Pilot: 1993 In A Can

A wind rushes through a dark forest, droning music completing a rising feeling of dread. A woman runs through these woods in a hospital gown, clearly afraid of something. Fleeing too fast, she trips as leaves start to fly and surround her. A bright, glowing figure emerges behind a hill and approaches the woman, walking through the tornado of leaves. As he moves ever closer, there is a sudden fade to white. 

Text appears on-screen to tell us this is Collum National Forest in Oregon. Hours later, police officers are crowding around the area near the woman’s now lifeless body, lying face down. A medical examiner notices two distinct marks resembling bug bites on her lower back. Turning her over, a detective identifies the woman as Karen Swenson, a recent high-school graduate and classmate of her son. This draws the attention of the examiner, asking the detective if she graduated in the Class of ‘89. As the detective silently exits the scene, the examiner shouts after him. “It’s happening again, isn’t it!?”

Thus begins the saga of The X-Files, and I have to say, I’m surprised. Starting the story focusing on this episode’s specific plot line rather than establishing the lead characters (as the next scenes do) is a tactic that TV shows don’t often use nowadays in their pilots. The idea of a brand-new show starting on a discrete event that only goes as far as the credits 45 minutes later is something executives today might balk at. This opening serves not only as a great tone setter but a nice reminder of when serialization did not yet rule the small screen. Someone could watch this episode and still have experienced a complete story, even disregarding elements that were obvious setups for later. 

Once the episode does get to the introduction of our protagonists, another smart move is made: Dana Scully, recent med school graduate and series skeptic, is introduced first as the audience proxy. She has been called to meet with the FBI Division Chief for assignment and it just so happens she is being tasked to monitor and report on the activities of a fellow agent in the organization—Fox Mulder, UFO obsessive and generally weird person. Mulder is the head of an obscure arm of the FBI in which he investigates and attempts to solve “unsolvable” cases regarding “unexplainable phenomena,” these cases being the eponymous “X-Files.” 

Mulder and Scully’s first meeting is lower-key than the series’ legacy had led me to believe. They exchange surface-level information about their pasts and worldviews. (Scully’s thesis paper at her university was called “Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation” to which Mulder responds “In my line of work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply.”) Then the plot comes crashing back in, with Mulder giving a slideshow presentation of recent deaths across the United States that share a common factor; the two dots also seen on Karen Swenson’s back. 

The rest of the episode is essentially a police procedural, with the twist being that the killings were carried out because the victims may or may not have been abducted by aliens. The whole thing feels very “early 90s,” with stylistic choices taken from Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs and the pacing following the structure of any number of crime/mystery shows. From this combination of inspirational factors, alongside the strength of this pilot on its own, I see what FOX saw in the project and fully understand how it got a series green light. Even without the intrigue laid in the final scene, where a mysterious old man takes the only piece of evidence that Scully recovered from the episode’s events, it still worked as a self-contained experience, and I have to give it points for only hinting at future plot points instead of stuffing itself full of setups the entire runtime.

4.5/5