The X-Files: Chris Carter’s best episodes

For any X-Phile (like me), October 13th is a special day. 10/13 as it’s known in America is the birthday of legendary The X-Files creator, Chris Carter, and the name of his production company which made the seminal, pop culture defining TV show such a rampaging success – a show that refuses to go away, given the eleventh season is just months away.

In honour of Carter’s birthday last Friday and his show, we thought we would look back at five of his key episodes, as both writer and director, and what they brought to the series.

Also, shameless plug time, but my podcast The X-Cast has begun #TheXCastPodwatch (find it on Twitter), a daily run of podcasts which talk the entire 200+ run of the series to date, before the S11 premiere. Hopefully unmissable for any X-Files fan out there.

Anyway, on with the list…

The List (S3, E5)

…and ‘The List’ seems as good a place as any to start! An early entry in the third season of the show, by now Carter knew he had a phenomenon on his hands. David Duchovny & Gillian Anderson were on the cover of Rolling Stone. 20th Century Fox were talking about doing a movie. The future was shaped with an X, and Carter knew he had more money to play with in order to realise his spooky tales.

You can see that cash on screen in the production design of ‘The List’, which builds an entire, large prison set as FBI Agents Fox Mulder & Dana Scully investigate what could well be a case of a Death Row, executed inmate returning from beyond the grave to exact vengeance on those who wrongfully put him in the chair. One of the darkest stories the show ever did, set in the smoky Florida tropics, ‘The List’ is filled with shady characters, stark lighting, twisty-turny plotting and memorable guest turns from well known character actors, such as the late, great JT Walsh as the sinister prison Warden.

The best part? It ends with Mulder genuinely uncertain about how it all rolled out. That’s so rare, where Mulder hasn’t figured out the weirdness, so to have him walk away feeling like the case is unfinished is fascinating to see, especially before a final sting of a ending. And I mean that literally…

Patience (S8, E3)

Oddly enough, Carter wrote and directed more episodes from the eighth season onwards than he often did in previous years of the show. Many consider the last few years of the series ailing but Season Eight, in reality, is one of the show’s strongest years; Carter pulls the series back to its roots, moving away from the lighter character comedy of the sixth and seventh season, choosing the absence of Duchovny’s Mulder to pare the season back to darker, tighter and creepier stand-alone stories – at least the first half anyway.

Straight after the two-part premiere, Carter delivers ‘Patience’, a story which absolutely fits the new, pulled back template. A shadowy monster, a small town and plenty of misfit characters who may or may not be doing the murdering and, in this case, be a bat-like creature of folklore. ‘Patience’ also has the virtue of being the first investigation not connected to the mythology for Scully and new partner, Special Agent John Doggett (Robert Patrick), hence Carter writes plenty of awkward tension between two very different people attempting to figure out how to work together, while the newly-pregnant Scully is still suffering the anguish of Mulder’s disappearance and having the man she loves ripped out of her life.

Though not a classic X-File, and in some ways a fairly routine story, ‘Patience’ is neatly shot with plenty of gloomy shadows and mood lighting, and a solid script for Scully and Doggett to start, ever so slowly, forming some kind of partnership.

Duane Barry (S2, E5)

Not just the first episode Carter both wrote and directed for the show, ‘Duane Barry’ in many respects was the episode that displayed quite what The X-Files was capable of, on a dramatic and cinematic level. It kickstarted a storyline for Scully which played out across the rest of the series’ long run—her infamous abduction (whether by men or aliens is never certain) due to Gillian Anderson’s unexpected pregnancy–while also telling a tight, compact and dramatically powerful story about a former FBI agent who could either be an alien abductee, or a crazed lunatic holding people hostage with bizarre demands.

For several reasons, Carter really makes an impact with ‘Duane Barry’. The script, for a start, could well be the strongest he’s ever written, tapping into a rich vein of drama based around the eponymous Duane’s quite harrowing recounting of his alien abduction experiences (many of which, as always with this show, come from documented real life claims), and quite how Mulder reacts to entering a hostage negotiation situation. Duchovny rises to the great material and guest star Steve Railsback–as Barry–just blows you away with how edgy, disturbed and ultimately sympathetic his portrayal is. Though fellow guest star CCH Pounder got an Emmy nomination, Railsback should have been honoured, because his performance is nothing short of legendary.

If not perhaps Carter’s greatest achievement both behind the script and camera (he too got Emmy plaudits), with ‘Duane Barry’ nonetheless he showed everyone The X-Files wasn’t just a weird little procedural, a baton Season Two picked up and very quickly ran with. The rest, well, is history…

The Post-Modern Prometheus (S5, E5)

For many, ‘The Post-Modern-Prometheus’ is The X-Files at its very best. Early on in Season Five, with the show at the height of its critical and commercial popularity, with a movie very soon on the way, Carter was very much able to indulge and experiment, and boy does this one tick that box – a love letter to Mary Shelley, to 1930’s Frankenstein movies, and the bizarre quirks of small-town Americana, Carter tells the emotive, eccentric story of a modern Frankenstein and films the whole thing in arresting black and white. It’s a remarkable achievement many shows simply wouldn’t get away with.

Many accuse Carter of dubious sexual politics for many reasons and ‘The Post-Modern Prometheus’ is pointed to as an example of that – whatever your feelings, the episode has a great deal going on. Not just in terms of the unique nature of how it was filmed, with some beautiful cinematography bringing out Mulder & Scully’s investigation in new lights, but a script which by turns is elegant, ponderous, romantic and philosophical as it explores the sad tale of The Great Mutato, a ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ who loves the music of Cher. Carter reached out to Cher to appear in a final sequence in which Mulder & Scully attend a concert of hers, and sadly she later regretted declining to appear given she was a fan of the show – that would have set off a climax where Mulder & Scully dance romantically to ‘Walking in Memphis’ which many ‘shippers’ point to as a moment deepening their eventual bond from the platonic to romantic.

Carter does manage to top ‘The Post-Modern Prometheus’ for creating something truly vivid and unique, but only just. Think of another TV show that honestly ever made an episode like this, and you really will be hard pushed. A true X-Files great.

Triangle (S6, E3)

If ever an episode of The X-Files should not have worked, it’s ‘Triangle’. Taking place early on in the show’s sixth season, following a change from filming in Vancouver to Los Angeles, riding off the success of the movie Fight the Future, it sets the stall out for a season which would experiment potentially more than any other year with the show’s traditional format. Carter throws everything but the kitchen sink at ‘Triangle’, both in terms of storytelling and how he shoots the episode, and it’s both marvellous and utterly utterly fan pleasing and indulgent. There had never been, and never will be, an X-File quite like it.

The story is simple: Mulder, searching for a lost cruise ship in the Bermuda Triangle, ends up finding the vessel but in the year 1939–having fallen through a time slip–as its boarded by Nazi’s on the eve of WW2 looking for a weapon of mass destruction. Here’s where it gets bonkers, though – everyone on board are facsimiles for all of the people in  Mulder’s life; Scully, the Smoking Man, Skinner, Spender, Kersh. They all both appear as strange 1939 people on the ship *and* in the present as Scully races around the FBI in a farcical hunt to track Mulder down. Sounds ludicrous, right? Totally. Carter knows that, though, and plays it beautifully for comedy, with a glorious Mark Snow score backing up his weird, comedic and fast-paced script.

‘Triangle’ stands out mostly, however, for how Carter shoots; not only does he frequently use split-screen in order to tell his story, sometimes even winking a little to the audience (such as when the two Scully’s pass each other in the same hallway in two time zones), but he uses long hand-held camera tracking shots, barely breaking for cuts, which allows for the episode to have a completely distinctive style which sweeps you along for the mad ride. It’s a joy – plus, at the end, Mulder even tells Scully for the first time that he loves her. Oh, brother!

Are you a fan of The X-Files? What is your favourite Chris Carter script/directorial effort? Let us know!