1: The X-Files/Pilot: "Steven Spielberg!"

1x79: "The X-Files/Pilot"

First broadcast 10th September 1993
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Robert Mandel

It's so weird going back to this episode after being smack in the middle of season 8. Especially since this one opens without even a sniff of the classic X-Files theme tune - no whistling along here, just straight in with the title, then the credits run over the first few minutes.

Oh, it is not. Why would you say that? It's like the beginning of Fargo or something. You just know it's bullshit from the off. Nothing like this has ever happened, or ever will.

Christ; Scully's demeanour has rubbed off on me. Indeed, she's at her most sceptical here. Look:

See? Pretty sceptical.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself - the first thing we see is someone running through a forest from something unknown. This, of course, will become a recurring incident in the panoply of The X-Files; a great deal of screen time dedicated to ooh lumme. Then we have an as-yet-unidentified chap surrounded by a tornado of leaves, glowing like a Christmas tree.

This is what would become the "teaser" - the cold opening, the first few minutes of the episode, usually dedicated to some similar paranormal event, or disgusting murder. However, this episode doesn't have one, seeing as the titles are front-loaded, which means we don't get that awesome blue stretchy face until the next show. Sad. I was looking forward to seeing stretchy face.

There's an investigation, and one Karen Swinson's corpse is found, with two strange little marks on her lower back, looking roughly like a colon. The punctuation, not an arsehole. Though, when you look at them closely... no... never mind.

Coroner: "It's happening again, isn't it?"

It seems this isn't the first time this has happened.

Scully is pure Clarice Starling in this episode, Silence of the Lambs clearly being a major influence, from the terse dialogue and sense of urgency to the scene in which Mulder tucks his balls away between his legs and dances to "Goodbye Horses". Mulder, indeed, is described by Scully as "the best analyst in the violent crimes section". It's nice to reminded of his professional credentials, because almost everyone spends the rest of the series calling him a massive bell-end behind his back. Scully heads down to meet her new partner, who introduces himself with "Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted", which is a line I've always loved. Such a perfect introduction to the character - bitterness, but good humour, and a far cry from what he would become.

Scully's a bit thick in this episode. A bit of a pseud, indeed.  Mulder refers to her senior thesis "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation". Yeah, no. The Twin Paradox is an example of time dilation affecting objects travelling close to the speed of light. Basically, the twin that's been travelling in a high-speed rocket returns home to find that twin who hasn't is now older. A "new interpretation" would have to begin with "Assuming relativity doesn't fucking exist". Assuming Scully passed with this thesis, it's to be assumed her essay isn't exactly a "new interpretation" at all, and she just gave it a ridiculous title. Why, Scully?

Never mind. Mulder puts on a little presentation of the Bellefleur deaths, and Scully follows her thesis up with this little exchange:

Mulder: "Do you believe in the existence of extra-terrestrials?"

Scully: "Logically, I would have to say "no". Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilities..."

Dana! That's not what he asked! You're waffling along about whether aliens are here, when all he wanted to know was if you believed in them. I mean, at least listen to what the guy says. Sure, he's a bit eccentric, but a cursory amount of professional respect for the best analyst in violent crimes, 'kay?

Mulder and Scully make their way to the scene, passing a sign that reads "Welcome to Bellefleur, Oregon - For Recreation". You just know this place is gonna suck.

En route, the agents experience some radio disturbance in their car, and Mulder gets out to spraypaint a massive "X" on the ground.

This scene is great - it's a classic, and hopefully etched into the minds of any X-Files fan. I've always loved how it portrays Mulder as he was at the time, the way he pursues his goals but also has this fun streak. He's testing Scully, and Duchovny really gets this over well.

Mulder and Scully order exhumation of one of the victims, Ray Soames. The harness breaks under the weight of the coffin and it rolls downhill, crashing against a gravestone. I like to imagine the Benny Hill Show music playing during this scene. Mulder hurries over to the coffin and moves to open it, when the coroner stops him, leading to my favourite exchange of the episode:

Coroner: "This isn't official procedure."

Mulder: "Really."

Upon opening the coffin, we see a bizarre, decayed and apparently mummified corpse. Goodness knows what this thing is, but it ain't human!  This excites Mulder terribly, which is a joy to see.

That is the sugar poppa likes.

Mulder arses around the examination taking photos like the adorable fanboy he is. Scully suggests the corpse is a chimpanzee, which seems a bit desperate, and Mulder rightly points out the absurdity of this. Relative absurdity, given that he reckons it's an alien. Scully locates a small implant in the nasal cavity of Ray's corpse, which is some quite impressive foreshadowing for a pilot episode! Usually they stand alone, with only the most basic hanging threads to help stimulate enough curiosity to get the show commissioned.

Oh! Can't let this little blog pass by without a mention of Mulder's backwards baseball cap.

Oh, write your own penis-based caption.  I won't give you the satisfaction.

Next, Mulder and Scully visit a psychiatric hospital to visit two classmates of Ray Soames, Peggy O'Dell and Billy Miles. Poor Billy is in a vegetative state, so he couldn't possibly be responsible for Karen's death. Wheelchair-bound Peggy O' Dell has a bit of an eppy, and gets a massive nosebleed. In the ensuing chaos, Mulder looks up the back of Peggy's shirt for a bit of a perv and coincidentally notices that she has the same little bumps that the late Ms Swinson had. A clue, gang! Mulder puts it to Scully that the kids were abducted, but she's not having any of it. She wants to find out what the kids were doing in the woods in the first place, so the dynamic duo make their way there.

They run across Detective Miles, Billy's father, who threatens the pair with a shotgun, telling them they are trespassing on private property. While driving back - in a stunning moment of insight - Mulder suggests that the 'tec may have something to do with this. Almost immediately, the car is enveloped in white light, with a fantastically dated white-out/inversion effect.

Mulder is ecstatic to note that the subsequent power failure has occured at the spot where he spray-painted the big "X" earlier, and steps out into the rain celebrating. According to his watch, it was 21:03 before the incident.  Now it's 21:13.

Mulder: "We lost nine minutes!"

I love this moment - Mulder's excitement is absolutely infectious, though Scully comes close to ruining it when she says "Time can't just disappear, it's a universal invariant!" Er, you wrote your goddamn thesis on Einstein, Scully! You know that isn't true.  It's right there under "relativity". Honestly.

Upon returning to the hotel, Scully works on her report when the power goes out. She retrieves a candle and goes to run a bath, but upon stripping to her underwear she notices something in the mirror, causing her to panic a little and head over to Mulder, who confirms for her that they are merely mosquito bites. She rests her head on his shoulder in relief, and he strokes her back slightly, bemused. It's terribly sweet, and a scene that started a thousand "ships".

This is quite a charged sequence, which puts our two relative strangers into a somewhat intimate scenario, and it works very well as development for them both - Mulder being very calm and understanding, Scully showing vulnerability and real fear for the first time. The gratuitousness of Scully's undressing has come under criticism from the fandom, but my perspective is that, let's face it, nubile young ladies in their pants probably get shows commissioned. The sequence is relatively superfluous, but it's not too egregious in my opinion, and if it played a role in us getting all the X-Files we got, I'm glad it came to pass.

Mulder tells Scully about his sister's disappearance, sowing the seeds for one of the major X-Files story arcs, and explaining more of his motivation to boot. It's this scene that first alludes to the wider "Conspiracy" storyline, and it's a fine moment of interaction. All the dialogue between the agents is fantastic in this episode, though. Duchovy and Anderson's chemistry is apparent from the off, and Mulder's passion has rarely been better presented.

Mulder: "Nothing else matters to me, and this is as close as I've ever gotten to it."

The agents get a mysterious phone call from a woman who informs them that Peggy O' Dell is dead. Somehow she ran out in front of a truck, which is quite unlike a wheelchair user. Upon investigating the scene they are told that Ray Soames' body has been stolen from the lab, which prompts them to hurry back to the hotel, which they find burning to the ground. Mulder is furiously frustrated, but retains his dignity in a superb bit of Duchovny acting. The pair are approached by Theresa Nemman, who asks them to protect her, and they go with her to a café. She delivers her lines in a stilted, hugely irritating way, and I found myself praying for her death. Sadly, I've have to wait seven seasons, but that's for another time. Thankfully Theresa's father and Detective Miles turn up to take her away, sparing us her dreadful performance any longer. Scully concludes that the pair know who is responsible for the murders, and that they are responsible for withholding medical evidence, stealing the corpse and torching the hotel.

They check out the other two graves, finding them empty, dug up. Mulder posits that he thinks he knows who committed the murders - Billy Miles. No way! Scully protests, reminding her partner of Billy's waking coma state, but Mulder reminds her that Peggy O'Dell ran in front of the truck that killed her, which I must stress does not normally happen to the wheelchair-bound. Scully admits that she noticed Peggy's watch had stopped at 21:03, the time they lost nine minutes.

MULDER: "That's the reason the kids come to the forest, because the forest controls them and summons them there. And, and, and the marks are from, from some kind of test that's being done on them. And, and that may be causing some kind of genetic mutation which would explain the body that we dug up."

SCULLY: "And the force summoned Theresa Nemman's body into the woods tonight."

MULDER: "Yes, but it was Billy Miles who took her there, summoned by some alien impulse. That's it!"

In a wonderful moment, Scully laughs with Mulder, finding this absolutely ludicrous, but somehow believing every word. This is really great stuff. I'm so glad I'm blogging this show so I get to watch it again.

The agents re-visit Billy Miles to find him still in his vegetative state, but, on his feet, Scully finds trace amounts of a compound she picked up back in the forest, but which was lost in the hotel fire. They head to the forest to get another one.

Reaching the forest, they hear a woman scream and hurry towards the sound, splitting up. Scully is cold-cocked by Detective Miles, who tells her she should have "stayed out of this" in his hilariously gruff voice.  Seriously, he's so gruff he makes Judge Dredd seem like Funshine Bear. In pursuit, Mulder is confronted by the Detective, and challenges him, telling him he knows Billy's responsible for the killings. The woman screams again, and Detective Miles turns to the sound, seeing his son lifting Theresa Nemman into his arms, standing in a tornado of leaves, a bright light glowing behind him. The Detective raises his weapon, and Mulder tackles him to the ground.  Hearing the ensuing gunshot, Scully hurries to the scene.

This is one of the iconic X-Files images - seen in all the promotion, it's evocative, mysterious and still impressive to look at. A nice microcosm of this episode as a whole, actually.

The light and wind die down, there is a clap of thunder, and it is over. Theresa's bumps have disappeared. Billy seems to have come around, and his father embraces him.

Back at the FBI, Billy is questioned under hypnosis, speaking of being taken, and testing he underwent. Scully presents the nasal implant she took from Ray Soames to Section Chief Blevins, and leaves the office. The last thing we see is a certain Cigarette-Smoking Man dropping the evidence into a box containing several similar implants, before the reveal that this is an enormous warehouse in the Pentagon. It's basically the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and sets up the potential scope of the series very nicely. I wonder if that Cigarette-Smoking Man will appear again?

Just kidding. We all know he will.

The Truth: Well, this is an auspicious start. A really, really brilliant little episode, and very daring not to offer any real answers in a pilot show of this nature. Deliberately obfuscating the audience is no longer a rare thing, but The X-Files did it first and with panache in this instance. This is from 1993 and if it aired today I believe it would still impress. A prime-time show insinuating that the American government was involved in such a sinister cover-up was unheard of back then - it really is impressive start.

Duchovny and Anderson are both wonderful, hitting it off straight away, and the writing is hugely enjoyable. It's a heck of an opener, and on a personal level has really motivated me to keep on top of this blog. I'd remembered this being a good episode, but I think I'd forgotten just how good. Nineteen years later (fuck!), it still feels fresh.

Rating: Five out of Five