X-Files" did, we're bound to miss on a couple of fan favorites, but hopefully these 15 are great examples of both stand alone episodes and mythology episodes. With talks of more episodes in the future, here are our 15 best episodes of the classic series (just don't go making up any conspiracies if your favorite didn't make the cut, all right?!). RELATED: The 15 Most Underrated Genre Shows Of The Last Decade
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Part paranoid conspiracy thriller ("All The Presidents Men" and "3 Days of the Condor" are massive cinematic influences), part alien invasion, all revolutionary television Carter's TV series remains a fierce and seminal piece of the genre. Big, heady, and magically cinematic, "The X-Files" was unlike anything that had come before.
Created by Chris Carter and starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson (in career defining performances), "The X-Files" became a groundbreaking TV phenomenon that reinvented what science fiction could do for television. it seems that phrase is more relevant now than ever and way back in the 1990s, it was the tagline that was on everyone's mind.