X-files Your topic title must have at least 10 characters.

Lot of episodes in this show. Many seasons. Dips and highs.

What's your fav episode/s?

Probably go with Duane Barry, although the ending where he escapes a hospital no problem and goes over Scully is a reach, and it's follow up is also somewhat disappointing, the majority of the episode is top-notch.

This one never gets old. It's all kinds of fun. Home is also really good, although I think that's largely because it's aesthetic/use of retro music really appeals to me.

It's not my favorite episode, but when I was a kid the one that scared me the most what the"Flukeman" (human parasite) one where he lived in the sewers. God that was scary.

Series was so good, love it so much. Perfect blend of good serious crime drama, horror, sci-fi, and camp.

I'd love to see them come back and do a semi-serious spoof of all the UFO shit that's happening right now. Mulder just like 'See, Scully? I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU!"

Obligatory shout out to the Peacock family episode.

Darkness Falls. The episode with the green bugs that were laying dormant in some old growth trees. First episode I ever saw, created an instant fan.

Badlaa. Creepy little blood caked man on a cart crawling into people and possessing them. Maybe not the best, but it gave me some hope the show could be good even after Mulder left. False hope in the end, but still a good episode.

Yes. Legit one of the grossest creatures.

Was that the incest one where Mulder falls in love, sort of?

It's the incest murder house. I think it was removed from syndication due to complaints on the violence and...you know....quadruple amputee incest.

I also remember 'Die Hand Die Verletzt' being great. I generally tended to like the sci-fi episodes more but episodes like this were great for supernatural themes.

This is hard to choose but I'm going to say for now S6 E21 Field Trip. I was in High School when this aired and I was really into psychedelics at the time so this episode really resonated with me. I also just like how freaking weird it is.

@warmblur:Field Trip made no damned sense (they were in a shared hallucinations) but it stands out to me as one of the more memorable ones for sure.

@judaspete: Darkness Falls was another pretty memorable one for me.

@mrbojangles25, @HoolaHoopMan: Incest murder house is the "Home" episode @mattbbpl mentioned. I'm not sure I'd call this a "good" episode but it sure had an impact. The funny thing is I remember watching it when it first aired and thinking to myself "huh, that's funny. I don't think other episodes have a content warning card at the beginning of the ep. Meh, I'm sure it's nothing..."

For funny episodes, I really liked Bad Blood. The Rashamon-style storytelling and the wildly different version of their stories were hilarious. From Outer Space was also a good one.

Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose was also a solid episode for the storytelling.

Our Town was also really solid and creepy in a very real kind of way.

Honestly, there were a -lot- of really good individual episodes of X-Files. I think that speaks to its structure. This was in the era when shows were just starting to move away from a sitcom-style of storytelling where status quo was resumed by the end of each episode so a viewer could plug in at any point and not be lost. X-Files alternated halfway between "monster of the week" and "main plot". However, while I prefer the shows that have less filler it was the opposite with X-Files. The monster of the week episodes were the best IMHO, and they had a lot of great bottle eps.

Absolutely!

I'm rewatching it again and freaked out when I saw it wasn't on Prime anymore. But it's on Disney+ ....and I have the blu-ray, not sure why I did.

Anyways Home is my favourite episode. I'll rewatch that episode even if I'm not binging the series.

I also really enjoy Bad Blood, Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, Dreamland and II, Five Potatoes, and Jose Chung's 'from Outer Space'.

I agree with others that monster of the week episodes were the best.

@SOedipus: @mattbbpl: When I think about it, it was the necessity of the format back then. It's easy to forget but TV back then just didn't work the way it does today. When a TV show episode aired, that was it unless you or someone you know taped it. It kind of forced TV writers down a path of maintaining a status quo from episode to episode. You can't do a progressing story from ep to ep if there's no access to previous eps to get caught up.

I used to watch Buffy when it was on. I forgot to tape an episode one day, and it was a very long time before I got to eventually see it. Same goes for the season finale of Season 3, which didn't air in the US due to the Columbine shooting having occurred not that long before. It was like a year before I managed to track it down from Canada to watch at potato-quality.

Nowadays we have access to pretty much everything at all times (provided you pay for the relevant streaming service). Too bad when you add all the streaming services together it still costs as much as cable anyway. :(

@SOedipus: Yea, noticed it popped up "11 days here". Man, Prime sucks. Just that, and Shaw Brother movies was the only reason bothered with it.

@Byshop: I've learned that I just straight up prefer self contained stories anyway. I prefer focus to my stories - something well thought out and planned from beginning to end without the meanderings that accompany a "I'm not sure when we'll be forced to end it" series. That's why I prefer movies, anthologies, and miniseries to traditional drama shows.

I also know that I'm in the minority there, though.

I see you are a man of culture.

I get that but there's also only so much story you can tell within the time constraints of a bottle episode. I definitely agree on succinct stories, though. UK TV shows tend to be structured like this, and I'll take a planned mini-series over a meandering show that wastes its time over five 26 episode seasons. Recently I just finished Lisey's Story and Dr Death, both of which were excellent.

There's also the "crime (usually a murder) occurs in a small and overwise seemly innocent community that results in an investigation that unearths like a million secrets everyone had that tear the community apart before they actually find out anything about the murder" genre. Broadchurch, The Killing, Deadwater Fell, The Sinner, Mare of Easttown, Safe, The Five, The Stranger, The Woods, that one Austrainlian series that's literally titled "Secrets and Lies", etc. Often, many of them are based on books by Harlan Coben.

@Byshop: You just reminded me, I still need to watch the 3rd season (sorry, "series". I'm from the US) of Broadchurch.

It's decent. Like The Killing the final season mostly revolved around a new and mostly self-contained arc and wasn't necessarily as good as the main arc but it's worth watching.

@mattbbpl: TBH I think the Xfiles was straight up bad at telling an overarching story any way cut it. Good at building mystery, but similar to a show like Lost, when it came to delivering the payoff it implodes in on itself.

Something like DS9, which would argue was ahead of it's time, managed to deliver a weekly contained story within the frame-work of a greater story week to week. Even if missed an episode, still get a A/B plot-lines for 98% of the show the over-arching plot was easy enough to comprehend, in the event some chunk was missing.

Home is the most memorable to me. I don't watch it often because it's pretty messed up.

@uninspiredcup: Yeah, it's main arc was a victim of its own success. It was time to end it, and they had a cash cow on their hands. So they just... Kept going, lol.

The most memorable ones for me are Detour and Alpha.

In Detour Mulder and Scully investigate the murder of people in the Appalachian Mountains by a 'creature with red eyes'. Then ending for this scared the pants off me.

In Alpha the duo investigate killings blamed on an Asian dog called the Wanshang Dhole. The ending to this story was excellent as Mulder gets a new "I Want To Believe" poster.

I forget what name of episode was from what season, but it was one where they dramatized the accounts of the characters and everyone had a different take and I think Jesse Ventura was in it.

Checked Wikipedia, it is called "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", Season 3 Episode 20.

YESSSS!

Everyone in this thread has impeccable X-Files taste.