Christi P

Now that the X-Files is being repackaged at a lower price ($50MSRP, around $35 in stores), I plan to pick up some of the seasons.

Seasons 1-3 get re-released on Jan.31, and 4-6 get released on March 28.

I've heard that the later seasons are pretty bad - is there a good place to stop watching the show?

GuruTwo

They're underrated. As you watch the series, just accept that the change from Mulder & Scully to Doggett and Reyes is coming. Doggett is introduced in the beginning of Season 8 and Reyes towards the end. The people that have a hatred for seasons 8&9 usually only cite D&R as the reason they hate the show. If you can prepare yourself for the transition, you'll be able to enjoy two surprisingly good and underrated seasons of the show. Also, you shouldn't stop there, you should check out the entire Ten Thirteen oeuvre, including "Millennium", "Harsh Realm" and "The Lone Gunmen".

Eric D.

The switch is not too bad if you just prepare yourself for it. If you don't watch seasons 8 & 9 you will miss out on some truly great episodes.

nitin77

season 5 was the last consistently good season.

Dazed

Will they have the same packaging as the existing boxsets ? I only have season 1 and put off getting the others because they were so expensive.

Would like to start completing the set now at the new price.

LeeVing

i just finished getting the seasons through netflix. I was surprised that I actually liked seasons 8-9. I think by that tiime i was ready for something different.

I will be getting these when the price drops.

argh923

The new releases will be in slimcases, instead of the current digipaks.

Josh Z

This is my feeling as well. I stopped collecting after Season 5 and the movie, but unfortunately this does not provide much of a sense of closure. Season 6 is hit or miss, and has a bad cliffhanger. Season 7 is not very good overall, but from a certain perspective its ending would have made a good series finale if later seasons didn't undo it (meaning that it won't lead well into any future movie). I am not a fan of much of Season 8, but it has a very good final scene and in a worst case scenario that is where I would stop.

Season 9 is bad from start to finish, and the actual series finale is IMO the worst 2 hours ever to air on the television medium.

MovieExchange

The general consensus from X-Files fans is that the movie is the best place to stop, which took place between seasons 5 & 6.

matome

bboisvert

I agree with most that Season 5 is the last decent one. I usually consider Season 1-5 + the movie to be The X-Files. However, Season 6-8 have a few bright moments here and there. If they release a compact complete season set for cheap, ala Buffy, in 2006... I'll probably get it.

Season 9 is pretty horrible start to finish. Most of the episodes are are real chore to get through. And, yes, the finale is terrible.

MovieExchange

I didn't see many episodes, despite going through 2 girlfriends that were fanatics about the show. I did watch the end, however, and it was pretty bad.

I still say that the series should have ended with Mulder in a straightjacket in a padded cell, and as you pan out the window in the door and out to the hallway, you see Scully as his nurse, Skinner as a doctor, etc. You find out that Mulder has been insane ever since his sister was abducted, and the entire series has been a figment of a crazy man's imagination.

nemein

Mod note: Since this is more about the series than the DVDs themselves I'm moving it to the TV Forum...


RE the subject, personally I didn't think season 9 was all that bad but then again I didn't watch it that regularly and I completely missed seasons 6-8 so for me it was like a whole new show.

Mazje

I think you can stop at the movie (taking place after season ) and still get a decent sense of...not really "closure," but of an ending. Just accept that Mulder and Scully are going to continue to fight against the conspiracy and keep on doing what they've been doing.

As bad as the series finale was (and make no mistake, it was not only awful, but an insult to the fans who'd been watching from the start), I would have to say that the episode that provides the "resolution" to the plotline about Mulder's sister is equally bad. It's in season 7 or 8, and it is almost too embarassing to watch.

Yes, Season 9 is bad from start to finish. Stop at the movie.

marty888

Another vote for that exact sentiment. Season 1-5 + movie does somewhat have a sense of closure (well as much as X-Files ever had any closure). Once you move into the last 4 seasons, the annoyance factor starts to outweigh the entertainment factor. It became a different show entirely, and the internal logic spun out of control. I actually watched the series to the bitter end - but the human mind is a wonderful thing, and I'm slowly erasing seasons 6-9 from my memory, and am left with 5 brilliant seasons of a landmark show.

maxfisher

I'd say it depends on if you're talking about the mythology or just the show in general. If you're watching for the mythology, I agree with most that it pretty much goes to hell somewhere around the time of the movie (end of season 5, beginning of season 6). However, I thought there were quite a few good stand-alone eps throughout seasons 6 & 7 and even a handful in season 8. I'll jump on the bandwagon and say season 9 was terrible from start to finish. I really liked Doggett as a character, but thought the overall writing and stories just turned to shit. I remember tuning in every Sunday throughout the last season, desperately hoping they'd make a good episode, as there certainly was the potential for it, only to be consistently let down 20+ times.

Michael Corvin

OMG, that was terrible. All that time invested for such a lame cop-out closure.

Many make good points, I was open to change so I can enjoy 8 & 9 ...somewhat. Dogget was a great addition. An excellent character, I really enjoyed Robert Patrick on the show. So 8 was good. Reyes on the other hand was a pityful excuse for a character, and was bad in almost every scene.

The two additions aside, maxfischer is right. If you are into it for the mythology then you could probably stop around 6-7. If you like the monster-of-the-week episodes there are still some good ones to be had in later seasons.

Josh-da-man

I think that X-Files, in the later seasons, had more problems than losing its two leads.

And, losing Mulder and Scully in the final two seasons does throw in some weird dynamics when you look at the series as a whole. It's like reading a novel and having the lead characters replaced with two new characters in the final chapters. It's disconcerting.

But ultimately, I think the X-Files problem was that Fox let it outrun its welcome. The mythology became so convoluted, the conspiracy so overextended, that it was hard to give a shit about. It's like... watching the finale when they attempted to reveal the whole conspiracy, it just came off as a big so what? By that time, you just didn't care.

That said, I think the series "peaked" in its fifth season; anything after seven, and the show was on life support.

bboisvert

Definitely agreed.

That was part of the issue... the show clearly wasn't able to sustain that many episodes. It continued waaay too long after running out of steam.

But, the fact that even when it was time to wrap things up they couldn't come up with acceptable answers to storylines that people had been following for years? I think the blame falls squarely on Chris Carter. It becomes pretty obvious that -- even for the central aspects of the show's mythology -- he was 'making it up as he went'. He didn't know how to end his own creation, even taking into account some of the silliness that resulted from cast changes and too many seasons.

Tracer Bullet

What was it?

Legolas

Doggett breathed new life into the show for Season 8. Unfortunately, they tried to milk Gillian Anderson's contract for what it was worth and we ended up with a Scully-sans-Mulder Season 9 which was pretty horrible. If they would've just let both original leads go after 8 and had 9 be about Doggett and Reyes, it could've continued on with new stories, instead of being bogged down by missing Mulder and his conspiracy.

mikeporter

I would recommend you buy all six, they are all worth the price.

gatoinfeliz

The cop-out was because at the end of season 7 Chris Carter didn't know if the show would be returning since it was failing in the ratings. It feels like season 8 and 9 were made with the feeling that those would ultimately be the last seasons even though he brought in Dogget and Reyes in to hopefully continue the show. The only reason Scully was still in the show at that point was because Gilian Anderson's contract expired after the 8th or 9th season and would ultimately be replaced by those two as the new X-Files agents. You can really tell in the 9th season because they have her as a FBI teacher at Quantico Bay. At that point, it was like she was there to collect her paycheck since they focused more on the other two agents while her storyline was "I wonder where Mulder is?" and that baby of hers.

It sucks that the show finished like it did, I feel like those last two seasons of the show were more interesting than some of the other ones where it felt so routine after a while, it was refreshing to see new blood in the show. Anabeth Gish who played Reyes said in an interview that she felt sad that it ended because they finally found their way in the last season with her character and Dogget's while they were still fresh and resented upon in season 8.

I got all of the seasons last December when they were still expensive as fuck. I got them from Amazon and it cost me around $600 including the movie. It was a great deal especially since each season alone would cost around $110 dollars.

If you want "closure" with Mulder and Scully, by all the seasons up to the 7th and don't bother with the 8th and 9th seasons. I would just get them all, they work way better as a whole, even if they don't include much of Mulder and Scully in the last two.

gatoinfeliz

Exactly, it felt like a let down when you saw the great episodes that revolved around the two new agents and then you saw too much of the "Where is Mulder" crap they pulled in the 8th season.

Anyone remember the episode where Dogget starts to believe in supernatural things when in his dream he almost gets killed?

One of the better ones is when they focus on Reyes and the whole two dimension thing and she has to kill Dogget to get everything back to normal.

Josh-da-man

It might've worked out better had the whole Mulder/Scully arc been closed in the seventh season.

And if Fox wanted an eighth season, they could've started a whole new 'arc' with Doggett and Reyes. With Mulder and Scully gone, the X-Files Department could've been taken over by the two new agents, and they could've been given their own mission/conspiracy to work on.

Instead, we got new agents with Mulder and Scully hanging out in the background all of the time, and NOTHING came to a satisfying conclusion.

Plus, that crap with the dragged the show down a road it never should've traveled. That was like sharks on motorcycles jumping over whales.