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Sceptical Special Agent Dana Scully is assigned by her
FBI superiors to observe and report on the paranormal investigations
of her new partner, Fox Mulder...
It
sure was sneaky of 20th Century Fox to re-release its so-called
limited edition VHS box set of Season One after many dedicated
fans had paid upwards of £150 for rare copies of its original
issue. It's even sneakier of Fox to now release the same material
on DVD, mere months after the VHS reissue! But for any of
you who still don't own Season One, this is your chance to
enjoy a fine collection of episodes.
Things
were much simpler back then, before the production team had
even dared to hope that they might need to sustain the series
for eight years or more. Each episode stands alone as a potent
piece of drama in its own right, with references to previous
instalments being few and far between. Many of the most notorious
paranormal phenomena, from UFOs and alien abductions to Bigfoot
(in The Jersey Devil), werewolves (Shapes),
ghosts (Shadows), channeling (Beyond the Sea),
reincarnation (Born Again), faith healing (Miracle
Man), spontaneous human combustion and pyrokinetic abilities
(Fire), are tackled within this first year - leaving
only vampires, witchcraft, lake monsters and more obscure
topics for future seasons to explore. From Season Two onwards,
the production team would be forced to make their stories
more complex, self-referential and self-mocking, but the first
season sticks to the basics of straightforward horror, mystery
and paranoia, without having to worry unduly about any long-term
consequences to a story arc.
Even
the reputedly weaker episodes of this season, such as Space
and Shapes, still make enjoyable viewing - they're
not bad, just not as great as the majority. The much maligned
Ghost in the Machine in fact makes a nice change from
the usual subject matter of the series. For me, the only real
clunker is Gender Bender, which takes an interesting
if muddled set of ideas but then completely fails to reach
a satisfactory resolution and instead whisks its mysterious
characters off in a crop circle for no adequately explored
reason!
To
tempt those of you who already possess VHS copies of these
episodes to part with your cash, this collection also includes
a disc full of extra features. A "making of" featurette entitled
The Truth Behind Season One isn't particularly revelatory,
although the orange-suited blob in a special-effects clip
from Fallen Angel is extremely amusing. Chris Carter
discusses his 12 favourite episodes from this season in interviews
that were originally included in the VHS box set, while Behind
the Truth comprises 12 mini-features first shown on the
Fox F/X channel (and is not the making of the featurette,
as the packaging suggests). Two complete deleted scenes from
the pilot episode are presented, featuring Scully's boyfriend,
Ethan, and these can also be accessed while watching the pilot
on Disc One. An extremely welcome inclusion is that of the
original 10- and 20-second trailers to each episode, including
a badly dubbed 20-second trailer for Squeeze and a
rather misleading 10-second spot for Conduit. It would
have been nice, though, to have had these trailers on the
same discs as their respective episodes.
The
features disc also contains a DVD-ROM game and episode guide,
while the six "episode" discs also include a selection of
scenes from nine shows dubbed for international markets.
Given
its x-tremely reasonable retail price, this is an x-cellent
package.
Richard
McGinlay
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