Dear grod. I started this blog entry when I managed to record several episodes of season 1 X-Files and watch them. I thought that was 12 or 15 months ago, a little more than a year maybe, but I have just discovered that the last time I updated this file was October 10, 2010. Good grief. Anyway, so I’m going to post this now, as I got the whole series on DVD recently, and just started at the beginning. This does not start at the beginning; it covers episodes 7-14. I’ll do 1-7 in another post, then 15-24 in a final one.
Anyway, the whole point of this was doing a “response to a show I haven’t watched in 20 years” thing. There is nothing meaningful or profound about my discussions here. They’re just reactive, and I’m enjoying doing them.
Theme music: still the most-listenable-to/earworming theme music until Smallville.
Episode 7: “Ghost in the Machine” — *snickers at those computers having the processing power to support an AI* And listen! Modem sounds! Hee hee hee. :)
Eh. Next few episodes did nothing much for me. I wanted to like “Eve” more than I did, “Ice” vaguely amused me for being set in the Arctic, “Space” needed more modern special effects (hardly their fault, that), and “Fallen Angel”, part of the mythology or not, seemed a bit flat. I’d forgotten about the “helpful” Deep Throat agent guy in first season; the Cigarette Smoking Man is the only one who really made an impression.
Episode 12: “Fire” — hey look, it’s Sterling from Leverage/Romo from BSG/Crowley from SPN! Only twenty years younger and…actually really kinda cute. Not that he isn’t still kinda cute now, but…yeah. Also: oh yes, the early nineties, when you actually had to use fire if you wanted fire effects. I miss those days. CGI is not always better.
Episode 13: “Beyond the Sea” — actually way better than it probably had any right to be. Since I haven’t yet watched eps 1-6, I don’t know if this is the first episode where Scully’s veneer cracks and she almost, or starts, to believe, but I thought she did a very nice job with it, as did the guy playing the serial killer/psychic. Bizarre bits: Scully’s father’s died in this episode, and Mulder, in concern, touches her face and tells her maybe she should take some time off. Just so inappropriate in a work relationship that it threw me, even though I not only get, but love, the Scully/Mulder romantic tension dynamic. Still, it made me go o.O. Second bizarre bit: one of the bad guys is described as having done time for something like “sexual assault, some drugs…nothing big, really.” And I thought, “Sexual assault isn’t big?” and couldn’t really imagine them saying that on TV now. Perhaps they would, but it certainly caught my attention.
Also, bonus points for Don S. Davis, though watching the show twenty years later, and knowing he does in fact die of a massive heart attack, as did his character…makes his presence and death a little more heartbreaking than it could ever have been when the show aired.
Episode 14: “Gender Bender” — Holy carp, is that Krychek?! …oh, damn. It’s the actor but not the character. *crushed* That would have been such a great way to bring Krychek into the mythos. Oh well. :)