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FBI-agent Mulder (David Duchovny) is a top profiler - but he's also
known for his rather unconventional deductions that often involve alien
abductions and stuff (mainly because he thinks his sister has been
abducted when he was a child as well), and he has developed a predilection
for the FBI's unsolved cases that involve the unusual. So the FBI has
decided to partner him with a watchdog, down-to-earth Scully (Gillian
Armstrong), and agent with a medical degree.
So much for the setup of the whole series, soon Scully and Mulder are
off to smalltown USA where a few unexplained murders have happened, and
the latest body shows some strange marks which for Mulder are a proof for
alien interference. Plus, when the two dig up one of the other bodies,
they find a non-human corpse in the coffin, and when they want to
reinvestigate the murderscene, the local sheriff (Leon Russom) prevents
them from doing so at gunpoint - and interestingly, the sheriff's own son
Billy (Zachary Ansley) is an inmate of the very asylum all the murder
victims were inamtes as well, and even though he is said to have been in a
coma for years, his feet are covered in dirt from the murder scene ... and
before you know it, his closest friend from the asylum (Katya Gardner) is
killed as well ...
And when Mulder and Scully all of a sudden just lose 9 minutes,
Mulder is convinced that aliens are behind all of it ... which is when all
of their evidence literally goes up in flames.
At the climax, Mulder and Scully manage to track Billy down just when
he's about to kill his next victim under some sort of spell, but the two
of them with the help of the sheriff can keep him from doing so, and
suddenly there's a light ... and the boy is healed.
Ultimately, agent Scully returns with very little actual evidence
regarding the case but a possibly alien communications thingie she found
in Billy's nose - but mysteriously this disappears, thanks to a certain
cigarette smoking man (William B.Davis) - who in the course of the series
will of course be behind pretty much every major gouvernment conspiracy
there is ...
In the early to mid-1990's, The X-Files was the
cult-series, seen from a distance (of 15 years) though, this pilot episode
already reveals the weak spots of the series: Mulder is always way too
quick to jump to conclusions involving the supernatural (mostly before he
even tries to find a rational explanation), while Scully's doubt in the
view of the obvious are almost a bit annoying, and the tendency to leave
things open do ultimately mar the series as this episode, as does the idea
to have proof just go up in smoke if it's in the way of the story as a
whole. That all said, this pilot episode is still not too bad a piece of
television, there's enough mystery and suspense to carry the somewhat
half-baked story, and the lead characters are actually likeable - it's
just not the classic by far one expects it to be given the series
reputation.
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