Best part of X-Files intro

GOVERNMENT DENIES KNOWLEDGE becasue that was like the whole plot of the programme.

http://www.t-shirthumor.com/Merchant2/graphics/fullsize/iwtb_lg.gif

Is that a sprout or a frog or what during PARANORMAL ACTIVITIES?

i always like that choppy ufo bit

Plasma ball thing that hippies own

they never fucking solved how this works

i liked it when THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE was changed to something else for select episodes

I want to vote for fwee fwee fwee fwee!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTCP0jk3cX4

1:19 - 1:45 in honor of FWEE FWEE FWEE FWEE.

OH MY AWESOMEGOD

i liked it when THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE was changed to something else for select episodes

-- blueski, Monday, 31 March 2008 22:14 (10 minutes ago) Link

yeah

best was when it was in navajo

deny inveigle obfuscate!

Trust No One — "The Erlenmeyer Flask"
Deny Everything — "Ascension"
éí 'aaníígÓÓ 'áhoot'é — "Anasazi" (Navajo: The truth is out there)
Apology is Policy — "731"
Everything Dies — "Herrenvolk" (German: Master race)
Deceive Inveigle Obfuscate — "Teliko"
E pur si muove — "Terma" (Italian: And still it moves — attributed to Galileo)
Believe the Lie — "Gethsemane"
All Lies Lead to the Truth — "Redux"
Resist or Serve — "The Red and the Black"
The End — "The End"
Die Wahrheit ist irgendwo da draußen — "Triangle" (German: The truth is out there.. somewhere)
In the Big Inning — "The Unnatural" (a baseball-themed episode)
Amor Fati — "Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" (Latin: Love of fate)
Believe to Understand — "Closure"
Nothing Important Happened Today — "Nothing Important Happened Today II"
erehT tuO si hturT ehT — "4D" (The Truth is Out There backwards)
They're Watching — "Trust No 1"
Dio ti ama — "Improbable" (Italian: God loves you)

^^ would make another good poll

^ i had most of these scrawled on my notebook in 7th grade

This song has the best theme song of any TV show ever. Sorry, "Perfect Strangers."

I want to vote for fwee fwee fwee fwee!!!!!

-- nickalicious, Monday, 31 March 2008 22:16 (Yesterday) Link

nick cave and the bad seeds remind you that zero is a number

it took me years to figure that out

This song has the best theme song of any TV show ever. Sorry, "Perfect Strangers."

you obviously never watched Tailspin

ducktales is even better

x-files theme rules though

so good it reached #2 in the UK charts

stretchy face

voted "White human silhouette falls onto outline of a blue and red handprint" after less than half a second of deliberation

Yeah, white silhouette is the winner, although I like those weird goopy balls during PARANORMAL ACTIVITY.

which part had the mirror image flamingos?

I want to vote for fwee fwee fwee fwee!!!!!

-- nickalicious, Monday, 31 March 2008 22:16 (Yesterday) Link

-- Roz, Tuesday, April 1, 2008 3:05 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Link

also <3 abbott poll

I want to vote for fwee fwee fwee fwee!!!!!

-- nickalicious, Monday, 31 March 2008 22:16 (Yesterday) Link

-- Roz, Tuesday, April 1, 2008 2:05 AM (12 hours ago)

NOw that I'm thinking about it shouldn't it be fwee fwee fwee FWEE fwee?

I voted "Choppy zooming in on a UFO a guy is pointing at." Most creepy and evocative, least goofy, basically encapsulates what the whole show is about.

http://minimateheadquarters.com/fujis/ComicBookGuy.jpg

whoa alternate x-files opening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzvYXFes31U&feature=related

^^^ not a rickroll

or there's season 9 opening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv-7UQc3PNQ

with such features as THE UNSEEN WORLD, kid with his mouth open, and MITCH PILEGGI.

I voted for "GOVERNMENT DENIES KNOWLEDGE" because I love the ghost walking in the hallway behind it.

Does anyone actually know what the "hand moving over symbols" is actually supposed to be?

whoa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

Wanted to vote for face stretch, cause that scared me the most, but I had to go with GOVERNMENT DENIES KNOWLEDGE... fucking classic!

That is so cute that that scared you. :D

White human silhouette falls onto outline of a blue and red handprint

I voted for this cause later seasons had Mulder falling into an eyeball.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I miss the early-mid 90s ... not the late 90s, that was garbage.

PEE PEE POW POW PEE PEE

MIRROR IMAGE FLAMINGOS WHAT IS IT

I was totally wrong. man/hand is good, and who can forget éí 'aaníígÓÓ 'áhoot'é, but the winner is THE X FILES

JJ that was PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. I thought it was a sprout in fast motion.

It's what I voted for!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

FWEE FWEE FWEE

Does anyone actually know what the "hand moving over symbols" is actually supposed to be?

An air traffic controller's radar screen. See also the very beginning of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L90wfWMOf_w

i don't like how fringe has copied only the most mundane parts of the x-files intro, and done so in the most clinical way instead of art school collage.

it is time to rewatch the x files

important x files question no. 1 (s01e01, 'pilot', 6:23: mulder meets scully, insults her, and shows a film of a dead woman he identifies as 'oregon female'): just how frequently would fox mulder have posted on reddit?

"dammit, mulder, cut the crap"

duchovny and anderson as alien visitors from the land of the preternaturally good-looking, walking among us with no camouflage bar ill-advised haircuts and terrible box-cut suits

so mad i missed this poll

or... did you?

dunnina dunnina dunnina

most people in the uk heard about the xfiles via the music of the bloodhound gang

popular welsh alternative rock act catatonia's single 'mulder and scully' iirc

xp no way, it was the talk of the playground when i was about 10.

just how frequently would fox mulder have posted on reddit

well obv. he would make preliminary contacts there, but he would have to establish more trusting relationships with good sources

the music on the closing credits for the pilot is p chill

16:40 in s01e02, 'deep throat', probably the first actually funny moment sort of (windscreen on car explodes, scully wakes up momentarily terrified, mulder comes running down the hill yelling at her to wake up and come see)

whereas most of the 'humour' seems to be in lines that are like, 'snappy one liner from mulder here' 'sarcastic remark here', but they never actually wrote the lines and went with whatever placeholder anyone could come up with on the day; i feel like the level of sarcasm we expect our fictional characters to be capable of displaying on demand has undergone some kind of arms race

important x files question no 2: is this a good thing or a bad thing in terms of the greater culture

this is a weird thing to ask of x-files, having the at times most cringingly earnest characters of the 90s.

Amazing that no big indie synthwave band has sampled the X-files theme yet.

how long does it take them to drop the scully's-word-processor-in-close-up schtick

"LOOK, dana, whose side are you ON?"

lots of bad dialogue:

"i could feel ... IT."
"feel WHAT, frank?"

"is this what it takes to CLIMB the LADDER, colton?"
"all the way to the top."
"then i can't wait til you FALL off and LAND on your ASS."

also a 'going through the records' montage and a retired cop shaking his head sadly at the newspaper. it's weird that the scripts seem a1 in terms of pacing and setting out the issues, just that there's lots of hokey business and, yeah, bad dialogue. does this get better?

'squeeze' (s01e02 or 03, does the pilot count? i don't know) is the first one of these i remember the plot of. but i don't know whether i've seen it before. it would have been on british tv when i was nine. -- when i was a kid i had one of those 'every episode explained' books, when i was like twelve and into the show. -- repeat situation for american shows on british tv in the 90s, not great. -- i do remember seeing the mosquito bite scene in the pilot the first time round, though, though nothing else yet.

the soundtrack to 'squeeze' is pretty good, dissonant string-plucking, little tape loop thing for the bit at the end. i am watching 'conduit' now and the dramatic-things-happen-synth-pads-play-minor-chords i'm not so sure about. did mark snow do all of the music?

good god, one of the episodes has scully doing voiceover notes for a case she's not even in

i actually recently re-watched most of this series. the monster madness stories came off as terrible and the government conspiracy/aliens stuff came off as much better and more captivating than i remembered. probably because i'm not a child any longer.

i don't remember mulder being so much of a big nerd! i think they toned down on this later, i certainly don't remember him strolling around with ziploc bags of healthy snack foods by season five or so

been on an intense binge since last month (when one of my housemates found it on netflix)—thomp otm w/r/t mulder's slightly ahead-of-its-time nerdiness, which is nonetheless somewhat justified/explained by the FBI's needs to 'keep tabs on' the latest developments in crackpottery

I'm old enough to remember scattered eps from seasons 2 & 3, and I think I was a regular watcher from season 4 on. later, I watched a lot of season 1 & 2 eps on DVD with my family, too; but that was several years ago, and they watched a lot of 'em without me, so there were still some boxes left to check (gotta catch 'em all!)

I like how every season or two, they'd do another one-off ep about a disgruntled vietnam vet w/ supernatural powers avenging old injustices

FAVORITE SELF-CONTAINED EPISODES:

- "Fallen Angel" (... in which, if you squint a little bit, you can imagine David Duchovny as Solid Snake)

- "Darkness Falls" (good conceit, pretty scenery, cheap-but-compelling SFX. I remember, before I had ever seen the X-Files, having scenes from this episode described to me by a friend at school; it didn't make sense, and I may have mistakenly thought he was talking about an episode of the X-Men cartoon... but it certainly sounded terrifying!)

- "F. Emasculata" (very genre, very 90s, but very good)

- "Wetwired" (the best of several episodes reflecting the oh-so-90s concern over media-induced violence [SEE ALSO: "Blood", though it's a lot less interesting]. pay special attention to the way that the hallucination sequences in this one destabilize the show's basically investigative, evidence-centered format, e.g. the mysterious tip Mulder receives at the beginning, which is necessary to put him onto the case since there's nothing outwardly 'supernatural' about it...)

- "Ice"/"Firewalker" (alien parasites double feature! the first is probably the better of the two, if you can overlook the enormous debt it owes to John Carpenter)

***BONUS TRIFECTA OF SPOOKY SORCERY***
- "Die Hand Die Verletzt" (dark as fuck—rewatching discovered some scenes I had repressed because they MESSED ME UP as a youngster)
- "Fresh Bones" (more hushed-up military scandal intrigue; but this time there's VOODOO)
- "Sanguinarium" (okay, this one's pretty silly, but still... witchcraft + plastic surgery accidents? sign me up!)

I'd have to say my favorite episode, which is pretty self-contained if not entirely is "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'". Pretty great meta in-joke on the show but also kind of a mind-trip.

Been watching XF on and off over the past few weeks now. Just watched "Pusher" last night, what a great episode. The nature of his powers wasn't particularly original, but the character really makes that episode. "The little man who wishes he was big".

Regarding table's comments above, I guess I must still be a child, as I still prefer the monster episodes as a whole. The alien conspiracy had moments of greatness but really started going downhill when they brought in too many elements without explaining it satisfactorily. As the plot expanded into a worldwide invasion scenario, there was too much of certain events and characters being given a great significance only because the script kept saying it, not because it was shown in any convincing way. I thought the MythArc went downhill before the MOTW episodes did.

That's why I found S4's "Tempus Fugit"/"Max" two-parter so refreshing. It's fun, thrilling and actually ABOUT something.

I agree "Josh Chung" is probably the best XF episode, and it's a great meta in-joke of the UFO phenomenon in general, not just XF. Chung later turned up in Millennium in a Scientology parody episode, but sadly got killed off.

All the Darin Morgan-penned episodes are classics. See also Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, War of the Coprophages, and Humbug. He wrote that Millennium episode about Jose Chung as well.

Oh yeah I forgot that the X-Files and Millennium existed in the same universe.

Also, I stopped watching the show after Mulder left or "died" or whatever so I have no idea if any of that Conspiracy MythArc stuff was ever resolved.

xpost oh yeah I forgot about "Humbug"—great ep

I liked that ep w/ the snake handler and the one w/ breaking bad

n that one in hollywood

as for the terminator 2 episodes, the one where he's in an underground tunnel w/ a bunch of marines or w/e was a good one, p much just like a self contained action movie or w/e

best scene of quite possibly the dumbest ep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VSvXfhGMGs

Every now and then I feel like want to rewatch the whole series from the start, to but always seem to get bogged down in Season 1, even though I like many of the episodes. I think maybe because there's a few stinkers in the first half of the season that always sap my enthusiasm to continue. For instance, there's "Fire" - just pure schlock, from the terrible accents to Mulder's horrendous ex-girlfriend (was it really true they considered replacing Scully with her?) to Mark Sheppard hamming the place up. And "Space" which manages to be both tedious and incredibly stupid.

I do think though, in terms of cinematography and direction at least, it outshines almost any low-budget Canada-filmed show you might find today. Take for instance "Continuum" - XF supporting cast all over it, but just looks like Amateur Hour by comparison. I really believe Chris Carter just got very lucky with the talent that came together on his show at that particular time, as his work outside X-Files(or lack of) has proved, you can't recapture that same lightning twice.

On the subject of Mark Snow's music, I definitely prefer it early on when it's less "theme-heavy". For Season 1 he seems to use lot of unusual ambient cues to enhance the atmosphere rather than dominate it. In later seasons he just gets incredibly overbearing, ladling on the emotion in every scene like the worst excesses of Murray Gold on Dr Who.

True, the quality of the episodes in the first half of S1 goes up and down like crazy. I really like "GenderBender" though, despite its bad rep.

Based on what I've read on various books, magazines and message boards over the years, the most polarising episode of the entire series is either "The Field Where I Died" (which I really like) or "Post-Modern Prometheus" (which I hate).

"Genderbender" is great. Totally underrated.

Unsure if not having Skinner around for most of Season 1 is a good thing or not