Season 1: The FBI's Most Unwanted

[moonb]

Shallow note: Scully's beige outfit in "Roland" might win awards for ugliest fashion choice overall in season 1, and that's saying a lot. Funny how when I first watched the X-Files in the mid-90s, courtesy of my college roommates, nothing was wrong with the season 1 fashion at all.

 

Most of my favorites are similar to the most-mentioned episodes: Squeeze/Tooms ("Do you think I'm spooky?"), Eve, Ice, Beyond the Sea. I also have an inexplicable fondness for Born Again and Genderbender.  I think they stand up as solid episodes with nothing out of the ordinary about it, just decent hours of tv even two decades later.  

[AntiBeeSpray]

14 hours ago, moonb said:

Shallow note: Scully's beige outfit in "Roland" might win awards for ugliest fashion choice overall in season 1, and that's saying a lot. Funny how when I first watched the X-Files in the mid-90s, courtesy of my college roommates, nothing was wrong with the season 1 fashion at all.

 

Most of my favorites are similar to the most-mentioned episodes: Squeeze/Tooms ("Do you think I'm spooky?"), Eve, Ice, Beyond the Sea. I also have an inexplicable fondness for Born Again and Genderbender.  I think they stand up as solid episodes with nothing out of the ordinary about it, just decent hours of tv even two decades later.  

Yea that was bad, but the weird white blouse from 'The Jersey Devil' would like to say hi. I find that to be even worse. Even though (if it's the suit I'm thinking of) that suit was very poorly fitted.

[moonb]

Call it a tie, imo. Scully's date hairdo from "The Jersey Devil" is pretty cute, even if her blouse looks like curtains.

[AntiBeeSpray]

13 hours ago, moonb said:

Call it a tie, imo. Scully's date hairdo from "The Jersey Devil" is pretty cute, even if her blouse looks like curtains.

*snort* Yea it does look like curtains (the blouse that is and not her hair). That was ok.

[M.F. Luder]

For me, her oversized coats in Ice and Darkness Falls take the cake for worst fashion decisions of Dana Scully's life. But I love every time we get to see her with her hair up.

[janestclair]

On 9/22/2016 at 11:36 AM, AntiBeeSpray said:

Yea that was bad, but the weird white blouse from 'The Jersey Devil' would like to say hi. I find that to be even worse. Even though (if it's the suit I'm thinking of) that suit was very poorly fitted.

That blouse was horrible, as were the white pantyhose she also wore in (I think) the same episode.  Just no.  

[AntiBeeSpray]

16 minutes ago, janestclair said:

That blouse was horrible, as were the white pantyhose she also wore in (I think) the same episode.  Just no.  

Yea those were bad too O_O.

[festivus]

Back in the day I used to look at poor Scully's clothes and wonder why they were dressing this little thing in these huge outfits. I didn't have a job at that time so I wondered if that was the workplace look now and if it was then I would stay in the '80s thankyouverymuch. As bad as the '80s could be it wasn't as bad as those huge shapeless suits.

[Baby Button Eyes]

Makes me think of the pilot episode and Scully was wearing that dress jacket that was looking way too big on her.  Didn't they tailor wardrobe for their cast back then? She was small, yet what she was wearing was like two sizes too big looking! And then the dress jackets, and trench coats, wonder if GA ever overheated from wearing all those layers under the set lights, lol

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I don't hate the Jersey Devil white blouse. It basically represents the first attempts by designers to give adult women something but feminine but professional to wear. I remember a lot of blouses like that in the early 1990s.

I also don't think anything can be worse than this monstrosity from the Pilot.  To be fair to the costume people, though, this is how a lot of professional women dressed at the time. Especially if they didn't have a ton of money:

 

ETA: Also, let's not ignore the fact that Mulder wore some of the ugliest ties in creation in those early seasons:

 

Edited September 24, 2016 by eleanorofaquitaine

[AndySmith]

Y'know, she may have not looked that good in those earlier seasons...but as eleanorofaquitaine said, it was somewhat realistic.

[AntiBeeSpray]

3 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

I don't hate the Jersey Devil white blouse. It basically represents the first attempts by designers to give adult women something but feminine but professional to wear. I remember a lot of blouses like that in the early 1990s.

I also don't think anything can be worse than this monstrosity from the Pilot.  To be fair to the costume people, though, this is how a lot of professional women dressed at the time. Especially if they didn't have a ton of money:

 

ETA: Also, let's not ignore the fact that Mulder wore some of the ugliest ties in creation in those early seasons:

 

Fair point. 

[wanderingstar]

I just watched "Ice" for the first time in a long time, and I'd forgotten what a good little horror movie that episode is. It's also very campy, so I found myself laughing at inappropriate moments. Like when everyone tackles Felicity Huffman's character to inject her with the second worm - for some reason, that whole sequence just cracks me up.

[AntiBeeSpray]

Yea it is. It was the first episode I ever saw of the show. Thank god for Blockbuster. Haven't looked back since. Started around s3 though, for live watch. Was a bit of a chicken before then lol.

[festivus]

I just watched Ice too. They're showing X-Files now on one of my antenna TV channels. I do love Scully's white parka.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

22 hours ago, Gillian Rosh said:

I just watched "Ice" for the first time in a long time, and I'd forgotten what a good little horror movie that episode is. It's also very campy, so I found myself laughing at inappropriate moments. Like when everyone tackles Felicity Huffman's character to inject her with the second worm - for some reason, that whole sequence just cracks me up.

My favorite bit of humor is Mulder and Scully yelling at each other in the background while the other three are like, "uh, what are we going to do?"  I don't know why I find that so funny except that it's so M&S.  Yes, we are snowed in with several dead bodies and killer ice worms, but that's not going to stop us from arguing loudly in front of other people.  But no, we're totally in control here.

[Taryn74]

On 9/5/2016 at 4:20 PM, Taryn74 said:

My 15 year old started watching XF for the first time today.  So far he's been thoroughly creeped out by Victor Eugene Tooms (the episode which he referred to as "the one with the murders"....uh, gotta give me more than that, kid), worried they were really going to kill Mulder in Deep Throat, tried to explain to his little brother that the Jersey Devil in Poptropica was way different than what he was seeing, and wanted to know if all the episodes are supposedly "based on actual events" or if that was just the first one.  Heh.

This may be the happiest day of my life.

Had to go back and find this post to see how long it took me to explain what a "MotW" episode is and convince my son it really is okay to just skip the episode he was stuck on (Genderbender - "It's really weird and is making me uncomfortable and I really don't want to watch this" LOL) and start watching XF again.  A little over a month.  Felt like a year, heh.  But he's now back to "just let me finish this episode...." when I tell him it's time to do something.  I love it.

Hubby also bought me the XF board game last week so the three of us have been playing it.  Good times.

[janestclair]

I've been catching the syndicated reruns on my local channel too.  I left Ice on in the background while I was grading papers.  They skipped a few though - went right from Conduit and Squeeze last week to Ice and Fallen Angel.  So I guess they skipped Jersey Devil and Shadows, which I suppose is fine, but why?  Space they should feel free to skip.    

[Taryn74]

My son finished S1 and is well on his way in S2 now.  He really liked Young At Heart, was most creeped out by Shapes, and wanted to know if the bugs are bioluminescent in Darkness Falls then why do they avoid the light?  With all the bizarre things that happen on this show, that's what you question?  LOL.

He also had an interesting observation about Roland - when Roland was finishing the equation in the teaser it looked like he was trying to spell out 'suicide' as part of the equation.  I never saw any indication in the episode that was intentional, but I thought it was interesting.

 

[Daltrey]

On ‎2014‎-‎04‎-‎09 at 11:04 AM, Taryn74 said:

Hee!  Also, yes.  So much yes.

It literally always shocks me to remember that Beyond the Sea is in Season 1.  It could easily stand up against an episode from any other season and the quality be just as good, IMO.

Spurred by the new season, I just started to rewatch the original series from the start. Back when it was on I didn't start watching the show until season 4, I think, so I had a lot of catching up to do. I'm about to start Beyond The Sea and I'm surprised that it, and these others, are all from season 1 - Ice, Fallen Angel, Eve, E.B.E, both Squeeze and Tooms and The Erlenmeyer Flask. There are plenty of clunkers here, so far, but these really stand out to me as prime examples of why the show was given the chance to grow and become as good as it did. If I'd have been asked, prior to watching them again, I would've guessed these were all from season 2 or 3 and I'll bet there will be a couple more I forgot about before I get to the end of season 1.

[Daltrey]

On ‎2014‎-‎04‎-‎09 at 2:52 PM, ElleryAnne said:

Oh, Mark Sheppard.  I was a kid the first time I saw Fire, and I think even then I knew he was someone to watch.  Years later, when I'd see him show up in Firefly or Leverage or Supernatural, I'd be like, 'oh, that's the guy from Fire!'  That episode stayed with me.  Very creepy.

Some of the standalones did a pretty good job of balancing humor and creepy elements - Ice, Darkness Falls, Eve, even The Jersey Devil.  Yeah, there were some awful ones (I never liked Miracle Man or Roland), but I think I like the season much more than not.  

I just finished watching Fire and found it is not one that had stuck with me. Once I started it came back to me of course, and Mark Sheppard is great as always, but I still didn't find it to be one of the better efforts of the season thus far. I must have missed something because I couldn't figure out why Amanda Pays' character had come over with the family from Scotland Yard or what she was investigating on their behalf. Why was Sheppard's character attacking them when he'd been hired to stay on as caretaker of the property even after killing the previous owners, unbeknownst to anyone; what was his motivation? Did I miss something or was he just a pyro-kinetic nut job?

[Sharna Pax]

I just watched Fallen Angel, which I hadn't seen in years and barely remembered. Mytharc is generally not my thing, but I'm glad I rewatched this one, because my god was David Duchovny beautiful in it. I'm sorry, I have to be shallow here for a moment. I've always thought of both Mulder and Scully as being very good-looking but in a normal-person way rather than a model way, and that's one of the things I liked about the show. But I may have to revise that judgment, at least as far as this episode is concerned, because Mulder is just too darn pretty in it to be a credible FBI agent. There's a scene where he's sitting at a computer, and he's got his shirt open at the neck and reading glasses on, and I haven't seen anyone make reading look this hot since Gael Garcia Bernal in The Motorcycle Diaries.

Then I watched Eve, which of course is a classic, and I don't have that much new to say about it. But I did find that my heart twisted a little bit for Mulder and Scully when they took the evil twins into the diner for a bathroom-and-poison break and I got to see what they would look like as parents on a family road trip. That little moment when Mulder goes up to pay for the sodas and he thinks to hand the money to one of the twins so she can pay? He's so naturally good with kids. It's one of those things that was just sort of sweet at the time but in retrospect is sad.

[Pippin]

A channel here in Canada is rerunning the show although they're all over the place in terms of running the episodes in anything that resembles a linear sequence.  However, beggars can't be choosers, so ...

I glommed onto the X-Files pretty early in its run, but it was Beyond the Sea that made me really sit up and say, now this show is something worth watching.

As for GA's oversize clothing, didn't she become pregnant at the end of season one?  Or am I misrembering?

I remember seeing Chris Carter at a local convention -- this was before the X-Files really took off (so I had the opportunity to meet him in person and give him some of my artwork;   </mild boasting > he even requested one of my 'toons that was in the art show < \mild boasting>) and during the Q&A he said that as far as casting was concerned, David was always Fox Mulder and he never had anyone else in mind for the role, but he really had to fight hard to get Gillian for Scully, because the network wanted a busty blonde in the role.** 

Glad he won.  Scully used to irritate me in the early seasons, but I love her now, and think she's an amazing feminist role model.  I love the fact that she's pulled Mulder's chestnuts out of the fire as often as he's saved hers.

 

**If I'm repeating stuff everyone already knows, apologies.

[Taryn74]

Cool story, Pippin!

1 hour ago, Pippin said:

As for GA's oversize clothing, didn't she become pregnant at the end of season one?

She had Piper, her oldest, right before filming One Breath, so yeah.  Would have been toward the end of S1.

[Bastet]

I can't believe how much of this is still in my head.  She got pregnant during the winter hiatus of season one (which is also when she got married), and found out she was pregnant shortly after filming Young at Heart, which freaked her out a bit, as she'd just spent umpteen takes falling (onto a mat) when Scully got shot, but obviously everything was fine, as Piper entered the world in September (while GA was filming season two - she was born during the filming of 3 [the only good thing to come of that episode, but that's for the season two thread]).  Although she worked a reduced schedule as season two began filming, she got only ten days off once she gave birth; she was in hospital for several (she had to have an unplanned c-section), home for several more, and then had to shoot One Breath (which she mostly spent sleeping), and then go right into a mostly-normal shooting schedule for Firewalker. 

2 hours ago, Pippin said:

he really had to fight hard to get Gillian for Scully, because the network wanted a busty blonde in the role.

That always amused me, just on general principle of how fucking stupid and sexist it is, and for the fact she is naturally blonde - and busty (although who could tell in Scully's early wardrobe).  Just not bottle blonde, silicone tits in your face busty, and, even accounting for the typical short-sightedness of network executives, how utterly stupid do you have to be to think that's who Scully should be?  To want more Pamela Anderson than Gillian Anderson for Dana Katherine Scully?  Please pursue a different line of work.  I have approximately 8,046 issues with Chris Carter, but I'll always give him - a fledgling showrunner trying to get his pilot greenlit on a fledgling network - credit for being adamant he wanted Gillian.

[Pippin]

4 minutes ago, Bastet said:

To want more Pamela Anderson than Gillian Anderson for Dana Katherine Scully?  Please pursue a different line of work. 

My dear Goddess Bastet, you are absolutely correct.  How do these people get into positions where they get to make creative decisions?  Boggles the mind, it does.

(I remember reading something by J. Michael Stracyzinski (sp?) the Babylon 5 showrunner, where he recalled trying to explain a story idea to a network exec by comparing it to Moby Dick.  The exec asked him what was Moby Dick.  The exec then went on to declaim that he was a business graduate of such-and-such a university and he had never, ever in his life heard of Moby Dick.  So JMS sent the guy a Gold Key comic adaptation of the story.  But really -- someone who's supposed to be making decisions about stories and doesn't know about $#!!! Moby Dick and what it symbolizes?  The hell?)

[Taryn74]

7 hours ago, Bastet said:

Please pursue a different line of work. 

I just snort-laughed.  Indeed!

[Sharna Pax]

I just watched Darkness Falls, which is one I've always liked a lot. I'm not sure just why I like it so much, because it's a really standard base-under-siege story, but I find the atmosphere really compelling - all that PNW darkness and rain is so very X-Files. And there's also something appealingly retro about the episode; it kind of reminds me of classic Tom Baker Doctor Who, with the slow pacing and the way the suspense builds. And I guess I just like hanging out in a cabin in the woods with Mulder and Scully; it feels cozy and comforting, even if there are killer bugs outside.

Watching it again, I still loved it, but it struck me for the first time that it's really not a good episode for Scully. For one thing, she doesn't really do anything all episode. There's none of the usual thesis/antithesis interplay where Mulder comes up with a theory and Scully challenges it with science. Instead, Mulder immediately figures out about the bugs, Spinney confirms his theory, the other characters argue about it, and Scully just sits there. Later, Scully sees some bugs on her and freaks out, and Mulder has to talk her down and explain that the bugs are on everything but won't swarm in the light. It's not that there's any great shame in freaking out about killer bugs - it's probably exactly what I would do - but I'm pretty sure a later episode would have had another character freak out and Scully be the one giving the scientific explanation and telling everyone to keep calm. The thing that really irritates me, though, is when they're looking at the rings of the old growth tree that's been cut down, and Scully asks the ranger, "The center rings are the older rings, right?" Why is Scully asking a question that could be easily answered by most third graders? That's not the kind of writing I expect for Dana Scully, Scientist.

A couple of other things I noticed on this rewatch:

I read somewhere that Gillian Anderson had serious morning sickness during this episode, and you can definitely tell once you're looking for it. During the scene where they're looking at the old-growth tree, there's a moment where they pan over to Scully and she looks exactly like she's about to throw up. I assume they left it in by accident, but it's really obvious once you see it.

I've always found Spinney's death very sad, but it gets more horrifying the more I think about it. He's attacked just seconds before Mulder and Scully are, so he's probably still alive when the rescuers arrive. But he's off somewhere in the woods, and the rescuers don't know to look for him. They keep repeating that there are "two, possibly three" people in need of help. They have no way of knowing that there are actually four. It's awful to think of him dying out there while everyone else is airlifted to safety, when he could have been saved.

[Baby Button Eyes]

On 05/01/2019 at 9:37 PM, Sharna Pax said:

I read somewhere that Gillian Anderson had serious morning sickness during this episode, and you can definitely tell once you're looking for it. During the scene where they're looking at the old-growth tree, there's a moment where they pan over to Scully and she looks exactly like she's about to throw up. I assume they left it in by accident, but it's really obvious once you see it.

 

One of the few detailed memories GA has of filming the series is in this epsiode, she remembers being in that car and all of them having to flail and panic from the insects and then leaning over to vomit into a large bucket that she kept right off camera after the scene finished. So it must have been so unpleasant shooting that episode for her. Being outdoors  in the middle of the wet, cold rainy woods, feeling so nauseous. And you can tell she didn’t seem too thrilled about it, Scully looks particularly unenthused!