Post by matt on Nov 7, 2022 15:24:41 GMT -5
From “monster of the week” classics to alien mythology arcs, EW selects Agents Mulder and Scully’s most memorable exploits.
"The truth is out there." Those words regularly appeared at the conclusion of the opening credits of The X-Files, the Chris Carter-created series about FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully as they delved into the more unique and not-readily-explainable cases landing in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Sometimes they revolved around a so-called "Monster of the Week," other times — far more often than they should've, if we're to be honest — they involved aliens.
Whatever the cases involved, the chemistry between castmates David Duchovny (Mulder) and Gillian Anderson (Scully) drove the series for nine seasons between 1993-2002, two movies — one in 1998, one in 2008 — and a two-season revival (2016 and 2018). Okay, so maybe both of them weren't on every episode, but the episodes where they did share the screen together were the ones that truly defined the series, and EW has picked the 25 best of the bunch in seasonal order.
25 Best X-Files Episodes
"Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1)
More than a few TV shows have kicked off with a pilot episode that bears no resemblance to what the series would eventually become, but in the case of The X-Files, it's hard to imagine a better way to introduce the concept, the central characters, or the ongoing mystery that continues throughout the entirety of its run.
Indeed, the series provides us with the not-so-secret origin of how Dana Scully was initially assigned to the oft-dismissed, occasionally-ridiculed department of the FBI known as the X-Files. Not only do we learn that she was assigned to serve as a "debunker" of sorts for Mulder's wild theories about the strange cases that land in his lap, but viewers are actually given the opportunity to witness the first meeting between Scully and Mulder in the latter's basement office, a sad spot he describes as being designated for "the FBI's Most Unwanted."
Immediately thereafter, they're off to Oregon to investigate a series of unexplained deaths which Mulder believes may be somehow linked to alien abductions. It's a great way to set up the "he wants to believe / she doesn't" dynamic between the partners while also providing some moments that reveal Scully's willingness to admit her inability to explain certain events.
Not every soon-to-be regular element of The X-Files is in place from the get-go, but there's plenty enough here that the series was able to capture viewers' attention straight out of the gate. Sounds like a solid pilot to us.
"Squeeze" / "Tooms" (Season 1, Episodes 3 & 21)
Although these two tales are told at different points during the first season, the fact that they find Mulder and Scully going after the same "monster of the week" make it more than reasonable to tackle both of them in the same entry. The "monster" in question is actually a man by the name of Eugene Tooms, but he definitely possesses some monstrous qualities, in particular a taste for human livers and an ability to stretch and squeeze his body into narrow spaces.
There are a number of gross moments involving bile, including one that results in one of Mulder's funniest lines in the history of the series: "Is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?" Doug Hutchison plays Tooms in both episodes, and it's hard to imagine that anyone else could've made the character come across quite as creepy, and not just because of the effects-enhanced eyes, either. Hutchison really gives his all in the performance, but arguably never more so than in "Tooms," when he bursts forth from his nest completely in the nude. Talk about committing to a role.
There are two other notable occurrences in "Tooms," and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention them: not only do we get to hear the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) speak for the first time, but the episode provides viewers with the introduction of FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), who we'd soon be seeing with considerable regularity.
"Ice" (Season 1, Episode 8)
An episode that takes place at an arctic outpost after a mass murder-suicide, the only survivor of which is a dog, and a plot that causes Mulder, Scully, and some fellow scientists to succumb to paranoia that someone might be under the influence of an alien creature? Okay, yes, the similarities to John Carpenter's The Thing — itself an adaptation of John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There? — are undeniable. Not only are they fully acknowledged by Chris Carter (although Glen Morgan actually began writing the episode after reading a Science News article about a 250,000-year-old item discovered encased in ice in Greenland), but production designer Graeme Murray actually worked on Carpenter's film.
A classic example of the TV trope known as the "bottle episode," where the majority of the proceedings take place in a single location, "Ice" has what may be the single best guest cast of any episode, with Felicity Huffman, Xander Berkeley, and Steve Hytner as the scientists who accompany Mulder and Scully to the arctic compound and Jeff Kober as their pilot. When they arrive at the compound, they're attacked by the dog, with Bear being bitten and promptly being infected by something alien that – in a very disconcerting moment – is soon seen moving under the pilot's skin.
Even though the premise is familiar and the worm-like creatures immediately cause flashbacks to the Ceti eels from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the episode nonetheless manages to ramp up the tension in a big way.
"Beyond the Sea" (Season 1, Episode 13)
From the very beginning, the story of The X-Files involved Mulder's family, but with "Beyond the Sea," viewers get an introduction to the importance of family in Scully's life, specifically her father, Captain William Scully (Don Davis). Admittedly, Capt. Scully's time on the series is rather short-lived, but his presence is felt well beyond the episode, setting up Dana's need for a substitute father figure from this point on.
After enjoying an evening with her parents, Scully falls asleep on the couch, waking up to see her father sitting in the chair across from her, his lips moving but no sound emerging. When the phone suddenly rings, she answers it to find her mother on the other end, revealing that her father has died of a heart attack. Looking back at the chair, she finds it now empty, but this isn't the last vision she has of Capt. Scully. Fast-forwarding a bit, she and Mulder visit imprisoned serial killer Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif), who claims to have information about a recent kidnapping, but while she's there, Scully sees her father again, singing the song played at his funeral: "Beyond the Sea." Later, Boggs claims to be able to contact the late Capt. Scully, putting the typically-skeptical Dana in an awkward position where she's the one who wants to believe.
This wasn't the episode that won Gillian Anderson an Emmy, but it certainly could've been. It's a wonderful spotlight and one of her strongest performances of the series.
"The Host" (Season 2, Episode 2)
Enter… the Flukeman! Yes, it's one of the series' more disconcerting monsters of the week, but as always seems to be the case with these situations, it's a monster that makes for one of the X-Files' best episodes. It was written by series creator Chris Carter, who cited three sources of inspiration: reading about Chernobyl, the extinction of several species during the 1990s, and his dog having worms. (We're guessing that last one was heavy on his mind when it came time to design the creature.)
The episode opens on a Russian freighter off the New Jersey coast, where a crewman repairing the ship's toilets is suddenly snatched by an unseen force and pulled down into the septic system. When initially assigned to the case, Mulder first views it as little more than glorified busywork, but that begins to change when Scully finds a flukeworm inside the crewman's liver, and it continues when a city worker is pulled underwater while working in the Newark sewer. In this case, the city worker survives, but after he coughs up a flukeworm in the shower... Well, it's not long after that when the aforementioned Flukeman — played by Darin Morgan, who also wrote the episode and whose name will come up again very shortly — formally makes his appearance, after which things start to get a little gross.
"The Host" is definitely one of those X-Files episodes that'll give you the chills, but it also has the potential to make you a little queasy at times, too, making for enjoyably unsettling viewing.
"Humbug" (Season 2, Episode 20)
With "Humbug," we come to the first of the five episodes written by Darin Morgan for the series. Make no mistake: all four of the others will either make their way into the list or at least warrant mention. That's just how defining Morgan's work was for The X-Files.
Directed by Kim Manners, "Humbug" takes place in Gibsonton, Florida, home to a community of former circus sideshow performers, including Dr. Blockhead and The Conundrum (played by Jim Rose and the Engima from the Jim Rose Sideshow Circus), Mr. Nutt (Michael J. Anderson of Twin Peaks fame), and Lanny (Vincent Schiavelli), who has a conjoined twin named Leonard. Mulder and Scully make their way to Gibsonton after the latest in a series of attacks that have occurred sporadically over the course of the past 28 years. Morgan watched a video tape of the Jim Rose Sideshow before writing the episode, so it's no wonder that he hired Rose and the Enigma for the cast, but in addition to that street cred, Morgan also utilized "Frenzy" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins for the soundtrack, which is a wonderfully off-kilter and slightly disturbing musical selection.
"Humbug" was decidedly the most comedic episode of The X-Files up to that point, and the tonal difference made a tremendous impact. Duchovny once said of Morgan's work on the series, "What I loved about his scripts was that he seemed to be trying to destroy the show," but what he did was invigorate it on a regular basis.
"Anasazi" (Season 2, Episode 25)
For TV viewers, there's nothing more frustrating than watching the season finale of a series that ends in a cliffhanger, and for fans of The X-Files, this was arguably the most frustrating season finale of the show, if only because it made for the longest summer everrrrrrr while waiting for season three to begin. To be fair, though, you know things are going to be bad when an episode begins with a bad-news phone tree that ends with the Cigarette Smoking Man saying, "That was the phone call I never wanted to get."
This is an action-packed installment, starting out with an associate of the Lone Gunmen — a guy known as The Thinker — hacking the defense department computer system and handing Mulder an encrypted file which ostensibly contains all of the US government's files on alien encounters. Although Mulder is initially frustrated by the encryption, it's Scully who recognizes that the key to cracking it involves finding someone who speaks Navajo, which she finally does, but before that happens...
Oh, man, what doesn't happen? The Cigarette Smoking Man surprises Mulder's dad by paying him a house call, after which the despicable Agent Krycek (Nicholas Lea) does the same. Realizing he's in danger, Scully takes Mulder to her place, but they don't end up staying there long because soon it's off to New Mexico, where Mulder finds a buried boxcar filled with alien corpses, and the whole thing ends with Mulder seemingly on the verge of burning to death. Now that's a cliffhanger!
"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (Season 3, Episode 4)
Every one of the episodes Darin Morgan wrote for The X-Files is memorable, but this is the only one that just might bring a tear to your eye before the credits roll. That's due to the writing, of course, but it also has a lot to do with the Emmy-winning performance by Peter Boyle as the titularly-referenced Clyde Bruckman, a middle-aged man who, during the course of the episode, reminds viewers that being able to tell the future isn't always a blessing and, indeed, can truly be a curse.
Mulder and Scully find themselves working on a case involving the murder of a doll-collecting tea leaf reader, but the only part of the woman at the scene of the crime are her eyes and her entrails, which makes for a pretty grotesque visual. It's the aforementioned Mr. Bruckman who stumbles upon the poor woman's body in the dumpster outside his apartment, and when he's questioned by Mulder and Scully and casually offers up details about the crime, Mulder begins to suspect that Bruckman is psychic.
Speaking of psychics, there's another one briefly in the mix — The Stupendous Yappi, played to egotistical perfection by Jaap Broeker — and it's entertaining to watch him view Mulder with the purest disdain, accusing him of all people of skepticism. But it's the interactions between Mulder, Scully, and Bruckman that are the heart of the episode, and it's the relationship he forges with Scully that leads to the emotional moment in the concluding minutes of the proceedings.
"War of the Coprophages" (Season 3, Episode 12)
Who doesn't love cockroaches? Oh, right: nobody, which is why this Darin Morgan-penned episode manages to be filled with a lot of nervous laughter derived from seeing other people having to deal with an invasion of these creepy-crawly critters.
When the episode begins, Mulder is enjoying a bit of downtime, doing exactly what you'd expect him to be doing to relax — investigating some recent UFO sightings — when an accidental encounter with a local sheriff leads him to get involved in a spate of what seem to be roach attacks. Indeed, a few more occur while Mulder is in town, which inspires a running gag throughout the first half of the episode about Mulder calling Scully for help, inspiring her to offer to join him in the town, only for him to decide she doesn't need to do so.
Of course, eventually Scully does join Mulder, but before their reunion, Mulder has a close encounter with Dr. Bambi Berenbaum (Bobbie Phillips), a cockroach researcher who helps him look into the town's problem, and when she believes that some of the roaches may be mechanical, it leads him to Dr. Ivanov, a scientist who works with insect-inspired robots. In the end, the whole thing circles back to Dr. Eckerle, the first local to experience a roach attack, and there's a big ol' dung explosion to wrap up.
Last but not least, be sure you're watching the screen very, very closely at around the 31:30 mark. (If you know, you know.)
"Pusher" (Season 3, Episode 17)
His name is Robert Patrick Modell (Robert Wisden), but the FBI — specifically, Agent Frank Burst (Vic Polizos) — call him "Pusher," and he's been responsible for a number of contract killings over the past couple of years. They've never been able to tie him to any of the deaths, however, because they've all been labeled as suicides. Why? Because Modell has the psychic ability to "push" people to do his bidding, even if that bidding results in bodily harm or — as in these instances — death.
Written by Vince Gilligan with the intent of creating a tense cat-and-mouse game between Modell and Mulder, it's fair to say that he succeeds, particularly in the scene toward the end of the proceedings where Modell forces Mulder to play Russian Roulette. It's later determined that Modell is just barely staving off death, battling a brain tumor, but he did manage to survive long enough to return in the not-nearly-as-good season five episode "Kitsunegari."
Also worth a mention: in addition to the Flukeman popping up on the cover of a tabloid in a grocery store, the episode includes a cameo by Dave Grohl, who, in addition to being obsessed with the show, was also in awe of Anderson. In a BBC Radio 1 interview, he said, "[Gillian] was the one person who I was, like, 'We're gonna get married. One of these days, she and I will finally meet and this will finally happen.'" Spoiler: they did eventually meet, but the love connection failed to materialize.
"Jose Chung's From Outer Space" (Season 3, Episode 20)
By the time this Darin Morgan episode made its debut, the younger X-Files fans probably had no frame of reference to the actor playing Jose Chung, but rest assured that fans of '60s and '70s TV were well familiar with Charles Nelson Reilly, who gives a deliciously droll performance in an episode that's already filled to the brim with laughs.
Trying to explain the goings-on within "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" gets a little difficult, and that's not just a cop-out, it's the God's honest truth. The episode starts with two teenagers captured by two aliens that are in turn confronted by a third alien, one seemingly of a different species. From there, author Jose Chung interviews Scully about this encounter, after which he gets perspectives from a variety of other individuals. To say that the "unreliable narrator" trope is in effect is an understatement, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining. And Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek cast as the men in black? It's the stuff of genius, plain and simple.
"Darin is a truly original comic mind," Chris Carter said in X-Files Confidential. "I don't know anybody in the world working in film, and that's what we work in here even though it appears on television, who has the voice Darin has. He is one in many million." In closing, fans of Jose Chung's work may wish to seek out his book Doomsday Defense… or, you know, at least try to hunt down and watch the Morgan-penned Millennium episode that revolves around it.
"Home" (Season 4, Episode 2)
Some episodes of television take up residence in your brain from the moment you see them and establish enough of a beachhead that you never need to see them again to remember just how traumatizing they were. Such is the case with "Home," which, just in case you're wondering, is just as disturbing now as it was when it originally aired, making it all the more understandable why it was the only episode during the series' run that Fox never reran.
If you've somehow managed to go this long without seeing "Home," we don't really want to spoil the experience for you, especially since it holds the honor of being named by Vulture as the most terrifying television episode to watch on Halloween. Suffice it to say that Mulder and Scully travel to the small town of Home, Pennsylvania and meet with Sheriff Andy Taylor (Tucker Smallwood) about the discovery of the body of a baby born with severe birth defects, which leads them to the Peacocks, a family with a long history of... uh, well, let's just say they have a close family relationship. Very close.
Directed by Kim Manners and co-written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, "Home" might be disturbing to some — actually, make that to most — but it hasn't stopped it from regularly landing atop best-of lists. If you've never seen it, you should, but if you never, ever want to go "Home" again, rest assured, you won't be alone.
"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" (Season 4, Episode 7)
William B. Davis has literally been part of The X-Files since the pilot, with the Cigarette-Smoking Man, a.k.a. Cancer Man, hovering in the background of the meeting where Dana Scully first finds herself teamed with Fox Mulder, but viewers knew very little about his back story until this episode. Well, frankly, they still didn't know much about it, since everything that unfolds between the bookending scenes ostensibly only took place within a story that Frohike (of the Lone Gunmen) read in a magazine that he believes may reveal the real background of the Cigarette Smoking Man, henceforth to be referred to simply as CSM. Mind you, those aforementioned bookending scenes involve CSM setting up a rifle in a sniper's nest with an apparent goal of assassinating Frohike, so it certainly seems like he's stumbled onto something compromising.
No matter what the veracity of the episode's many flashbacks may be, "Musings" nonetheless provides an entertaining look at a history that might belong to CSM, who was ostensibly part of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., and everything from the Anita Hill hearings and the Rodney King verdict to the "Miracle on Ice" at the 1980 Winter Olympics. Obviously, we don't get much Mulder and Scully in the episode, but we do get to see Jerry Hardin reprising his role as Deep Throat, which is never a bad thing, and CSM offers his twist on a certain Forrest Gump monologue.
"Paper Hearts" (Season 4, Episode 10)
One of the key moments in Fox Mulder's history that drives him throughout the series is trying to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of his sister, Samantha, when they were kids. (He was watching the short-lived Bill Bixby series The Magician at the time. But you probably already knew that.) While the presumption throughout the majority of The X-Files is that she was the victim of alien abduction, this episode takes a beat to contemplate a different possibility: what if she was actually the prey of a child-molesting serial killer?
Okay, so it's not the most upbeat episode of the series, but it's damned sure a gripping one, and you can chalk that up to the efforts of two individuals: Vince Gilligan, who wrote the script, and Tom Noonan, who utilizes the same disconcerting creepiness he did in Michael Mann's Manhunter, stars as the aforementioned killer, John Lee Roche. It turns out that in those dark days before being assigned to the X-Files, Mulder worked Roche's case and helped capture him, but now the special agent's suddenly finding himself dreaming about being shown the sites of the killer's previously unknown victims, only to wake up and actually find their remains.
In turn, Scully's autopsy of the first newly-discovered victim reveals that Roche started his murders earlier than previously believed, which takes Mulder down a path that leads him to suspect that Samantha might've been one of those early victims. Was she? Does it really matter? Ultimately, the episode is more about Mulder than Samantha.
"Memento Mori" (Season 4, Episode 14)
There aren't many of The X-Files' so-called "mythology" episodes in this list, but it's damned near impossible to build a best-episodes list without including this one, which, despite feeling almost overstuffed at times, is one of the more moving installments of the series. Granted, it helps immeasurably if you've been following the show from the very beginning, but you don't have to have been there from the start to sympathize — or perhaps even empathize — with Scully after she receives a cancer diagnosis.
Directed by Rob Bowman and co-written by Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz, "Memento Mori" gives Gillian Anderson a real workout as a narrator, with Scully delivering a voiceover throughout as she pens a lengthy missive to Mulder in the event of her inability to speak to him later. The end result: an Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. In addition, there are a few moments of genuinely terrifying visual imagery, a scene where Skinner makes a deal with the devil, a.k.a. the Cigarette Smoking Man, more Kurt Crawfords than you can shake a stick at, and the Lone Gunmen, too.
At this point, it's not much of a spoiler to reveal that the two-part season five opener, "Redux," opens with the revelation that Scully's cancer has gone into remission, but it doesn't change the impact of this episode or the way it reveals the depth of the Mulder/Scully relationship as well as what the duo mean to Skinner.
"Small Potatoes" (Season 4, Episode 20)
"Good lord... Not another one." So says the obstetrician who delivers the baby at the beginning of this episode, and while the reason for the first two words are perfectly understandable – he's holding up a baby girl who's sporting a vestigial tail – it's the addition of the subsequent two words that make all the difference. Then again, the mother did casually acknowledge in the moments before her baby's birth that the father was from outer space...
Written by Vince Gilligan, it's a rare episode where it's evident almost from the get-go that the person claiming to have had an alien encounter sounds unabashedly ludicrous — she claims that her baby's father is Luke Skywalker (and not, it must be clarified, Mark Hamill) — but as a result of another event that happens after Mulder and Scully get to town, Mulder offers the theory that they're dealing with someone who can change their physical appearance to look like anyone they might want to emulate.
That "someone" is Eddie, played by none other than X-Files writer Darin Morgan, who promptly takes on Mulder's appearance, after which he gets the jump on the real Mulder, stows him in the basement of the local hospital, and, taking on Mulder's appearance, tells Scully that he's ready to return to Washington. As one of the lighter-toned X-Files episodes, "Small Potatoes" gives Duchovny a number of great comedic moments, a side he'd get to show in similar fashion a few seasons later during the "Dreamland" two-parter.
"The Post-Modern Prometheus" (Season 5, Episode 5)
Written and directed by Chris Carter, this episode stands out for several reasons, first and foremost because it's in black and white, but it's also the first episode of the series to really feature individuals of note playing themselves. We refer, of course, to Jerry Springer, but we're technically referring to Cher as well, since even though she doesn't actually appear in the episode herself, the performance of Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis" is ostensibly supposed to be being performed by Cher.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
In this unabashed homage to James Whale's Frankenstein, Carter takes Mulder and Scully to meet up with Shaineh Berkowitz (Pattie Tierce, although the role was written for Rosanne Barr), a single mother who became familiar with Mulder's paranormal expertise via The Jerry Springer Show and wants him to look into her mysterious impregnations: one occurred 18 years earlier, the other which took place recently, and both happened after unexplained attacks. They also meet Shaineh's son, Izzy, who's drawn a comic book character featuring a character, the Great Mutato, who resembles the creature she thinks attacked her. As it happens, the town also harbors a geneticist (John O'Hurley) whose work seemingly could have inspired such a creature. What are the odds?
Last but not least, and feel free to argue about this amongst yourselves after the conclusion of this paragraph, but to our way of thinking, there is no greater episodic ending in the entirety of The X-Files — it's not even close.
"Bad Blood" (Season 5, Episode 12)
Of all the shows you'd expect to serve as influences for The X-Files, one that probably wouldn't come up in most discussions is The Dick Van Dyke Show… unless, of course, you're thinking of the walnuts episode, in which case it makes perfect sense. In this instance, however, writer Vince Gilligan was inspired by "The Night the Roof Fell In," an episode where Rob and Laura Petrie each have different recollections of a fight they had, with the viewers seeing just how different their respective perceptions are.
In this case, of course, it's Mulder and Scully who find each other remembering a case differently, with the "monster of the week" being a boy who Mulder believes to be a vampire. Indeed, he believes this so strongly that he actually pounds a stake into the kid's chest immediately before the opening credits roll, which, you have to admit, is one hell of a set-up. From there, however, the episode jumps forward to Mulder and Scully trying to get their story straight before delivering their report to Skinner, and the differences between their versions make for an extremely entertaining episode.
Also aiding the enjoyment: a young up-and-comer named Luke Wilson plays the local sheriff in the town where the purported vampire resides, the boy is played by Patrick Renna, best known for his role in The Sandlot, and the town coroner is played by Brent Butt, still half a dozen years away from the Canadian superstardom he would eventually earn with Corner Gas.
"Drive" (Season 6, Episode 2)
Although it's definitely a strong episode in its own right, there's little question that the biggest reason "Drive" has found its way into the public consciousness in a big way is because it's the episode that first brought together two gentlemen who would eventually re-team for one of the greatest series in television history. At this point, however, Breaking Bad was still a decade down the road for writer Vince Gilligan and guest star Bryan Cranston.
The episode begins with a live news report of a car chase, one which ends with driver Patrick Crump (Cranston) on the ground in handcuffs and his wife in the back of a police car, but things take a bizarre turn when the news copter captures footage of the woman, alone in the vehicle, as she bangs her head against the window and then suddenly explodes. Even though Mulder and Scully aren't actually assigned to the case, they take a detour from their current location because Mulder suspects it might be something right up their alley, and it isn't long before Mulder finds himself forced by Crump at gunpoint to serve as a getaway driver. Meanwhile, Scully is trying to determine what happened to Crump's wife and whether or not a contagion might have been responsible.
Although there are some great moments of awkward comedy between Cranston and Duchovny, there's far more tension, and the way the episode ends can be seen as early proof that Vince Gilligan doesn't always give his stories happy endings.
"Triangle" (Season 6, Episode 3)
Written and directed by Chris Carter, "Triangle" finally takes The X-Files to an area you would've thought they'd have gone well before the show's sixth season: the Bermuda Triangle. Granted, it's not Area 51, but any location that warrants its own episode of In Search Of... is certainly somewhere that Mulder and/or Scully should end up visiting eventually. So the fact that the show finally took the twosome there is certainly a momentous occasion.
The episode begins with Mulder floating unconscious in the ocean, not long after which he's taken aboard a passenger ship, the Queen Anne, which — as we're soon to learn — disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1939 but has just reappeared in the present. In short order, however, Mulder realizes that the ship hasn't moved forward, he's gone back in time. Meanwhile, back in the present, the Lone Gunmen inform Scully of Mulder's mysterious disappearance, forcing her to try and get assistance within the FBI to help find him, a task which is easier said than done.
Carter took his directorial inspiration for the episode from Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, resulting in a number of extremely fun-to-watch sequences, but make no mistake about it: there's a fair amount on loan from The Wizard of Oz as well, with Mulder running into several individuals during his travels who share their faces with his friends and foes from within the FBI. In the end, though, it seems pretty evident that the whole thing was just a dream… or was it?!
"Dreamland" (Season 6, Episodes 4 & 5)
There aren't that many two-parters within the run of The X-Files, and of the ones that exist, the majority are part of the series' long-running alien story arc, so as a so-called "monster of the week" two-parter, "Dreamland" stands out in the crowd. More than that, however, it also serves as a tremendous showcase for guest star Michael McKean.
While heading to Area 51, Mulder and Scully are stopped by a team of soldiers led by Morris Fletcher (McKean), and while they're in the midst of trying to sort things out, an unidentified craft flies overhead, shining a light on them which causes the minds of Mulder and Fletcher to be switched into each other's bodies. Only the two men are aware of the switch, and in the post-event commotion, Fletcher/Mulder is driven back to Area 51 by two of his fellow Men in Black, while Scully and Fletcher/Mulder head back to FBI HQ, after which we're treated to hilarious moments of each man trying to adapt to the other's life. Understandably, it takes Fletcher/Mulder a fair while to convince Scully that he's the real Mulder, and even after he does, there's still the not-insubstantial problem of how to get the men's right minds back in their respective bodies.
Directed by Kim Manners (Pt. 1) and Michael Watkins (Pt. II), "Dreamland" as a whole is actually credited to three writers: Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz. As it happens, the part of Morris Fletcher was originally intended for Garry Shandling, but scheduling didn't pan out. (Thankfully, he was still able to make his way into the series, playing himself in season seven's "Hollywood A.D.")
"How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" (Season 6, Episode 6)
Unto every series there must come a holiday episode, and while The X-Files would not necessarily seem to be a perfect candidate for such a traditional installment, rest assured that this episode, penned and helmed by series creator Chris Carter, is a delightful blend of holiday sentimentality and haunted-house shenanigans.
On Christmas Eve, Mulder calls Scully to meet him outside a haunted house in Maryland, one where, in 1917, a couple made good on a deadly lovers' pact, with one killing the other and the remaining one committing suicide, leaving the twosome to haunt the house every Christmas Eve. Although Mulder weaves a wonderfully dark tale, it's not enough to sell Scully, who refuses to follow Mulder into the house...until she realizes that he's swiped her keys, forcing her to trail after him despite her desire to depart. After they're both inside, they jointly experience strange paranormal activity, but they soon end up separated, at which point they meet the ghostly residents of the house: Maurice and Lyda, played by Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin.
The pair get the opportunity to shine both independently and together, with the plot allowing each of them to play against Duchovny and Anderson for a bit. And although there's a surprising amount of bloodshed for a Christmas episode, everything gets wrapped up nicely by the time the credits roll, leaving Scully typically questioning whether they actually experienced the events within the house but still providing a happy holiday ending for the longtime partners.
"Arcadia" (Season 6, Episode 15)
Written by Daniel Arkin, a first-year staff writer for the series, this episode finds Mulder and Scully going undercover as a married couple in order to investigate a series of unexplained disappearances among residents of a planned community called the Falls of Arcadia, located in San Diego County, California.
The moment viewers see a smirking Mulder stepping out of a minivan with his sweater tied around his shoulders, it's evident how much fun he's having with the assignment, and it's underlined when he introduces himself and his "wife" as Rob and Laura Petrie. "It's pronounced 'petri,' like the dish," clarifies Scully/ Laura, inwardly groaning at the obviousness of the Dick Van Dyke Show reference, thereby underlining that she's clearly been dreading the assignment at least as much as Mulder is relishing it. Mind you, this makes for some truly delightful moments throughout the episode.
As the episode unfolds, It quickly becomes evident to Mulder and Scully that their neighbors are disconcertingly concerned about making sure not to do anything that might go against the standards established by the president of the community's homeowners association, and Mulder soon realizes that those who've disappeared are the ones who went against those standards. That's because the aforementioned president is utilizing a Tulpa creature from Tibet in order to enforce the rules he's established, and as for what the creature is... well, it doesn't matter, anyway: when all's said and done, all you'll really remember is that this was the episode where Mulder and Scully pretended to be married.
"X-Cops" (Season 7, Episode 12)
This isn't exactly a crossover in the traditional sense, but it's definitely some top-shelf network synergy. If the title doesn't ring a bell, this is the episode where Mulder and Scully find themselves on an investigation that ends up being filmed for an episode of Cops. Given that both The X-Files and Cops were on Fox, that means the former was able to open up this installment with the latter's ubiquitous theme song (Inner Circle's "Bad Boys"), and to make it really feel like a Cops episode, the whole thing was shot on videotape.
Vince Gilligan, a Cops fan, wrote the episode and actually pitched it back in season four, but both Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz thought the idea was too goofy for the series, and Spotnitz in particular didn't love the idea of emulating Cops' videotape format for the filming. By the time season seven rolled around, however, Carter decided it was an experiment worth conducting, and Gilligan's episode moved forward, helmed by director Michael Watkins.
"X-Cops" revolves around one of the series' more esoteric monsters of the week, namely an entity which reveals itself to its victims as their greatest fear, resulting in people being attacked variously by a werewolf, a wasp man, Freddy Krueger, and the Hantavirus. In the long run, though, the monster matters less than the enjoyment of seeing Mulder and Scully dealing with being on camera and in an episode of Cops, a situation which leads to several extremely funny and memorable moments.
"Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" (Season 10, Episode 3)
While the 2016 revival of The X-Files may have been hit or miss in terms of recapturing the magic of the original series, critics and fans were united in their love of this installment, which — no surprise here — was written and directed by longtime fan favorite Darin Morgan, the man behind four other episodes on this list.
Mulder's in a bit of a funk from examining old files, realizing just how many past cases involved him steadfastly believing they revolved around "monsters," only for them to be complete hoaxes. It couldn't be worse timing for him, then, when a body is found in Oregon with its throat ripped open and witnesses are placing blame on some sort of strange creature. After arriving on the scene, Mulder and Scully promptly meet up with local animal control officer Pasha, played by longtime X-Files superfan Kumail Nanjiani, and in short order they cross paths with Guy Mann (Rhys Darby), a cell phone salesman who dresses suspiciously like Carl Kolchak and has a surprising secret that helps restore Mulder's faith in his more monster-centric investigations.
Morgan adapted the script for "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" from one he'd written for Frank Spotnitz's 2005 Kolchak reboot, Night Stalker, since that series' quick cancellation kept him from ever utilizing it. It's worth mentioning that Morgan also wrote one episode for The X-Files' 11th season, "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat," which, in another less-than-surprising turn of events, was hailed as the best episode of that season.
"The truth is out there." Those words regularly appeared at the conclusion of the opening credits of The X-Files, the Chris Carter-created series about FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully as they delved into the more unique and not-readily-explainable cases landing in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Sometimes they revolved around a so-called "Monster of the Week," other times — far more often than they should've, if we're to be honest — they involved aliens.
Whatever the cases involved, the chemistry between castmates David Duchovny (Mulder) and Gillian Anderson (Scully) drove the series for nine seasons between 1993-2002, two movies — one in 1998, one in 2008 — and a two-season revival (2016 and 2018). Okay, so maybe both of them weren't on every episode, but the episodes where they did share the screen together were the ones that truly defined the series, and EW has picked the 25 best of the bunch in seasonal order.
25 Best X-Files Episodes
"Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1)
More than a few TV shows have kicked off with a pilot episode that bears no resemblance to what the series would eventually become, but in the case of The X-Files, it's hard to imagine a better way to introduce the concept, the central characters, or the ongoing mystery that continues throughout the entirety of its run.
Indeed, the series provides us with the not-so-secret origin of how Dana Scully was initially assigned to the oft-dismissed, occasionally-ridiculed department of the FBI known as the X-Files. Not only do we learn that she was assigned to serve as a "debunker" of sorts for Mulder's wild theories about the strange cases that land in his lap, but viewers are actually given the opportunity to witness the first meeting between Scully and Mulder in the latter's basement office, a sad spot he describes as being designated for "the FBI's Most Unwanted."
Immediately thereafter, they're off to Oregon to investigate a series of unexplained deaths which Mulder believes may be somehow linked to alien abductions. It's a great way to set up the "he wants to believe / she doesn't" dynamic between the partners while also providing some moments that reveal Scully's willingness to admit her inability to explain certain events.
Not every soon-to-be regular element of The X-Files is in place from the get-go, but there's plenty enough here that the series was able to capture viewers' attention straight out of the gate. Sounds like a solid pilot to us.
"Squeeze" / "Tooms" (Season 1, Episodes 3 & 21)
Although these two tales are told at different points during the first season, the fact that they find Mulder and Scully going after the same "monster of the week" make it more than reasonable to tackle both of them in the same entry. The "monster" in question is actually a man by the name of Eugene Tooms, but he definitely possesses some monstrous qualities, in particular a taste for human livers and an ability to stretch and squeeze his body into narrow spaces.
There are a number of gross moments involving bile, including one that results in one of Mulder's funniest lines in the history of the series: "Is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?" Doug Hutchison plays Tooms in both episodes, and it's hard to imagine that anyone else could've made the character come across quite as creepy, and not just because of the effects-enhanced eyes, either. Hutchison really gives his all in the performance, but arguably never more so than in "Tooms," when he bursts forth from his nest completely in the nude. Talk about committing to a role.
There are two other notable occurrences in "Tooms," and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention them: not only do we get to hear the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) speak for the first time, but the episode provides viewers with the introduction of FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), who we'd soon be seeing with considerable regularity.
"Ice" (Season 1, Episode 8)
An episode that takes place at an arctic outpost after a mass murder-suicide, the only survivor of which is a dog, and a plot that causes Mulder, Scully, and some fellow scientists to succumb to paranoia that someone might be under the influence of an alien creature? Okay, yes, the similarities to John Carpenter's The Thing — itself an adaptation of John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There? — are undeniable. Not only are they fully acknowledged by Chris Carter (although Glen Morgan actually began writing the episode after reading a Science News article about a 250,000-year-old item discovered encased in ice in Greenland), but production designer Graeme Murray actually worked on Carpenter's film.
A classic example of the TV trope known as the "bottle episode," where the majority of the proceedings take place in a single location, "Ice" has what may be the single best guest cast of any episode, with Felicity Huffman, Xander Berkeley, and Steve Hytner as the scientists who accompany Mulder and Scully to the arctic compound and Jeff Kober as their pilot. When they arrive at the compound, they're attacked by the dog, with Bear being bitten and promptly being infected by something alien that – in a very disconcerting moment – is soon seen moving under the pilot's skin.
Even though the premise is familiar and the worm-like creatures immediately cause flashbacks to the Ceti eels from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the episode nonetheless manages to ramp up the tension in a big way.
"Beyond the Sea" (Season 1, Episode 13)
From the very beginning, the story of The X-Files involved Mulder's family, but with "Beyond the Sea," viewers get an introduction to the importance of family in Scully's life, specifically her father, Captain William Scully (Don Davis). Admittedly, Capt. Scully's time on the series is rather short-lived, but his presence is felt well beyond the episode, setting up Dana's need for a substitute father figure from this point on.
After enjoying an evening with her parents, Scully falls asleep on the couch, waking up to see her father sitting in the chair across from her, his lips moving but no sound emerging. When the phone suddenly rings, she answers it to find her mother on the other end, revealing that her father has died of a heart attack. Looking back at the chair, she finds it now empty, but this isn't the last vision she has of Capt. Scully. Fast-forwarding a bit, she and Mulder visit imprisoned serial killer Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif), who claims to have information about a recent kidnapping, but while she's there, Scully sees her father again, singing the song played at his funeral: "Beyond the Sea." Later, Boggs claims to be able to contact the late Capt. Scully, putting the typically-skeptical Dana in an awkward position where she's the one who wants to believe.
This wasn't the episode that won Gillian Anderson an Emmy, but it certainly could've been. It's a wonderful spotlight and one of her strongest performances of the series.
"The Host" (Season 2, Episode 2)
Enter… the Flukeman! Yes, it's one of the series' more disconcerting monsters of the week, but as always seems to be the case with these situations, it's a monster that makes for one of the X-Files' best episodes. It was written by series creator Chris Carter, who cited three sources of inspiration: reading about Chernobyl, the extinction of several species during the 1990s, and his dog having worms. (We're guessing that last one was heavy on his mind when it came time to design the creature.)
The episode opens on a Russian freighter off the New Jersey coast, where a crewman repairing the ship's toilets is suddenly snatched by an unseen force and pulled down into the septic system. When initially assigned to the case, Mulder first views it as little more than glorified busywork, but that begins to change when Scully finds a flukeworm inside the crewman's liver, and it continues when a city worker is pulled underwater while working in the Newark sewer. In this case, the city worker survives, but after he coughs up a flukeworm in the shower... Well, it's not long after that when the aforementioned Flukeman — played by Darin Morgan, who also wrote the episode and whose name will come up again very shortly — formally makes his appearance, after which things start to get a little gross.
"The Host" is definitely one of those X-Files episodes that'll give you the chills, but it also has the potential to make you a little queasy at times, too, making for enjoyably unsettling viewing.
"Humbug" (Season 2, Episode 20)
With "Humbug," we come to the first of the five episodes written by Darin Morgan for the series. Make no mistake: all four of the others will either make their way into the list or at least warrant mention. That's just how defining Morgan's work was for The X-Files.
Directed by Kim Manners, "Humbug" takes place in Gibsonton, Florida, home to a community of former circus sideshow performers, including Dr. Blockhead and The Conundrum (played by Jim Rose and the Engima from the Jim Rose Sideshow Circus), Mr. Nutt (Michael J. Anderson of Twin Peaks fame), and Lanny (Vincent Schiavelli), who has a conjoined twin named Leonard. Mulder and Scully make their way to Gibsonton after the latest in a series of attacks that have occurred sporadically over the course of the past 28 years. Morgan watched a video tape of the Jim Rose Sideshow before writing the episode, so it's no wonder that he hired Rose and the Enigma for the cast, but in addition to that street cred, Morgan also utilized "Frenzy" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins for the soundtrack, which is a wonderfully off-kilter and slightly disturbing musical selection.
"Humbug" was decidedly the most comedic episode of The X-Files up to that point, and the tonal difference made a tremendous impact. Duchovny once said of Morgan's work on the series, "What I loved about his scripts was that he seemed to be trying to destroy the show," but what he did was invigorate it on a regular basis.
"Anasazi" (Season 2, Episode 25)
For TV viewers, there's nothing more frustrating than watching the season finale of a series that ends in a cliffhanger, and for fans of The X-Files, this was arguably the most frustrating season finale of the show, if only because it made for the longest summer everrrrrrr while waiting for season three to begin. To be fair, though, you know things are going to be bad when an episode begins with a bad-news phone tree that ends with the Cigarette Smoking Man saying, "That was the phone call I never wanted to get."
This is an action-packed installment, starting out with an associate of the Lone Gunmen — a guy known as The Thinker — hacking the defense department computer system and handing Mulder an encrypted file which ostensibly contains all of the US government's files on alien encounters. Although Mulder is initially frustrated by the encryption, it's Scully who recognizes that the key to cracking it involves finding someone who speaks Navajo, which she finally does, but before that happens...
Oh, man, what doesn't happen? The Cigarette Smoking Man surprises Mulder's dad by paying him a house call, after which the despicable Agent Krycek (Nicholas Lea) does the same. Realizing he's in danger, Scully takes Mulder to her place, but they don't end up staying there long because soon it's off to New Mexico, where Mulder finds a buried boxcar filled with alien corpses, and the whole thing ends with Mulder seemingly on the verge of burning to death. Now that's a cliffhanger!
"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (Season 3, Episode 4)
Every one of the episodes Darin Morgan wrote for The X-Files is memorable, but this is the only one that just might bring a tear to your eye before the credits roll. That's due to the writing, of course, but it also has a lot to do with the Emmy-winning performance by Peter Boyle as the titularly-referenced Clyde Bruckman, a middle-aged man who, during the course of the episode, reminds viewers that being able to tell the future isn't always a blessing and, indeed, can truly be a curse.
Mulder and Scully find themselves working on a case involving the murder of a doll-collecting tea leaf reader, but the only part of the woman at the scene of the crime are her eyes and her entrails, which makes for a pretty grotesque visual. It's the aforementioned Mr. Bruckman who stumbles upon the poor woman's body in the dumpster outside his apartment, and when he's questioned by Mulder and Scully and casually offers up details about the crime, Mulder begins to suspect that Bruckman is psychic.
Speaking of psychics, there's another one briefly in the mix — The Stupendous Yappi, played to egotistical perfection by Jaap Broeker — and it's entertaining to watch him view Mulder with the purest disdain, accusing him of all people of skepticism. But it's the interactions between Mulder, Scully, and Bruckman that are the heart of the episode, and it's the relationship he forges with Scully that leads to the emotional moment in the concluding minutes of the proceedings.
"War of the Coprophages" (Season 3, Episode 12)
Who doesn't love cockroaches? Oh, right: nobody, which is why this Darin Morgan-penned episode manages to be filled with a lot of nervous laughter derived from seeing other people having to deal with an invasion of these creepy-crawly critters.
When the episode begins, Mulder is enjoying a bit of downtime, doing exactly what you'd expect him to be doing to relax — investigating some recent UFO sightings — when an accidental encounter with a local sheriff leads him to get involved in a spate of what seem to be roach attacks. Indeed, a few more occur while Mulder is in town, which inspires a running gag throughout the first half of the episode about Mulder calling Scully for help, inspiring her to offer to join him in the town, only for him to decide she doesn't need to do so.
Of course, eventually Scully does join Mulder, but before their reunion, Mulder has a close encounter with Dr. Bambi Berenbaum (Bobbie Phillips), a cockroach researcher who helps him look into the town's problem, and when she believes that some of the roaches may be mechanical, it leads him to Dr. Ivanov, a scientist who works with insect-inspired robots. In the end, the whole thing circles back to Dr. Eckerle, the first local to experience a roach attack, and there's a big ol' dung explosion to wrap up.
Last but not least, be sure you're watching the screen very, very closely at around the 31:30 mark. (If you know, you know.)
"Pusher" (Season 3, Episode 17)
His name is Robert Patrick Modell (Robert Wisden), but the FBI — specifically, Agent Frank Burst (Vic Polizos) — call him "Pusher," and he's been responsible for a number of contract killings over the past couple of years. They've never been able to tie him to any of the deaths, however, because they've all been labeled as suicides. Why? Because Modell has the psychic ability to "push" people to do his bidding, even if that bidding results in bodily harm or — as in these instances — death.
Written by Vince Gilligan with the intent of creating a tense cat-and-mouse game between Modell and Mulder, it's fair to say that he succeeds, particularly in the scene toward the end of the proceedings where Modell forces Mulder to play Russian Roulette. It's later determined that Modell is just barely staving off death, battling a brain tumor, but he did manage to survive long enough to return in the not-nearly-as-good season five episode "Kitsunegari."
Also worth a mention: in addition to the Flukeman popping up on the cover of a tabloid in a grocery store, the episode includes a cameo by Dave Grohl, who, in addition to being obsessed with the show, was also in awe of Anderson. In a BBC Radio 1 interview, he said, "[Gillian] was the one person who I was, like, 'We're gonna get married. One of these days, she and I will finally meet and this will finally happen.'" Spoiler: they did eventually meet, but the love connection failed to materialize.
"Jose Chung's From Outer Space" (Season 3, Episode 20)
By the time this Darin Morgan episode made its debut, the younger X-Files fans probably had no frame of reference to the actor playing Jose Chung, but rest assured that fans of '60s and '70s TV were well familiar with Charles Nelson Reilly, who gives a deliciously droll performance in an episode that's already filled to the brim with laughs.
Trying to explain the goings-on within "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" gets a little difficult, and that's not just a cop-out, it's the God's honest truth. The episode starts with two teenagers captured by two aliens that are in turn confronted by a third alien, one seemingly of a different species. From there, author Jose Chung interviews Scully about this encounter, after which he gets perspectives from a variety of other individuals. To say that the "unreliable narrator" trope is in effect is an understatement, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining. And Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek cast as the men in black? It's the stuff of genius, plain and simple.
"Darin is a truly original comic mind," Chris Carter said in X-Files Confidential. "I don't know anybody in the world working in film, and that's what we work in here even though it appears on television, who has the voice Darin has. He is one in many million." In closing, fans of Jose Chung's work may wish to seek out his book Doomsday Defense… or, you know, at least try to hunt down and watch the Morgan-penned Millennium episode that revolves around it.
"Home" (Season 4, Episode 2)
Some episodes of television take up residence in your brain from the moment you see them and establish enough of a beachhead that you never need to see them again to remember just how traumatizing they were. Such is the case with "Home," which, just in case you're wondering, is just as disturbing now as it was when it originally aired, making it all the more understandable why it was the only episode during the series' run that Fox never reran.
If you've somehow managed to go this long without seeing "Home," we don't really want to spoil the experience for you, especially since it holds the honor of being named by Vulture as the most terrifying television episode to watch on Halloween. Suffice it to say that Mulder and Scully travel to the small town of Home, Pennsylvania and meet with Sheriff Andy Taylor (Tucker Smallwood) about the discovery of the body of a baby born with severe birth defects, which leads them to the Peacocks, a family with a long history of... uh, well, let's just say they have a close family relationship. Very close.
Directed by Kim Manners and co-written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, "Home" might be disturbing to some — actually, make that to most — but it hasn't stopped it from regularly landing atop best-of lists. If you've never seen it, you should, but if you never, ever want to go "Home" again, rest assured, you won't be alone.
"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" (Season 4, Episode 7)
William B. Davis has literally been part of The X-Files since the pilot, with the Cigarette-Smoking Man, a.k.a. Cancer Man, hovering in the background of the meeting where Dana Scully first finds herself teamed with Fox Mulder, but viewers knew very little about his back story until this episode. Well, frankly, they still didn't know much about it, since everything that unfolds between the bookending scenes ostensibly only took place within a story that Frohike (of the Lone Gunmen) read in a magazine that he believes may reveal the real background of the Cigarette Smoking Man, henceforth to be referred to simply as CSM. Mind you, those aforementioned bookending scenes involve CSM setting up a rifle in a sniper's nest with an apparent goal of assassinating Frohike, so it certainly seems like he's stumbled onto something compromising.
No matter what the veracity of the episode's many flashbacks may be, "Musings" nonetheless provides an entertaining look at a history that might belong to CSM, who was ostensibly part of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., and everything from the Anita Hill hearings and the Rodney King verdict to the "Miracle on Ice" at the 1980 Winter Olympics. Obviously, we don't get much Mulder and Scully in the episode, but we do get to see Jerry Hardin reprising his role as Deep Throat, which is never a bad thing, and CSM offers his twist on a certain Forrest Gump monologue.
"Paper Hearts" (Season 4, Episode 10)
One of the key moments in Fox Mulder's history that drives him throughout the series is trying to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of his sister, Samantha, when they were kids. (He was watching the short-lived Bill Bixby series The Magician at the time. But you probably already knew that.) While the presumption throughout the majority of The X-Files is that she was the victim of alien abduction, this episode takes a beat to contemplate a different possibility: what if she was actually the prey of a child-molesting serial killer?
Okay, so it's not the most upbeat episode of the series, but it's damned sure a gripping one, and you can chalk that up to the efforts of two individuals: Vince Gilligan, who wrote the script, and Tom Noonan, who utilizes the same disconcerting creepiness he did in Michael Mann's Manhunter, stars as the aforementioned killer, John Lee Roche. It turns out that in those dark days before being assigned to the X-Files, Mulder worked Roche's case and helped capture him, but now the special agent's suddenly finding himself dreaming about being shown the sites of the killer's previously unknown victims, only to wake up and actually find their remains.
In turn, Scully's autopsy of the first newly-discovered victim reveals that Roche started his murders earlier than previously believed, which takes Mulder down a path that leads him to suspect that Samantha might've been one of those early victims. Was she? Does it really matter? Ultimately, the episode is more about Mulder than Samantha.
"Memento Mori" (Season 4, Episode 14)
There aren't many of The X-Files' so-called "mythology" episodes in this list, but it's damned near impossible to build a best-episodes list without including this one, which, despite feeling almost overstuffed at times, is one of the more moving installments of the series. Granted, it helps immeasurably if you've been following the show from the very beginning, but you don't have to have been there from the start to sympathize — or perhaps even empathize — with Scully after she receives a cancer diagnosis.
Directed by Rob Bowman and co-written by Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz, "Memento Mori" gives Gillian Anderson a real workout as a narrator, with Scully delivering a voiceover throughout as she pens a lengthy missive to Mulder in the event of her inability to speak to him later. The end result: an Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. In addition, there are a few moments of genuinely terrifying visual imagery, a scene where Skinner makes a deal with the devil, a.k.a. the Cigarette Smoking Man, more Kurt Crawfords than you can shake a stick at, and the Lone Gunmen, too.
At this point, it's not much of a spoiler to reveal that the two-part season five opener, "Redux," opens with the revelation that Scully's cancer has gone into remission, but it doesn't change the impact of this episode or the way it reveals the depth of the Mulder/Scully relationship as well as what the duo mean to Skinner.
"Small Potatoes" (Season 4, Episode 20)
"Good lord... Not another one." So says the obstetrician who delivers the baby at the beginning of this episode, and while the reason for the first two words are perfectly understandable – he's holding up a baby girl who's sporting a vestigial tail – it's the addition of the subsequent two words that make all the difference. Then again, the mother did casually acknowledge in the moments before her baby's birth that the father was from outer space...
Written by Vince Gilligan, it's a rare episode where it's evident almost from the get-go that the person claiming to have had an alien encounter sounds unabashedly ludicrous — she claims that her baby's father is Luke Skywalker (and not, it must be clarified, Mark Hamill) — but as a result of another event that happens after Mulder and Scully get to town, Mulder offers the theory that they're dealing with someone who can change their physical appearance to look like anyone they might want to emulate.
That "someone" is Eddie, played by none other than X-Files writer Darin Morgan, who promptly takes on Mulder's appearance, after which he gets the jump on the real Mulder, stows him in the basement of the local hospital, and, taking on Mulder's appearance, tells Scully that he's ready to return to Washington. As one of the lighter-toned X-Files episodes, "Small Potatoes" gives Duchovny a number of great comedic moments, a side he'd get to show in similar fashion a few seasons later during the "Dreamland" two-parter.
"The Post-Modern Prometheus" (Season 5, Episode 5)
Written and directed by Chris Carter, this episode stands out for several reasons, first and foremost because it's in black and white, but it's also the first episode of the series to really feature individuals of note playing themselves. We refer, of course, to Jerry Springer, but we're technically referring to Cher as well, since even though she doesn't actually appear in the episode herself, the performance of Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis" is ostensibly supposed to be being performed by Cher.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
In this unabashed homage to James Whale's Frankenstein, Carter takes Mulder and Scully to meet up with Shaineh Berkowitz (Pattie Tierce, although the role was written for Rosanne Barr), a single mother who became familiar with Mulder's paranormal expertise via The Jerry Springer Show and wants him to look into her mysterious impregnations: one occurred 18 years earlier, the other which took place recently, and both happened after unexplained attacks. They also meet Shaineh's son, Izzy, who's drawn a comic book character featuring a character, the Great Mutato, who resembles the creature she thinks attacked her. As it happens, the town also harbors a geneticist (John O'Hurley) whose work seemingly could have inspired such a creature. What are the odds?
Last but not least, and feel free to argue about this amongst yourselves after the conclusion of this paragraph, but to our way of thinking, there is no greater episodic ending in the entirety of The X-Files — it's not even close.
"Bad Blood" (Season 5, Episode 12)
Of all the shows you'd expect to serve as influences for The X-Files, one that probably wouldn't come up in most discussions is The Dick Van Dyke Show… unless, of course, you're thinking of the walnuts episode, in which case it makes perfect sense. In this instance, however, writer Vince Gilligan was inspired by "The Night the Roof Fell In," an episode where Rob and Laura Petrie each have different recollections of a fight they had, with the viewers seeing just how different their respective perceptions are.
In this case, of course, it's Mulder and Scully who find each other remembering a case differently, with the "monster of the week" being a boy who Mulder believes to be a vampire. Indeed, he believes this so strongly that he actually pounds a stake into the kid's chest immediately before the opening credits roll, which, you have to admit, is one hell of a set-up. From there, however, the episode jumps forward to Mulder and Scully trying to get their story straight before delivering their report to Skinner, and the differences between their versions make for an extremely entertaining episode.
Also aiding the enjoyment: a young up-and-comer named Luke Wilson plays the local sheriff in the town where the purported vampire resides, the boy is played by Patrick Renna, best known for his role in The Sandlot, and the town coroner is played by Brent Butt, still half a dozen years away from the Canadian superstardom he would eventually earn with Corner Gas.
"Drive" (Season 6, Episode 2)
Although it's definitely a strong episode in its own right, there's little question that the biggest reason "Drive" has found its way into the public consciousness in a big way is because it's the episode that first brought together two gentlemen who would eventually re-team for one of the greatest series in television history. At this point, however, Breaking Bad was still a decade down the road for writer Vince Gilligan and guest star Bryan Cranston.
The episode begins with a live news report of a car chase, one which ends with driver Patrick Crump (Cranston) on the ground in handcuffs and his wife in the back of a police car, but things take a bizarre turn when the news copter captures footage of the woman, alone in the vehicle, as she bangs her head against the window and then suddenly explodes. Even though Mulder and Scully aren't actually assigned to the case, they take a detour from their current location because Mulder suspects it might be something right up their alley, and it isn't long before Mulder finds himself forced by Crump at gunpoint to serve as a getaway driver. Meanwhile, Scully is trying to determine what happened to Crump's wife and whether or not a contagion might have been responsible.
Although there are some great moments of awkward comedy between Cranston and Duchovny, there's far more tension, and the way the episode ends can be seen as early proof that Vince Gilligan doesn't always give his stories happy endings.
"Triangle" (Season 6, Episode 3)
Written and directed by Chris Carter, "Triangle" finally takes The X-Files to an area you would've thought they'd have gone well before the show's sixth season: the Bermuda Triangle. Granted, it's not Area 51, but any location that warrants its own episode of In Search Of... is certainly somewhere that Mulder and/or Scully should end up visiting eventually. So the fact that the show finally took the twosome there is certainly a momentous occasion.
The episode begins with Mulder floating unconscious in the ocean, not long after which he's taken aboard a passenger ship, the Queen Anne, which — as we're soon to learn — disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1939 but has just reappeared in the present. In short order, however, Mulder realizes that the ship hasn't moved forward, he's gone back in time. Meanwhile, back in the present, the Lone Gunmen inform Scully of Mulder's mysterious disappearance, forcing her to try and get assistance within the FBI to help find him, a task which is easier said than done.
Carter took his directorial inspiration for the episode from Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, resulting in a number of extremely fun-to-watch sequences, but make no mistake about it: there's a fair amount on loan from The Wizard of Oz as well, with Mulder running into several individuals during his travels who share their faces with his friends and foes from within the FBI. In the end, though, it seems pretty evident that the whole thing was just a dream… or was it?!
"Dreamland" (Season 6, Episodes 4 & 5)
There aren't that many two-parters within the run of The X-Files, and of the ones that exist, the majority are part of the series' long-running alien story arc, so as a so-called "monster of the week" two-parter, "Dreamland" stands out in the crowd. More than that, however, it also serves as a tremendous showcase for guest star Michael McKean.
While heading to Area 51, Mulder and Scully are stopped by a team of soldiers led by Morris Fletcher (McKean), and while they're in the midst of trying to sort things out, an unidentified craft flies overhead, shining a light on them which causes the minds of Mulder and Fletcher to be switched into each other's bodies. Only the two men are aware of the switch, and in the post-event commotion, Fletcher/Mulder is driven back to Area 51 by two of his fellow Men in Black, while Scully and Fletcher/Mulder head back to FBI HQ, after which we're treated to hilarious moments of each man trying to adapt to the other's life. Understandably, it takes Fletcher/Mulder a fair while to convince Scully that he's the real Mulder, and even after he does, there's still the not-insubstantial problem of how to get the men's right minds back in their respective bodies.
Directed by Kim Manners (Pt. 1) and Michael Watkins (Pt. II), "Dreamland" as a whole is actually credited to three writers: Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz. As it happens, the part of Morris Fletcher was originally intended for Garry Shandling, but scheduling didn't pan out. (Thankfully, he was still able to make his way into the series, playing himself in season seven's "Hollywood A.D.")
"How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" (Season 6, Episode 6)
Unto every series there must come a holiday episode, and while The X-Files would not necessarily seem to be a perfect candidate for such a traditional installment, rest assured that this episode, penned and helmed by series creator Chris Carter, is a delightful blend of holiday sentimentality and haunted-house shenanigans.
On Christmas Eve, Mulder calls Scully to meet him outside a haunted house in Maryland, one where, in 1917, a couple made good on a deadly lovers' pact, with one killing the other and the remaining one committing suicide, leaving the twosome to haunt the house every Christmas Eve. Although Mulder weaves a wonderfully dark tale, it's not enough to sell Scully, who refuses to follow Mulder into the house...until she realizes that he's swiped her keys, forcing her to trail after him despite her desire to depart. After they're both inside, they jointly experience strange paranormal activity, but they soon end up separated, at which point they meet the ghostly residents of the house: Maurice and Lyda, played by Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin.
The pair get the opportunity to shine both independently and together, with the plot allowing each of them to play against Duchovny and Anderson for a bit. And although there's a surprising amount of bloodshed for a Christmas episode, everything gets wrapped up nicely by the time the credits roll, leaving Scully typically questioning whether they actually experienced the events within the house but still providing a happy holiday ending for the longtime partners.
"Arcadia" (Season 6, Episode 15)
Written by Daniel Arkin, a first-year staff writer for the series, this episode finds Mulder and Scully going undercover as a married couple in order to investigate a series of unexplained disappearances among residents of a planned community called the Falls of Arcadia, located in San Diego County, California.
The moment viewers see a smirking Mulder stepping out of a minivan with his sweater tied around his shoulders, it's evident how much fun he's having with the assignment, and it's underlined when he introduces himself and his "wife" as Rob and Laura Petrie. "It's pronounced 'petri,' like the dish," clarifies Scully/ Laura, inwardly groaning at the obviousness of the Dick Van Dyke Show reference, thereby underlining that she's clearly been dreading the assignment at least as much as Mulder is relishing it. Mind you, this makes for some truly delightful moments throughout the episode.
As the episode unfolds, It quickly becomes evident to Mulder and Scully that their neighbors are disconcertingly concerned about making sure not to do anything that might go against the standards established by the president of the community's homeowners association, and Mulder soon realizes that those who've disappeared are the ones who went against those standards. That's because the aforementioned president is utilizing a Tulpa creature from Tibet in order to enforce the rules he's established, and as for what the creature is... well, it doesn't matter, anyway: when all's said and done, all you'll really remember is that this was the episode where Mulder and Scully pretended to be married.
"X-Cops" (Season 7, Episode 12)
This isn't exactly a crossover in the traditional sense, but it's definitely some top-shelf network synergy. If the title doesn't ring a bell, this is the episode where Mulder and Scully find themselves on an investigation that ends up being filmed for an episode of Cops. Given that both The X-Files and Cops were on Fox, that means the former was able to open up this installment with the latter's ubiquitous theme song (Inner Circle's "Bad Boys"), and to make it really feel like a Cops episode, the whole thing was shot on videotape.
Vince Gilligan, a Cops fan, wrote the episode and actually pitched it back in season four, but both Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz thought the idea was too goofy for the series, and Spotnitz in particular didn't love the idea of emulating Cops' videotape format for the filming. By the time season seven rolled around, however, Carter decided it was an experiment worth conducting, and Gilligan's episode moved forward, helmed by director Michael Watkins.
"X-Cops" revolves around one of the series' more esoteric monsters of the week, namely an entity which reveals itself to its victims as their greatest fear, resulting in people being attacked variously by a werewolf, a wasp man, Freddy Krueger, and the Hantavirus. In the long run, though, the monster matters less than the enjoyment of seeing Mulder and Scully dealing with being on camera and in an episode of Cops, a situation which leads to several extremely funny and memorable moments.
"Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" (Season 10, Episode 3)
While the 2016 revival of The X-Files may have been hit or miss in terms of recapturing the magic of the original series, critics and fans were united in their love of this installment, which — no surprise here — was written and directed by longtime fan favorite Darin Morgan, the man behind four other episodes on this list.
Mulder's in a bit of a funk from examining old files, realizing just how many past cases involved him steadfastly believing they revolved around "monsters," only for them to be complete hoaxes. It couldn't be worse timing for him, then, when a body is found in Oregon with its throat ripped open and witnesses are placing blame on some sort of strange creature. After arriving on the scene, Mulder and Scully promptly meet up with local animal control officer Pasha, played by longtime X-Files superfan Kumail Nanjiani, and in short order they cross paths with Guy Mann (Rhys Darby), a cell phone salesman who dresses suspiciously like Carl Kolchak and has a surprising secret that helps restore Mulder's faith in his more monster-centric investigations.
Morgan adapted the script for "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" from one he'd written for Frank Spotnitz's 2005 Kolchak reboot, Night Stalker, since that series' quick cancellation kept him from ever utilizing it. It's worth mentioning that Morgan also wrote one episode for The X-Files' 11th season, "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat," which, in another less-than-surprising turn of events, was hailed as the best episode of that season.
