X Files Season Sets: Worth an Investment? (1 Viewer)

[Joshua_W]

Yeah, this is absolutely a show with diminishing returns.

It's really hard to pinpoint where exactly the decline begins, because there isn't really a clear "jump the shark" moment. It starts strong, but just meanders around for nine years.

The first three seasons are excellent.

The fourth and fifth seasons are good-to-decent.

By the sixth and seventh seasons the premise is beginning to wear extremely thin, and you sort of start to realize that they probably aren't going to start clearing anything up.

When seasons eight and nine come around, the series has bled off its lead actors -- which should be indicitive of Fonzie putting on the water skis, but by that time the show had worn its premise so thin, so many new characters had been introduced that didn't go anywhere, and it was clear that they were just stretching things out and not clearing up any plotlines, that it didn't make much difference.

My advice would be to go one season at a time, and to stop buying them once you start to get bored with it. It never gets any better.

Ultimately, they should've either gone the Babylon 5 or Buffy route. Create a show with a clear premise and a predefined stopping point like Babylon 5, or make each season its own defined unit with a clear resolution by season's end, and move onto the next story arc the next season.

Instead of doing this, they just kept introducing new elements all of the time, pulling characters in and out of the storyline and not really doing anything with them. I'm not really sure what the hell happened to Samantha Mulder, they threw so many possibilities around that I sort of lost track. It just started to become this over-convoluted mess, like a tangled up set of Christmas lights.

 

[GuruAskew]

I'm actually in the minority here but I think all 9 seasons were pretty damn good. In any case, the show had bad episodes throughout its entire run, and the hardest of the die-hard Doggett-era haters would be lying if they said episodes like "Space" and "3" were better than any of the Season 8&9 episodes.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

I thought the show started slipping in season 6 and got pretty bad in season 7. Daggett revitalized the show in season 8, only to have it wrecked again by Reyes.

 

[Sam Favate]

I thought the show got noticably weak in season 5. It was a big hit then, the talk of the airwaves, but it was becoming a caricature of itself. Seasons 5 and 6 were still interesting, IMO, but the mythology was becoming more and more convoluted. By season 7, it wasn't good (again, IMO), although it may have had its moments. For me, Seasons 1-4 were unbeatable. Just great.

 

[Sanj K]

Seasons 1-4 are all excellent, 5 is good solid drama but in Season 6 when they created so many gimmicky episodes, tried to tie up the entire mythology with 2 hours of pure exposition, it started to go downhill.
I agree about Season 7 being pretty bad, with such all-time-worst contenders like Brand X, First Person Shooter and of course Fight Club. Not only that but Gillian Anderson and William B Davis wrote two of the most self-indulgent episodes of all in 'all things' and 'En Ami'. I did love Hollywood A.D. though (written and directed by David Duchovny).
Season 8 was refreshing and Season 9 was a pretty awful send-off for a great show.

 

[Jonathan_Clarke]

The movie is a clear breaking point.

It came after Season 5 and ironically was my jump on point for the show. I always admired the show before but couldn't understand the continuity. The movie gave me fundamentals (although looking back now it's just a 'greatest hits' with a big budget and adds little to the story).

Season 6 is the first to be shot in LA and it definitely hurt the show. The creepy low lighting of Vancouver was gone, replaced by a new crew that turned everything brown. Look at the later seasons, they're brown. I still like a lot of the episodes in this season thoughand after a couple of years I've finally decided to buy the set. If nothing else, it's got Bruce Campbell!

By Season 7 everyone is BORED. You can see Duchovny especially phoning it in. I thought that was the end of the show, much like Star Trek TNG 7th season where they're just packing up their trailers all year. The finale had one great plot point (Mulder's abduction) and one horrible one (Scully's pregnancy).

Season 8 was a breath of fresh air. With the introduction of Robert Patrick (who knew this was his biggest break since T2) and the 'search for Mulder' story it was new ground. The cardinal sin was when Mulder comes back, he gets pushed to the background. Honestly, your main character spends 7 years looking for aliens, he gets abducted for six months and he's got NOTHING to say about it? Seemed mostly political since Duchovny refused to do Season 9. Ruined the show IMO.

Season 9? I didn't even watch it. X Files starring Coy and Vance. The series finale was all I watched and it was pretty lousy. I'm hoping a second movie (which sounds like it's going to happen) will wash that sour taste out of my mouth.

 

[Zen Butler]

To the thread's creator, yes, a worthy investment. I've got a lot of play out the season sets.

 

[GuruAskew]

It's funny that you apparantly accepted the "TNG" cast but you refer to Doggett and Reyes as "Coy and Vance". When I watch the 8th and 9th seasons, I feel that there was a lot of potential for the pair. Given a little more time, I think they could have become accepted by the fanbase. The show was called "The X-Files", not "Mulder and Scully's X-Files". I would have liked "The X-Files" to have a long run like the "Law and Order" series, and it's a shame that "Millennium" and "The Lone Gunmen" didn't run long enough to really get into some more complex crossovers.

 

[Tim-H.]

I love everything through the movie. The first set I bought was S5, my favorite episode being 'Bad Blood' (I know-a tad silly for some hardcore fans). IMO even if Duchovny & Anderson had kept going, the mythology was starting to just spin around in circles. I thought Robert Patrick did a great job & keep hoping he'll find a series to call his own.

 

[Bryan Ri]

I picked up Season 1, so far not complaints over here. It's very interesting especially to see the Mulder and Scully relationship early on. The Pilot had Scully a bit more convinced than I think she normally would have been, in the heart of the shows run.

I'm about halfway through this set and looking for my season 2 set as we speak. Thanks again for all the input guys.

 

[Jonathan_Clarke]

Bill, it took me 6 YEARS to accept TNG. And the only reason I did was Patrick Stewart.

I disagree about X Files being like Law & Order. IMO, the show was always about Mulder, this man's quest to uncover the truth at all costs and the one person he could count on to go with him. When he got abducted, I was fascinated. this would really add something to his character. He came back and it didn't. Scully was more affected by her abduction and she was only gone for a few weeks!

 

[Sanj K]

I ordered Season 3 after Amazon reduced it to get rid of the old stock, and it arrived today. When I put it next to my Season 1, it is considerably shorter. Are anybody else's like this?

I agree that X-Files shouldn't have been turned into a Law & Order type formulaic anthology show. Although the mytharc episodes were abysmal towards the end, they originally worked because of how personal it all was to Mulder, and that was lost in Season 9 and would've been more so had they taken the Law & Order path.

 

[Rakesh.S]

this show has to be one of the greatest shows of all time..even with the lackluster seasons

as for when it started to go downhill, i'd say midway through season 4..the movie was good but certainly nothing like season 1,2,3

it seems like the show had a certain look and feel for s1,2,3....and then all of a sudden midway thru season 4, everyone started looking different and the show just felt different

i don't even want to talk about the crappy comedy and mulder or scully being sick all the time in the latter seasons

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Rakesh.S wrote (post #33):


I had a similar impression and analysis, especially with regard to the show's "red-shifted" dark lightinghttp://hometheaterforum.com/htforum/showthread.php?&postid=766591#post766591 of the later seasons produced in LA ("the L.A. Captivity", as I like to call it).

 

[StylesStewart]

hi everyone i would just like to give everyone the heads up that futureshop is selling xfiles brand new for 49.99 canadian i just picked it up my self, i dont know if they ship to the states but if they do i would recommend this at such a cheap price it really made me remember how good xfiles is rewatching season one after so many years.

 

[Jonathan_Clarke]

Looks like the UK is repackaging the sets in slimline cases and selling them even cheaper in October.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...822755-7590036

Could the U.S. be far behind? If Fox could drop these lower than $50, like Millennium, I would snap up all the remaining seasons.

 

[Bryan Ri]

Just thought I'd give a little update as to where I am in the series:

I'm about a quarter way through season 4. It's stille good, but I think season 2 is my favorite thus far.

 

[Ian_H]

Where does it say it has slimline cases? If they do go to slimlines here it would be great if Fox would offer them to people that already have the sets. I would pay a few bucks to replace the crappy fold out boxes.


-Ian

 

[Chris Cheese]

Has there been any sort of indication about the Region 1 copies of this being repackaged and repriced like the UK versions? Fox would sell me nine sets if they did that.

 

[Don Scott]

I own all 9 seasons and have watched them all. I love the show from start to finish. They cost me about a grand but are worth every penny.
Even though the audio is 2.0 it sounds great with prologic. As for future HD releases, I won't be buying them. Not after paying what I did. Besides how much better is it going to look, really?