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By
WAYNE KLEIN
The laws of physics dictate that eventually everything falls apart. Entropy is a bitch particularly for television shows. Why? Because the evidence of better days doesn't linger behind like a badly faded photograph but is in your face every day in syndication. After a series reaches its peak, there's a chance that the quality of the writing, direction and performances can ease into a certain comfort zone. Once that point is reached a series will usually, despite a couple of highlights, go into slow decline. Such was the case with the revolutionary "The X-Files."
Chris Carter's original premise combining our collective paranoia about the government, conspiracy theories and fascination with UFO's and paranormal incidents propelled "The X-Files" into one of Fox Network's first early hits. Unfortunately, Carter faced the Roddenberry curse; "The X-Files" was so ground breaking and influential that Carter had a hard time coming up with anything quite as innovative and interesting. Despite attempting to channel David Fincher's "Seven" with the increasingly absurd "Millennium" and other "Files" spin offs, Carter couldn't recapture the lightening in a bottle that had made "Files" so unique.
Despite a number of well-crafted episodes and a shift to new cast members earlier in the show's life, the 9th season of "The X-Files" showed all the symptoms of television's equivalent of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. While newer cast members Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish brought much needed energy and a change in tone to the series, they faced the challenge of drowning in the wake generated by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully the two pivotal characters that the series was build around.
Still, there were delights to be found during the 9th season. Episodes such as "Sunshine Days," "Improbable" and "Scary Monster" had some life in them and at times captured the show's power from the two best seasons (3 and 4 were the strongest). While the "mythology" episode arcs are interesting, I personally found the stand-alone episodes among the series' best. That's much more the case here as the show was winding down. The final episode "The Truth" tried to tie it all together but the series fizzled out and Carter was well out of his depth as a writer on this particular episode.
With four episodes on each dual layer disc, the picture quality appears quite good. There are the usual transfer problems inherent with squeezing so many episodes of such a textured series on onto one disc. The dark look of many of the episodes might prove to be a problem for a series that was transferred with less care. Luckily, the transfer looks unusually rich with vivid colors, sharp image quality. Edge enhancement (a technique used to sharpen the picture but that sacrifices the detail in a picture) is kept to a minimum throughout the set.
The exceptional sound quality of the set gains considerable depth and motion in the 5.1 Surround mix presented here. There's quite a bit of fine detail that didn't come through on the broadcast episodes that are apparent for the first time here on DVD. Some of these episodes would have benefited from a separate Surround track for the sound track but as it is Fox has done a fine job of keeping the presentation quality very high.
Although "The X-Files" has a retail price higher than many other boxed sets, the extras included (along with the nearly pristine picture and sound quality) play a part in that expense. We get four documentaries including a 90-minute "Making of" on the grand finale "The Truth." While that particular episode probably shouldn't have enjoyed so much attention (there were much better episodes during the 9th season), it's place as the conclusion of the "mythology" story arc started during the first season of the series makes it an appropriate choice. What would have worked better would have been a 90-minute documentary covering the entire series of story arcs presented during the show's run. Since Carter created his "mythology" episodes initially without a full idea as to how they would end once the series concluded, it would have been much more interesting to find out about the planning and creation of these episodes over the life of the series.
A terrific series that looked like it might be a one trick pony when it was first aired, "The X-Files" managed to help redefine television with its complex story arcs, interesting characters and paranoid atmosphere. Sadly as early as the seventh season the series began to limp along like an arthritic marathon runner. By season 9 the show was well beyond a face life and tummy tuck; it needed serious life support to keep it interesting. |
