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Chris Carter had a weird idea in the early nineties. He wanted to make people afraid of the dark again, but not with slashers or gore. He wanted to use the FBI. When the first of The X Files TV show episodes aired in 1993, nobody really expected a show about filing cabinets and flashlights to change how we watch television forever. It did, though.
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson had this lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry that shouldn't have worked. A believer and a skeptic? It sounds like a cliché now because they basically invented the trope. You’ve got Fox Mulder, a guy whose sister was taken by... something... and Dana Scully, a medical doctor sent to debunk him. They spent nine seasons (and then a couple more later on) chasing shadows.
It wasn't just about aliens. Not really.
The Brutal Split Between Mytharc and Monsters
If you ask a die-hard fan about their favorite The X Files TV show episodes, they’re going to give you two different lists. First, you have the "Mytharc." This is the sprawling, often confusing conspiracy involving the Syndicate, Black Oil, and alien colonization. It’s heavy. It’s dramatic. It’s why we know who the Smoking Man is.
Then you have the "Monster of the Week."
Honestly? These are often the better episodes.
While the mythology eventually tripped over its own feet trying to explain every single detail of an alien invasion, the standalone stories were pure distilled horror or sci-fi. Think about "Squeeze." We meet Eugene Victor Tooms, a guy who can stretch his body to fit through a chimney. It’s terrifying because it feels grounded in a dirty, urban reality. No spaceships needed. Just a guy who wants your liver.
Why the "Monster" Episodes Won
The show excelled when it took a break from the global conspiracy. Episodes like "The Host" featured the Flukeman, a creature born from Chernobyl waste in a New Jersey sewer. It’s gross. It’s memorable. It’s also a perfect example of how the show used practical effects to create something that looks better than most modern CGI.
Writer Darin Morgan eventually showed up and flipped the whole script. He wrote "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," which is arguably the best hour of television ever produced. It stars Peter Boyle as a man who can see how everyone dies. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and deeply cynical. It proved that The X Files TV show episodes could be more than just scary—they could be high art.
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The Architecture of a Classic Episode
Most episodes follow a specific rhythm, but the greats break it. Usually, it starts with a "cold open." Someone dies in a weird way. Mulder gets a tip. Scully sighs and grabs her coat. They go to a small town in Vancouver (which stood in for everywhere from Florida to New Mexico for the first five years).
They talk to a local sheriff who thinks they’re crazy.
Mulder finds a weird piece of slime or a blurry photo. Scully performs an autopsy. She usually says something like, "Mulder, there is a perfectly rational medical explanation for why this man has no skeleton." Then, by the end, she sees something she can't explain, but when she writes her report, she stays objective. That tension kept the show alive for a decade.
The Vancouver Aesthetic
You can't talk about these episodes without talking about the rain. For the first five seasons, the show filmed in British Columbia. It was moody. It was dark. Everything looked damp and grey. That "Pacific Northwest Gothic" vibe became the visual language of the series. When the production moved to Los Angeles in Season 6, the show changed. It got brighter. Sunnier. Some fans think that's when the soul of the show started to drift, even though we got great episodes like "Triangle" (the one shot in long takes on a ghost ship) during the California years.
The Best of The X Files TV Show Episodes You Need to Revisit
If you're looking to dive back in, or if you're a newcomer wondering what the fuss is about, don't start at the beginning and power through. You'll get burnt out on the conspiracy stuff. Pick and choose.
"Home" (Season 4, Episode 2)
This one was so disturbing that Fox actually banned it from being aired in reruns for years. It deals with a family of inbred outlaws in Pennsylvania. It’s visceral. It’s one of the few times Mulder and Scully seem genuinely shaken by human evil rather than extraterrestrial threats.
"Bad Blood" (Season 5, Episode 12)
This is the "Rashomon" episode. Mulder and Scully tell their different versions of a vampire investigation. In Mulder's version, he's a hero and the local sheriff (played by Luke Wilson) is a buck-toothed idiot. In Scully's version, the sheriff is handsome and Mulder is a manic lunatic. It's hilarious.
"Jose Chung's From Outer Space" (Season 3, Episode 20)
A masterpiece of meta-commentary. It’s an episode about an author writing a book about an alien abduction that may or may not have happened. It features Men in Black played by Alex Trebek and Jesse Ventura. It’s weird, but it perfectly captures the "Trust No One" paranoia of the nineties.
The Legacy of the "Scully Effect"
There is a real-world phenomenon named after Dana Scully. Seriously.
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The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media conducted a study that found a huge spike in women entering STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) because of Gillian Anderson's character. Before Scully, women in sci-fi were often the damsel or the love interest. Scully was the smartest person in the room. She was a scientist. She was a skeptic.
In The X Files TV show episodes, her skepticism wasn't a flaw; it was a tool. Even when she was "wrong" about the aliens, her methodology was sound. That mattered. It still matters.
What People Often Get Wrong About the Ending
The original run ended in 2002 with "The Truth." People hated it at the time. It was basically a courtroom drama where everyone reminded the audience what had happened over the last nine years. It felt like a clip show.
Then came the 2008 movie, I Want to Believe, which was a quiet, dark thriller. People hated that too because it wasn't "big" enough.
Finally, we got Seasons 10 and 11 in 2016 and 2018.
The revival is a mixed bag. Some of it is rough. The mytharc gets incredibly convoluted, involving William (Mulder and Scully's son) and some questionable choices regarding the Cigarette Smoking Man’s motivations. But! We also got "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster." It’s a late-era classic that reminds you why the show worked in the first place. It didn't take itself too seriously.
Behind the Scenes: The Writers' Room
The show was a factory for talent. Look at the credits of the best The X Files TV show episodes and you’ll see names like Vince Gilligan. Yeah, the Breaking Bad guy. He cut his teeth writing for Mulder and Scully. You also had Frank Spotnitz, Howard Gordon (who went on to do 24), and Glen Morgan and James Wong.
These writers weren't just making a TV show; they were experimenting with the medium. They did episodes in black and white (The Post-Modern Prometheus). They did episodes that took place in real-time. They did episodes about sentient AI and cursed film sets. They had the freedom to fail, which is something a lot of modern "prestige" TV lacks because everything is so tightly controlled.
The Limits of Conspiracy
The show's biggest weakness was its own success. Because it was a hit, Fox wanted it to go on forever. Chris Carter had to keep stretching the mystery.
Eventually, the "truth" became so tangled that it was impossible to resolve. Was it a colonization plan? Was it a virus? Was the government working with the aliens, or were they just trying to survive? By the time we got to the later seasons, the answers didn't matter as much as the atmosphere.
How to Watch The X Files Today
If you want to experience the best of the show, you have to embrace the grain. While the HD remasters look incredible—they actually went back to the original film negatives—some of the "vibe" is lost when you can see every detail of the rubber monster suits.
Start with the Pilot. It's one of the best pilots in history. It establishes the dynamic immediately. Then, skip around. Don't feel guilty about missing a three-part episode about a submarine in the middle of Season 3 if you just want to see a story about a cursed psychic.
Essential "Next Steps" for a Deep Dive
To really understand the impact of The X Files TV show episodes, look at the context of the era. The Cold War had just ended. People were looking for a new "enemy." The show suggested that the enemy was within our own government.
Watch these three episodes in order to see the show's range:
- "Ice" (Season 1) - A tribute to The Thing. Tight, claustrophobic, and paranoid.
- "War of the Coprophages" (Season 3) - A brilliant comedy about mass hysteria and cockroaches.
- "Memento Mori" (Season 4) - A heavy, emotional look at Scully's battle with cancer, which was tied into the larger conspiracy.
This trifecta shows you the horror, the humor, and the heart.
The show taught us that "The Truth is Out There," but it also reminded us that the search for the truth is usually more interesting than the answer itself. We never really wanted Mulder to find his sister or stop the invasion. We just wanted to see him and Scully in a dark hallway with their flashlights, looking for something that shouldn't exist.
That’s why we’re still talking about it thirty years later. The world is still weird, the government is still secretive, and honestly, we still kind of want to believe.
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Practical Takeaways for Fans and Newcomers
To get the most out of your viewing experience today, focus on the "Monster of the Week" format for the highest quality-to-time ratio. While the overarching mythology is culturally significant, the standalone episodes contain the most inventive writing and cinematography of the nineties. If you are a writer or creator, study the dialogue between Mulder and Scully; it is a masterclass in establishing character through ideological conflict rather than just plot. Finally, pay attention to the score by Mark Snow. His use of ambient synthesizers and that iconic whistle theme defined the "sound" of mystery for an entire generation.