I Saw Elvis In A Potato Chip Once 1 - The X-Files 1.01: Pilot

After I had finished "The 800 Day Project" (watching every single episode of Doctor Who in order) back in March 2016, I was going to take a short break to catch up on some other neglected viewing and then tackle another long-running series. Unfortunately that intended mini break turned into a full nine months, I never seemed to get caught up and all my plans fell by the wayside.

Well it's now 2017 - a new year (currently) full of promise and hope  - so with the blog getting back on track, I thought it was time to resurrect my idea. So here we are - I'm going to watch every single episode of "The X-Files" in order, including the two movies and the recent "event" mini-series.

Why "The X-Files"? Well, partly it's because I somehow managed to miss more than 95% of the episodes of this iconic show on original transmission here in the UK. I caught the first three or four I think back in late 1994, but that was all. However a more important reason is that I used to have a real obsession with UFOs, the paranormal, etc. I think it really started when I first saw "Close Encounters Of the Third Kind", but let me give some history...

Back in 1980 I was just a mere thirteen years old. I already had a huge love for science fiction. Of course this included the genre TV shows of the time (you know the list, I don't need to repeat it) I'd also been avidly working my way through the work of the grand masters of SF - Isaac Asimov, H.G. Wells, Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, Jules Verne - and of course Arthur C. Clarke.

That last name is important, because September 1980 also saw the first UK transmission of a TV series about UFOs and other unusual mysteries. "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" was a major production from Yorkshire Television for ITV. Sadly it didn't see dear Arthur globetrotting around the world like a paranormal Indiana Jones - instead he introduced and closed out each program with a short segment filmed in his beloved Sri Lanka. The bulk of the documentary sequence tackling the topic of the week was then narrated by the 1970s most popular newsreader, Gordon Honeycombe.

The thirteen parts of the series covered the full range of unexplained phenomena, including giant land and sea creatures, 'forgotten' technologies, Bigfoot and the Yeti, huge figures or shapes carved into the landscape that can only be appreciated from the air, the Tunguska explosion of 1908, megalithic stones, UFOs - and of course the infamous crystal 'Skull of Doom' which became the defining image of the show.

I was utterly fascinated by all of this and couldn't wait to watch it each week *and * I was lucky enough to get a copy of the accompanying book to pour over. But I wanted to learn more, and at the same time as all this was unfolding on my TV screen, Orbis Publishing started to release a new (and hugely popular) part-work magazine onto British newsstands - it's name? - "The Unexplained"

Eventually running to an eye-watering 157 parts, this was the definitive (for the time) exploration of every kind of weird happening, spooky occurrence and crackpot theory out there. In the decades since, many have of course been debunked (Cottingley Fairies anyone?) but back then it was interesting, absorbing, unbelievably fascinating stuff, I can clearly remember how I felt when I first read about Kirlian aura's, Zener cards, the enigma of Kasper Hauser, the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, Men in Black, Madame Blavatsky, hypnotic regression, the Angel of Mons, the vampire of Croglin Grange, Aleister Crowley, the Turin Shroud - plus of course Spontaneous Human Combustion - which I became so fascinated with that I even presented a ten minute piece on it to the rest of my English class. Issue one came with a free flexi-disc of "Voices From the Dead" which to be honest scared the living crap out of me.

Many of the covers and the pictures within the hundreds of pages of the magazine were burned into my memory - either because I read the articles over and over again or because they genuinely sent a chill up my spine. My parents were wonderful and indulged my interests, allowing me to collect every issue plus all the blue and gold binders to put everything in. Four years worth of issues at sixty pence (or more) each. Not a lot in today's terms but a sizeable investment back then.

So given all of the above, when 1994 rolled around, why wasn't I instantly addicted to "The X-Files"?

Sifting through my memories and trying to analyse the past, I think that at the end of the day it was just a matter of timing. A lot of water had gone under the bridge in the intervening decade and a half since my paranormal obsession had started. As the years went by, I moved onto other interests like computer games (I *loved* my ZX Spectrum) and lots and lots of American comics - the 80s being the high point for innovative indie titles and the massive game-changers like "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight". I guess I "grew out of" perusing through what was a glorified encyclopedia (as interesting as it was) and stuck with the more colourful fantastical worlds. I enjoyed Arthur C's fiction more than his dives into the 'Mysterious World', and increasingly I was reading more fantasy fiction than SF. The binders of "The Unexplained" gathered dust on the shelf, hidden behind rows of comics and graphic novels and paperbacks and eventually when I moved out of my parents home they went to a charity shop or some place like that.

When "The X-Files" arrived, I was twenty-seven, with a career and a house and a fiancee and a spring wedding to plan and different friends and different interests and...well you get the idea. As I said earlier, although I watched the first few stories, it just didn't grab me in the same way those subjects had in my youth. The passion for the paranormal had gone. By the time my personal life had settled down, many months had gone by and in those days unless you had recorded it on home video tapes at the time or could fork out for the later expensive VHS releases, you had no chance to catch up on TV shows. So I just didn't bother.
Like I said -  timing.

Three decades rolled past, with kids arriving, new jobs, a sad divorce and then eventually an amazing new wife. I moved house several times. Some (not all) of my comics moved with me but the 'Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time"? - they had moved to the long term part of my memories marked "childhood"...

But just a couple of years ago I was browsing through eBay and came across a number of issues of "The Unexplained" for sale - and there were auctions for the complete set in binders, just like I used to own. A local seller was offering them for just £ 20.00. Filled with a sense of nostalgia I showed the listing to my wife who made some humorous comment about "..having enough crap taking up space on the shelves..", so I quickly clicked to the next page and forgot about it. But when my birthday arrived, I opened a large wrapped box to find the full thirteen binders there:

What a wonderful wife I have ! As I flicked through the pages all those happy memories came vividly flooding back. Of course I don't have the time to pour over it like I did in my youth, but it's a fun thing to be able to dip into a random volume every now and again and remind myself just how crazy some of this stuff really was.

Anyway, when I was looking for a new series for a viewing marathon I thought of "The Unexplained" and "The X-Files" popped into the number one spot. But the final part of the jigsaw and my reasons for deciding to return to the adventures of Mulder and Scully at this moment in time is that I've just managed to pick up another Ebay bargain - a complete Blu-ray box set of all nine seasons (in fact I got a deal which included the two movies and the 2016 series as well). With that in my possession, it feels like this project was meant to happen.

Having said all of the above and decided to do this - it's a big undertaking - over 200 episodes in all. But as I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I'm going to learn from the limitations and problems of the last year and make things slightly easier on myself.

My wife doesn't have any interest in a lot of these genre shows, so it's unfair to subject her to them during the time we have together in the evenings or weekends. That means my viewing time is constrained. Now with "Doctor Who", I managed one episode a day before leaving for work, so that seems like the perfect time slot, but sticking to just the one programme every single day leaves no time for any other series to get a look in and I am *way* behind on so much (Daredevil season one I'm looking at you). That kind of schedule would also make any kind of writing about the episodes nigh on impossible - I'd never be able to keep up. Finally I really want to make the blog posts shorter and on more varied topics - not just all about one thing. This is all meant to be enjoyable remember, not a chore.

So, this means that I'm taking a stand and not committing to more than one "X-Files" episode a week. Sometimes there might be more (two-part stories perhaps) or I might throw in the spin-off shows "Millennium" and "The Lone Gunmen", if they overtly cross-over, but generally I'll watch just one episode every seven days. This structure leaves time to watch and enjoy other things, time to write - and most importantly time to relax and not berate myself for missing unachievable goals. It's going to take a *lot* longer to get through the whole canon, but that's okay.

One last thing - I'm not going to attempt to "review" these episodes in the conventional sense. There have been a million words written about every aspect of  "The X-Files" in the last twenty-plus years and these posts are really more for fun and to document my journey rather than minutely detail every plot point. Sometimes I might not have much to say beyond "That was excellent / terrible" or "Ah, now I see how it all fits together". My new mantra for  2017 is 'keep it short' and we'll see how that goes.

Enough waffle. Time to get on with the main event - and of course we have to start with:

Episode 1.01 - "Pilot"

Part of the problem with watching the show now, twenty-three years after it's debut is that I can't help but already know who Mulder and Scully are. What the X-Files are. The show was *so* big back in the day that even if, like me, you were not watching the actual episodes you couldn't avoid it. David and Gillian's faces were *everywhere*. It's like starting to get into "Star Trek" or "Doctor Who" in 2017 - many of the staples of the series have now seeped into the collective unconscious to an extent that they've become part of the lexicon of society. There is no way that I can reproduce the feeling that original audiences had watching two unknown actors in a show that became the biggest thing since ..."Twin Peaks"?

This means that when viewing episode one it's almost a game to spot the tropes that came to define the programme for the general public - the woodland scenery, the flashlights in the darkness, shadowy creatures that could be aliens, what appeared to be constant torrential rain, the Cigarette Smoking Man, the obvious sexual attraction between the characters. The classic theme by Mark Snow isn't present yet but his musical influence is woven throughout many of the scenes. All these things are so well known now and have been used and parodied countless times in popular culture - but this was the kernel of the success to come.

While I was watching, a few small things popped out at me:

• Mulder misquotes the famous speech Arthur Conan Doyle gave Sherlock Holmes of "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".
• Although I can obviously get behind the appearance of now-outdated technology such as huge computer monitors and the lack of mobile phones, since this was set in 1992, what strangely stood out was Mulder's use of a slide projector. Were they really still a thing in the 90s?
• The mutated dead body that was exhumed was pretty disgusting. I'm surprised they could get away with it on US network television. I wonder if the BBC censored "The X-Files" at all on original transmission in the famous 6.00 pm "SF slot"?

At this point it's feels that Gillian Anderson got the top deal and comes out looking like a better actor than David Duchovny. Maybe I'm biased and looking through rose-tinted glasses having enjoyed so much of her work in the intervening years, but for someone who had only done one minor film and a single TV episode at the time, her performance was remarkably strong from the very beginning. That's not to say that Duchovny was bad (I loved his quirkiness), but perhaps he was still feeling his way with the character of 'Fox' Mulder. I need to watch a few more episodes to really judge.

The key thing is that it's an immensely confident opener - setting out the premise of the series in an interesting and understandable way, No wonder it caught the general public's attention.

See? I told you it would be short. Onwards...