TW watches The X-Files Pilot Episode S01E01

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

I can count literally on one hand how many shows that have grabbed me right away and kept me viewing until the very end. From, Odyssey 5, Enterprise, The Walking Dead are just a few. But all these years later, I can still remember where I was when a little show was shown on Sky called The X-Files.

Little did we know what a phenomenon that was about to unfold and in a way it was very much an exclusive club until it went global in season two.

All I knew was that this was about aliens and UFOs. Don’t come near me with all that UAP shit; they are UFOs and that’s that.

The first that grabbed me was the eerie music and the series logo broken by a light while the rest is in darkness. It makes the viewer slightly uncertain evoking the feeling not to go into the haunted house. A young girl runs through a forest pursued by a massive light. A wind storms up causing a tornado of dead leaves to form as the light increases and she vanishes. As a teaser, it is simplistic and effective and certainly got me asking what the hell was that?

We learn that we are in a National Forest Park in Oregon and police have discovered the girl’s dead body. It is clear that something is going on from the veiled dialogue between the officers and coroner. Identified as Karen Swenson, it is clear that they are not at all surprised.

Then we get to see Agent Dana Scully, a medical doctor that is now being assigned to work with Spooky Fox Mulder and to debunk his work, The X-Files.

Their first meeting in his basement office is quoted word for word by fans when Mulder answers her knock on the door with, “Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted.’ It is clear that Mulder is fully aware of why she is here but respects her work on The Einstein Twin Paradox. Anyone that can rewrite Einstein is someone you want on your side.

He uses her medical knowledge to show her dead bodies which all were abducted but has an unknown element in the autopsy. All have distinct puncture marks on their bodies. Right here is the crux of the series . Where Mulder sees something unusual and potentially extra-terrestrial, Scully is, as she says, logical. To her, there is no mystery here from beyond the veil. The answers are there, you just need to know where to look for them. One believes while the other does not.

We get it all here as they experience lost time as their car goes haywire and later on it happens again and they lose time.

But Scully’s logic is about to be tested to the full to the point we get our first glimpse of her almost giving in to Mulder’s beliefs. The local coroner is furious at the insinuation that he missed something in the other autopsies but it is clear he knows more than he admits. But when they exhume a body, Scully is horrified to fins that it isn’t human at all. Mulder is convinced it is the rotting corpse of an alien given its large eyes among other things but Scully deduces that what they have is the body of an ape of some kind; an ape that ha a metal device lodged in its cavity. Scully is strong enough to call Mulder out but he is persistent and she follows it through.

We are very much in the middle of a town that is keeping secrets. The question is why are they so ready to cover up the deaths of their kids.

Mulder and Scully have their first clash when after witnessing a wheelchair bound girl Peggy O’Dell reading to a comatose bey called Billy Miles. Billy has been in a waking coma for four years and Peggy seems disturbed as if taking orders from Billy to read to him and stay close. Peggy takes a fit during which Mulder shows Scully Peggy has the same puncture wounds as the previous victims. Scully sees a medical mystery but cannot believe they have been rising around in spaceships. Scully is seeing her beliefs challenged as she cannot explain how these kids were found miles from home and one died of exposure on a warm night.

We also get our first torches in the woods scene which would become part of the lore. What Chris Carter does very well is double bluff the viewer. In the woods, Scully is separated from Mulder and a huge light rears up behind her just like the opening scene . But this time it is a vehicle. Similarly when Scully finds the same puncture marks on her, she panics until Mulder reveals they are just mosquito bites.

While Scully is having her perceptions challenged to the point they may well be dealing with a satanic cult, she still believes that the answers to this are rooted somehow in science. But she gets to see the man behind the Spooky label when Mulder opens up to her about his sister’s abduction, how his success as a profiler allowed him to open up the X Files. he warns her that his work is being blocked from a higher power. His claim that the government knows all about it suddenly becomes real when their motel is torched destroying all of their evidence to date. The exhumed body has coldly destroy her work will take her out too.

When the wheelchair bound Peggy is killed running out in front of a car, the coroner’s daughter, Teresa Neman begs them for help as she is going to die too. It is clear to Scully the town is conspiring against them but the questions stack up higher than the answers. And as a viewer you are right there along side our agents desperate to solve this mystery and save a girl’s life.

The chemistry between Mulder and Scully is seamless. When Mulder thinks that Billy Miles is the real killer, Scully reveals that Peggy’s watch stopped at nine and the whole thing makes crazy sense to her. Part of the appeal of Scully is the fact she is grounded in logic and science and this madman Mulder has shown her that there may be more to existence than she thought. It is Scully that comes to revelation that Billy really is the one that brought the others to be experimented on by someone or something. But as Mulder reminds her, she must believe in what she thinks as she is the one that has to wrote it in a report for those trying to debunk The X-Files. Her reputation will be in question if she does.

We also get the trend that would go on for years of Scully just missing the big event. She sees the light that comes for Teresa but perhaps because of the presence of Mulder and Billy’s sheriff father, Teresa is saved and a walking Billy is awake and talking.

We finish with Billy telling how a higher power made him take the others so the aliens could perform experiments on them but the test failed and they wanted all the evidence destroyed. back before the men that assigned her to The X-Files, Scully plays devil’s advocate but gives them the device that was placed in the corpse’s nasal cavity. Wherever this journey will take her, she is now on board, not only because she now believes that Mulder is right but because this is a chance for her to break a whole new side of science to ground these strange events. she has seen too much to deny something is going on and perhaps she feels that Mulder needs someone to keep him on the path so the powers that be do not destroy him and keep whatever secret they have from the public.

Credit must go to composer Mark Snow for his evocative, haunting music which brings to mind the best of John Carpenter like The Fog and Halloween. It is creepy and evocative totally cementing the atmosphere of now just this first episode but the entire series.

As the weeks went on Scully would be challenged on so many levels over the paranormal but who knew that it would lead to ten seasons then a further three down the line Is it any wonder myself and millions like me were hooked on a show that made us believe the truth was really out there.

Oh and remember, always be wary of the Smoking Man in the corner of the room.