The Pilot A girl tumbles through dense Oregan thicket and ends up being swallowed up by a bright light, only to be found later on with strange markings about her person... This type of opening became the staple setup for an X-Files episode, but in this iconic pilot it's hard to find the formula bettered across the whole series. The episode itself is a tour de creepy in storytelling from creator and true believer, Chris Carter, and it's still refreshing now to see special agents Dana Scully and Fox 'Spooky' Mulder first being paired up to investigate these strange goings on in backwater America. Everything we grew to love about the show emerges in this episode; starting with the series' overarching abduction plotline unfolding from the opening beat all the way to David Ducovony and Gillian Anderson's intimidate and believable chemistry. Plus, nothing says there's more to come than a closing shot of a sinister government agent (main baddie, The Smoking Man) lurking in a huge vault, crammed to the rafters with lots of cases and specimens to be investigated. What Did It Change? The male and female buddy-up had been tried and tested previously in cop shows, but not so much in science fiction - so this in itself was original. But what pushed The X-Files into best sci-fi show ever territory was its breadth. As seen in the pilot, Carter's colony story thread and the government conspiracy to cover this up was already taking shape, so with this established he went on to dedicate a hefty chunk of each season to standalone monster of the week episodes and Arthur C Clarke esque investigations into the unknown. By not predominately focusing on the show's main plot, each season remained fresh and allowed Mulder and Scully's relationship to bubble and simmer. This formula was established in the pilot. Legacy Along with two spin off series - the underrated Lone Gunman and Millennium - and a couple of movies, The X-Files shone a standard issue torch into a genre hidey hole and allowed the likes of eerily similar pretenders such as The Outer Limits, Dark Skies, Strange Luck and Warehouse 13 to come to light. Props should also go to Supernatural and Fringe for taking the X-Files template and turning it into something fresh, new and spooky.
Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing.
He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.
